The founder of the award-winning US public affairs program “Alternative Radio” will speak on the media and Iraq in Melbourne at 6.30pm next Tuesday 28 October, at the New International Bookshop, Trades Hall.

“In an increasingly homogenised US media culture, David Barsamian represents one of the few genuinely dissident voices,” according to RMIT, which is hosting the Public Forum,titled: “Weapons of Mass Deception: The Media and Iraq.”

Barsamian says: “I don’t think there’s a terribly sophisticated press ‘corpse’, as I call them. What we have now instead of watchdogs is lapdogs with laptops. That’s their societal function.”

Since September 11, Barsamian has been in demand across the United States in discussions about the role of the corporate media in building the case for war.

“When the US marches to war, the media march with it. The din of collateral language is rising to cacophonous levels. The mobilisation and ubiquity of present and past brass on the airwaves is an essential component of manufacturing consent for war,” says Barsamian.

What about the prospect for alternative views? In cutting through the fog of war, Barsamian looks to the potential of independent media.

Barsamian was named a “Top Ten Media Hero” by the Institute for Alternative Journalism and is the winner of the American Civil Liberties Union 2003 Upton Sinclair Award for Independent Journalism.

His books include Propaganda and the Public Mind with Noam Chomsky, Confronting Empire with Eqbal Ahmad, Culture and Resistance with Edward Said and The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting.