Ukraine war – a shocking failure of our mainstream media

The well-known, and well-respected, international journalist John Pilger describes the war between Ukraine and Russia as “above all, a war of propaganda.”

He says that nothing in the western press about this war can be trusted implicitly. That the reader or viewer must develop all their skill of scepticism in their following of news reports on this war.

I have always felt the need for scepticism and questioning of any media but agree it has really got awfully bad now. In a sense, the population has been well prepared for this propaganda onslaught because they have been exposed to such propaganda for many years.

Only this can explain the willing acceptance of media censorship, the acceptance of a propaganda narrative leading to imposing collective responsibility on a whole nation of people despite their individual attitudes towards the war. What we have seen is a mass operation of confirmation bias leading to the acceptance of such actions which surely violate the human values of justice most of us have been brought up to accept.

The trouble is, the confirmation bias and wishful thinking which have guided media presentations and our acceptance of this propaganda must, in the end, be challenged by the facts on the ground.

How will people who have willingly given along with such acceptance of propaganda react when the stories about the wars, both the military and economic wars, are shown to be false?