The following is an excerpt from the Islamic Review’s first edition, published from Woking, Surrey, UK. This only reinforces the fact that Ottoman Turkey was demonized by the Western press and Western historians as part of a dubious propaganda war.
In a country like England, where the public voice acts as an effective agency to mould the trend of events, while in its turn itself receives its shape chiefly from the Press, it is a matter for regret if the latter is not a free and unbiased channel of enlightenment. That unfortunately it is not so in certain quarters· is undeniable. The Press here, as it ought or used to be, is to an extent no index of genuine public opinion, nor is it a mirror of’ true facts. It plays in the hands of a party it belongs to and is a strong weapon to be wielded to further the latter’s ends. It must support party-policy at any cost and conceal or distort and minimise everything which it thinks has got counteracting effects. That these are not our hasty impressions, but that our opinion is based also upon information we have received from, and views entertained by, some of those unbiased thinkers who have given their best consideration to the subject, will appear from a letter inserted elsewhere in these pages, which comes from the able pen of that literary luminary of Occidental and Oriental fame – we mean Professor Edward Browne, of Cambridge, who so kindly gives us a welcome, and a timely warning too, which we hope to utilise to our advantage. The situation of the Press here, however, can better be explained by reference to Ottoman affairs in the near East. Seemingly, the foreign policy of the present Government has all through been adverse to Turkish interest, and favourable to the Allies. A considerable portion of the Press comes to its help to uphold the said policy. No exaggeration is spared to blacken the Turks in English estimation, while all the inhuman atrocities of the savages of the Balkans, one-hundredth part of which was more than enough to arouse honest resentment and genuine horror, are concealed or explained away, and anything which may tend to, direct the wave of English opinion to the right direction is no allowed to have its free course, and the honest nation is hood winked as to the real state of affairs….
http://www.wokingmuslim.org/work/islamic-review/1913/feb13.pdf
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