The anchors who were involved in the video have said that while they encouraged viewers to reach out with any concerns, they were told by Sinclair Broadcast Group, “corporate will monitor the comments and send replies to your audience on your behalf."
The post Viral Video Exposes News Stations Across US Pumping Exact Same Scripted Fear into Viewers appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
In the almost twenty four hours since The Washington Post published an article, sourced anonymously, that claimed that President Trump had called multiple countries “shitholes” the media reaction has been downright hysterical.
From claiming that Trump is evil, all the way to absurd claims that he is a terrorist sympathizer, the mainstream media has gone into full-scale meltdown mode while throwing out any semblance of objectivity.
Some of the reactions are truly insane and show that the vast majority of the mainstream media suffers from extreme cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome and have no problem directly lying to their viewers as long as it is perceived to hurt the president.
The media watchdog website, Grabien News, compiled a list of the most insane comments made in the wake of the Washington Post story and it reads like a story about a bunch of actually crazy human beings pretending to provide political analysis.
A writer at The Root, Jason Johnson, said these comments show Trump is a “white supremacist,” a “terrorist sympathizer,” and a “danger” to non-whites.
“The president is a white supremacist,” Johnson said Thursday night on MSNBC. “Our president is a terrorist sympathizer. Our president is a clear and present danger to nonwhite people in America. It’s that simple. There’s no reason to pretend that’s not what’s going on.”
As I noted in a previous report, these type of comments are designed to get someone to eventually attack the sitting president.
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said Friday morning that Trump’s use of the word “sh*thole” proves his theory that the commander-in-chief is suffering from early-onset dementia.
“Let me just say, everybody knows that granddad and grandmom and people with early onset of dementia, I know this, say things that they would have never said five or six years ago,” Scarborough said. “Just ask members of my family and my mom about how they’ll say stinging things about you or other people. I’m just saying.”
Of course one can count on Scarborough to bring the discredited “mentally unfit” narrative into the picture.
MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch said Trump’s comments prove he’s not only “racist” but also “insane,” “crazy” and an “evil, evil man.”
“I think there’s a word we have to start to use with Donald Trump in addition to all of the crazy talk,” Deutsch said.
“If you take Charlottesville and his blessing and love of or kinship with understanding there are nice Nazis out there, if we take his implied support of a pedophile, and now if we take this additional, very clear racist thing, he is an evil man. We don’t talk about that a lot. We talk about he’s insane, he’s crazy. That’s evil. This is just an evil, evil man.”
Keep in mind that Deutsch is just straight up lying at this point, as there is absolutely NO evidence that Trump supported Nazis in Charlottesville (although the media did support violent hard-left protesters) and the president has never “implied” support for pedophilia. (He simply refused to automatically concede that Roy Moore was guilty because the media said so.)
MSNBC guest and former press secretary for Bernie Sanders, Erika Andiola, said the comment proves Trump’s policies are rooted in “white supremacy.”
“A lot of this has been rooted in white supremacy since the beginning,” she told Joy Ann Reid. “These policies are rooted in racism.”
Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said the comment shows that Trump “could lead the Ku Klux Klan in the United States of America.” He’s “somebody who could be the leader of the neo-nazis.”
So there you have it. The ENTIRE mainstream media is painting the President of The United States as some sort of Hitler like killer who, if left unchecked, could begin to actually murder minorities inside the country.
Make no mistake, this type of disinformation is specifically designed to put it out there that someone may need to take Donald Trump out in order to save the country from his evil.
This article was originally published by Paul Joseph Watson at Infowars.com
CNN is now pushing an effort to “ban the term fake news” after the slogan became synonymous with CNN itself thanks to President Donald Trump.
In a CNN opinion piece written by Hossein Derakhshan and Claire Wardle, who are affiliated with the globalist Council of Europe, the authors argue that the term “fake news” has “become meaningless” and lost its power because politicians (primarily Donald Trump) have hijacked it as a way to “undermine” the media establishment.
The authors decry the fact that many people now believe the mainstream media peddles “fabricated stories” and that information monopolies are being challenged by the ability for “anyone in the world” to have a platform.
Remember when the mainstream media & the Hillary campaign invented the term "fake news" in an effort to discredit alternative & right of center media outlets?
Yeah, that went well. pic.twitter.com/HJPpIQEr4j
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) November 27, 2017
Complaining that “less powerful agents can harm large institutions or established individuals,” Derakhshan and Wardle warn that trust in institutions is declining and that only through intervention at the level of “public education” (ie indoctrination) can this be reversed.
Of course, the real reason media elites want to clamp down on the term “fake news” is because its original intention, to smear and discredit opponents of Hillary Clinton, right of center media outlets, and people who distrust the mainstream media, has completely backfired.
This was illustrated yet again by Donald Trump’s tweet earlier today when he suggested that a “fake news trophy” should be awarded to the network that has been responsible for the most inaccurate reporting.
We should have a contest as to which of the Networks, plus CNN and not including Fox, is the most dishonest, corrupt and/or distorted in its political coverage of your favorite President (me). They are all bad. Winner to receive the FAKE NEWS TROPHY!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2017
“Fake news” was one of many excuses trotted out after November last year to push the narrative that President Trump’s election was somehow illegitimate.
In reality, a major Stanford University study found that “even the most widely circulated fake news stories were seen by only a small fraction of Americans,” and that the most widely believed fake news stories were those that benefited Hillary Clinton.
Fake news had virtually no impact on the election, but the establishment media weaponized the term as part of an agenda to silence and censor voices of dissent, including media platforms, that had opposed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
In addition, mainstream media news coverage in the weeks leading up to the election was 91% negative towards Trump, according to a study by the Media Research Center.
The Podesta emails also revealed how mainstream journalists were completely in bed with the Clinton campaign and even ran stories by them before publication.
The “fake news” narrative has completely backfired on the political establishment and the media because it has acted as a boomerang, showing the mainstream media to be the most consistently dishonest entity of all.
Is it any wonder therefore that the political class is now so keen to retire the term altogether?
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com.
Liberty Blitzkrieg — It doesn’t take courage to denounce Nazism. Moreover, it appears many of the people incessantly proclaiming how anti-Nazi they are, happen to be the same folks who have the most to answer for when it comes to all sorts of transgressions against the world over the past couple of decades. That said, I’ll give my my quick two cents on the Nazi, white supremacist hysteria currently being amplified by the corporate media.
The general proclivity to obsess about how one’s group, whether it be a nation, political tribe, or race/religion is superior to all others represents such a immature and unconscious way of seeing the world, it’s really is hard for me to believe so many people still see reality through such a lens. This type of thinking tends to attract very insecure people. People who cannot look at themselves individually and be proud of the person they see. As such, they scurry around looking for a group with an established superiority myth which they can then latch themselves onto in order to feel better about themselves.
The good news when it comes to Nazism/white supremacy, at least here in the U.S., is that most people appear to be at least conscious enough not to fall for the most basic and primal type of tribalism — i.e., finding a race-based superiority cult attractive. In contrast, the more nuanced superiority cults, such as those based on mindless nationalism or political identity, are far more entrenched here at home, and present a much greater danger to our future.
Before some of you lose it, I wrote “mindless” nationalism for a reason. I think it’s completely normal and healthy for everyone to love and appreciate their own national/regional culture, this is not what I’m referring to. I’m talking about the hordes of mindless automatons who simply fly the American flag and constantly profess their super-sized patriotism, while being completely unaware of the multitude of evil and anti-American actions being done both at home and abroad in their names. It doesn’t seem to matter to these type that their government is acting in total opposition to the Constitution they ostensibly claim to uphold. These people might be less shallow than an self-professed Nazi, but they are far more dangerous to decent, ethical Americans at home, and billions of innocent people abroad. Political party tribalists represent a similar threat, as I’ve discussed on many occasions.
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To summarize, Nazism has become almost as discredited as slavery within the minds of most humans. Meaning, it’s such a patently grotesque, childish and unconscious ideology, it can and will only attract very small pockets of people. In fact, given the rampant corruption, wealth inequality and societal decay we’re experiencing in these United States, I’m somewhat encouraged that the movement is as small and insignificant as it is. Of course, I could be wrong about all of this (we’ll have to see how things unfold if the empire collapses chaotically), but that’s how I see it at the moment. Should that ever change, of course I will fight Nazism, or anything similar with all my energy. In contrast, I think other forms of mindless tribalism, political and nationalistic, are far more likely to cause major disasters in the years ahead.
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If I’m right about what I wrote above, why is the corporate media acting so hysterically in response to this small collection of hateful misfits? Let me share a few tweets I wrote yesterday to start the conversations.
Two things corporate media consistently does.
1) Scare people
2) Convince them to give up liberties to fight the enemy du jour.— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) August 16, 2017
You can probably tell where I’m going with this. Namely, a lot of really terrible people are trying to reinvent themselves by hyping up the Nazi threat. I’ve discussed this dangerous phenomenon in recent posts, but it’s important enough to keep hammering home. The examples are pretty much everywhere you look. Here’s a particularly shameless example I came across earlier today:
Sarah’s not exaggerating. Here’s the exact quote Madeline Albright made on 60 Minutes:
Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.
—60 Minutes (5/12/96)
Lesson number one. Don’t let terrible people get away with moral preening about some relatively insignificant Nazi threat when these are the very same people who have run this country and much of the world into the toilet bowl. Lesson number two. Don’t allow authoritarians to manipulate your emotions about white supremacy (or any other threat for that matter) as an excuse to take away cherished civil liberties. These types have been selling us on giving away our rights since 9/11, and they continue to use any threat they can to take away those that remain. Free speech is the holy grail for tyrants, and anyone who suggests we give up speech to protect ourselves presents a threat to us all. I came across two examples of this today in the normal course of my reading.
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First, an attorney who works for UCLA named K-Sue Park, wrote an op-ed published in The New York Times titled, The A.C.L.U. Needs to Rethink Free Speech. It’s one of the most incoherent, authoritarian pieces I’ve read in a while and, although a painful read, you should definitely check it out. It doesn’t take much logic to recognize that her call for the government to decide which speech is acceptable and which is not, is actually far more dangerous to society than a few hundred Nazis getting together in Virginia, irrespective of the terrible loss of life.
Another example of this authoritarian impulse was penned by Leonid Bershidsky in his Bloomberg article, Facebook and Twitter Are Too Big to Allow Fake Users. To be fair, this article was written before the Charlottesville attack, so I would not characterize him as using the attack to push this narrative, but it’s a wildly dangerous view nonetheless. He writes:
Social networks should be obliged to ban anonymous accounts. If they refuse to do so voluntarily, government regulators should force the issue.
This is a completely unhinged response to the problems of “trolling, fake news and cyberbullying,” which he identifies. It’s the equivalent of taking a nuclear bomb to a knife fight. As someone who spends a great deal of time on Twitter, I can tell you that some of the most insightful and humorous accounts I follow are anonymous. This makes total sense because most people have jobs, and people with jobs can be easily fired or ostracized. Not because they’re writing pro-Nazi tweets, but because everything is essentially political these days, and if your boss happens to be a member of a different political tribe, it could affect your career. Did we already forget what happened to James Damore?
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If social media companies suddenly banned anonymous accounts, the entire internet and discourse on it would instantly become 90% less interesting, creative and dynamic. Much of the promise of the web would be crippled by such a policy, and humanity would be far worse off for it.
Such a policy would crush political speech online, and limit it largely to those who create political content professionally. I could see why people in power would want to do this, but I can’t grasp how anyone else could be so naive to support such a agenda.
As Patrick Chovanec (who lived and worked in China), so insightfully tweeted:
I think internet anonymity has big downsides. But forcing “real name registration” is something China’s government does to suppress dissent. https://t.co/AEr3H7C4To
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) August 17, 2017
Ultimately, we need to recognize that fear is our biggest enemy. The corporate media tries to keep us in a constant state of fear, because it’s in a state of fear where we are most vulnerable and hence easily manipulated. Don’t succumb to fear. Stand strong, be courageous and don’t every give up liberties because some pundit tells you it’s what you need to do to fight whatever enemy they happen to be hyping at the moment.
Finally, let’s finish with a classic clip from the late Bill Hicks, who I consider to be an American prophet. He said it much better than I ever could.
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In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
Corporate media are once again creating scary headlines about the supposed dangers of cannabis — and, as usual, their hype amounts to the proverbial ‘nothingburger.’
CNN recently blared the headline: “133% leap in children admitted to ER for marijuana, study finds.” The article referred to a study in France of children under six being admitted to the ER for cannabis ingestion over an 11-year period, as well as the number of calls to poison control centers.
“From 2004 to 2014, 235 children were admitted to ERs with cannabis intoxication, and there was a 133% increase in the admissions rate for it. The number of calls to poison control centers related to cannabis exposure in children increased by 312% in the same period.”
This represents an average of 21 children every year going to the ER, in a country with a population of 66 million people. This is not to downplay the danger of a child becoming temporarily comatose after eating a piece of hash. However, the rate of occurrence is so low that it does not warrant fear-mongering. Nor does it justify halting the progress toward freedom to use a plant people have known for thousands of years.
France’s population was about 61 million in 2004 at the beginning of the study timeline, growing to 65 million in 2014 — meaning that we would expect more ER visits and poison control center calls with more population growth. But CNN makes no mention of a statistical correction for population growth.
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Parents should do all they can to keep any kind of psychoactive substance or drug out of the hands of children, but the actual numbers relating to cannabis do not justify being trumpeted as fodder for prohibitionist paranoia.
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Cannabis remains illegal in France, so any uptick in ER visits there – regardless of degree – have no relevance to legalization efforts in the U.S. and elsewhere.
In a legal framework, cannabis products are more likely to be packaged to deter accidental ingestion, and manufacturers are putting more effort into this. Unsafe, nondescript packaging is another dangerous product of the black market, caused by prohibition.
The ominous tone of CNN’s article is even more absurd when we consider that other common household items pose a far greater threat to children – including crayons, diaper paste, toothpaste and energy drinks.
If the MSM wants to make people aware of real dangers, it should focus on that fact that 160 children go to the ER every day after accidentally overdosing on prescription drugs, pain relievers or vitamins. That’s 60,000 kids every year.
Last week, media seized on a study linking cannabis use to an increased risk of death from hypertension. One site even suggested “Marijuana ‘may be worse than cigarettes for cardiovascular health’” in its headline.
The study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, did not rely on any clinical or experimental research. It was simply a comparison of data from the 2005 U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, and mortality data from 2011 for the same group of people.
Authors looked at who said they had “ever used” cannabis from the 2005 study, then compared their mortality to those who said they had never used cannabis. They controlled for high blood pressure but did not take into account diet and exercise. They also assumed “that those who said they had used marijuana in 2005 continued to do so,” and that most of the pot was smoked.
READ MORE: National Report Hoax
Hardly a model of scientific rigor.
As Paul Armentano of NORML wrote:
“Those participants who fessed up to having engaged in past pot use were then automatically classified by the study’s researchers as current users of the drug, despite the fact that no evidence exists to corroborate this claim.
Even more problematically, to calculate the estimated duration of each subject’s marijuana use, researchers simply subtracted the age participants first reported trying pot from their current age.”
Armentano goes on to reference other, more comprehensive longitudinal studies contradicting the alleged link between cannabis use and declined cardiovascular health. Somehow these studies didn’t bear mentioning in other media articles.
Corporate media may claim they are doing their due diligence in reporting on studies such as the two described above, but they fail to provide context or proper analysis. In doing so, MSM allows those with vested interests in prohibition to keep on spouting disinformation.
(FAIR) The three most prominent US newspapers haven’t run a critical investigative piece on Jeff Bezos’ company Amazon in almost two years, a FAIR survey finds.
A review of 190 articles from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the Bezos-owned Washington Post over the past year paints a picture of almost uniformly uncritical–ofttimes boosterish–coverage. None of the articles were investigative exposes, 6 percent leaned negative, 54 percent were straight reporting or neutral in tone, and 40 percent were positive, mostly with a fawning or even press release–like tone.
The last major investigative piece we found in any of these three publications was a 4,500-word critique of Amazon’s labor practices in the New York Times (8/16/15) almost two years ago. Considering that Amazon is the fourth-most-valuable company in the world, with a 43 percent (and growing) share of all US online commerce, it’s a striking absence of journalistic scrutiny.
The line between straight reporting and fawning coverage wasn’t always clear, given the nature of technology journalism, but, in general, a distinction was drawn when reporting on Amazon’s latest moves featured no criticism or contrary third-party input, and the article was mostly indistinguishable from a press release.
Examples of this type of breathless corporate coverage, from a one-week span in 2016, included “Amazon’s Latest Weapon in the E-Commerce Wars: Its Own Air Force” (Washington Post, 8/6/16), “Amazon Reveals ‘Prime Air’ Cargo Jet” (Wall Street Journal, 8/5/16) and “Think Amazon’s Drone Delivery Idea Is a Gimmick? Think Again” (New York Times, 8/10/16). The most embarrassing example of outright PR pablum was this Washington Post “exclusive look,” based primarily on futurist porn speculation (3/2/17):
Amazing how a Bezos-owned paper got an “exclusive” on Jeff Bezos!
One can review the list and determinations here. We included articles about Amazon.com, Inc. (reviews of Amazon TV shows or stories about Amazonbestsellers, for example, were not included) that were significant enough for the outlets’ respective Twitter accounts to post the stories.
One might expect the Washington Post—the personal property of Bezos—to provide more favorable coverage of its owner’s company, but the Post’s level of uncritical praise, though very high, was roughly par for the course. About 95 percent of Post coverage ranged from neutral (43 percent) to positive/fawning (48 percent) in tone.
Ninety-three percent of New York Times coverage of Amazon and 94 percent of the Wall Street Journal’s ranged from straight news to press release. Fifty-seven percent of the Times‘ coverage and 31 percent of the Journal‘s could be characterized as somewhat to extremely flattering. (Note that the Post‘s level of positive coverage fell in between the two other papers’.)
One of the major reasons Amazon gets such glowing coverage is that tech journalism is traditionally not a very critical vertical. Tech company X reveals it’s doing Y or will do Z—that is, by the beat’s definition, newsworthy, and the press release is rewritten, with some added commentary from friendly talking heads and market analysts. Because it’s “tech,” the political or labor implications come in a distant second to the shiny-object quality of the beat.
Occasionally issues such as privacy or anti-trust or union unrest will be touched on, but this is usually in response to legal action taken by the state or by activists, not as a topic raised by reporters themselves. On a case by case basis, this is understandable (clearly not every tech write-up has to be an exposé), but on the whole, tech journalism is a media landscape dominated by corporate stenography.
With Amazon’s stock surging to well over $1,000 a share, and its head recently crowned the richest person in the world, the stakes for putting Amazon and Bezos in a critical light couldn’t be higher. Yet time and again, the pillars of US media provide them all the critical rigor a high school paper typically provides the spring dance committee.
By Adam Johnson / Creative Commons / FAIR.org / Report a typo / Steve Jurvetson
This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.
The internet was in an uproar Thursday as people took to decrying President Donald Trump for his childish and cruel remarks about the late globalist billionaire, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s daughter, Mika.
While the mainstream media drug Trump through the mud, ad nauseam, for his uncouth and immature comments, their silence — on issues that actually matter — was deafening.
In a most profound tweet on Thursday, Julian Assange weighed in on the issue, making an immensely powerful statement and calling out the ridiculous nature of corporate media and their ability to distract from the crimes of the establishment.
“Which is worse? Trump blowing hundreds of girls faces to pieces in Yemen or Trump mentioning the daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s facelift?”
Which is worse? Trump blowing hundreds of girls faces to pieces in Yemen or Trump mentioning the daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski"s facelift? pic.twitter.com/nDSAjXLFTw
— Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) June 29, 2017
The girl on the left in the image above is one of 30 people, including 10 women and children, who were killed in one of Trump’s first missions into Yemen. That beautiful little girl was the 8-year-old granddaughter of Nasser al-Awlaki and killed by US troops only days after Trump assumed his position in the White House.
Despite US claims no civilians were killed in Yemen raid, Dr. Nasser Awlaki says his 8 yr old granddaughter was shot in the neck & killed
— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) January 29, 2017
During that raid, US troops were said to have slaughtered unarmed women and children and this barely measured as a blip in the mainstream media radar. Contrast this coverage with coverage of Trump’s covefefe blunder or his Mika Brzezinski comments and the media is exposed for the horrendous distractive and divisive monster that they are.
READ MORE: In the Land of the Free, A Cop Can Kill 2 Girls, Face No Charges, then Be Elected to Office
No one is arguing that the president probably shouldn’t tease someone who just lost their father, but compared to US war crimes, this coverage becomes an outright criminal injustice.
How on Earth does corporate media have any relevance anymore?
As Vladimir Putin previously pointed out, Trump is merely a puppet and it matters not which puppet is in power — the machine still marches on. Nothing illustrates this more than the entirely distracting horseshit that the media is spewing while ignoring the hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent dead civilians, mounting up under Trump’s watch in the Middle East.
Donald Trump is carrying out the same genocidal foreign policy as his predecessor Barack Obama and his supporters and opponents still think there is a difference between them.
Just like Obama, Trump is curtsying to the terrorist Saudi Arabian regime and selling them weapons which are in turn used to kill innocent women and children. Just like Obama, Trump is continuing war, and in fact, doubling down. In March, Trump dropped more bombs in Yemen than Obama did in all of 2016.
It gets worse.
When looking at the last 12 years in Europe, terrorist attacks have taken the lives of 459 civilians. That is still less than the at least 472 civilians that were killed by the U.S. in Syria — just in the last month.
Where is the outrage? Where is the media coverage? Sadly, they are filling the airwaves with vacuous blather about Russian hacking and teasing the latest puppet in office. All of it is serving its purpose.
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American citizens are addicted to distraction and the establishment media and government are getting rich off of selling it to them. While the divide and conquer tactics keep the citizens fighting over superficial and irrelevant issues, the status quo marches on, laying waste to everything it touches — including entire countries and their citizens, men, women, and children.
“So long as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern…Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.”
― George Orwell, 1984
“Fake News” has become the buzzword that the dying mainstream media has been using to dismiss alternative viewpoints that may appear on the internet or in alternative media. While it is true that there are a large number of satire sites and clear disinformation sites on the web, mainstream media sources are focusing on alternative media websites who do not share their views politically and attempting to associate these sites with the “fake news” phenomenon.
Luckily, however, it seems that the public is not buying this recent propaganda campaign. A poll conducted by the Harvard-Harris group found that 65 percent of voters believe that the mainstream media is guilty of distributing false reports.
Harvard-Harris co-director Mark Penn believes that the extreme polarization on cable news channels is playing a major role in this negative perception that has been developing.
“Much of the media is now just another part of the partisan divide in the country with Republicans not trusting the ‘mainstream’ media and Democrats seeing them as reflecting their beliefs. Every major institution from the presidency to the courts is now seen as operating in a partisan fashion in one direction or the other,” Penn told The Hill.
The poll reportedly surveyed 2,006 registered voters from May 17 to May 20.
Although the mainstream media continuously pumps divide into the populace through the use of the left/right paradigm, the survey shows this is simply not what the people want. One of the questions asked is if people want to see the divide continue — the overwhelming response was, ‘no.’
Do you want the parties to work together and try to reach compromise or stick to their positions and fight it out until the next election?
89 Percent said they want to see this divide come together.
Trust in the mainstream media has been slowly declining after several decades of monopolization and centralization. Over the last century, many large companies have been attempting to consolidate the media and have total control over what is said in the public arena. These companies are almost always heavily involved in politics and international business affairs, many times even depending on the government to regulate their competition.
The good news is, people aren’t buying it. Despite the massive push by the media to assert some sort of connection between Russia and Trump — without providing a single shred of concrete evidence — the majority of Americans still don’t buy it.
Here are some things that have been said by the media or one of the political parties. For each of the following, do you agree or disagree with it?
Donald Trump is a puppet of Vladimir Putin.
66 Percent don’t buy it.
While Donald Trump is most likely someone’s puppet, Putin is most assuredly not the master.
Through controlling the dialogue in the media they are able to portray their political allies in a positive light, even if this is accomplished by telling blatant lies. It is even a generally accepted fact that all of the corporate news outlets have their own political agendas.
What is not realized is that even though they may have different party affiliations, the major media sources are all on the same team and advertise the same general worldview. This bias was clearly visible after Trump bombed Syria in April. As the Free Thought Project pointed out, the day following Trump’s illegal act of war against a sovereign nation was nothing but praise for him in the mainstream media — including outlets like WaPo and the NY Times, who constantly attacked him prior to the strike.
In the early 1980s, there were over 50 corporations which controlled all of the news media in America. This is a small number considering that it accounted for television, movies, magazines, books and music all combined. Before the First World War, there were actually hundreds of corporations that made up the US media.
This corporate monopolization is largely due to government regulation that prevents independent journalists from reaching the masses. This is done by limiting the number of broadcast spots available, issuing permits and licenses for the ability to broadcast and, now, censoring alternative media.
In 1983 a man by the name of Ben Bagdikian published a book called “The Media Monopoly” which pointed out the consolidation going on in the media at the time. In his book, Bagdikian predicted that the meager number of 50 corporations would dwindle very quickly to less than a dozen companies in coming decades.
His predictions were met with a great deal of criticism in the mainstream circuit, and that was to be expected considering they were the target of his accusations. Sure enough though, over the next 25 years, the media would be consolidated into fewer and fewer hands. In 2012 it was reported by Forbes that just 6 companies owned the entire mainstream media, then they reported in 2016 that all media was owned by just 15 billionaires amongst those companies.
This consolidation has caused an obvious change in the content, and even if the general public doesn’t understand why it is happening, they do understand that the mainstream media cannot be trusted.
(ANTIMEDIA Op-Ed) In October 2016, the Guardian ran an article entitled “Reality Check: are US-led airstrikes on Syrians as bad as Russia’s?” The article was a response to the suggestion of the British Labour party that there was too much focus on Russian atrocities in Syria and that this focus was detracting from other atrocities taking place, particularly from the U.S.-led coalition.
Unsurprisingly, the article concluded outright that “[N]o party to Syria’s brutal civil war has joined the conflict without killing civilians, but the scale of deaths caused by Russia’s bombing campaign is much higher than that from coalition airstrikes.”
The most telling part of this report is that one of the sources of their conclusion was the non-partisan monitoring group Airwars, which has been following the conflict closely since the air war against ISIS began. This is all well and good; it is hard to argue with neutrally produced statistics.
However, this is the same monitoring group that stated in March of this year:
“[T]he high number of alleged incidents across both countries forced Airwars temporarily to pause its full vetting of Russian airstrikes in order to keep pace with the reported Coalition toll.” [emphasis added]
Airwars confirmed:
“For the third straight month the reported civilian toll of Russian airstrikes in Syria was surpassed by that of the Coalition in both Iraq and Syria.” [emphasis added]
The same media that used Airwars’ reports to demonstrate that the Russian military was killing more civilians in Syria than the U.S.-led coalition in 2016 is almost all but silent on Airwars’ reports from 2017 that show the U.S.-led coalition is massacring Iraqis and Syrians by the thousands.
In March alone, the U.S. air campaign allegedly killed 1,782 civilians in Iraq and Syria. Airwars also notes that the U.S.-backed campaign in Mosul has displaced 400,000 civilians from just this one city alone.
In March 2017, the Guardian ran another article entitled “The west condemned Russia’s bombs – now coalition attacks are killing civilians in Mosul.” Considering the scale of the tenacity with which the mainstream media accused Russia of war crimes and elevated these stories to headline news, these lone articles containing the truth about what is unfolding in the Middle East are not nearly sufficient. If you have the time, Google search “guardian+russia+bombs+aleppo,” and you might notice a stark difference in the style, frequency, and manner of reporting on Russian casualties.
When a U.S. aerial bombardment in Mosul killed well over 200 civilians, the mainstream media shamelessly spun their headlines to downplay American culpability. In contrast, when an alleged Russian airstrike hit an area in Syria controlled by al-Qaeda, the media never once hesitated to run the story — even without legitimate sources on the ground to confirm the casualties. This patent hypocrisy matters greatly, especially considering that most Americans are headline readers only.
If the Guardian or any other mainstream media outlet were impartial and concerned only with the truth, they would run a new follow-up “Reality Check” article concerning the most horrifying developments taking place right now.
Though it is not a competition to see who can kill the most versus who can kill the least, there is a stark difference in that Russia’s air campaign has at least a small mode of legitimacy; the Syrian government formally requested Russia’s intervention. Compiling a coalition of countries — one rife with direct sponsors of ISIS and exporters of extremist ideology — does nothing to legitimize the United States’ war in Syria.
Further, according to Airwars, the U.S. is responsible for 95 percent of all coalition strikes in Syria and 68 percent of all actions in Iraq, making the rest of the countries’ contributions virtually inconsequential. For example, as the second most active partner, the United Kingdom has contributed 92 strikes in the Syrian campaign since the U.K. parliament formally voted to begin conducting airstrikes in 2015. This amounts to barely one percent of the coalition’s total of at least 8,502 strikes in Syria. Why were they so determined to join the fight in the first place — heavily debating the intervention in the U.K. legislature — just to contribute 92 missiles? What is the uncontrollable desire for everyone to bomb Syrian territory rooted in given that it has no internationally recognized legal basis? There is no U.N. mandate and there is no request from the Syrian government, which deems allied forces invaders.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has given enormous scope to his military generals to order in airstrikes on the battlefield, which has directly resulted in blatant war crimes. To the media, this isn’t remotely important, scandalous, or newsworthy. Apparently, only anonymously leaked reports of intelligence sharing with Russia regarding topics the mainstream media had already reported on are all that’s worth covering.
While this nonsensical hysteria plagues our television sets, Iraq and Syria continue to burn.
As Airwars explains:
“‘The prevailing view in the United States,’ says Chris Kolenda, ‘is that ISIS is a terrorist organisation which just needs to be eliminated and it’s unfortunate that there are civilian casualties in the process. Americans tend to believe that the ISIS cancer will metastasize if left unaddressed. Most believe that ISIS causes far more damage to civilians in Iraq and Syria and that ineffectual US military efforts, due to excessive restrictions, will prolong the war and place more civilians at risk of harm.’
“Ordinary Iraqis and Syrians on the ground – who have already endured 1,000 days of airstrikes in the effort to defeat Islamic State – might disagree. For too many civilians, each new day brings the ominous sound of yet another air raid, once more putting them in fear of losing their homes, their loved ones and their own lives. It is a situation which we, far away from the battlefield, can barely begin to comprehend.”
Opinion / Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo
Only a select few over the entire course of human history can legitimately say they’ve witnessed the implosion of an empire, but Americans now have a front row seat to the tabloidesque spectacle currently slashing heads and taking names, as it rips through Washington with the full force of a deadly — if highly propagandized — tornado.
And this storm leaves no one — corporate press, politician, nor the U.S. President, himself — unscathed.
What began as proof of election-rigging by the Democratic National Committee and key players, including failed candidate and ex-Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has morphed into an as-yet unsolved murder, allegations of sedition by the White House, and an altogether murky soup of unconfirmed accusations and hurt feelings — a true mashup of events, legitimately putting House of Cards to shame.
A tragic dearth in actual facts betrays mainstream media’s disingenuous headlines plastering unfounded tales of Russian collusion, as if on automatic pilot to peg every crime of the 21st century on shady operatives of The Enemy State.
Worse, the life of promising DNC staffer, Seth Rich, appears to have mattered as little to power-hungry pols as figures compiled in the military’s estimations of ‘collateral damage’ — excess, ostensively accidental killings of civilians — were this operation taking place anywhere but these once-United States.
Worse still, the only collusion thus far evident from anything other than unnamed, anonymous sources crucifies those once-illustrious media institutions as willing and active participants in both the cover-up of a murder, and slavish devotion to the nefarious U.S. Intelligence Community.
It’s a wonder any independent journalists — let alone, the people inhabiting this planet — can keep track.
In all its macabre splendor, this is the weaponization of news The Free Thought Project — and Wikileaks founder and editor, Julian Assange, himself — warned of, months ago.
And on that note, several laughably audacious assertions and their profoundly telling roots must be dissected for a better understanding of what has, in actuality, become a farce deserving of a cinematic cable series — or, perhaps, reality TV.
Buckle up: this will be a decidedly bumpy ride — veritably guaranteed to nauseate upon descent into this rabbit warren, over which any soap opera producer would drool. Were it only fictional drama.
Welcome to the Spin Cycle.
First, the wholly ruthless and altogether inexplicable demise of Seth Rich must be examined, in its own right — but must be done so against the backdrop of the Internet rumor mill, superimposed on revelations from albeit unconfirmed information, revealed just one day ago.
Deemed a robbery gone awry by D.C. police, Rich met an early fate in a hail of gunfire last July, during the wee hours after leaving a bar and just feet from his Bloomingdale District home. Speaking to his girlfriend at the time, Rich blew off that strangers were approaching him on the sidewalk, due to the proximity of his residence — and ended what would become his last communication with anyone.
Police arrived in three minutes to the bloody scene, and though the young DNC staffer remained conscious, he later passed away after transport to a local hospital. No witnesses have surfaced. Rich’s cell phone, keys, wallet, watch, and $2,000 necklace were apparently disregarded by the feckless robbers.
None of the evidence amassed proves, well, anything — yet, D.C. police baselessly asserted the unfortunate murder a result of a botched robbery.
Nothing of value had been taken. Nothing about the murder scene even whispered of a strong-arm, violent robbery. Yet, that’s the narrative held by unusually tight-lipped police, politicians, and the ionosphere of corporate press.
Secondly, just this week, the ice fractured a bit, as private investigator and former D.C. homicide detective, Rod Wheeler — hired by Rich’s family for an independent probe — broke ranks, telling Washington affiliate FOX 5,
“My investigation up to this point shows there was some degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks … The police department nor the FBI have been forthcoming. They haven’t been cooperating at all. I believe that the answer to solving his death lies on that computer, which I believe is either at the police department or either at the FBI. I have been told both.”
Thirdly, Wikileaks published tens of thousands of DNC documents — evincing massive corruption, collusion, and a plot to thwart the candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders — which had been obtained from an unnamed source, and which then dominated headlines for a significant period in the run-up to the U.S. election.
Corporate-funded media titans declared, sans evidence, it must have been The Russians who hacked the DNC to hand off information — thus, Wikileaks, and any journalist with sufficient integrity to cover the damning content of the files also must be colluding with the U.S.’ familiar Cold War foe.
Independent journalists, right-leaning press, and the ever-suspicious Internet, however, raised worthwhile doubts about the evidence-free claim — instead pouncing on Rich’s murder as suggestive a disgruntled insider might have earned a belt-notch on the notorious but theoretical Clinton Body Count.
Wheeler’s claims appear to at least partially back those suspicions — despite the staffer’s family denigrating the admittedly unproven narrative.
In fact, positing Rich as the leaker would seem to prove his killing more than an already peculiar anomaly — particularly, as mainstream, left-loyal press dismissed Wheeler’s statements as a diversion from a laughable and equally unprovable report from none other than the Intelligence darling, Washington Post — which claims President Trump carelessly forked over intel on the Islamic State to Russian officials in a secretive tête-a-tête recently.
Fourthly, the timing should not be ignored. Incredulously timed to coincide with the FOX affiliate’s earth-shattering revelations, the Post published its article, “Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian foreign minister and ambassador,” as yet further supposed proof the president has been in bed with the evil Russians for time immemorial.
None of the officials leveling blame in this matter have been named or otherwise identified. To us, they’re simply, officials — a designation the Post seems to think should garner the unhindered respect.
READ MORE: Her "Oh S**t" Moment -- Clinton Email Server Wiped AFTER her Subpoena
On the left hand, American media collectively excoriated Trump’s putative Russian ties, while the right hand repeated Wheeler’s accusation as further proof the political establishment would stop at nothing — not even murder — to deflect from the impotent and ultimately failed campaign of Hillary Clinton.
Remember, despite substantial circumstantial evidence backing the latter, neither the left nor right has provided unassailable proof their allegations can tread water, much less swim under duress.
That the Washington Post concluded The Russians Did It — It, of course, being Everything — should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with owner Jeff Bezos’ oh-so timely $600 million business deal with the CIA the same year the billionaire Amazon owner purchased the once-upstanding media colossus.
Fifthly, the key article posing a possible explanation as to why all this is happening was scrubbed from the web this week. The go-to article from The Nation, detailing the freakish timing of Bezos’ Post purchase and CIA contract — since used as a reference for scholars and journalists, alike — suddenly vanished from the Internet within hours of the media’s mudslinging competition about Rich and The Russians.
WaPo put out the fake Trump story 1 hour after the #SethRich story broke to distract from it.
Podesta works for WaPo.
100% collusion. pic.twitter.com/gw4Pgd30PZ
— /pol/ News Forever (@polNewsForever) May 16, 2017
It had been part of The Nation’s website since 2013. No more. Although cached versions of its piece, “Amazon, ‘The Washington Post’ and That $600 Million CIA Contract,” are retrievable — at least, on a temporary basis.
While the CIA deal ostensibly came to Bezos under a premise wholly unrelated to the Post, his outlet’s devotion to the neoliberal establishment continued with the unabashed hiring of disgraced former Clinton campaign chair, John Podesta — himself, the starring role in injurious documents obtained and published by Wikileaks, prior to the election.
Podesta joined the Washington Post as a contributor in February, this year — and, in short order, held Trump responsible for every ill on the planet, in an op-ed boastfully proclaiming, “Trump is on a rampage to endanger the planet. Now it’s up to us to save it.”
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Given Bezos’ suspect CIA deal and Podesta’s unwavering fidelity to the Clintons, if no one or nothing else — in conjunction with the permanency of his megaphone at the Post — that the organization conveniently peppered the pot with further anti-Russian tripe at virtually the same time Wheeler’s claims about Rich began circulating, to consider WaPo a disinterested party would be to willingly wool one’s eyes.
Of course, all of this has yet to address Trump’s audacious termination of James Comey as head of the FBI — Comey, having been responsible for a thus-far publicly inconclusive probe into the president’s rather elusive ties to the Russian Federation.
No FBI chief, no investigation, many have pointed out — whatever bickering between the two parties might have occurred behind the closed doors of the Oval Office.
Even that managed to garner political disputation, as the timing of Comey’s termination, amid all of the aforementioned, effectively halted the months-long investigation to discern whether or not Trump involved The Russians to steal the White House from its apparent, rightful heir, Hillary Clinton.
It would seem someone set off an incendiary propaganda device in Washington, D.C. this week — and nary a soul on the planet has the tools available to quash the politicized flames.
When all else fails, a Hail Mary offers light where only mud existed, thus, CNN muscled a long shot Wednesday, boldly pronouncing all of right-leaning media washouts, in an article titled, “Story on DNC staffer’s murder dominated conservative media — hours later it fell apart” — intone here your best, over-the-top Canadian “sore-y aboot that” at your own peril.
Murdered staffers, Russian hackers, and media hacks, aside, what this chronicle of chaos enunciates more explicitly than any text offered by the duopoly’s media bullhorns is that, clearly, the Emperor Wears No Clothes — the empire’s naked vanity is on full display in a mirror reflecting years upon years of collective hope ‘this time will be different.’
This time, the serfs have spoken — they’ve elected a leader impugn to corruption, manipulation, and smear tactics infamously inextricable from American politics.
Or so they’d thought.
The reality of our demise instead reeks of the mundanity pictured in a supermarket tabloid — everyone gawks, no one admits they do, and the gruesomeness of someone else’s misery tantalizingly tempts us to pretend we don’t share in its fomentation, when we all know we do.
Have Americans learned nothing? Have we seriously entered an era where murders with hundred-thousand-dollar-plus rewards go unsolved, lest tipsters also suffer similar fates? Has this country succumbed to narcissism this profound, that blame in black-and-white text be sufficient to finger heads of state responsible for crimes not even committed — while legitimate but less flashy infractions go unanswered?
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Voting matters, how?!
With all of these brazen details — and a copious volume unaddressed in this article for, well, brevity’s sake — is anyone still convincing themselves politicians have the peasants’ best interests at heart?
Seth Rich is dead. Hillary Clinton lost. Donald Trump tweets policy matters and temper tantrums, vicariously depending on the day.
America’s imperialist nightmare obviously wishes its capacious ills would just go away — but they won’t. They can’t. These stakes are too high.
It’s been lamented the unlikely swamp-drainer will be the last President of the United States; but — judging from this flaming pile of manure masquerading as tenable — perhaps that’s the best, possible outcome for the planet.
(MPN) Damascus — This week, Syria saw one of its most deadly attacks against civilians fleeing al-Qaeda-held areas in Al-Fu’ah and Kafrayah through a government-rebel civilian swap. Rebels targeted and killed 126 people, including dozens of women and children, after a blast hit a convoy of evacuee buses Saturday.
The evacuees, all of whom were Muslim Shiites, were scheduled to be bussed from the al-Nusra-Front-dominated Idlib Province as part of an evacuation deal between the rebels and the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
Strangely, the fact that the victims targeted in the blast were all Muslim Shiites was either outright ignored by the media or construed as proof that they were “pro-Assad,” a term that much of the mainstream media uses as a pejorative.
The rebels in Idlib, where the bombing took place, have been proven to be aligned entirely with the al-Nusra Front – otherwise known as al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch. This group and their associates have a specific interest in carrying out attacks against Muslim Shiites, whom they consider to be heretics along with Syria’s Christian minority and the Druze.
This genocidal ideology, which has manifested itself repeatedly through the actions of terrorist groups and rebels active in the Syrian opposition, owes to the extreme Wahhabi leanings of these groups, which seek to unite Syria under their particular brand of extreme political ideology. Said differently, many of these extremist rebels seek to create a politically-motivated theocracy that parallels that of the Saudi Arabian government. This would only include Wahhabis and extremist Sunnis who share their ideology – supplanting Syria’s secular government, which has allowed a multiplicity of faiths to flourish without fear of state persecution.
Despite their supposed commitment to “democracy” and self-determination in Syria, the media outlets that support the regime-change narrative promoted by foreign governments have conveniently omitted these facts from their coverage. For instance, Al Jazeera, funded by the Daesh (ISIS) and rebel-supporting Qatari government, refused to even mention the fact that the victims were Muslim Shiites, as well as omitting the fact that the attack occurred in al-Qaeda territory – even going so far as to imply that the attack was perpetrated by the Syrian government.
Al Jazeera was by no means alone in twisting the facts. The BBC, funded by the pro-Syrian opposition British government, also insinuated that Assad’s forces were to blame for the attack, even claiming that the attack “would not be in the rebels’ interest” despite the fact that extremist Syrian rebels have been calling for the massacre of all Muslim Shiites in Syria for years and that even the U.S. government has admitted that anti-Assad groups, particularly Daesh, are committing acts of genocide against those of different faiths.
In addition, most mainstream media coverage – from CNN to the Huffington Post – has concluded that there was “no evidence” that rebels were involved in the attack or that no one could be blamed as “no group had claimed responsibility.”
CNN went on to dehumanize the Syrian victims fleeing al-Qaeda as Assad supporters just because they were Muslim Shiites, and described the attack as a “hiccup.”
Rebel suicide attack kills over 100 civilians in Syria.
CNN reports “dozens of supporters of Assad” killed in a “hiccup”. pic.twitter.com/hUhFsCXlW9— Lina Arabi 🇰🇵 (@LinaArabii) April 16, 2017
One BBC correspondent completely dismissed al-Qaeda and described the bus attack as a false flag attack perpetrated by Assad’s government.
BBC correspondent blames yesterday’s slaughter of Shia on Assad false flag, says Al Qaeda wouldn’t do such a thing https://t.co/S75ZLrwyzG
— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) April 16, 2017
These news outlets failed to mention that al-Nusra Front rebels have been caught before burning civilian evacuation buses while also casting doubt on the accounts of Syrian government sources that blamed a suicide car bomber for the most recent attack. However, these same outlets had no problem condemning Assad for the early April chemical gas attack that occurred in the same province, despite the fact that Assad’s government never claimed responsibility and that evidence has emerged calling the details of the attack into question.
Also dubious is the mainstream media’s continual reliance on only two sources of information from inside Syria – the White Helmets and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). As MintPress News has reported in the past, the White Helmets are a mercenary-founded and Western government-funded group that collaborates with the al-Nusra Front on a regular basis and has even facilitated street executions of civilians despite their “humanitarian” image.
SOHR, in contrast, consists of just one man: the vehemently anti-Assad Rami Abdul-Rahman, who lives in the United Kingdom. Abdul-Rahman’s “sources” in Syria, from which he receives his information regarding the war, are anonymous and never recorded – thus making them completely unverifiable.
Since the Syrian conflict began over six years ago, most media coverage of the war – particularly that of news organizations from Western and pro-regime change nations – has been noticeably slanted in favor of rebel groups funded and armed by proxy nations with the interest of ousting the Assad government.
Through selective reporting, the omission of key facts and reliance on dubious sources of information, including Western NGOs and rebel groups operating alongside the Al-Nusra Front, these media outlets have sought to twist the facts and whitewash crimes committed by the rebels while ignoring their agenda of ethnically cleansing Syria of anyone who refuses to follow their extremist Wahhabi political ideology. In the process, the media has colored the Syrian crises through a false narrative of Sunni survival against a power-hungry Alawite Syrian government and expanding Shiite Iran – a narrative that was manufactured by the rebels and their proxy nations to justify their insurgency.
Through this sectarian lens, rebels are using a “divide and conquer agenda” supported by the proxy nations that are arming them to target Muslim Shiites, Muslim Sunnis, Arab Christians, Druze, Zoroastrians and other minorities in their fight to destabilize Syria, spread sectarianism and drive the nation into a civil war in order to weaken and eventually oust the Assad government.
The media has worked to flip the narrative to glorify the rebels and frame any atrocities committed by them as having been perpetrated by the Syrian government. The BBC, Al Jazeera and CNN are the most prominent examples.
Such disparities have been commonplace over the past several years. The last month alone has been particularly telling of the mainstream media’s refusal to value the lives of innocent civilians equally, instead only choosing to cover the deaths of civilians in Syria when it supports the long-standing regime change agenda targeting Assad.
Arguably the most dramatic geopolitical event of the year took place earlier this month, when U.S. President Donald Trump chose to bomb Syrian government forces, an act of alleged retaliation for a still-unconfirmed chemical gas attack in al-Qaeda-held Idlib. The attack killed an estimated 58 civilians, including nearly a dozen children. The gas attack received non-stop media coverage, largely because it served as a convenient pretext to further vilify Assad and justify U.S.-led unilateral military action within Syria.
However, higher civilian death counts that resulted from U.S.-led coalition airstrikes went largely uncovered and failed to generate the same level of outrage among these same media outlets, even though they took place just weeks prior.
Considering this, it is no small wonder that viewership and popularity of the mainstream media have reached a historic low, given their propensity to overlook journalistic standards and even manipulating tragedies to sell a particular narrative – whether true or false – to their audiences.
By Whitney Webb / Republished with permission / MintPress News / Report a typo
