by
Eric Toussaint
As they
often depend on advertising from private corporations or major banks,
mainstream media are reluctant to question the legitimacy of some
debts or to envisage their cancellation. Indeed they are in cahoots
with creditors such as banks and large financial groups. Public
mainstream media are also deeply influenced by the discourse of
current leaders, who use public debt as a pretext to justify the
austerity measures they implement.
Media
thus support and promote the repayment of public debt and the
implementation of austerity measures. Notions such as odious or
illegitimate debt or debt auditing are never mentioned.
What
negative impact did the media have in the case of Greece?
At an
international level, when the media discussed the issue of the Greek
debt, they offered a caricature of the Greek people supposed to be
lazy, spendthrift and irresponsible, with big retirement pensions and
no taxes to pay. So while the Greek people are depicted as guilty
and Greece as making the euro teeter, we good Europeans, in our
infinite generosity, help them out so that their pensions can be paid
and their hospitals run.
The
media claim that Greece not repaying its debt would result in drastic
losses for tax-payers in other European countries; this is meant to
frighten the audience, for in fact it would hardly have any adverse
consequences on tax-payers’ pockets in other countries. Mainstream
media never mention feasible solutions to cancel public debt.
Source, links, references:
Source, links, references:
Éric
Toussaint, spokesperson for the CADTM, refers here to the partial
approach to the public debt issue developed by mainstream media at an
international level: they never include the deleterious consequences
of repaying public debt on people’s lives and on human rights in
heavily indebted countries.
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