I personally agree with this statement and the reason behind
it is that sometimes there is not such a big difference between the way we
would define deceiving someone or lying to someone. Deceiving would be
considered convincing one of something that is not true, which is in the end
lying, the only observable difference here being the premeditation or purpose
behind a deceiving attempt. It is true that lying could have the same result
overall yet it would lack the previously mentioned premeditation.
Taking
for example a documentary about the Invasion of Iraq in 2003, (Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMsK4F5VOsE)
we can notice examples of deception which was applied and lead to a result which
was the same as if an outright lie was told. One of the aspects that stood out
for me was the difference between American media and Al Jazeera, and especially
their views. The senior producer of Al Jazeera, Samir Khader, mentioned that
people should be informed of exactly what is happening, “there is a war around
you, something is happening in the world; you’re still sleeping; wake up!”. During
the interview at the Military Centre, the military mentioned how Saddam Hussein
has supposedly threatened the Americans with weapons of mass destruction,
statement which is later discarded by the military when more questions on the
topic are asked by the interviewer, by saying “I misunderstood your question”.
This signals the deception of people at the time. They were deceived into
believing that Saddam Hussein was threatening the USA, which was the reason for
the attacks. Linked to this comes also the transmissions in which Americans
mentioned that the casualties were limited, yet it was in contradiction with
the images published by Al Jazeera. Overall, the American media as stated by Samir
Khader was promoting the idea of people from both the USA and Iraq being under
threat. This could be developed into a perception of safety provided by the action
of military forces in Iraq, again deceiving the Americans. Journalist for Al
Jazeera, Hassan Ibrahim, mentioned that he had faith in the American public
that they were going to understand what is going on and stop the war, yet as we
can see, the deception here was something that was in the way of this
happening, showing again how deception can be as bad as a lie.
Al Jazeera was also initially accused of being biased,
showing only footage of American troops and not of Iraqi troops and their
negative actions, yet in defense, Al Jazeera journalists mentioned that there
is no one that has that kind of footage, showing that overall every media,
including themselves, can be biased in what type of information they present
and what they leave aside, and this contributes to the deception of the
population.
