Representative Press Blog

Mainstream Media has kept the American Public in the Dark

The mainstream media has really wronged the American people horribly (on top of the things I have just pointed out about Vietnam). The mainstream media has kept these things from the public. Those that ignorantly repeat the phrase "the liberal media" need to do some serious rethinking. The media serves state power enormously, not a thing that one would assume the "liberal" media would do. (from what I gather the average person's opinion of what "liberal" means. By the way, not everyone agrees with the "liberal media" myth, there are people that realize how extreme the mainstream media really is) As far as Vietnam, mainstream media hasn't educated the public about the basics concerning US actions against Vietnam.

The 1954 Geneva agreements did not "partition" Vietnam but separated two military zones by a temporary demarcation line that "should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary," pending the unification elections of 1956 that were the heart of the accords. Elections were supposed to be held, unifying the country. The Geneva agreement divided into two zones, not two countries; our government lied about this. The US backed Diem who refused to go through with the 1954 provision calling for nationwide elections in 1956. This is going against democracy! Why did Diem refuse? Because he knew as did others that he would lose the election, President Eisenhower said that Ho Chi Minh would win 80% of the vote in a free election. The CIA supported the repressive Vietnamese ruling the South--who were not only repressive but were also greedy. WE HAD NO RIGHT TO DO THIS! (The Vietnamese have a right to govern themselves and vote for the system they wanted!) We blocked elections in Vietnam because it was obvious Ho Chi Minh was going to win there. The Kennedy administration escalated the attack against South Vietnam from massive state terror to outright aggression in 1961-1962. We were not 'defending' South Vietnam. As Chomsky says, "I have never seen in thirty years that I have been looking carefully, one phrase even suggesting that we were not defending South Vietnam. Now, we weren't: we were attacking South Vietnam. We were attacking South Vietnam as clearly as any aggression in history. But try to find one phrase anywhere in any American newspaper, outside of real marginal publications, just stating that elementary fact. It's unstable." footnote #10 Understanding Power Chapter 2 Footnotes

Kerry testified back in 1971 about things that even today the media is reluctant to report:
WHAT WAS FOUND AND LEARNED IN VIETNAM
"We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from."