GNN: Spins of the Week

The latest from the Guerrillanews.com headquarters – special war edition!

PR Watch,  March 28, 2003

“The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it.” – Goebbels

Special War Edition:

The Truth About Basra
Robert Fisk reports that “an Iraqi general, surrounded by hundreds of his armed troops, stands in central Basra and announces that Iraq’s second city remains firmly in Iraqi hands. The unedited al-Jazeera videotape, filmed over the past 36 hours and newly arrived in Baghdad, is raw, painful, devastating. … It is also proof that Basra, reportedly ‘captured” and ‘secured’ by British troops last week, is indeed under the control of Saddam Hussein’s forces. … The unedited reports therefore provide damaging proof that Anglo-American spokesmen have not been telling the truth about the battle for Basra.” Source: The Independent (UK), March 28, 2003

Who Lied to Whom About Iraq’s Nuclear Program?
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh asks, “Why did the Administration endorse a forgery about Iraq’s nuclear program?” How did the misinformation end up in the President’s State of the Union address, and who has been fooling whom to make sure the US attacked Iraq? Source: The New Yorker, March 24, 2003

Spin of the Week comes courtesy of our friends at PR Watch, a Wisconsin-based non-profit organization that reports on the public relations industry and the role of the media in democracy.

See PR Watch’s John Stauber in a GNN NewsVideo.

New from PR Watch:

Disinfomania!
Yesterday the PR Watch staff launched a new website – an “open source” encyclopedia of propaganda that we have dubbed the “Disinfopedia.” The Disinfopedia lets people like you contribute your knowledge about PR front groups and propaganda to a growing, ever-improving database that will serve as a resource for citizens and journalists. Users have already added dozens of new articles to the Disinfopedia.

The Disinfopedia is a self-conscious experiment in alternative forms of information-gathering and publication. We hope you like what you see, and that you’ll become one of our regular contributors!