Pixelated Semantics

The greatest fictions are not from literature any more

A blatant, almost shocking, attempt to manipulate reader's fears over terrorism by News Ltd reporting this morning. Stating that "after months waging war on terror in the Middle East, Australian sailors came home yesterday - to be told terrorists were plotting an attack in Australia" belies the fact sailors are no more a target than anyone or anything else.

A juxtaposition of returned sailors and "plots" shores up the Iraq - Terror - Domestic Politics nexus without basis in fact. By the time one arrives at the bottom of the story, an "intelligence source" admits "there has been plenty of talk about their motivation to commit a terrorist act, but no specific intent." In other words, there was no specific plot, there were no charges laid, and none of the "terror raids" had anything to do with those sailors at all. Its headline "Sydney cell finance chaos" is so completely misleading as to deserve an award.

This reporting is transparent propaganda, maintaining carefully crafted fictions to keep a "threat" in the public mind. Agencies claim to have "foiled an attack designed to paralyse our economy" while offering no evidence for the claim, and admitting no specific threat against any person, while using the right kind of key words (like "economy", "extremists", "attack") to promote fear. This is one of the clearest examples of propagandising by Australian media and enforcement authorities yet.

Item posted by AutoEditor at 12:12 pm ::