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Emmanuel Macron, who was comfortably elected to the presidency with the support of almost the entire French media, has demanded that his parliamentary majority provide him with a law against ‘fake news’ during election campaigns. Perhaps he’s preparing for the next one.

The draft legislation reveals both the blindness of those who govern when challenged and their inclination to invent new coercive countermeasures. You would have to be myopic indeed to believe that the victory of ‘anti-establishment’ candidates, parties and causes (Donald Trump, Brexit, the Catalan referendum, Italy’s Five Star Movement) could, even marginally, be the consequence of authoritarian regimes spreading fake news. The US press has been trying to demonstrate for a year, as yet without conclusive evidence, that Trump owes his election to fake news manufactured by Vladimir Putin.

Macron has a similar obsession, to the point of hoping to make fake news vanish with a law that is both useless and dangerous. Useless because France’s Council of State pointed out on 19 April that ‘French law already contains several measures intended to combat the dissemination of false information’: in particular the law of 29 July 1881 on the freedom of the press, which permits curbs on the dissemination of false information and the expression of views that are defamatory or abusive or incite hatred.

And dangerous because the bill about to go before parliament would require a judge to act within 48 hours to ‘stop the artificial and large-scale dissemination of news constituting false information.’ But, the Council of State’s response continued, ‘these are hard to determine legally, especially when the judge must give a judgement within a very short time.’ Macron’s law would also strengthen Internet service providers’ and hosts’ duty of cooperation with the authorities, since it extends to all false information restraints that were initially aimed at preventing ‘apologism for crimes against humanity, incitement to hatred and child pornography.’

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

The Media Stopped Reporting The Russia Collusion Story Because They Helped Create It

February 18, 2018

Half the country wants to know why the press won’t cover the growing scandal now implicating the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice, and threatening to reach the State Department, Central Intelligence Agency, and perhaps even the Obama White House.

After all, the release last week of a less-redacted version of Sens. Charles Grassley and Lindsey Graham’s January 4 letter showed that the FBI secured a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to search the communications of a Trump campaign adviser based on a piece of opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The Fourth Amendment rights of an American citizen were violated to allow one political party to spy on another.

If the press did its job and reported the facts, the argument goes, then it wouldn’t just be Republicans and Trump supporters demanding accountability and justice. Americans across the political spectrum would understand the nature and extent of the abuses and crimes touching not just on one political party and its presidential candidate but the rights of every American.

That’s all true, but irrelevant. The reasons the press won’t cover the story are suggested in the Graham-Grassley letter itself.

Steele Was a Media Informant

The letter details how Christopher Steele, the former British spy who allegedly authored the documents claiming ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, told the FBI he wasn’t talking to the press about his investigation. In a British court, however, Steele acknowledged briefing several media organizations on the material in his dossier.

…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

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).

Dangerous Situation: Venezuelan National Guard Assault Members Of The Press During Protests

June 4, 2016

Dangerous Situation: Venezuelan National Guard Assault Members Of The Press During Protests

During Thursday’s protest over food in Caracas, chaos erupted after supermarket shoppers were told that regulated goods they had expected to be available would not be up for sale. In a sign of just how bad things have gotten, at least 19 journalists were attacked while trying to cover the chaotic events Bloomberg reports.

Espacio Publico, a non-government organization that monitors freedom of expression said that the assaults include robberies by members of the National Guard and armed civilians.

“We categorically reject the criminalization that the press is being subject to as they are held hostage, threatened and repeatedly intimidated by armed groups while they cover the street” the organization said in a separate statement.

Venezuela’s opposition is pushing for a recall referendum on Maduro’s rule to be held this year, and after the country’s election board known as CNE canceled a scheduled meeting to discuss the status of the request, the 2 million Venezuelans who had signed the petition calling for the recall were urged to march in order to “ratify” their signatures.

Jesus “Chuo” Torrealba, the executive secretary of Venezuela’s opposition alliance known as MUD said “we collected over 2 million signatures, and the CNE hasn’t yet said how the process will go. We already have five times the signatures needed to start the process.”

“There were some very rough hours today in downtown Caracas. Venezuela is a time bomb of social and economic discontent” he added.

Time bomb of social and economic discontent is an understatement…

Follow

José Miguel Sardo @jmsardo

#Venezuela: Journalists reportedly attacked by pro-govt groups at “hunger demo” in #Caracas pic.twitter.com/tt6qF5TUbo pic.twitter.com/0lYPVcbLaz

3:30 PM – 2 Jun 2016

Kick Turkey Out of NATO

March 7, 2016

Kick Turkey Out of NATO

There’s a Petition at Change.org to suspend Turkey’s membership in NATO.

Why kick Turkey out of NATO?

Because:

Turkey just shut down the largest Turkish newspaper using tear gas, water canons and brutality:

Turkey has destroyed free speech and freedom of the press

Turkey imprisons more journalists than any other country in the world

Journalists – such as Dutch reporter Frederike Geerdink or Vice News’ Mohammed Rasool – are regularly detained on spurious charges

Anyone who criticizes Turkey’s president is arrested

Twitter reports that the Turkish government makes more content removal requests than any other in the world

After reporters, local police and Turkish generals caught a weapons shipment from Turkey into Syria, they were all arrested on “treason” charges for exposing the shipment

Turkey’s president says he doesn’t have to follow the rulings of Turkey’s top court

Turkey is one of the main supporters of ISIS and Al Nusra

Turkey provided the chemical weapons used in the famous attacks which killed hundreds in Syria. Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh – who uncovered the Iraq prison torture scandal and the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam – previously reported that high-level American sources tell him that the Turkish government carried out the chemical weapons attacks blamed on the Syrian government

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

America’s Corrupt Media – How Reporters Took Direct Orders from Hillary Clinton’s Staff

February 13, 2016

America’s Corrupt Media – How Reporters Took Direct Orders from Hillary Clinton’s Staff

It is the job of the Fourth Estate to act as a check and a restraint on the others, to illumine the dark corners of Ministries, to debunk the bureaucrat, to throw often unwelcome light on the measures and motives of our rulers. ‘News’, as Hearst once remarked, ‘is something which somebody wants suppressed: all the rest is advertising’. That job is an essential one and it is bound to be unpopular; indeed, in a democracy, it may be argued that the more unpopular the newspapers are with the politicians the better they are performing their most vital task.

– Brian R. Roberts from a October 29, 1955 article in the London periodical “Time & Tide”

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

– H.L. Mencken

If you really want to know how weak Hillary Clinton is as a candidate, you merely have to appreciate that the U.S. media essentially acts as her own personal PR firm, yet the public still recognizes her as a dishonest crook. Brace yourself for the following story, it’s huge.

Earlier this week, we learned from Gawker that at least one U.S. reporter traded content in his article for information from Hillary Clinton’s staff while she was Secretary of State. In what is an almost hard to believe exchange, Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic, agreed to insert specific words and imagery into his article in return for a copy of Hillary’s upcoming speech at the Council on Foreign Relations.

We have the exact exchange thanks to emails released from a 2012 Freedom of Information Act Request (FOIA). Gawker reports:

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

HBO and Snapchat are Actively Working with the U.S. Government to Create Propaganda

October 2, 2015

HBO and Snapchat are Actively Working with the U.S. Government to Create Propaganda

Screen Shot 2015-10-01 at 10.35.58 AM

In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.

Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty‑five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters.

The history of the CIA’s involvement with the American press continues to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception.

– From Carl Bernstein’s 1977 article: The CIA and the Media

What is art, when the artist is working with the host government to promote a particular message?

It is propaganda, and just because it’s your government doing it with the help of your friends and neighbors, doesn’t make it any less so. Even if you agree with the message, it is still propaganda. No wonder so many movies suck.

Today, we learn that both HBO and Snapchat are actively working with the U.S. State Department to push an anti-ISIS message. Again, even if the message is a good one, make no mistake about it, it is still propaganda. This is a very slippery slope, and something that Americans shouldn’t tolerate.

The National Journal reports:

The State Department is seeking a counter-narrative to the propaganda being spread by ISIS, and it is reportedly turning to some of America’s preeminent storytellers for help. According to The Daily Beast, executives from both HBO and Snapchat are part of a team of filmmakers and social media specialists that’s brainstorming how to hamper the effectiveness of ISIL’s messaging.

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

Political Corruption Sanctioned by Mainstream Press?

September 6, 2015

Political Corruption Sanctioned by Mainstream Press?

The press is cleverly twisting the Hillary e-mail scandal to her benefit by narrowing their focus on what qualifies as “secret” instead of the fact that she conducted all national security business from her private e-mail server to avoid getting subpoenaed. There is no question whatsoever from a legal perspective that what Hillary did was outright criminal and conducting the business of the Secretary of State from a private server from which she then deleted 31,000 emails was at minimum obstruction of justice if not treason to the United States.

What Hillary did was far more direct treason than what Edward Snowden was accused of. Even Snowden has come out and stated bluntly that others go to jail for what Hillary did. How can Hillary claim privacy when she and the Obama Administration have supported the grabbing of every email by the NSA? Why has the press not demanded the NSA turnover all the emails Hillary erased when they have everything?

Where in mainstream media is our Woodward & Bernstein? Are we totally lacking anyone in the media with the guts to do what they were supposed to do? We seem to be looking at more than just the corruption of politics, it has infected the media and downgraded everything to a biased slant. The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine has steered the press into a political tool for propaganda.

How about the confidential e-mails concerning Hillary’s brother who got a unique gold mining contract from Haiti after Hillary approved billions from the State Department? The press is all over Trump, desperately trying to prevent him from running, while they remain silent on the internal corruption going on in the White House. How about Joe Biden’s son getting the contract from Ukraine?

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

The US Economy Continues Its Collapse

August 11, 2015

The US Economy Continues Its Collapse

Do you remember when real reporters existed? Those were the days before the Clinton regime concentrated the media into a few hands and turned the media into a Ministry of Propaganda, a tool of Big Brother. The false reality in which Americans live extends into economic life. Last Friday’s employment report was a continuation of a long string of bad news spun into good news. The media repeats two numbers as if they mean something—the monthly payroll jobs gains and the unemployment rate—and ignores the numbers that show the continuing multi-year decline in employment opportunities while the economy is allegedly recovering.

The so-called recovery is based on the U.3 measure of the unemployment rate. This measure does not include any unemployed person who has become discouraged from the inability to find a job and has not looked for a job in four weeks. The U.3 measure of unemployment only includes the still hopeful who think they will find a job.

The government has a second official measure of unemployment, U.6. This measure, seldom reported, includes among the unemployed those who have been discouraged for less than one year. This official measure is double the 5.3% U.3 measure. What does it mean that the unemployment rate is over 10% after six years of alleged economic recovery?

In 1994 the Clinton regime stopped counting long-term discouraged workers as unemployed. Clinton wanted his economy to look better than Reagan’s, so he ceased counting the long-term discouraged workers that were part of Reagan’s unemployment rate. John Williams (shadowstats.com) continues to measure the long-term discouraged with the official methodology of that time, and when these unemployed are included, the US rate of unemployment as of July 2015 is 23%, several times higher than during the recession with which Fed chairman Paul Volcker greeted the Reagan presidency.

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

Report: After Spying Operation in Germany, CIA Outed Suspected Leaker to Retaliate Against Journalists

July 4, 2015

Report: After Spying Operation in Germany, CIA Outed Suspected Leaker to Retaliate Against Journalists

In the summer of 2011, the CIA station chief in Berlin asked one of the most powerful intelligence officials in Germany to go on a private walk with him, the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel reports. The American spy had an important message to convey: one of Germany’s own senior officials was leaking information to the press.

The suspected leaker, Hans Josef Vorbeck, had been in contact with Spiegel, the station chief told the German official, Günter Heiss. Head of Division 6, Heiss is responsible for coordinating Germany’s intelligence services. Vorbeck was his deputy.

At the time, Vorbeck was responsible for managing German counterterrorism efforts. Following the meet-up, Vorbeck was discreetly transferred to a less prestigious post, overseeing historical archives for the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence service.

For four years, the conversation that led to Vorbeck’s demotion remained secret. It has now become public, thanks largely to a German intelligence inquiry launched in the wake of Edward Snowden’s historic leak of top-secret NSA documents. The walk — and its implications for U.S.-German relations — were detailed Friday by Spiegel.

Obama administration officials told the magazine that the disclosure of the alleged communications between Vorbeck and its journalists was prompted by national security concerns. The fact that the Americans were willing to expose an ongoing surveillance operation underscored the seriousness of the threat posed by the leaks, sources in Washington told Spiegel. Intentionally or not, the sources said, the disclosure put the Germans on notice — the Americans were watching.

“People around the world — regardless of their nationality — should know that the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don’t threaten our national security,” Ned Price, spokesperson for the National Security Council, said in a statement to The Intercept. “We also have made clear that we take their privacy concerns into account.”

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

Today Financial Journalism Suffered An Epic Failure

June 18, 2015

Today Financial Journalism Suffered An Epic Failure

Earlier today we reported about a very sad development for the freedom of speech, or at least the illusion thereof, when one of, if not the best, critical Federal Reserve reporter in the mainstream media, WSJ’s Pedro da Costa founds he was no longer “invited” to the Fed’s quarterly press conference. His transgression: daring to ask Yellen some very uncomfortable questions during the March 2015 press conference. To wit:

PEDRO DA COSTA. Pedro da Costa with Dow Jones Newswires. I guess I have two follow-ups, one with regard to Craig’s question. So, before the IG’s investigation, according to Republican Congressman Hensarling’s letter to your office, he says that, “It is my understanding that although the Federal Reserve’s General Counsel was initially involved in this investigation, the inquiry was dropped at the request of several members of the FOMC.” Now, that predates the IG. I want to know if you could tell us who are these members of the FOMC who struck down this investigation? And doesn’t not revealing these facts kind of go directly against the sort of transparency and accountability that you’re trying to bring to the central

CHAIR YELLEN. That is an allegation that I don’t believe has any basis in fact. I’m not going to go into the details, but I don’t know where that piece of information could possibly have come from.

As it turns out, the allegation did have “basis in fact” because two months after this exchange, we learned that not only was there a parallel investigation into the Fed’s leaks in addition to the Hensarling subpoena, a criminal one by the Department of Justice at that, but that the Fed had indeed declined to comply with the subpoena as Pedro suggested.

The former Reuters reporter also had this testy exchange.

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

American journalism’s ideology: Why the “liberal” media is fundamentalist

June 11, 2015

American journalism’s ideology: Why the “liberal” media is fundamentalist

Note: The memo below is my response to an editor at a U.S. news organization who was soliciting feedback for a review of the organization’s coverage of environmental news. From a conservative point of view, this newsroom is part of the “liberal media.” My goal in the memo was to step back from that superficial, diversionary label and evaluate the deeper ideological commitments that shape mainstream news.

Evaluation of a news media outlet’s coverage of a subject often focuses on a critique of how stories are covered, suggestions for how stories can be improved, and ideas for stories that currently aren’t being covered. Such an evaluation of XYZ’s environmental coverage would be useful, but it also is crucial to consider more basic questions about the ideological framework in which the coverage goes forward.

Talk of journalism’s ideology typically meets resistance, given that journalists routinely assert that they are non-ideological. If “ideology” is defined as a rigid, even fanatical, devotion to a set of ideas no matter what the evidence, then it is a good thing for journalists (and everyone else) to avoid ideology. But if ideology is understood as the set of social attitudes, political beliefs, and moral values that shape one’s interpretation of the world, then everyone works within an ideological framework, including journalists. Then the task is to understand competing ideologies, including one’s own, and not to imagine that anyone, or any institution, transcends ideology.

There are three key elements to the dominant ideology of the contemporary United States—involving world affairs, economics, and ecology—which can be best understood as forms of fundamentalism. Moving beyond the religious roots of the term, we can understand fundamentalism as any intellectual, political, or moral position that asserts a certainty in the truth and/or righteousness of a belief system. In that sense, the United States is an especially fundamentalist country.

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

Did “China” Really Say “War” With the United States is “Inevitable”?

June 8, 2015

Did “China” Really Say “War” With the United States is “Inevitable”?

The Stenographic Press Strikes Again!

Spoiler: No.

It would seem a certain amount of foreign affairs reporting starts out as pabulum fed by the government and its loyal allies to available journos, who further if incompletely digest it and then crap it out on the digital pages of various newspapers, magazines, and think tank white papers for the delectation of a somewhat undiscriminating public.

In other words, the media is often just the messenger, and there’s no point in getting aggravated about crappy coverage and blaming the messenger when the real problem is crappy policy.

But sometimes, especially in the runup to a big foreign policy show—which the U.S. South China Sea gambit certainly has become—the evolution and devolution of media coverage provides useful insights into who’s pushing what and why.

I currently have a piece up at Asia Times, “China Hawks crosshair Obama on South China Sea” on a rather important example. It extensively fisks an interesting and rather ugly op-ed by Bloomberg View’s Josh Rogin, which seems to represent only the most recent iteration of sustained a campaign by China hawks to ensure that President Obama has no political alternative but to greenlight a yearned-for act of escalation: a US Navy Freedom of Navigation sail-by within 12 miles of one of the PRC’s reclaimed “island” features in the South China Sea.

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

Why Would Bloomberg News Completely Disappear the February, 2014 Ukraine Coup?

May 27, 2015

Why Would Bloomberg News Completely Disappear the February, 2014 Ukraine Coup?

Bloomberg says in a post today that the “confrontation between Russia and the US” over Ukraine was “provok[ed]” by Putin’s annexation of Crimea:

“…Putin annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea last March, provokingthe biggest confrontation between Russia and the U.S. and Europe since the Cold War.”

That’s odd, though, because the reintegration of Crimea into Russia (after a vote in favor – but remember democracy is what we say it is) happened, as Bloomberg says and BBC confirms, in March, 2014, about five months after violent, US-backed protests began in November 2013, and ended in the the elected Ukrainian president, Victor Yanukovych, being driven out of the country by, as BBC put it, “radical groups”, including neo-Nazis: see BBC’s “Neo-Nazi Threat in Ukraine“, Feb. 28, 2014. (“BBC Newsnight’s Gabriel Gatehouse investigates the links between the new Ukrainian government and Neo-nazis.” Later articles covering the topic were published by, among many others, Glenn Greenwald,Robert Parry, and even, albeit 8 or 9 months too late to make a difference, NBC)

It’s also strange that BBC would say the following (even in a piece rife with the British state-run outlet’s typical pro-Western spin):

Pro-Russian forces [ie the Russian troops already stationed in Crimea by agreement] took control of Crimea in February. They moved in after Ukraine’s pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted after street protests.

So, they reacted to the US-backed overthrow of elected Yanukovych. To be precise, Russian troops began the process of, in US political-speak, liberating and securing Crimea on “February 23rd, 2014“.

Yet, again oddly, here is Time on February 22nd, 2014:

“Ukraine protesters seize Kiev as President flees”

“Yanukovych fled to the eastern city of Kharkiv where he traditionally has a more solid base of support…”

It is noted in Wikipedia that Yanukovych had “won election in 2010 with strong support in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and southern and eastern Ukraine.”

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

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