Media Manipulation

BBC and RTE television factual broadcast 25/05/2006

An analysis of the BBC (journalist Pyriath Liyanage), and RTE (journalist Simon Delaney). Also included former prosecuting attorney turned politician Terri Moore.

Extract from broadcast RTE Factual Documentary 'Chain Reactions'

[1] To think that in such a small incident in such a small country in far corner in the world can have such a big effect globally is amazing.

[2] In 1997 a man called Mangala Samaraweera was Minister for Communications. He travelled abroad a lot and he ran up a lot of expenses on his official credit card.

[3] He was buying a lot of things for himself and maybe he says that he was buying gifts for his staff and because it is traditional in Sri Lanka to when you go away to bring presents for your friends and colleagues. So he was saying that some of the money was spent on the staff so it is official but then he had gone to exclusive shops and was buying exclusive things. I think that's why when the credit card details came up there were a lot of things which he couldn't explain to be official.

[4] But then somebody leaked details of Mangala's lavish credit card spending to a national newspaper, there was even a purchase from Avoca Handweavers in Wicklow.

[5] They published a copy of the credit card you could see in the newspaper there was the copy of the credit card as well as the statement, with the details and numbers so it was available for anybody to see. As a result people started using the credit card number.

[6] So the minister's credit card details including the credit card number were on the front page of a national newspaper. It is just as well the minister remembered to cancel the card, he did cancel the card didn't he?

[7] Mangala Samaraweera apparently got a huge credit card statement as a result of pages and pages of material which he never ordered.

[8] But then it stopped being funny. The card was used by someone to buy pornography on the Internet from Landslide Productions here in Texas, yep, the same Landslide.

[9] The criminal investigation department of the police started investigating the how it happened and international crime, they didn't know how to solve it, they didn't have any experience of solving cybercrime so they had sought the help of the Interpol and the FBI.

[10] An opposition party member eventually admitted the credit card fraud, but the Sri Lankan scandal had triggered a request to the FBI's Hong Kong bureau, who passed it to Washington, who passed it to Texas where Landslide was based. This was a full 18 months before the postal inspectors stumbled across Landslide.

[11] It was a young agent, his name is Frank Super, he is a very good agent, but at the time he was very green, he was right out of school, just very inexperienced. A good person but you can't blame someone for being inexperienced, and so when he was assigned to go follow up on the complaint that came in, he went by the Reedy's business, it was just a stones throw from where my office is located now, and left a card and later ended up talking to Thomas Reedy.

Thomas Reedy can be convincing. I think he is a shyster and I think he fooled Frank Super. I am sorry for Frank but I doubt if Frank will be fooled again, he will not be quite so naive.

[12] Our story could have come to a dead end there and then. The FBI had walked away from Landslide twice but then 18 months later, along came the postmen and they only had to knock once.

It is useful to quantify what conclusions are drawn by the reader in order to measure the effects of what was claimed as a factual documentary by RTE and the BBC, to see how much effect media distortions have on public thinking. The reader is invited to note down conclusions made and emotions invoked by the above narrative extracted from the broadcast. The effects can be cumulative as the media as with any marketing use re-enforcement, as can be seen by a campaign by the UK government currently running in the media to discredit the Human Rights Act. Once a product is sufficiently discredited, merely to mention it becomes a smear, therefore it is useful to examine what views one comes with to examine how and if they are changed or affirmed.

[1] The BBC journalist states he was amazed by the effect. The BBC were involved before Operation Avalanche started, at the launch of Operation Ore and have been part of Operation Ore throughout working directly with the governments in the US and UK. In this broadcast they are taking part in Operation Amethyst in Ireland. As the BBC have not been passive in this process, they are expressing the fact that they are amazed by effects they have made a direct contribution to causing. To be amazed at an effect they have helped invoke is questionably credible.

[2] - [4] A Sri Lankan government minister of Posts and Communications is compromised by a lavish spending pattern on his credit card.

[5] The BBC journalist presents the story that inexplicable expenses were appearing on the minister's official credit card, but as the card details were published on the front page of a national newspaper, anyone could have used the card, so perhaps the minister was as he asserted, simply generous in granting favours to his staff and the responsibility for any misdemeanours lay elsewhere.

[6] The RTE journalist suggests strange spending was occurring because the minister had failed to cancel his credit card.

[7] The BBC journalist states categorically the minister was not responsible for the transactions appearing on his credit card, so a compromising issue in relation to a Sri Lankan government official has been raised but rationally explained by the counter play of two journalists.

[8] The RTE journalist raises the issue of Landslide as a sinister development, this involved pornography, by intimation of the broadcast overall; child pornography.

It is perhaps time to examine some of the details intimated or presented as fact, to see if they are concurrent with the evidential truth. By intimation of the BBC this is 1997. We introduce the first exhibits, the Landslide transaction details of Mr. Mangala Samaraweera.

Landslide record for the Sri Lankan official

Further examination of Landslide data reveals the Visa credit card transaction used for AVS Platinum at Landslide had a transaction date of 10/05/1998 23:42:00 being processed through batch 568 on 11/05/1998 07:02:20. The transaction in the subscriber database was dated 11/05/1998 04:42:23, with the card being credited by a chargeback on 18/07/1998. A chargeback normally arises when the owner of a credit card reports fraud to the issuing bank who in turn contact the merchant. It is reasonable to presume therefore that the $49.95 transaction was reported as fraud after 10/05/1998 and before 18/07/1998 for Landslide to have reversed it.

Those dates are technical details, perhaps too boring to read and significant discrepancies easily lost. At the opening by Simon Delaney, the date that was planted in the mind of the public was 1997, when the evidence clearly indicates the facts of the matter evidentially relate to mid 1998. When the media deliberately misinform us, it is often for a reason.

[9] The BBC present Interpol and the FBI as the white knights, who will help rescue this embattled minister from false allegations.

[10] Simon Delaney of RTE television now feeds us the explanation, it was not the government minister at all, it was the opposition and the crime had been admitted. Crime, culprit and cavalry, the story complete.

He then puts this date in perspective, that this was 18 months before USPIS started investigating Landslide. He states this was a full 18 months before Postal Inspectors just happened to stumble across Landslide. Once again, a specific fact is presented, and once again it is materially at odds with the facts. The USPIS investigation of Landslide commenced in April 1999, the date of Frank Super's investigation less than a year before this. Less than a year had become a full 18 months.

[11] We now have the official endorsement courtesy of politician Terri Moore who was a prosecuting attorney at the original Landslide trial. Terri Moore introduces a folk demon in the form of Thomas Reedy, he seems a nice guy, but really a shyster.

[12] Simon Delaney at RTE raps this part of the story up, though 18 months is now referenced not to when USPIS stumbled across Landslide but when they raided it, on 8th September 1999. Rewinding a full 18 months from this date, we are still in 1998 not the date of 1997 that was planted in the mind of the reader.

Simon Delaney has presented a deception again. First we need to establish what the truth of the matter is, then find out why this deception has taken place. We have the government minister presented as falsely accused, dirty opposition, white knights at the FBI and Interpol and folk demon Thomas Reedy the shyster.

Investigations of controversial adult transactions via AVS systems at Landslide Productions (Texas) and Dakotah Marketing & Research (North Dakotah) and adult dating agency Cherry Blossoms (Haywaii) were initiated by the police in Sri Lanka contacting Hong Kong liaison in July 1998.

A government minister in difficulty is fully laundered by the BBC and RTE, such is the power of disinformation by the media that black becomes white and white becomes black.

It is sometimes said that neutral reporting cannot exist. Just by saying 1997, the reporter is suggesting this is significant, it is something we should know, intrinsically an assertion and therefore materially at odds with the concept of neutrality. Accuracy does not fall victim to this paradox.

Presenter Simon Delaney has introduced dates imputing facts not made in evidence, instead he has manipulated dates and datums and pure fiction is presented as fact.

The role of the media does not just deceive by presenting falsehood as truth and truth as falsehood, they are also involved in concealing the truth. Simon Delaney was handling a number sensitive vulnerabilities in the official story. Officially, and according to the Landslide trial transcripts, there were 3 FBI investigations in relation to their folk demon Thomas Reedy, yet Simon Delaney states there were two. One investigation has disappeared completely, and this manoeuvring could be accounted for by the fact that Irish journalist Brian Rothery presented evidence to the effect one of those investigations was a fiction made up by Special Agent Frank Super in order to convict Thomas Reedy, a fiction that was successful as the folk demon was originally sentenced to 1,335 years for running an AVS service.

The assertions of Simon Delaney were fallacious, but as a broadcast presented as 'RTE factual', the effect is dramatic, and endorsed by the 'official version' in the form of Terri Moore by saying 'at the time he was very green'  in reference to FBI Agent Frank Super. An unusual statement, as only one official ever asserted any illegal sites were using Landslide's payment system at the time of the investigation referred to and that was Frank Super himself, an assertion that was evidentially dismantled in Brian Rothery's expose. Whereas Terri Moore had presented Frank Super as an agent fresh out of Quantico, in 1998 this could not have been the case and the transpositions of fact and fiction by the BBC and RTE television was simply deception.

Fact becomes fiction, fiction becomes fact. Compared to what the BBC and RTE presented, the truth is another story altogether, and really that is the point of this treatise.

The effect of media distortions are more dramatic when we jump from the written word to a television broadcast, the extracted segment being provided here.

It would be easy to conclude that the BBC and RTE simply didn't care about the dates, these were unimportant details, and the blurring and deceptions were simply the product of negligence. The video format of the broadcast not only adds extra drama to the story, an added relevant piece of evidence is presented. The newspaper article is shown bearing the resurrected minister's credit card. A careful observer might note the date of this publication, the 21st of June 1998. Simon Delaney attributes the transaction at Landslide on the embattled minister's credit card to the fact it was published in the newspaper and the opposition party were responsible and had admitted it. Simon Delaney has failed to account for the fact that the Landslide credit card transaction on the 10th of May 1998 came before it was published in the newspapers leaving the story told at odds with such facts as it did include.

Fraud on a government credit card was alleged so we have the drama of the crime, but if the BBC and RTE cannot be trusted, the whodunit remains the mystery it ever was.

So much deception occurs with the framing of headline, few readers delve into the detail, but for those readers who have made it this far, you are perhaps on a quest for the truth. May that quest continue.

21/01/2007