Patrick Anderson's book explores why British liberal newspaper were critical of counter-insurgency tactics used by the French against the FLN and uncritical of similar method used by the British to counter IRA violence.
In its coverage of the Algerian war for independence , the British liberal press minimised the role that religion played in what was a long and bloody conflict between a resolute Algerian nationalist movement, an insecure European settler community and an unstable French Republic.
Using Edward S Herman and Noam Chomsky’s propaganda model to explain these anomalies, it argues that the British public were the victims of a sophisticated misinformation campaign, the aim of which was to manufacture consent for the government’s counter-insurgency policies in Northern Ireland. The complicity of the British liberal press in this conspiracy, it concludes, was cemented by the influence of unionist commentators John Cole and Conor Cruise O’Brien.
Comparing the British Labour government’s Northern Ireland policy in 1998, and its policy towards Iraq in 2003, seems to confirm this hypothesis. With the exception of The Daily Telegraph, which at the time represented outlier anti-agreement British views, the media broadly supported the government’s handling of the peace process and the Belfast Agreement it delivered.
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