The Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu writes in his book “The Art of War” that “all warfare is based on deception”.
“The Art of War” written around the fifth century BC is still considered as the Bible of warfare and propaganda. This book has 13 chapters and each one is devoted to a different set of skills (or “art”) related to warfare and how it applies to military strategy and tactics. I follow conflict zone reporting as a part of my studies and always try to figure out propagated news in reference to works like the “Art of War” and Ukraine war is the recent part of my study.
Since the time of ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus (550 BC) who justifies promoting “false” against “truth” while his nation had been at war, we all know that truth cannot come out of war zones and the first causality of conflict is the truth. If so then why do we follow war news? What do we spend hours and hours sitting in front of the radio, television, or looking at the screens of our smartphone for?
I believe this is due to the human quest to know something we wish to know. This proposition offers us another proposition that if we wish to know only what we wish to know then how can we get balanced knowledge? Are we interested only in the propaganda of our choice when war is around us? Do we like to be part of echo chambers? I believe there is a need for deep research to find several questions of the same kind I raised above. We know that echo chambers restrict the reasoning and evaluation process and primarily rely on Filter Bubbles thus adhering to low moderation and directed control which leads to falsified communicative webs.
Following the Ukraine war, one can understand that human morality has nothing to do with aggression and concepts like right, wrong, truth, falsehood, freedom of speech, censorship, democracy, dictatorship, and all such notions lost their meanings and the only quest that drives during a war is “success”. The western world is a champion of freedom of speech but has officially banned Russian news outlets like Russian Television (RT), Tass news agency while stating that these are propaganda tools of Russia. Only western media outlets like Fox News, CNN, Sky News, BBC, and western inclined television channels can be aired in the western world because according to the western governments they are not propaganda tools and provide only truth. Russia on the other hand is intercepting western media. The world is standing where it was during the Cold War era when one-sided information had been provided to populations. Whatever freedom of speech humanity achieved in the last three decades has abruptly been seized by states. Today’s media is providing us only claims and blames. Western censorship has actually supported autocratic rulers and now the west will have no justification and no face to teach or promote freedom of media or right of speech to dictators and autocratic rulers.
Western censorship has actually supported autocratic rulers and now the west will have no justification and no face to teach or promote freedom of media or right of speech to dictators and autocratic rulers.
Stuart Allan and Barbie Zelizer in their book “Reporting War, Journalism in Wartime” write that the most important question to a war journalist is that “to whom are you true?”. They say that the above-mentioned question is a radical question, which cuts to the core of the media business and the ethical problems faced by war reporters and war reporting. While watching and reading news about the Ukraine war, I think that western media is true to the western target market and Russian media is true to the Russian market so there is no question of objectivity rather objectivity is not needed at all. If we go through the files of Operation Desert Storm (Iraq invasion) and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan invasion), we find western media was not too blunt in giving a one-sided version and we could find words like “it is claimed”, “according to Pentagon”, “it is said by official sources”. However, today we do not find such balancing words in the news, and official versions are aired as reports coming from media outlets. This situation indicates that the line between the State Media and independent media is no more blur rather has been erased.
Ukraine war will have a lasting impact on journalism and media ethics and thousands of books written about media ethics will have to rewrite and republish I believe works of Greek playwright Aeschylus and Sun Tzu will have to be included in them. I believe there should be now two kinds of Curriculums for media studies—one for “pre-War situation” and another for “Way situation”. We can also publish media ethics books with two parts—part one can deal with the western viewpoint of media ethics for non-western countries and the second part can be western media ethics when the west is a physical or political war with someone. We need to include “Fake News” as an important genre of news in new books with a new name like “Otherwise Fake News” and we can write that such kind of news is legitimate if released by states whenever they consider it appropriate for national interests.
I also suggest that dictions like disinformation, misinformation, fabricated, concocted should also be rephrased and it should be written that nothing is fake, disinformation, misinformation, fabricated and concocted that comes from State media outlets and private media outlets shall have to use all material without reviewing and without using fact check tools. I do not want to be sarcastic but I want to find a way for students of mass communication and journalism to work effectively under new norms because transparency in news is a bygone case.
I believe that every student of media ethics should become Dadaist if wishes to survive in the era of the biggest lie of “wars for peace”. Dadaism rejects the idea that anything should make any sense. Dadaists believed that if the war can be justified, anything can be art, even a toilet seat as a sculpture. Dadaists’ beliefs are based on having no truths, beliefs, or rules. Dadaism was about twisting reality and being outside the mainstream. Should we call today’s media moving towards Dadaism?
