Some readers might criticize the book as Snowden-ish, using RT and many other-than-western-official medias as information sources, therefore the book is “not worthy of being called academics”, I beg to disagree with them. For one thing, if one has to judge the book by its cover, instead of whether it is fact based, the reader is already biased. They should go back to read whatever they like and not to bother with the book.
While studying through propaganda issues, we always have to keep in mind the FACTS and EVIDENCES, for those are our only guiding lights, instead of whether they are from your favorite BBC or CNN, or maybe Snowden or RT.
An interesting propaganda case to be examined is the press conference held by chief prosecutor of International Court Moreno Ocampo in June 2011. When asked to quote the EVIDENCES of Libyan dictator Gaddafi’s crime against humanity, Ocampo directed the audience to read the 77 page report back home, probably confident that everyone will trust the news and that NO ONE would bother reading them. It turned out that more than half of the report only shows “REDACTED”, those which did exist were provided by miscellaneous NGOs who are not professional investigators (they were just observers or worse, themselves linked to PR companies) and whose nature are of the sort not able to be evidences in court.
Update- I personally went to the case info sheet on ICC, the 77 pages so-called evidence are all gone, the NGO ones too, wonder what happened.
Whether Gaddafi really were a dictator, we don’t know, and it’s not an issue here, but that very conference is the DEFINITION OF PROPAGANDA, because Mr. Ocampo was talking about non-existent things.
Also I’d ask future readers to distinguish between FACTS, and VALUE JUDGMENTS that masquerade themselves as PSEUDO-FACTS. For example, here is exact one sentence quote from The Ukraine Conflict and Russia’s Media Transformation by Mr. Jill Dougherty from CNN: based on mounting evidence that the plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile launched by pro-Russian separatists.
OK, since Mr. Ocampo already taught me a thing on Gaddafi, I’d like to be wise and ask WHERE ARE YOUR EVIDENCES??? We know the definition of missile, but WHAT EXACTLY ARE “SEPARATISTS”? Why is SEPARATIST a term intrinsically bad? Can you use it to describe people who want to democratically self-govern? What's going on here? Here the term is used as an implied VALUE JUDGEMENT therefore not a FACT. If we are thrown in the face these terms without getting them straight, we end up very confused over whether Ukraine is undergoing CIVIL WAR, whereas we don’t debate if Abraham Lincoln led American Civil War, as nobody was masquerading anything on Lincoln. This is also an important point studying this book.
On the other hand, this is a simple sentence right from the beginning of the book: Yanukovych is a popularly elected president. We know clearly what is POPULARLY, what is ELECTED, there is basically nothing to contradict this, so the sentence could be viewed as a fact no problem.
This book and many other things taught me a lot, I am thankful.
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- Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2017
- Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2016
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Top reviews from other countries
- davideReviewed in the United Kingdom on October 12, 2019
Fundamental and unique in a wasteland of propagandistic media and academic works on the subject
