AN ESSAY in Phillip Knightley’s 1975 book, The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Myth-Maker, by historian Garry Wills said: “A liberal democracy submits to propaganda more readily than a totalitarian state.”

He adds: “Self-censorship is always more effective than bureaucratic censorship.”

As the illegal and unprovoked war launched by the US and Israel against the Iranians continues we are seeing heightened levels of not just downright lies from leading politicians but many in the media meekly following and scribing whatever line they are spun.

Journalists, and therefore all of us, are faced with a regular occurrence notably, though far from exclusively, in the US, of leading politicians saying one thing on record and swearing later that they said no such thing.

But it’s in the US that we see this dissembling taken to a whole new level of insult to everyone’s intelligence with US President Donald Trump, seemingly in some kind of dangerous made-up world all of his own, lying just for the sake of it.

Even the New York Times (NYT), the same that rushed headlong into following the lies of George Bush the younger to support the Iraq war, only later, after many thousands of deaths, admitting they were had and, in turn, had us, has called out Trump’s lies.

The editorial board of the NYT ran an opinion piece recently calling out Trump’s “stream of falsehoods” about the war with Iran.

They reminded readers that for Trump, “lying is standard behaviour,” noting that in his first term Trump made upwards of an astonishing 30,000 (not a typo) misleading or outright lies.

The NYT said Trump’s lying “creates a culture in which deadly mistakes and even war crimes can become more common” and ultimately “undermines American values and interests.”

The paper says Trump has not even attempted to make a coherent case for war against Iran. Instead, he resorts to simply lying “about the reasons for the war and about its progress, in an apparent attempt to disguise his poor planning and the war’s questionable basis.”

Even here the NYT feels the need to hedge their bets. It is beyond “questionable” that the war is entirely illegal and completely unprovoked.

In an interesting point the NYT board also pointed to past conflicts — including the Vietnam war and the 2003 invasion of Iraq — where presidents “learned that falsehoods can boomerang on the leaders who tell them.”

The NYT concluded by saying: “Whatever short-term gain Trump thinks he is getting by lying about the war in Iran is far exceeded by the cost, for him, the country and the world.”

The tactic now appears to be that any journalist who dares to enquire into the inconsistencies, particularly women journalists, are subjected to a level of vitriol that surpasses any threshold one can imagine for harassment.

Yet the consistent outcome of these exchanges appears to be, well, nothing. The US media seems to prefer some kind of access to the US president or his leading disciples rather than the threatened zero access.

The self-styled Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has already clamped down on even the chance of hostile questioning by filling the Pentagon press room with that new breed of scribe called “influencers” and Maga progagandists.

Hegseth blasted recent coverage of the war in Iran as “fake news,” following it with a public declaration of how pleased he would be when the family of Trump disciple, the mega rich Larry Ellison, which already controls CBS News, takes over CNN.

Television networks across the US have been threatened by Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission, with having their licences taken away for what he called “running hoaxes and news distortions.”

Trump followed his man’s threats by threatening to bring charges of “treason” against networks who report the news he doesn’t agree with. A timely reminder why last week’s massive “No Kings” protests across the length and breadth of the US were so important.

The first amendment to the US constitution says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Carr has no legal authority to take political retribution against networks or newspapers that actually bother to tell the truth. But that doesn’t mean he won’t try.

But that sort of pressure is also designed to keep news outlets in line and for them to self-police what they write or broadcast because they might have to spend millions of dollars in litigation or, worse still, lose access.

This all essentially comes down to the truth, in the eyes of Trump, being whatever he says it is, despite whatever evidence may exist to the contrary.

This is dangerous at the best of times but coming from someone with the power to inflict catastrophic harm on any nation he chooses, is frightening to the extreme.

Trump is, of course, not the first politician in the US or anywhere else, to tell straight up lies. But he does it on a regularity and with such relish that one is actually forced to consider that either he does actually believe these lies, that he has a serious mental illness or perhaps both.

Either way this does not bode well for any of us.

But his latest lie could lead to catastrophic consequences.

Last week Trump claimed his main “diplomatic team,” real-estate developer Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, the same people who in talks with Iran when the US and Israel attacked them, were now in such fruitful discussions with Tehran that he would postpone his threat to target Iranian energy installations.

The Iranians were very clear that they were not in negotiations and had no intention of joining them.

The Iranian news agency Tasnim said: “From the beginning of the war until today, messages have been sent to Tehran by some mediators, and the clear response has been that we will continue our defence until the necessary level of deterrence is achieved. There have been no negotiations and there are none under way.”

Asking the question why Trump would lie, the Mizan news agency said: “To reduce energy prices and to buy time for implementing his military plans.”

Minutes before Trump’s announcement £1.1 billion in futures was bought while £145 million in oil futures was sold.

With all the madness of King Trump, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that he is a gangster and only interested in making money for him and his crime syndicate family.

Someone clearly had insider knowledge of what was about to be announced and, as they say, made a killing.

That Trump is a liar is beyond argument. The question for the media, in the US and across the globe, is will they do their job fearlessly and call him out?