Working with non-Western media on Nord Stream and Ukraine – and revealing my experiences with Western mainstream media manipulation methods

Photo above: China’s National Television, CCTV, headquarters

I’ve never done so much media work as I do these days – columns, interviews, panel debates, and short comments. Dailies, radio and TV. Below please find some glimpses – which you, my dear reader here, may also use as an opportunity to browse a bit and acquaint yourself with a world I am sure most of you never browse. You probably follow mostly Western media – mainstream and/or counterstream.

However, we live in one big world, as part of one human family, and it is definitely not enough to know what roughly 1,2 billion Westerners out of 8 billion on earth – that is, about 15% of humanity – think and what happens among them with a further heavy concentration on the US and Europe. Such navel-gazing won’t produce an understanding of our world and our times.

So I feel privileged to be invited to work with non-Western media (and some alternative ones in the West) and get the opportunity to learn about different media cultures, competence and professional standards. And – not the least – what it is people outside my own world (or at least where I live) think are important issues.

At the bottom of this short expose, I guide you to my online in-the-making “Worldmoires” book in which the 3rd chapter, published in March 2023, reveals my experiences and conclusions – for the first time – concerning the Western mainstream media world and its decay over the decades I have interacted with them.

I consider the coverage of the Ukraine war and of the Nord Stream destruction a mind-boggling and substantial example of this decay. They wallow in FOSI = Fake + Omission + Source Ignorance. To be politically correct, megaphones for their respective governments instead of pursuing the independent critical public service role in society.

So here first are some glimpses and then the book chapter.

An event from China’s National Television, CCTV, on February 21, 2023 – presumably reaching a few hundred million people. First, about the US/Norway destruction of Nord Stream:

Re-used in a slightly different version here.

Then about the Ukraine war as a conflict between NATO (its expansion and NATO in Ukraine for about 20 years) and Russia – both playing it out on Ukraine’s territory:

China Daily, February 24, 2023
Time to reflect on the Russia-Ukraine War

And then Nord Stream once again:

China Global Television Network, CGTN, March 8, 2023
Live: Headline Buster – Report links U.S. to Nord Stream explosion, western media silent on coverage?

China Daily, March 7, 2023
European experts question unusual silence over Nord

Some countries are more interested in human security and peace aspects of international politics than others.

Should my dear readers be interested in the development or de-development/decay of the mainstream media, I have just published a new chapter in my non-memoir online book called Worldmoires. Its title is – “Experiences with the media over almost 50 years. And how the mainstream media became the largest single obstacle to an understanding of our complex world.”

For the first time, I reveal a long series of concrete MMMMs – mainstream media manipulation methods – I have experienced behind the scenes. I also attempt to summarise what has happened over these decades, the trends and why it’s gone so madly wrong. And finally, there are some thoughts on peace journalism as another way of doing things – what it is and is not.

You may subscribe there to the next chapters. It’s an online book in the making, free of charge and already with lots of followers, and you may write comments and search – all the things you cannot do in a printed book. And it will never become a printed book. Be careful, however, because you may get absorbed in this media exposé and even feel seduced to browse other chapters too…