Most people have heard the old bromide; “Truth is the first casualty of war.”
This explains why I listen to war reports from Iran in a very jaded manner. I have learned how truth gets so badly mangled during war. In World War I there was the propaganda from the Allies that Germans were throwing Belgian babies in the air and catching them on their bayonets. Also, there were multiple reports of how the Germans would crucify farmers on the farmer’s barn doors. In World War II we all know of the propaganda that advanced the nonsense that the Germans were making fine bone China out of Jewish bones, or how the Germans were turning Jews into soap, or how the Germans used Jewish skin to make lampshades. The Soviets lied about Katyn forest. The Kuwaitis lied about Iraqi soldiers dumping Kuwaiti babies out of their neo-natal units in hospitals. Artist Frederic Remington who had been assigned to cover the building Spanish-American conflict in 1897 once famously cabled Newspaper Magnate Randolph Hearst who had assigned Remington to cover the war; “I can find no war.”
Hearst cabled back; “Please remain [in Cuba]. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”
From Abraham Lincoln’s propaganda that pinned the blame of the war on the South when he was the one who had committed a naked act of aggression — all of which vaulted the nation into the War of Northern Aggression, to Hitler’s dressing up German soldiers as Polish soldiers in order to contend that the Poles attacked the Germans to give pretext to German invasion of Poland, to the British bald face lies to their public about the Boers being the aggressors in the Boer War, one has to be a fool to believe anything that they are being told by media outlets during a war, because truth is the first casualty of war.
So, where does that leave us in our (US) tidy little war with Israel against Iran? It means that we have to be very jaded about any and every report from anybody and everybody. The incentive to lie and propagandize during war is massive since the stakes are so high. War, you see, is as much about public perception as it is about the bombs being dropped. He who can create the war narrative will have the odds on their side when it comes to winning the war.
This means, that one can’t not buy into just one information outlet. One should be dipping into (as they can) different outlets for information. Also, one has to keep in mind that when they are dipping into different information outlets that they are learning more about the worldview of people who run those outlets then they are learning about the war. Wars, are events that create the possibility of changing the world but the change comes not so much from bombs dropping as the ability to create and foster a new macro narrative. In War (and other like events – the myth of climate change comes to mind) what is being sought out to accomplish is the ushering in of a new narrative template by which the world will be organized and so during war, all the information outlets are doing their damnedest to have the narrative they’re spinning to be the narrative that attains hegemony. So, because that is true, you’re information outlets giving you “news” about the war, is in point of fact giving you their narrative they want you to accept — a narrative that is based on their worldview. The reporting of information outlets during the time of war tells you more about the worldview of the outlet reporting the news than it tells you about what is happening in the war.
So, for example, if you listen to Iranian outlets, they will give you a completely different accounting of the war than you will get from Jewish information outlets. FOX news on the war will give you a different war than the war you’ll be told about at CNN or MS NOW, will give you a different war than Al Jazeera, will give you a different war than Russia Today. The reason for all these different wars, which are reputedly the same war, is because it is not the war reporting that is really important but the narrative that can be spun out of the war reporting. You can count on the fact, that when it comes to these world changing type of events that information outlets are not trying to tell you about the event itself but are seeking to shape your worldview.
When we get to the nitty gritty that means when you watch Tucker Carlson or Joe Scarborough, or the maniac Sen. Lindsey Graham, or Douglas MacGregor, or Jeffrey Sachs, or John Mearsheimer, etc. you have to try to spend some time digging into their worldview in order to discern what spin they are seeking to put forth.
I am not saying that all that exists is spin and the truth is impossible to arrive at. That would be a post-modern view of truth. What I am saying is that you can’t allow yourself to be spoon-fed by any one information outlet. The truth is, as they say, out there, but in a spin heavy environment, tracking it down is not easy to do.
Also, in this context, I would champion the idea of learning worldview thinking. Worldview thinkers are equipped to smell spin. Christian worldview thinkers are better able to identify the presuppositions that are governing the information outlets. Christian worldview thinkers, having a Christian world and life view can spot when reporting is being driven by an ideology/theology that is discernably false.
We piece together the best we can from various reports what is happening in our war du Jour. We piece it together based on our worldview and not based on the worldview of the talking head who is trying to sway us with misinformation. (And most of them know they are dishing out misinformation.)
It is a complicated world and for the consumer of information one has to remember another old bromide …. “Let the buyer of war information beware.”