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One of the hallmarks of democratic society is a healthy, free-flowing media ecosystem.

In times past, that media ecosystem would include various mass media outlets, from newspapers to cable TV networks. Today, the internet and social media platforms have greatly expanded the scope and reach of communication within society.

Of course, journalism plays a key role within that ecosystem. High quality journalism and the unprecedented transparency of social media keeps power structures in check—and sometimes, these forces can drive genuine societal change. Reporters bring us news from the front lines of conflict, and uncover hard truths through investigative journalism.

That said, as Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley and Carmen Ang detail below, these positive impacts are sometimes overshadowed by harmful practices and negative externalities occurring in the media ecosystem.

The graphic above is an attempt to catalog problems within the media ecosystem as a basis for discussion. Many of the problems are easy to understand once they’re identified. However, in some cases, there is an interplay between these issues that is worth digging into. Below are a few of those instances.

Explicit Bias vs. Implicit Bias

Broadly speaking, bias in media breaks down into two types: explicit and implicit.

Publishers with explicit biases will overtly dictate the types of stories that are covered in their publications and control the framing of those stories. They usually have a political or ideological leaning, and these outlets will use narrative fallacies or false balance in an effort to push their own agenda.

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

“The Typhoid Mary of Disinformation”: Nicolle Wallace. Nobody Spreads it More Relentlessly.

May 20, 2022

“The Typhoid Mary of Disinformation”: Nicolle Wallace. Nobody Spreads it More Relentlessly.

From her days as Bush/Cheney propagandist, to her stint on The View, to her role as beloved-by-Democrats MSNBC host, Wallace has perfected the art of sociopathic lying. Watch our original video.

Screen shot from our new original video about Nicolle Wallace, “The Typhoid Mary of Disinformation” (credit: Matt Orfalea)

The most blatant and shameless liars from the first term of the Bush/Cheney administration have, revealingly, enjoyed great success in media and journalism. That is because serial deceit is not a liability for a thriving career in corporate journalism but rather a vital asset — provided that the lies are in service of ruling class policies. Tawdry propagandists who helped drive post-9/11 America into a bottomless pit of lies and self-destruction have become the most highly-paid and beloved stars of liberal media. They include:

Former Bush White House speechwriter David Frum of The Atlantic and CNN;
Bush/Cheney CIA and NSA Director Gen. Michael Hayden of CNN;
Ubiquitous amoral neocon warmonger Bill Kristol of MSNBC and various #NeverTrump groups;
Al-Qaeda/Saddam conspiracy theorist Jeffrey Goldberg, now editor-in-chief of The Atlantic;
The various scumbags, con artists, predator-protectors and fraudsters of the Lincoln Project, drowning in #Resistance cash and frequent MSNBC appearances;
Pro-war Florida GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough, now a multi-million host of MSNBC’s flagship morning show and anchor of its corporate brand; and,
Rep. Liz Cheney, long-time vocal supporter of her father and now a literal “hero” to American media liberals.

But few Bush-era propagandists have thrived more, made more money, and developed a more devoted and swooning liberal fan base than the official Communications Director of the Bush/Cheney White House and 2004 Bush/Cheney-reelection campaign, Nicolle Wallace…

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

Media Lies & the Sacred Rites of the Vaccine CultThe coverage Szilveszter Csollany’s death shows you being called an “anti-vaxxer” is more about what you think, than what you do.

January 29, 2022

Media Lies & the Sacred Rites of the Vaccine CultThe coverage Szilveszter Csollany’s death shows you being called an “anti-vaxxer” is more about what you think, than what you do.

The Independent has put out an early (and strong) entry for “Worst Journalism of the Year” award, reporting yesterday the death of Hungarian gymnastics coach Szilveszter Csollany under the headline:

Anti-vax Olympic gold medalist Szilveszter Csollany dies of Covid, aged 51

The glaring issue with this headline becomes clear just three paragraphs into the article [our emphasis]:

While Csollany had, according to [Hungarian newspaper Blikk], expressed anti-vaccination views on social media, the six-time World Championship medallist had been vaccinated to allow him to continue to work as a gymnastics coach.

The journalism is terrible, criminally bad.

The evidence supplied for Csollany’s supposed “anti-vaccination views” is non-existent. Second-hand hearsay, at best. No direct quotations, no sources provided.

OffGuardian would be ashamed to publish something so flimsy. Any outlet should.

But, of course, that isn’t the most egregious part – as you can tell from our emphasised quote – the supposed “anti-vaxxer” had been vaccinated.

To bury that in the body, under that headline, is deliberate deception. They know many people will read the title and assume he hadn’t had the vaccine without ever reading the body of the text, and they are relying on that to spread an intentionally false impression.

The very definition of disinformation.

After deliberately misrepresenting the man’s life, they proceed to do the same to his death. Not even granting him the respect of an honest appraisal of his last weeks alive, they totally ignore all the relevant questions pertaining to the man’s health.

They never question why a previously healthy 51-year-old would ever need to be put on a ventilator, or consider how ventilator-associated pneumonia or ventilator-induced trauma may have contributed to his death.

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

Fact-Checkers Are Used to Confuse the Public: Sharyl Attkisson

January 26, 2022

Sharyl Attkisson, a five-time Emmy Award winning investigative journalist and host of “Full Measure,” in Leesburg, Virginia, on Jan. 14, 2022. (York Du/The Epoch Times)

Fact-Checkers Are Used to Confuse the Public: Sharyl Attkisson

Five-time Emmy award-winning journalist Sharyl Attkisson said she has seen an increased effort to manipulate the public to appreciate censorship and disapprove of journalism. One of the strategies that has been employed is the use of third-party fact-checkers, she said.

“Nearly every mode of information has been co-opted, if it can be co-opted by some group, [and] fact-checkers are no different,” Attkisson told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”

“Either they’ve been co-opted, in many instances, or created for the purpose of distributing narratives and propaganda,” said Attkisson. “This is all part of a very well-funded, well-organized landscape that dictates and slants the information they want us to have.”

Attkisson said she first started to notice news being controlled in the early 2000s when the media company she was working for was actively trying to suppress certain stories.

“The pushback came to be more about keeping a story from airing or keeping a study from being reported on the news, not just giving the other side, not just making sure it was accurately reported,” she said of pharmaceutical company stories she was covering at the time.

In 2016 Attkisson heard former President Barack Obama say news needed to be curated, after which mainstream media outlets started to consistently use the term fake news to describe mostly conservative news stories that they deemed untrue.

“And I remember thinking that was such a strange thing to say, because there was no big movement among the public, that people needed to have their information curated, that someone needed to step in and tell us what to think, curate what was online…

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

Tomorrowland Has Fallen!

January 5, 2022

Tomorrowland Has Fallen!

Has anyone else noticed just how odd it is that so many people on the progressive end of our cultural landscape are frantically trying to convince everyone that the Omicron variant, the latest mutation of the Covid-19 cold virus, really is the end of the world? I freely grant that a lot of people are ill just now—that’s what usually happens in the temperate zone’s winter, you know, when the latest respiratory viruses make their rounds. I grant just as freely that hospitals are scrambling to keep up—many of them have laid off up to half their staff as a result of vaccine mandates, after all, and they’re being besieged by mobs of people who have been convinced by the media that ordinary cold symptoms mean they’re about to die.

The result is a collective frenzy being eagerly fed by a great many people. Of course it’s not surprising that the corporate media would push scare stories at full volume. Whoring out the news to sell advertising space is their stock in trade, and “if it bleeds, it leads” has taken precedence over responsible journalism since before there was responsible journalism. Still, this isn’t limited to the media. A great many people seem remarkably eager to insist that the pandemic can’t be winding down. In that eagerness I sense the approach of convulsive change.

Granted, a case can be made that there are practical if unmentionable reasons for this habit of sedulously cultivated panic. To begin with, as Freddie deBoer has pointed out in a trenchant post, being terrified of the Covid virus has become a venue for status competition among members of the privileged classes. It’s an old story, at least as old as that fine fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea.”…

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

Julian Assange should be freed

January 1, 2022

Julian Assange should be freed

The appeal by the US government to extradite Julian Assange to the United States bewilders this writer. Even that the US should seek to extradite Julian Assange for the crime of WikiLeaks’ publication of secret US military documents a decade ago is equally bewildering. For the opinion of this writer is that Assange has done no wrong. That he has in fact revealed information that we, the general public, have every right to know, He should be freed.

Even President Biden’s administration plans to continue to seek to extradite the WikiLeaks founder.

And yet the Australian government has consistently refused to support him.

The UK court of appeal is equally confusing. Lord Burnett of Maldon, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, and Lord Justice Holroyde ruled that the lower court ought to have afforded the US “the opportunity to offer assurances” about Assange’s treatment. The judges accepted that the assurances now provided-by a state which, they were told in the appeal hearing, plotted Assange’s “assassination, kidnap, rendering poisoning”-were “sufficient to meet the concerns” about his well-being. It ordered that Assange be extradited.

The inspiration for Assange’s revelations through Wikileaks was Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers had demonstrated that the Johnson Administration had “systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress.” Ellsberg is now regarded as a hero. Assange should equally get the same regard.

What did Julian Assange do that such powerful countries want him condemned ? For he is not guilty of any crime. Guilty only of exposing wrongdoings that we, the general public, had the full right to know.

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

How the Corporate Media Launched a Disinformation Campaign to Protect Fauci

December 4, 2021

How the Corporate Media Launched a Disinformation Campaign to Protect Fauci

As public anger grew over gruesome and medically useless dog experiments funded by Fauci’s agencies and budgets, his media allies came to the rescue with a pack of lies.

Anthony Fauci (R), Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Chief Medical Advisor to the President, speaks alongside U.S. President Joe Biden as he delivers remarks on the Omicron COVID-19 variant following a meeting of the COVID-19 response team at the White House on November 29, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

NOTE FROM GLENN GREENWALD: Earlier this month, I reported that The Washington Post was preparing a hit piece on a group that it had long praised: the White Coat Waste Project, devoted to the singular mission of building an ideologically diverse coalition to oppose wasteful and morally reprehensible taxpayer-funded experiments on dogs and other animals. As I noted there, The Post — after years of heaping praise on this group as a rare Washington success story in uniting left and right around a common noble cause — was now working to create the exact opposite narrative: namely, that the group was driven by some sort of clandestine MAGA or pro-Trump agenda, which meant its work should be regarded as unreliable and that it is denouncing animal experimentations not out of a sincere devotion to the cause but only to undermine the sacred-to-liberals Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose agencies and budgets fund these experiments (that White Coat has been working against government experimentations on dogs for many years, long before Fauci became a political lightning rod, was no impediment to the Post‘s smear job, because, as is so often the case these days, its mission was political and not journalistic).

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

Reporters May Face 14 Years In Prison For ‘Embarrassing’ UK Government Officials

September 12, 2021

Reporters May Face 14 Years In Prison For ‘Embarrassing’ UK Government Officials

People who believe President Obama abused his powers by cracking on journalists are about to be even more shocked by new rules being implemented in the UK. According to the Daily Mail, journalists could face prison sentences of up to 14 years for stories that embarrass the Government under plans to reform the Official Secrets Act.

According to changes to the interpretation of the UK’s Official Secrets Act, which is being updated for the “Internet age” (which began more than 2 decades ago) and the fact that data can be transported instantaneously by Priti Patel’s Home Office. Patel apparently is opposing a “public interest exemption” that would exclude journalists from being liable under the law.

Under these new provisions, reporters could face up to 14 years in prison for publishing “unauthorized” information in the supposedly “free” and “open” west.

But in a paper released during the consultation on the revisions, the Home Office argued that such a move would “undermine our efforts to prevent damaging unauthorized disclosures, which would not be in the public interest.”

Critics of the changes, which include human-rights organizations and the Law Commission, argue that if they had been in effect at the time, they could have lead to the prosecution of the journalists who revealed this month that then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock was breaking COVID rules by having an affair with his married aide, because the scoop relied on leaked CCTV footage.

Already the government is facing backlash for its response to the leak. The Commissioner’s Office faced criticism for having two homes searched as part of an investigation into how the information on Hancock leaked.

A Home Office spokesman denied that the changes would curtail press freedoms.

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

Snowden: Journalism

September 4, 2021

https://youtu.be/oinq1qWbxsw

Craig Murray’s jailing is the latest move in a battle to snuff out independent journalism

August 2, 2021

Craig Murray’s jailing is the latest move in a battle to snuff out independent journalism

Craig Murray, a former ambassador to Uzbekistan, the father of a newborn child, a man in very poor health and one who has no prior convictions, will have to hand himself over to the Scottish police on Sunday morning. He becomes the first person ever to be imprisoned on the obscure and vaguely defined charge of “jigsaw identification”.

Murray is also the first person to be jailed in Britain for contempt of court for their journalism in half a century – a period when such different legal and moral values prevailed that the British establishment had only just ended the prosecution of “homosexuals” and the jailing of women for having abortions.

Murray’s imprisonment for eight months by Lady Dorrian, Scotland’s second most senior judge, is of course based entirely on a keen reading of Scottish law rather than evidence of the Scottish and London political establishments seeking revenge on the former diplomat. And the UK supreme court’s refusal on Thursday to hear Murray’s appeal despite many glaring legal anomalies in the case, thereby paving his path to jail, is equally rooted in a strict application of the law, and not influenced in any way by political considerations.

Murray’s jailing has nothing to do with the fact that he embarrassed the British state in the early 2000s by becoming that rarest of things: a whistleblowing diplomat. He exposed the British government’s collusion, along with the US, in Uzbekistan’s torture regime.

His jailing also has nothing to do with the fact that Murray has embarrassed the British state more recently by reporting the woeful and continuing legal abuses in a London courtroom as Washington seeks to extradite Wikileaks’ founder, Julian Assange, and lock him away for life in a maximum security prison…

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

“The Enemies of the State”: The New York Times and The Fluidity of Advocacy Journalism

July 30, 2021

“The Enemies of the State”: The New York Times and The Fluidity of Advocacy Journalism

We have been discussing the rise of advocacy journalism and the rejection of objectivity in journalism schools. The New York Times has been at the forefront of this shift away from traditional reporting but has increasingly found that the fluidity of advocacy journalism leaves it without any clear framework or standards. Consider the latest scandal at the Times. Justice Department reporter and MSNBC contributor Katie Benner went on a rave about Republicans and called Trump supporters “enemies of the state.” She also made a not-so-veiled call for readers to vote against them. The Times has been in total radio silence over what, just a few years ago, would have been viewed as an outrageous violation of journalistic standards. Yet, just recently, it fired another reporter for a comparatively mild tweet supporting Biden. Professional ethics, it seems, has become entirely impressionistic in the age of advocacy journalism.

Notably, many of us denounced Donald Trump for calling the New York Times and other media outlets the “enemy of the people.” The media was aghast and the Times publicly condemned such rhetoric as “inflammatory.” Now, however, journalists like Benner are engaging in the same inflammatory rhetoric and the Times is conspicuously silent.

We have have been discussing how writers, editors, commentators, and academics have embraced rising calls for censorship and speech controls, including President-elect Joe Biden and his key advisers. This movement includes academics rejecting the very concept of objectivity in journalism in favor of open advocacy. Columbia Journalism Dean and New Yorker writer Steve Coll has denounced how the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was being “weaponized” to protect disinformation…

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

Report: Biden Administration Officials “Unmasked” Tucker Carlson

July 27, 2021

Report: Biden Administration Officials “Unmasked” Tucker Carlson

A few weeks ago, I testified in the House Judiciary Committee on the surveillance of journalists in a long series of scandals from the Bush to the Obama to the Trump to the Biden Administrations. These scandals have occurred with almost seasonal regularity. There was a rare sense of bipartisanship in the hearing as both parties called for investigation and new legislation to address this ongoing problem. However, there has been a notable silence among members and the media after Tucker Carlson went public with an allegation that his emails were not just intercepted by the National Security Agency (NSA) but that they were shared with members of the press by intelligence officials. Now, there appears confirmation that the communications were mentioned on intercepts and, as some of us assumed early in the coverage, Carlson was “unmasked” by Biden Administration officials. Yet, the response continues to be crickets from the media and members of Congress.

When the story broke, I stated that it was likely that the communication was not a direct targeting but either an incidental interception (when targeting a foreign intelligence subject) or the gathering of the information when it was discussed by third parties on an intercept. It would then have to have been “unmasked” by an official with such authority. The latest coverage would suggest that it was likely the later circumstance of the communication was discussed or read during an interception and later unmasked.

This is once again an example of how bias continues to distort coverage. Many in the media dislike Carlson and the feeling is obviously mutual. However, what Carlson described on his show was extremely serious and concerning. He said that a journalist and a third party both contacted him to say that his emails were being leaked…

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

Former New York Times Editor: “I’m a Biased Journalist and I’m Okay With That.”

July 10, 2021

Former New York Times Editor: “I’m a Biased Journalist and I’m Okay With That.”

We have been discussing the movement in journalism to discard out-dated notions of objectivity and define journalism as a form of advocacy. Now, Lauren Wolfe, the recently fired freelance editor for the New York Times, has not only gone public to defend her pro-Biden tweet but published a piece titled “I’m a Biased Journalist and I’m Okay With That.” It is a full-throated endorsement of the new journalistic model of open bias and advocacy. Indeed, Wolfe may have only been undone by her expressly declaring bias as opposed to reflecting bias in her writings.

Wolfe was fired by the Times after she expressed the joy of watching the arrival of then-President-elect Joe Biden at Joint Base Andrews ahead of his inauguration by writing “I have chills.”

Now, in her column in the Washington Monthly, Wolfe insists that the is nothing incompatible with being biased and being a journalist. Indeed, she noted ever since she began as a journalist “angry people come out of their hidey-holes to yell at me.” It is certainly true that writers today are constantly barraged by trolls and critics. However, Wolfe then proceeded to fulfill that very stereotype by embracing bias as right and good in journalism. She attacks the very notion of objectivity that was once the touchstone of modern journalism.

“I’ve always believed it is better to be open about my views on the issues I cover, which for a long time have been war and international human rights. And yes, I often do write with an agenda—with an eye toward creating change. So yes, I am biased, and consciously so when it comes to certain subjects—especially when I’m reporting on criminality. But I don’t see that as a bad thing.”

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

Biden’s Attack on the Press – Same as Lenin

June 8, 2021

Biden’s Attack on the Press – Same as Lenin

The Washington Post and New York Times should look at history. They may have waged war to get rid of Trump and cheered all night long when Biden was declared the winner. But little did they realize that those in Washington behind the curtain pulling all the strings in the Biden Administration are not about to allow the press to do to them what they willingly did to Trump should they suddenly wake up and smell the red stain Marxist roses. Fred Ryan, a publisher of The Washington Post, has come out complaining about Biden’s attack upon the press that helped him get in power.

Journalists are suddenly discovering that they are being targeted aggressively under the new Biden Administration. Biden’s Justice Department has pursued subpoenas for reporters’ email logs issued to Google, which operates the New York Times’ email systems. Biden’s Administration has even imposed a gag order compelling a New York Times’ attorney to keep remain silent about the fact that federal authorities were seeking to seize his colleagues’ records. Biden has even barred the New York Times executives from discussing the legal battle with the New York Times’ newsroom, which means they cannot even report when is going on. So much for freedom of the press and the First Amendment.

In November the Bolshevik government issued the Decree on the Press which closed down many opposition media outlets which were deemed counter-revolutionary; the decree was widely criticized, including by many Bolsheviks themselves, for compromising freedom of the press although the Council of People’s Commissars ( Sovnarkom) said that the measure would only be temporary, which was a lie. (Pipes, Richard (1990). The Russian Revolution: 1899–1919 id/pp. 521–522; London: Collins Harvill. ISBN 978-0-679-73660-8.)

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

“Fact-Checking” Takes Another Beating

May 25, 2021

“Fact-Checking” Takes Another Beating

Fact-checkers are great, but the media business keeps trying to solve its credibility problem by misrepresenting what they do

*The soul of rectitude testifies in the Senate*

The news business just can’t stop clowning itself. The latest indignity is an international fact-checking debacle originating, of all places, at a “festival of fact-checking.”

The Poynter Institute is perhaps the most respected think tank in our business, an organization seeking to “fortify journalism’s role in a free society,” among other things through its sponsorship of the fact-checking outlet PolitiFact. A few weeks back, it held a virtual convention called the “United Facts of America: A Festival of Fact-Checking.”

The three-day event featured special guests Christiane Amanpour, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Brian Stelter, and Senator Mark Warner — a lineup of fact “stars” whose ironic energy recalled the USO’s telethon-execution of Terrance and Phillip before the invasion of Canada in South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. Tickets were $50, but if you wanted a “private virtual happy hour” with Stelter, you needed to pay $100 for the “VIP Experience.”

During the confab, PolitiFact’s Katie Sanders asked Fauci, “Are you still confident that [Covid-19] developed naturally?” To which the convivial doctor answered, “No, I’m not convinced of that,” going on to say “we” should continue to investigate all hypotheses about how the pandemic began:

Conservatives in particular were quick to point out that Fauci last year said, “Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species.” At that time last May, of course, the issue of the pandemic’s origin had already long since been politicized, with Donald Trump’s administration anxious to point a finger at China for causing the disaster…

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

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