Monday, August 08, 2005

Hiroshima, the Top Story that Wasn’t

CARACAS, Venezuela - The atomic bomb that was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima 60 years ago, on Aug. 6, 1945, may have been the most crucial event of the 20th century. But it was not the top news story. That was because censorship and the manipulative media treatment of the tragic event, managed by Washington and Tokyo, greatly muffled the impact of the catastrophe and made the press an accomplice in the war.....

...By the summer of 1946, the censorship office in Japan had grown to the extent that it employed 6,000 people, who pored over and listened in on all kinds of communication, from letters and telephone conversations to movies and billboards. The press was censored both prior to and after publication....Six decades later, “manipulative practices are still repeated, at the direction of those in power, and the media disseminates inaccurate, hasty, exaggerated or biased reports, or just plain rumors, that can affect public perception even in the long term”

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