VivirLatino

To add more complexity to the various conversations we’ve had here at VL about the media coverage of the coup in Honduras, there is this really important interview on Democracy Now! with John Pilger, a journalist covering Honduras.

But for most people, the primary source of their information is the mainstream. It is mainly television. Even the internet for all its subversiveness has still a very large component of the mainstream. And that means we’re getting still either its this singular message about wars, about the economy, about all those things that touch our lives. All we are getting is what I would call is a contrived silence, a censorship by a mission. I think this is almost the principal issue of today because without information, we cannot possibly begin to influence government. We cannot possibly begin to end the wars.

All of this, it seams to me, has come together in the presidency of Barack Obama who is almost a creation of this media world. He promised some things, although most of them were more for us, and has delivered virtually the opposite. He started his own war in Pakistan. We see the events in Iran and Honduras in quiet subtlety, but very directly influenced in the time-honored way by the Obama administration. And yet the Obama administration is still given this extraordinary benefit of the doubt by people, who in my view are influenced by the mainstream media. It is a time when I think, where either we are going to begin to understand how the media really works, or we’re going to let that opportunity pass. Its almost a historic opportunity the we understand that the perception of our world is utterly distorted, most of the time through what are seen as credible sources of information.

There was also discussion in the interview about comparisons between the election in Iran and the election Honduras. It is a really important interview, if only because it asks all the questions I haven’t been able to think through because I’m not sure of the exact history in Honduras.