Washington Post: fake-news partner with the CIA

Washington Post: fake-news partner with the CIA

By Jon Rappoport

Let’s frame the situation in simple terms. You work for a company that has a very lucrative partnership with a big-time money man. That money man gives you a piece of information and tells you it’s important.

What you do every day is spread information. That’s how you earn your living.

Are you going to take that piece of info from the money man and spread it, or are you going to question it and research it and shoot back hard-edged questions to the money man?

If you’re a loyal employee, and if you want to keep your job, and if you’re smart enough to understand how things work, you’re going to spread the money man’s piece of info and keep your head down.

You’re not going to worry your pretty little head about whether the piece of info is true.

Unless you’re a complete dolt, you certainly aren’t going to spread the info with a disclaimer stating that your source, the money man, has a major business contract with your company.

Getting the picture? The truth is irrelevant.

Here are key statements from Norman Solomon’s AlterNet article about the Washington Post, its owner, Jeff Bezos, and the CIA (12/18/13):

“The Post’s new owner, Jeff Bezos, is the founder and CEO of Amazon — which recently landed a $600 million contract with the CIA. But the Post’s articles about the CIA are not disclosing that the newspaper’s sole owner is the main owner of CIA business partner Amazon.”

“Even for a multi-billionaire like Bezos, a $600 million contract is a big deal. That’s more than twice as much as Bezos paid to buy the Post four months ago.”

“And there’s likely to be plenty more where that CIA largesse came from. Amazon’s offer wasn’t the low bid, but it won the CIA contract anyway by offering advanced high-tech ‘cloud’ infrastructure.”

“Bezos personally and publicly touts Amazon Web Services, and it’s evident that Amazon will be seeking more CIA contracts. Last month, Amazon issued a statement saying, ‘We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA’.”

“As Amazon’s majority owner and the Post’s only owner, Bezos stands to gain a lot more if his newspaper does less ruffling and more soothing of CIA feathers.”

“Amazon has a bad history of currying favor with the U.S. government’s ‘national security’ establishment. The media watch group FAIR pointed out what happened after WikiLeaks published State Department cables: ‘WikiLeaks was booted from Amazon’s webhosting service AWS. So at the height of public interest in what WikiLeaks was publishing, readers were unable to access the WikiLeaks website’.”

“How’s that for a commitment to the public’s right to know?”

“Days ago, my colleagues at RootsAction.org launched a petition that says: ‘The Washington Post’s coverage of the CIA should include full disclosure that the sole owner of the Post is also the main owner of Amazon — and Amazon is now gaining huge profits directly from the CIA’…”

“While the Post functions as a powerhouse media outlet in the Nation’s Capital, it’s also a national and global entity — read every day by millions of people who never hold its newsprint edition in their hands. Hundreds of daily papers reprint the Post’s news articles and opinion pieces, while online readership spans the world.”

“Propaganda largely depends on patterns of omission and repetition. If, in its coverage of the CIA, the Washington Post were willing to fully disclose the financial ties that bind its owner to the CIA, such candor would shed some light on how top-down power actually works in our society.”

“’The Post is unquestionably the political paper of record in the United States, and how it covers governance sets the agenda for the balance of the news media’, journalism scholar Robert W. McChesney points out. ‘Citizens need to know about this conflict of interest in the columns of the Post itself’.”

“In a statement just released by the Institute for Public Accuracy, McChesney added: ‘If some official enemy of the United States had a comparable situation — say the owner of the dominant newspaper in Caracas was getting $600 million in secretive contracts from the Maduro government — the Post itself would lead the howling chorus impaling that newspaper and that government for making a mockery of a free press. It is time for the Post to take a dose of its own medicine’.”

You may recall that the Washington Post was a main player in launching stories about fake news sites after the presidential election.

One of the biggest fake news outlets in the world took the lead in “exposing fake news.”

Then, on January 8, 2017, the Post ran a piece headlined: “It’s time to retire the tainted term ‘fake news’”. That was an attempt to stop the bleeding, because independent news sites all over the world were pointing out that mainstream news outlets had long been the biggest purveyors of fake news. The Post writer, Margaret Sullivan, stated:

“But though the term [fake news] hasn’t been around long, its meaning already is lost. Faster than you could say ‘Pizzagate,’ the label has been co-opted to mean any number of completely different things…”

Actually, the term has been around for quite a while. I named my site nomorefakenews in 2001. And the term, in 2016, wasn’t “co-opted.” It was turned against news outlets, like the Post, who were attacking independent media.

The Post is in bed with the CIA to the tune of $600 million. If that isn’t the foundation of fakery on a grand scale, what is?

Try to find one major news outlet that has exposed and pounded on this Washington Post-CIA marriage. You can’t. You see, the fakers protect their own. It’s a club. If you join, you keep your mouth shut about the inherent unholy alliances within the club. It’s a rule.

Memo to the New York Times, LA Times, CNN, FOX, NBC, CBS, ABC, BBC, Reuters, AP: If you want to prove you’re not fake, go after the Washington Post, hammer and tongs, on their marriage to the CIA. Don’t let up. Demand conflict of interest statements from the Post, for starters.

And here’s a talking point for you. Was Jeff Bezos’ cash purchase of the Washington Post a mere coincidence, placed next to his $600 million contract with the CIA, or did he buy the Post so he could offer the CIA an even tighter relationship with the number-one paper of record?

Get it? Or am I going too fast for you?

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