Joe Lauria at Consortiumnews.com has a good article about how media produced fake news upon the invasion of Libya in 2011 by spreading official lies. They later largely suppressed the domestic dissemination of “…a 2016 British parliamentary report on Libya that showed how then Secretary of State Clinton and other Western leaders lied about an impending genocide in Libya to justify their 2011 attack on that country.”
It is good to see such an article. Better late than never. It was possible at the time to figure out what was actually going on that the press and Obama administration were warping. See here, here, here, here, here, and here. By June 29, 2011, even greater clarity was emerging, see here.
A year later, it was possible to write about many “fake stories” about Libya:
“The Libyan War began, continued, and ended with many lies. There was the false story of Gaddafi hiring black mercenaries. It was easy to fake photos since Libya had many sub-Saharan guest workers who were dark-skinned. There were fake stories and photos blaming them for atrocities that were actually perpetrated by Arab rebels armed and instigated by the West, France, and Great Britain in particular. There were fake stories about massacres. There were fake stories about rapes and Viagra.”
Since we on the outside are not investigative reporters, we do not have sources to call or interview. We do not make it our jobs to publish articles and collect royalties on subsequent books. We have to rely more heavily on other means:
“More than ever, it’s necessary to interpret and judge all news items. One has to measure them against common sense, the interests of those providing information, similar events in the past, internal reliability, the logic of situations, human motivations, and the credibility of various sources. One has to look at multiple reports and sources.” (4/8/2011, here.)
1:01 pm on July 8, 2017
