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The mainstream media’s hysteria over “fake news” is aimed less at the few instances of intentionally fabricated stories than at well-reported articles that challenge the U.S. government’s dubious official narratives, says David P. Hamilton.

For the most part, “fake news” is a fake concept designed by the corporate news media to discredit those who challenge the official U.S. hegemonic narrative. The typical MSM fake news accusation starts with some egregious fictionalization and then morphs over to the real targets: the subversives, those who would dispute foundational elements of the official history or its recent approved updates.

The New York Times building in Manhattan. (Photo credit: Robert Parry)

These subversive elements are likely to question important myths, such as the necessity of the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima or – before the Iraq War – Saddam Hussein possessing WMD, and hence must be silenced.

There are people in this world who write what they know to be fiction and try to pass it off as fact. Many of them work for the CIA and related institutions. Then, there are satirists like The Onion who write fictionalized truth. These professional prevaricators are not what draws the ire of the corporate “news.”

The approved rendition of U.S. history is a composite of lies, euphemisms and dubious rationales taught in schools, public and private, since the nation’s founding. It is continuously updated by the corporate news media. There is an army of PR types and psy-op warriors working constantly on this project; some private sector, some public, who often switch roles and sectors, but work hand-in-glove regardless.

The real fake news is the fake narrative that flows perpetually forth from these functionaries of the MSM to dominate the discourse which the billionaire owners allow voiced via their facilities. In this manner, we are all being played, all the time, and have been since birth.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Disaster Myth Narrative: No One Panics, No One Loots, No One Goes Hungry

October 11, 2017

The Disaster Myth Narrative: No One Panics, No One Loots, No One Goes Hungry

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” ~ George Orwell

A few years back, I was doing some research about the aftermath of some natural disasters that took place here in America. I was shocked to find that the articles I was looking for – ones that I had read in the past – were pretty hard to find, but articles refuting the sought-for pieces were rampant. Not just one event, but every single crisis aftermath that I looked up, had articles that were written after the fact stating in no uncertain terms that the hunger, chaos, and unrest never happened.

Apparently we, the preparedness community, are all wrong when it comes to the belief that after a disaster, chaos erupts and civic disorder is the rule of the day. That is only a disaster myth, and the public narrative belies it all.

Listen to the “experts” and they will confirm, it never happens.

Panic? What panic?

According to newspaper articles written after Superstorm Sandy devastated the East Coast and after Hurricane Katrina caused countless billions in damage in New Orleans, people were calm, benevolent and peaceful. Heck, they were all standing around singing Kumbayah around a campfire, sharing their canned goods, calming frightened puppies, and helping the elderly.

Apparently, studies prove that the fear of anarchy, lawlessness, and chaos is nothing but the “disaster myth”. Reams of examples exist of the goodness and warmth of society as a whole after disaster strikes. All the stories you read at the time were just that – stories, according to the mainstream media:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

New York Times Hypocrisy Exposed: Former Reporter Says Paper Killed Weinstein Expose In 2004

October 9, 2017

New York Times Hypocrisy Exposed: Former Reporter Says Paper Killed Weinstein Expose In 2004

After it publicized former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s history of harassing female colleagues earlier this year, prompting Fox to dismiss the longtime primetime host, the New York Times claimed the scalp of another powerful media titan last week when it published a bombshell story exposing Harvey Weinstein’s lurid history of sexual harassment and coercion. After the story was published, Weinstein’s career crumbled as he quickly became persona non grata in an industry that he had dominated for nearly 30 years. Lawyers and advisers denounced him. Politicians returned campaign contributions. Humanitarian awards were rescinded. And the legendary producer was fired from his own company.

But while the Times gloated over its latest triumph of holding the powerful to account, one former NYT reporter revealed that America’s paper of record had, for more than a decade, helped shield Weinstein, going so far as to kill a story about Weinstein’s history of paying off women whom he’d sexually harassed.

Sharon Waxman, the founding editor of The Wrap and formerly an entertainment industry reporter at the Times, revealed in a blog post published Sunday that she had reported out a similar story back in 2004, only for it to be quashed by top editors at the paper, who, instead of encouraging her to pursue the story, questioned its value and relevance after Weinstein had reportedly made a personal appeal demanding that it not be run.

Waxman applauded the two reporters who broke the story, saying she knows how difficult reporting on powerful industry figures like Weinstein can be. But she could only scoff at a column written by Times’ media columnist Jim Rutenberg blasting Weinstein’s “media enablers”, who had rerportedly turned a blind eye to his problematic behavior for decades.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Julian Assange Outlines The 3 Simple Steps To “Being A Journalist In 2017”

October 8, 2017

Julian Assange Outlines The 3 Simple Steps To “Being A Journalist In 2017”

Haven’t you heard? The Russians did it.

Seemingly behind every major news event in the last number of years, Russia has been busy influencing world events simply by reporting on them, just like everyone else. And as RT notes, this, according to Assange, is key, as outlined in his three-point strategy on Friday.

First, “Pick a globally newsworthy event” which the Russian press “will also be reporting it by definition.”

Second, “Write story: Russian state secretly behind globally newsworthy event as proved by their press reporting it.”

And finally “Profit!”

Julian Assange

@JulianAssange

Want to be a Western journalist in 2017? You can do it!

1) Pick random globally newsworthy event.

Russian press will also be reporting it by definition.

2) Write story: Russian state secretly behind globally newsworthy event as proved by their press reporting it.

3) Profit!

11:27 AM – Oct 6, 2017

Assange’s comments echo that of The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald who, on September 28, reported on the demise of “yet another major Russia story” that most major US media outlets ran with as fact, despite the lack of any evidence whatsoever.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US Media: Standards Tossed Overboard

October 1, 2017

US Media: Standards Tossed Overboard

Internet development resulted in disappearance of America’s local media to benefit metropolitan mainstream outlets with large countrywide circulation. Predominantly pro-Democratic, they espouse liberal values, paying little attention to political views and everyday life problems of those who live outside megacities.

The mainstream media have lost trust of provincial America to engender the phenomenon of Trump, with public trust in mainstream media reaching its lowest level in history. The people living outside big cities trust President Trump more than media.

There were times US media served all Americans no matter where they lived, while meeting the highest journalism ethics and standards. True, outlets have always been divided to some extent between conservative and liberal camps but media were not antagonistic to each other as they are now. In the 1960s-1980s, the situation was quite different. US media were the real Fourth Estate, revealing the abuse of power and highlighting real problems the country faced.

Media contribution into the Civil Rights Act becoming a law in 1964 and ending the Vietnam War was immense. It’s enough to remember the reports of Walter Cronkite (CBS), often cited as “the most trusted man in America”, about the Vietnam war. His 1968 editorial about the United States “mired in stalemate” in Vietnam was seen by some as a turning point in the US opinion of the war. President Lyndon Johnson is claimed by some to have said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” Cronkite helped broker the 1977 invitation that took Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem, the breakthrough to Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The MSM’s Anti-Russia Bias

September 27, 2017

The MSM’s Anti-Russia Bias

The U.S. mainstream media (MSM} presents itself as the arbiter of truth-telling and journalistic professionalism – the global gold standard – but its deep-seated biases, especially on Russia, belie that self-image, notes William Blum.

The anti-Russian/anti-Soviet bias in the American media appears to have no limit. You would think that they would have enough self-awareness and enough journalistic integrity -– just enough -– to be concerned about their image. But it keeps on coming, piled higher and deeper.

President Reagan meeting with Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev at the Soviet Mission during the Geneva Summit in Switzerland, Nov.20, 1985. (Photo from Reagan presidential library)

One of the latest cases in point is a review of a new biography of Mikhail Gorbachev in the New York Times Book Review (September 10). The review says that Gorbachev “was no hero to his own people” because he was “the destroyer of their empire.”

This is how the New York Times avoids having to say anything positive about life in the Soviet Union or about socialism. They would have readers believe that it was the loss of the likes of Czechoslovakia or Hungary et al. that upset the Russian people, not the loss, under Gorbachev’s perestroika, of a decent standard of living for all, a loss affecting people’s rent, employment, vacations, medical care, education, and many other aspects of the Soviet welfare state.

Accompanying this review is a quote from a 1996 Times review of Gorbachev’s own memoir, which said: “It mystifies Westerners that Mikhail Gorbachev is loathed and ridiculed in his own country. This is the man who pulled the world several steps back from the nuclear brink and lifted a crushing fear from his countrymen, who ended bloody foreign adventures [and] liberated Eastern Europe. … Yet his repudiation at home could hardly be more complete. His political comeback attempt in June attracted less than 1 percent of the vote.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Is Google Hiring 1,000 Journalists To Flood Newsrooms Around America?

September 19, 2017

Why Is Google Hiring 1,000 Journalists To Flood Newsrooms Around America?

So what do you do when you fail to elect your chosen candidate and your former political allies and mainstream media turn against youby painting you not as the ‘progressive’, open-minded, friendly tech company that you used to be but as an evil, racist, Russian-colluding corporate villain intent upon destroying all that is sacred in the world? Well, you just buy the media, of course.

As Poynter notes today, after a series of public relations debacles in recent weeks, from the firing of James Damore to news last week that Google’s algos served up some fairly disturbing keywords to potential advertising buyers (e.g. “Why Do Black People Ruin Neighborhoods“), Google is ramping up its media presence with the announcement that the Google News Lab will be working with Report For America (RFA) to hire 1,000 journalists all around the country.

Many local newsrooms have been cut to the bone so often that there’s hardly any bone left. But starting early next year, some may get the chance to rebuild, at least by one.

On Monday, a new project was announced at the Google News Lab Summit that aims to place 1,000 journalists in local newsrooms in the next five years. Report For America takes ideas from several existing organizations, including the Peace Corps, Americorps, Teach for America and public media.

Unlike foreign or domestic service programs or public media, however, RFA gets no government funding. But they are calling RFA a national service project. That might make some journalists uncomfortable – the idea of service and patriotism. But at its most fundamental, local journalism is about protecting democracy, said co-founder Charles Sennott, founder and CEO of the GroundTruth Project.

“I think journalism needs that kind of passion for public service to bring it back and to really address some of the ailments of the heart of journalism,” he said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Death Of Free Speech Is Imminent: Government Begins Censorship Of Media Through Disingenuous Means

September 18, 2017

The Death Of Free Speech Is Imminent: Government Begins Censorship Of Media Through Disingenuous Means

censorship2

The death of free speech is imminent. Anyone with access to a computer and the internet can see that the United States mainstream media is nothing more than a propaganda machine designed to brainwash the masses into a lemming-like agreement with the government.

And now, it’s oh-so-ironic that the same government that tells the media what to report on in order brainwash the public is seeking to quiet those who disagree and label them as “propaganda.” Some may call it fake news, others just want a different opinion rather than the left-leaning media hysteria we are accustomed to. But now,media outlet RT (Russia Today), founded in Russia will have to register with the United States as “foreign media;” which will forever give it the inaccurate title of “propaganda.”

This doesn’t apply to merely the Russian version of the news outlet, but the American-run and operated site as well. According to The Hill, in a report on Monday, RT did not name the company that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has compelled to file paperwork under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, but blasted the edict as overreaching.

“The war the US establishment wages with our journalists is dedicated to all the starry-eyed idealists who still believe in freedom of speech. Those who invented it, have buried it,” Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor-in-chief, said about the registration.

Media organizations have been exempted from the law, which is wide-ranging in its disclosure requirements and generally applies to political consultants and those working in lobbying or public relations. It would be a felony if RT is found to have willfully failed to register as a foreign agent, however.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

MSM, Still Living in Propaganda-ville

July 10, 2017

MSM, Still Living in Propaganda-ville

Exclusive: The stakes in U.S.-Russia relations could not be higher – possible nuclear conflagration and the end of civilization – but the U.S. mainstream media is still slouching around in “propaganda-ville,” says Robert Parry.

As much as the U.S. mainstream media wants people to believe that it is the Guardian of Truth, it is actually lost in a wilderness of propaganda and falsehoods, a dangerous land of delusion that is putting the future of humankind at risk as tension escalate with nuclear-armed Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses a crowd on May 9, 2014, celebrating the 69th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany and the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Crimean port city of Sevastopol from the Nazis. (Russian government photo)

This media problem has grown over recent decades as lucrative careerism has replaced responsible professionalism. Pack journalism has always been a threat to quality reporting but now it has evolved into a self-sustaining media lifestyle in which the old motto, “there’s safety in numbers,” is borne out by the fact that being horrendously wrong, such as on Iraq’s WMD, leads to almost no accountability because so many important colleagues were wrong as well.

Similarly, there has been no accountability after many mainstream journalists and commentators falsely stated as flat-fact that “all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies” concurred that Russia did “meddle” in last November’s U.S. election.

For months, this claim has been the go-to put-down whenever anyone questions the groupthink of Russian venality perverting American democracy. Even the esteemed “Politifact” deemed the assertion “true.” But it was never true.

It was at best a needled distortion of a claim by President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper when he issued a statement last Oct. 7 alleging Russian meddling. Because Clapper was the chief of the U.S. Intelligence Community, his opinion morphed into a claim that it represented the consensus of all 17 intelligence agencies, a dishonest twist that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton began touting.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

NYT Cheers the Rise of Censorship Algorithms

May 5, 2017

NYT Cheers the Rise of Censorship Algorithms

Exclusive: The New York Times is cheering on the Orwellian future for Western “democracy” in which algorithms quickly hunt down and eliminate information that the Times and other mainstream outlets don’t like, reports Robert Parry.

Just days after sporting First Amendment pins at the White House Correspondents Dinner – to celebrate freedom of the press – the mainstream U.S. media is back to celebrating a very different idea: how to use algorithms to purge the Internet of what is deemed “fake news,” i.e. what the mainstream judges to be “misinformation.”

New York Times building in New York City. (Photo from Wikipedia)

The New York Times, one of the top promoters of this new Orwellian model for censorship, devoted two-thirds of a page in its Tuesday editions to a laudatory piece about high-tech entrepreneurs refining artificial intelligence that can hunt down and eradicate supposedly “fake news.”

To justify this draconian strategy, the Times cited only a “fake news” report claiming that the French establishment’s preferred presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron had received funding from Saudi Arabia, a bogus story published by a Web site that mimicked the appearance of the newspaper Le Soir and was traced back to a Delaware phone number.

Yet, while such intentionally fabricated articles as well as baseless conspiracy theories are a bane of the Internet – and do deserve hearty condemnation – the Times gives no thought to the potential downside of having a select group of mainstream journalistic entities feeding their judgment about what is true and what is not into some algorithms that would then scrub the Internet of contrary items.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Dan Rather Exposes Corrupt Media – But Back in 2008

April 1, 2017

Dan Rather Exposes Corrupt Media – But Back in 2008

Don’t You Hate Spammy, Sensationalist Click-Bait Like this?

March 20, 2017

Don’t You Hate Spammy, Sensationalist Click-Bait Like this?

So what’s the difference between “fake news,” spammy sensationalist click-bait and so-called “mainstream news” that serves the interests of the corporate-state? It’s getting hard to tell.

We’re inundated with spammy sensationalist click-bait. You know what I mean–the little boxes containing eye-candy photos and headlines such as “you won’t believe how badly these stars have aged,” “7 tricks to losing weight during Thanksgiving,” “These children of celebs are so good looking your jaw will drop,” “9 surprising signs of dementia” and outre classics such as “Hitler’s shocking final words.”

The “news” is “shocking,” “secrets are revealed,” and “surprising facts” are promised. Authorities are always cited as unimpeachable sources, and the headlines are quasi-plausible. (Why wouldn’t good-looking celebs have good-looking offspring?)

But the “authorities,” “facts” and “secrets” are all dubious. The spammy click-bait is self-serving to those promoting the sensationalist content, and to the media sites that promote the spammy content.

According to The New York Times, unidentified sources in the spammy sensationalist click-bait industry report that “We have been told from major, major publishers that we have become their No. 1 revenue provider.”

So the spammy sensationalist click-bait content serves the interests of those originating the bogus spam and the media that publishes it. Talk about a two-fer; no wonder this junk is everywhere in the Corporate Media.

Though the Corporate Media denies it, of course, the lines between propaganda, paid content and actual reporting have blurred. The C.I.A. has played a major role in the Corporate Media for decades. If you doubt this, please study the following:

The CIA and the Media by Carl Bernstein

The CIA and the Media: 50 Facts the World Needs to Know This article by Professor James Tracy first published in August 2015 is of particular relevance in relation to the “fake news” campaign directed against the alternative media.

Operation Mockingbird

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Newly-Declassified Documents Show that CIA Worked Closely with Owners and Journalists with Many of the Largest Media Outlets

February 28, 2017

Newly-Declassified Documents Show that CIA Worked Closely with Owners and Journalists with Many of the Largest Media Outlets

Newly-declassified documents show that a senior CIA agent and Deputy Director of the Directorate of Intelligence worked closely with the owners and journalists of many of the largest media outlets:

The United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities found in 1975 that the CIA submitted stories to the American press:

Wikipedia adds details:

After 1953, the network was overseen by Allen W. Dulles, director of the CIA. By this time, Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. The usual methodology was placing reports developed from intelligence provided by the CIA to witting or unwitting reporters. Those reports would then be repeated or cited by the preceding reporters which in turn would then be cited throughout the media wire services.

The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was funded by siphoning off funds intended for the Marshall Plan [i.e. the rebuilding of Europe by the U.S. after WWII]. Some of this money was used to bribe journalists and publishers.

In 2008, the New York Times wrote:

During the early years of the cold war, [prominent writers and artists, from Arthur Schlesinger Jr. to Jackson Pollock] were supported, sometimes lavishly, always secretly, by the C.I.A. as part of its propaganda war against the Soviet Union. It was perhaps the most successful use of “soft power” in American history.

A CIA operative told Washington Post owner Philip Graham … in a conversation about the willingness of journalists to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories:

You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month.

Famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein wrote in 1977:

More than 400 American journalists … in the past twenty?five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Watergate’s Bob Woodward: “Press Shouldn’t Whine About Trump, It Doesn’t Work With The Public”

February 25, 2017

Watergate’s Bob Woodward: “Press Shouldn’t Whine About Trump, It Doesn’t Work With The Public”

Infamous Watergate reporter Bob Woodward had some uncomfortable words for the mainstream media’s safe-space-seekers. Following a tempestuous few days as the media and the White House toss propaganda grenades at one another, on Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Hardball” show, the Washington Post Associate Editor stated that:

the press “shouldn’t whine, and if we sound like we are an interest group only concerned with ourselves, it doesn’t work with the public. At the same time, we need to continue the in-depth inquiries, the investigations.”

Woodward begins at 6:45:

Woodward added that it’s not in the interest of either the Trump White House or the media to war with each other.

“I think everyone has accelerated this work. The other question to ask, is there any justification for Trump and people like — in his White House responding this way? And the only justification I can think of, which really isn’t a justification, but it accounts for emotional spasm of, my God, this is enemy of the people, I know that reporters have talked to people in the Trump house, — Trump White House about very sensitive intelligence operations, that we find out about in the press. And I think Trump is horrified that this is out there. And these are not necessarily things that are going to be published, but Trump is a newcomer saying, my God how do reporters know about these things? And so it’s — we’ve got to stop it.”

“[I]t’s not in our interest, the media’s interest to have a war with the Trump White House. It’s not in Trump’s interest to have this war.”

Sadly, it appears it’s too late to get this toothpaste back in the tube (for both sides).

Faking It

February 25, 2017

FAKING IT

Thanks to the election of President Trump and his uncompromising attitude to the establishment media, much hot air is being expended on the subject of ‘fake news’. Those being so exercised seem unable to stop and wonder when such news has NOT been, shall we say, ‘nuanced’. In Napoleon’s day, a well-worn figure of speech was ‘to lie like a bulletin’ while there was always much rather at hollow hilarity in the West over the fact that one of the Soviet Union’s main organs of the press was call ‘Pravda’ or, in English, ‘The Truth’.

What we should, of course, be getting worked up about is ‘fake economics’, for this is a much more pervasive evil, as well as a much more persistent one.

One such idea, currently doing the rounds is that automation is about to throw everyone out of work and so we should tax the ‘robots’ and distribute the proceeds as a ‘universal income’ to the poor souls who can no longer find work in industrial drudgery.

Ironically, Bill Gates is the latest to add his voice to this half-reasoned, Broken Window call – a man whose entrepreneurial genius has spared us non-specialists more labour and meanwhile reduced the employment opportunities of more accountants, typists, publishers, graphic designers, and photographers than anyone in history!

Would you mind just writing us all a cheque now, Bill, for all that lost income and we’ll call it square?

What none of those raising such a clamour seem to realize is that the ‘robots’ – and how conveniently sinister THAT term seems, with its echoes of every piece of dystopian science fiction from Frankenstein to Terminator and beyond – will only be installed if they allow more or better goods to be made at lower cost and that for their installers to enjoy a return, those goods have to be able to be sold at a price the masses – including the robotically-displaced masses – can afford to pay!

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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