Western media bias: how imperial narratives shape global perceptions

We accept that most of the 1884-85 Berlin conference participants, except France, who continue to steal African wealth directly, left the African continent when they decided to grant their colonies independence.

But they ensured to remain in their minds through influence. In reality, they continued to work on our minds and alter our African cultures through their media narratives.

We are so used to it because it’s so much in our faces. Any country that opposes American imperialism and its accompanying hegemonic manoeuvres is targeted with negative narratives.

China and Russia are the main threats to US economic (in the case of China) and military (in the case of Russia) dominance; therefore, they are the targets of negative reporting in the Western media.

This may include their allies like South Africa, Burkina Faso and so on. Curiously, one had been monitoring how the protests in Los Angeles were portrayed in the US media compared to how the 2019-20 anti-China protests in Hong Kong were reported.

The quick reaction, crackdown and brutality of the US police towards the protesters in Los Angeles were under-reported and ignored.

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The huge show of force, including the deployment of the army, was unprecedented, as US President Donald Trump vowed to “hit hard” on the protesters he believed threatened to become an insurrection movement against him.

It’s an irony that an insurrectionist fears the taste of his own medicine, when he encouraged it against incoming president Joe Biden through violent protests at Capitol Hill in January 2021.

In Los Angeles, pro-Trump media cared less about comparing or reporting the fact that China delayed acting against the Hong Kong rioters and their concerted trashing of the city.

The police did not take stronger action for long, despite the damage caused by the protesters.

The Western media did not mention that the protests were actually sponsored by the first Trump administration, which stoked the situation to destabilise China.

Many of the protest leaders were transported to the US, where they were trained by the Trump administration.

But for some time, China refused to be dragged into taking harsher action to deal with them. Beijing only had to strengthen its hand when the protests turned into acts of terrorism.

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These were not in the Western media. It’s independent media in the West that provided a balanced view and exposed the role played by Trump in fomenting the situation.

Independent media again continues to play a central role in giving the true perspectives about the war in Ukraine, where it is not just about Russia’s aggression, but the Nato expansion that caused all the trouble.

Similarly, the false narrative about the Israeli-Iranian war is that Tehran is the aggressor when we all know Israel started the whole thing, putting the world on the brink of World War III – the nuclear war, to be precise.

The independent media includes researchers at institutions like Global Research and certain Western analysts like geopolitics expert Prof John Mearsheimer, top US economists Jeffrey Sachs and Richard Wolff and military analysts like Scott Ritter.

We should commend journalists from our top TV channels who travelled with President Cyril Ramaphosa to tell Trump and his media and their audiences that, in fact, it’s a lie that there is white genocide or uncontrollable land grabbing in South Africa.

With China, we should be able to judge for ourselves and tell the truth about its immense direct assistance to the whole of Africa through the development initiative, minus the planted Western media narratives about Beijing.

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