Last night on the CBS Evening News (2/25/13), viewers saw this brief report from anchor Scott Pelley:
Iran’s culture minister today called the Oscar-winning film Argo about the Iranian hostage crisis “distorted history.” He said this on the same day that Iran’s Fars news agency gave a lesson in how to distort history. Have a look. This is Michelle Obama presenting Argo with the Best Picture Oscar last night and this is how she looked today in the Iranian press after some Photoshop alterations to cover her chest and shoulders in the conservative Islamic country.
You can see the photo, apparently from Iranian media, to the right.
This is a useful lesson in propaganda–though not the one CBS intended.
I suppose we might ignore that the first lady of a country appeared at an awards show, flanked by members of the military, to present a prize to a film about the heroism of U.S. intelligence against an official enemy state.
No, the real problem is Iran’s Photoshopping.
There are actually serious arguments about the historical accuracy of the film in question, which just won an Oscar for Best Picture. Nima Shirazi’s summary of the case against Argo provides a fairly devastating look at what the film made up, despite director Ben Affleck’s claims that the movie is “all true” (Wide Asleep in America, 2/23/13). Rather than wrestle with these questions, CBS points to Iranian “history distorters” as the source of the critique of the film. And we’re certainly not going to believe them.
Effective propaganda has to be convincing. CBS Evening News know this. As recently as last week (2/17/13), the broadcast was referring matter-of-factly to Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons (2/17/13). Correspondent Bill Plante told viewers:
With the Middle East in turmoil and Iran working to acquire nuclear weapons, South Carolina Republican Lindsay Graham warns that this is the wrong time for cutbacks.
There is no evidence Iran is working to acquire any such weapons. But in U.S. media it can be treated as a fact.
In 2011 we noted that CBS was hyping Iranian nukes (FAIR Blog, 12/21/11). The show repeatedly gave viewers a false history of the Israel/Gaza conflict (FAIR Blog, 11/21/12), erasing Israeli attacks–including its massive Cast Lead invasion in 2008-2009 from the narrative. That is, to my mind, a greater offense than covering up Michelle Obama’s arms.
CBS Evening News has done embarrassingly uncritical reporting on fracking. When the show wanted to give viewers a sense of the calamities that would befall the country if it fell off the “fiscal cliff,” it went right to a few CEOs as if they were experts. When Republicans falsely claimed that raising taxes on the wealthy was actually a tax hike for “small businesses,” CBS Evening News helped them make their point. When WikiLeaks published cables about civilian deaths in Afghanistan, CBS Evening News misinterpreted the documents to massively undercount the actual death toll.
Speaking of which: How many civilians died in the U.S.-led war in Iraq? CBS Evening News told viewers in December of 2011 that it was 50,000. It wasn’t until FAIR activists pointed out that this was woefully incomplete–as was even acknowledged by the source of that 50,000 figure–that the broadcast did an update, now telling viewers that over twice as many Iraqi civilians were killed.
But those Iranians and their clunky Photoshop skills, right?
Covering up chest and shoulders
Or covering up corporate and gummint crimes
Hard choice on which to condemn, innit?
Pots and kettles, people
Pots and kettles
What’s interesting is this time half of America would probably be agreeing with the Iranian news agency but for different reasons, maybe Michelle is being a touch risque for some locals who expect more discretionary behavior from a politician’s wife and then again the Iranians might be uneased that a high ranking woman had ‘the audacity’ to show as much skin as she did. Or it could also be a situation that Michelle has a certain image that she must comply with in Iranian’s eyes….?
http://scallywagandvagabond.com/2013/02/michelle-obamas-gown-photoshopped-by-iran-news-agency-leads-to-cheers/
Yup, they are so clunky that in the photo you can see it is not ‘clear’. On the other hand, neither was the Hostage Crisis, and I was there.
Wow. Still watching CBS, huh? Or one of the other propaganda outlets? Our media, owned by mega-billionaires, is there to make money, not tell truth. Wasting time watching or reading the falsehoods propagated daily by our vaunted “Free Press” reminds me of the late, unlamented Pravda (Truth in Russian) selling bullshit to the masses.
Thanks for your work, Peter Hart.
You know, Michelle does look pretty snazzy in that mock-up t-shirt they gave her, especially with those new bangs of hers!
Sorry, did you say something about Iran?
Great article!
It would seem that you are confusing entertainment with news. As of 1987 the FCC removed even the most basic form of news coverage from the requirements to access our airwaves. Your humor and cynicism is wonderful!
We must go to war with Iran because if they invade us they will take away our Michelle Obama shoulder-gawking liberty.
As acknowledged by then president Jimmy Carter, the rescue was 90 percent Canadian and 10 percent CIA. Argo seems to have gotten this backwards.
Why no outrage about old man Bush getting the hostages kept till after the elections ?
That the story everybody should know about and be asking questions about !
Great! Instead of talking about propaganda and manufactured History in the movie Fargo, we are now talking about Michelle Obama’s skin.
Good deflection … feeds upon American bias and hatred perfectly. They all fall in line..
Any way on the other subject what’s with Michelle Obama? She’s everywhere these days. ” I’ll feed them cake”.
I was going to post on Rehmat’s World, but Rehmat is an idiot and claims that I need to be logged on to post, only after I’d written, but doesn’t have a link for said Log On.
Better Late Than Never:
Have you ever heard a Jew speak about any other groups persecution or losses under the Third Reich; I haven’t? But it isn’t necessarily the fault of the average Jew on the street, the fault and the narcissistic behavior are handed down from their leadership and reiterated from womb to tomb.
i.e. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Jehovah’s Witnesses suffered religious persecution in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945 after refusing to perform military service, join Nazi organizations or give allegiance to the Hitler regime. An estimated 10,000 Witnesses—half of the number of members in Germany during that period—were imprisoned, including 2000 who were sent to concentration camps. An estimated 1200 died in custody, including 250 who were executed. They were the first Christian denomination banned in the Third Reich and the most extensively and intensively persecuted. Unlike Jews and Gypsies who were persecuted on the basis of their ethnicity, Jehovah’s Witnesses could escape persecution and personal harm by renouncing their religious beliefs by signing a document indicating renouncement of their faith, submission to state authority, and support of the German military. Historian Sybil Milton concludes that “their courage and defiance in the face of torture and death punctures the myth of a monolithic Nazi state ruling over docile and submissive subjects.
I’m not a Witness, but I respect their convictions and morality over all of Christendom. Thank god I’m atheist!
Iran is a beautiful country with cities of spectacular architecture and no ads, and what I’d been led to believe, fantastic, wonderful and generous people. I hope we don’t turn it into another Iraq!
Cut Israel loose, permanently deport all Israeli national lobbyists in the USA, decommission the Federal reserve and bring its chairman and executives to trial!
Thanks for letting me post!
Be safe and well!
Karl Luther
If you Peter Hart actually believe what you wrote ” there is no evidence that Iran is working to acquire such weapons” than the next article you should be writing is along these lines.President Obama should face impeachment .The reasons being too numerous to go into at this time.But the basic premiss that he has stated catagorically that Iranian ambitions are nuclear, while knowing he has no actionable intel (with all that entails) is enough on its own.The second article should be about how anyone that voted for this very dangerous liar,hould be ashamed.Personally I feel this open deception would break 3-4 articles of impeachment.Write that article mr Hart.As far as the iranians….they are every bit as bad as the North Koreans leadership
The American people will never be privileged to know anything but propaganda from occupied Palestine just as the world knew nothing about occupied Poland in 1940. The victor can always be counted on to provide whatever reality the victor deems relevant. The United Nations passed Resolution 242 in 1967 demanding Israel surrender occupied Palestinian territory; since then Israel has surrendered nothing, only expanded its occupation. Israel has loyal friends in Hollywood that are willing to use every tool of propaganda Columbia University identified prior to World War II to put an acceptable face on Israel’s machinations.
http://www.balchug-moscow.com/44870ctXHxlSoLFs15aM.html