Most of the ‘fourth estate’ is no longer able or willing to hold politicians accountable, and act instead like another branch of power
When some combination of Western and Ukrainian terrorists with obvious state support – we still don’t know who and how precisely – destroyed the Nord Stream I and II Baltic Sea pipelines in September 2022, they caused an ecological catastrophe by releasing an unprecedented amount of the climate killer gas methane into our atmosphere. In other words, they made a hell of a stink. But that immediate impact pales in comparison with the rotten stench generated by the politics of cover-up that have followed the attack.
We have gotten so used to the European and German response that it’s hard to grasp just how perverse it has been. Usually, the victims of a crime do not try to cover it up. And yet, despite being the targets of a perfidious assault on critical energy infrastructure, both the EU as a whole and Berlin in particular have done everything they could to delay investigations and obfuscate and downplay the attack, while avoiding finding or naming all its perpetrators.
Indeed, Sweden and Denmark, both directly affected by the sabotage, simply and quickly abandoned any attempt at investigation. NATO, of course, if it followed its own rules, would have moved heaven and earth to identify and then, in accordance with precedent, bomb the aggressor state behind the attack on its members.
Instead, after an initial phase of blaming Russia that was so absurd it could not last forever even in the West, the strategy for this grand exercise in self-damaging lying has now shifted to deploying a quarter-truth in order to keep telling one big fat lie: In beautiful unison, German prosecutors, the Wall Street Journal, and about every German mainstream media outlet you can think of are desperately trying to impose a silly new narrative: it was the Ukrainians that did it, and – here comes the crucial part – only the Ukrainians. It is easy to see that this is a particularly cynical case of throwing the Kiev proxy regime under the bus, as it is reaching its geopolitical best-by date on the battlefield.
It is true that the new narrative, mendacious as it is, has been enough of a departure to cause some nasty public quarrelling between Germany and Poland. The two NATO members can’t really stand each other, as a result of long histories and the recent rise of Warsaw as Washington’s new favorite, whereas Berlin’s standing has fallen, despite and also because of its ostentatious submissiveness.
The Nord Stream attacks, however, have added special venom due to the fact that it’s as good as certain that Poland was involved in them, while making a point of displaying its complete contempt for a weakened Berlin: for instance, by clearly helping escape – it seems, in a Ukrainian diplomatic car – the one alleged Ukrainian Nord Stream bomber the Germans have actually managed to produce an arrest warrant for.
By now, Western cover-up strategies and plain lies are so obvious that Sahra Wagenknecht, leader of the rising left-conservative BSW party, has called for a parliamentary committee of inquiry. There is, however, one issue that does merit more attention than it is receiving: What has the role of the Western media been in all of this? Were they not supposed to form a “fourth estate” in the self-idealizing, “value”-proud Western liberal democracies?
When governments and states, their offices and agencies behave like conspiracies, was it not the media who were charged with saving the day, Watergate-style, by exposing malfeasance on-high and those politicians involved in it? In particular, when public officials manifestly serve foreign powers rather than their own countries – be it the US-via-Ukraine or the US directly – shouldn’t the media call out what amounts to a form of treason?
And yet, the Nord Stream attack and its ongoing aftermath have exposed something entirely different, not for the first time but starkly: When it comes to truly serious issues, especially involving geopolitics, Western mainstream media no longer investigate, criticize, or expose Western elites. Instead, they help them spread lies and distractions, while blaming geopolitical opponents and helping mobilize Western populations for the fight against them. In short, Western media now behave as just another weapon in the Western arsenal, forming, in effect, the information war branch of its hybrid warfare.
There are rare exceptions. In a remarkable article, Germany’s Berliner Zeitung has pinpointed mainstream media complicity with regard to Nord Stream. Multiple details in their reporting – on TV and in the press – do not add up. But that is not even the oddest aspect of their behavior. What is especially strange is that they do not come up with these inconsistencies and contradictions themselves. Instead, they are simply reproducing official narratives with a total lack of criticism and alertness.
Take, for instance, the fact that German prosecutors issued their single arrest warrant for a Ukrainian suspect in June. And yet, in a case of a political relevance second-to-none, at the time, the public was not informed of this key turn of events. Germans only learned about it once the suspect had escaped in or from Poland.
At the same time, Russia is still absurdly being named as a suspect, and the important investigative reporting of US journalist Seymour Hersh is arrogantly being dismissed as a conspiracy theory. The reason for this insult is hidden in plain sight: Hersh has offered a plausible hypothesis about how Washington participated in the attack on its vassal Germany’s pipelines. While Hersh may be right or wrong about his details, any theory factoring in the US as a perpetrator is more plausible than the silly blame-Ukraine-alone story we are being offered now.
We could multiply examples, but the gist of the criticism so exceptionally offered by Berliner Zeitung is clear: German mainstream media – and they stand exemplarily for many others in the West – simply pass along, reinforce, and pleasantly embellish official narratives. Even their specific turns of phrase, expressions, and choice of terms betray an unhealthy and unprofessional identification with offices and officials that they should not fraternize with but distrust and question.
All of this – just like the abysmal politics of the West – has a price. For one thing, mainstream journalists who turn themselves into information warriors, whatever their motives, mightily contribute to the decline of their own credibility. It is a different topic but still telling that a recent poll has just shown that almost half of Germans (48%) do not trust their mainstream media regarding Israel and Palestine. Even in Germany, an almost compulsively pro-Israel country, almost a third (31%) of respondents believe that the national media favor Israel; only 5% see a pro-Palestinian bias.
What does all of this look like from outside Europe and the West as a whole? Take, for instance, the prominent and influential Indian news website Firstpost. It finds that the key question now is if the West will hold Ukraine accountable: If Kiev is guilty – as it surely is, if not alone – and yet given a free pass, the “West’s true colors” will shine through, showing that terrorism is only condemned when associated with a geopolitical rival.
In most of the world, the politicians of the West keep losing whatever is left of their credibility. The West’s mainstream media will fare no differently.
