DemocracyNow! owes its audience an explanation and an apology

DemocracyNow! has for decades been one of the leading voices in the independent media landscape. In its own words: “an independent news program, Democracy Now! is audience-supported, which means that our editorial independence is never compromised by corporate or government interests.”

A program that presents itself as anti-establishment, truth-seeking, anti-state-propaganda, one not afraid to challenge power and the official narrative. Skillfully achieving all that by covering grass-roots and allowing space to views that challenge convention.

While great majority of that does hold true, DN!’s international affairs coverage has on occasion consciously been repeating the official narrative. Listeners and viewers are owed an explanation and an apology.

Two recent examples help paint the picture. Ethiopia and Ukraine.

Ann Garrison wrote a good piece in the Black Agenda Report on how the Western media, including DemocracyNow!, presented the conflict between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Ethiopian government as starting with a brutal, unprovoked assault by Addis Ababa on “Tigrayan forces” (in the words of DN!). Not as a response to the attack on its army by the Western goaded and supported TPLF, as Garrison explains. DemocracyNow!, among others, continued to cover the war from that perspective, never questioning the involvement of the West, chiefly blaming the government of Abiy Ahmed for the conflict and its consequences. Even contrasting Ahmed's Nobel Peace prize with his initiating the war. No retractions or explanations have yet been issued, as Garrison points out.

Then came Ukraine. DN! continued with the same practice overwhelmingly repeating the official narrative. Alternative views at least ignored; debunked stories unchallenged, or only so when the official channels did it.

There has not been a retroactive look at some of the obvious lies, later exposed, that helped whip up popular support for the massive aid for Ukraine and for the insane proxy conflict with a nuclear super-power. For example, the story of the incredible defiance of Ukrainian soldiers at Snake Island who told the Russian barbarians about to smother them to “go fuc* themselves” before being annihilated. Only to subsequently be reported alive and well in Russian custody. Or the story of the super-hero fighter pilot - The Ghost of Kiev, who kept destroying Russian jets in their vile attempt to conquer his home city and country. No explanation how the Russians who were running out of missiles days into the war seem to keep having ever more almost two years later. No reflection or space for challenge is allowed to the official version of the story of the Mariupol theater bombing by the Russians, or the extremely potent narrative of the Bucha massacre, despite obvious issues with those stories, amply challenged in other independent media.

It is as if DN! never heard of “emotionally potent oversimplifications” being crucial to propaganda as Noam Chomsky explained (quoting Reinhold Neighbour). A category replete with examples especially in periods of pre-conflict or during conflict with an evil official enemy, as DN! is clearly aware of. Iraqi soldiers pulling babies out of incubators (DN!s own account of the lies in 2018) and Libyan (in 2011) and Russian (in 2022) soldiers being provided Viagra to rape their adversaries’ women belong in this category, for example. Both stories debunked since.

DemocracyNow! owes its listeners and viewers an explanation of why there has practically been no space allowed in their programming for analysts and experts whose view of the “unprovoked” Russian aggression is exactly the opposite. These are no fringe conspiracy theorists, mind you. We are talking about people like professor John Mearsheimer, fmr. Iraq WMD inspector and the person who publicly challenged the G.W. Bush administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein had WMDs, Scott Ritter, Col. Douglas McGregor, geo-political analyst Alexander Mercouris, fmr. CIA USSR analyst Ray McGovern, and a slew of others whose opinions align with historical figures such as George Kennan and Mikhail Gorbachev, all of whom warned about NATO expansion. Incidentally, the economist Jeffrey Sachs who shares their opinion on provoking Russia by expanding NATO was on the show a few times, but never to specifically talk about the causes of the war. In fact, Sachs’ unplanned mention of his view of the causes of the Ukrainian conflict was the most space DN! allowed to such opinions. His latest appearance was in relation to the negotiations on the US debt ceiling in May of this year, and his article making the connection between US wars and massive spending on the same. Sachs mentioned we spent roughly $9 trillion on wars since 2000, and that “these are not only wars of choice, the ones that I mentioned. They are wars of lies, because we’ve never been told the truth about what these fights are about, why we’re doing it. Of course, Iraq famously was on completely phony pretenses, but that’s not the only one. All of them have been based on lies.” He then leaned in on Ukraine saying: “When it comes to Ukraine, we knew — our diplomats knew and warned that the continued pressure by the military-industrial complex to expand NATO to Ukraine would provoke war. But they never told the American people that. They never explained it. And 'til this day they haven't explained what this war is really about.” The interchange with Juan Gonzalez continued: “JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I wanted to ask you — you mentioned Ukraine. You’ve written often about this whole way that the American — top officials in the U.S. government, as well as the media, talk about the Ukraine war and Russia’s entry, invasion as unprovoked, this whole issue of being an unprovoked war.

JEFFREY SACHS: I noted that The New York Times has used the word “unprovoked” regarding this invasion 26 times in its editorials, its opinion columns and its invited guest op-eds. They don’t talk about the truth, which is that our own diplomats — I’m talking about U.S. diplomats, including CIA Director William Burns, who wrote a memo that was released by WikiLeaks in 2008. His 2008 memo said this is existential, from Russia’s point of view. If we continue to push NATO enlargement to Ukraine, this could have absolutely dire consequences. Our diplomats have known this all along. But it’s been the politicians, it’s been the military-industrial complex, it’s been the big companies that have been championing NATO enlargement. That’s a lot of weapons sales if you do that.”                    

That prompted Amy Goodman to intervene and make sure Russian barbarism isn’t left out, and to redirect the conversation. “Well, Jeffrey Sachs, you also have been critical of Russia’s brutal invasion. And I’m wondering how you see this ending now. And also, as we started, if you could talk about how you see this debate on lifting the debt ceiling ending?”

Why redirect? Didn’t we have enough of that part of the argument on DN! already? Shouldn’t we give more space to folks of Prof. Sachs’ persuasion to get alternative views? A debate on DN! perhaps?

Instead, what we are getting as news from DN! is a selection from western newswires, mostly Associated Press and Reuters (New York Times as well, whose biases are well known) as evidenced when coverage is compared side-by-side.

Given the infiltration and subservience of these outlets to the Western military-intelligence-governmental propaganda masters, we’re at the very least owed a disclosure that these are the sources DN! draws from in its reporting, and an apology for peddling that message as the truth as well as an apology for largely ignoring the prominent, legitimate, opposing view points on the war.

A Swiss study of western governments’ influence over main news agencies (Reuters, AFP, AP, analyzing their Syria war coverage) explains: “It is one of the most important aspects of our media system – and yet hardly known to the public: most of the international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three global news agencies based in New York, London and Paris. The key role played by these agencies means that Western media often report on the same topics, even using the same wording. In addition, governments, military and intelligence services use these global news agencies as multipliers to spread their messages around the world. A study of the Syria war coverage by nine leading European newspapers clearly illustrates these issues: 78% of all articles are based in whole or in part on agency reports, yet 0% on investigative research. Moreover, 82% of all opinion pieces and interviews are in favor of the US and NATO intervention, while propaganda is attributed exclusively to the opposite side… Finally, the dominance of global agencies explains why certain geopolitical issues and events – which often do not fit very well into the US/NATO narrative or are too “unimportant” – are not mentioned in our media at all: if the agencies do not report on something, then most Western media will not be aware of it.”. “… from Vienna to Washington, our media often report the same topics, using many of the same phrases – a phenomenon that would otherwise rather be associated with »controlled media« in authoritarian states…”. “… it is easy for interested parties to spread propaganda and disinformation in a supposedly respectable format to a worldwide audience. DPA editor Steffens warned of this danger: “The critical sense gets more lulled the more respected the news agency or newspaper is.””

Or in more detail: ”Fred Bridgland looked back on his work as a war correspondent for the Reuters agency: “We based our reports on official communications. It was not until years later that I learned a little CIA disinformation expert had sat in the US embassy, in Lusaka and composed that communiqué, and it bore no relation at all to truth. Basically, and to put it very crudely, you can publish any old crap and it will get newspaper room.”” And finally: “In addition to global news agencies, there is another source that is often used by media outlets around the world to report on geopolitical conflicts, namely the major publications in Great Britain and the US. For example, news outlets like the New York Times or BBC have up to 100 foreign correspondents and other external employees.”

While, doubtless, DN! does a great job covering most issues, particularly historical injustices, such as, for example, the way Indigenous children were treated in Canada; one does wonder what would their coverage have been if DN! was a contemporary of these crimes and relied on the official reports of the time?

Barring DN!’s credible explanation of the gaps in their coverage, as well as the issue in citing western news agencies (or at least warning us with a disclaimer), I don’t see how we can seriously take DemocracyNow!’s claim that “our editorial independence is never compromised by corporate or government interests”.