Mediaboss Marketing

Now that Nelson Mandela has finally been laid to rest, its worth reflecting not only on an historically significant figure, but the crucial truths an international media has sought to bury, says John Hilley.

Bush and Bono paying their respects to Mandela

And, in the wake of that relentless distortion of Mandelas life and cause, its an urgent reminder of the need for a radical new media, completely released from the constraints of corporate control.

The treatment of Mandelas death and memorial has shown just what a vital service state-corporate journalism performs in disguising systemic crimes, whitewashing elite offenders and mythologising those deemed useful to that selective narrative.

Or, rather, its shown precisely none of this to a public massively smothered by political and media groupthink.

Notable here has been the focus on Mandelas capacity for forgiveness, an honourable character trait, of course. Yet, as pinpointedly shown by Media Lens, emotionally potent over-simplifications have been used here to twisted effect. Thus:

many journalists have rightly praised Mandelas forgiveness. But the state-corporate system also has a generous capacity for excusing torturers, dictators, terrorists, and even former enemies like Mandela anyone who serves the deep interests of power and profit in some way.

So, while in life and death Hugo Chavez whose revolutionary movement sought to resist Western-corporate dictate was damned and derided as an egotistical tyrant, Nelson Mandela whose African National Congress embraced that neoliberal agenda was forgiven and hailed as a saintly liberator.

Another welcome antidote to this choice media adulation can be found in Greg Palasts fine dissection of the rampant hypocrisy and dollification of Mandela, laying bare the real story of how, beyond the standard media narrative, his triumph over political apartheid came at the cost of a continued and deepening economic apartheid.

Like Media Lens, Palast also corrects the much-vaunted line on Mandelas ready forgiveness:

Read more from the original source:
Mandela coverage – the urgent need for corporate-free media