Home » Posts tagged 'press' (Page 3)
Tag Archives: press
Noam Chomsky Reads the New York Times — Explains Why ‘Paper of Record’ Is Pure Propaganda
A front-page article is devoted to a flawed story about a campus rape in the journal Rolling Stone, exposed in the leading academic journal of media critique. So severe is this departure from journalistic integrity that it is also the subject of the lead story in the business section, with a full inside page devoted to the continuation of the two reports. The shocked reports refer to several past crimes of the press: a few cases of fabrication, quickly exposed, and cases of plagiarism (“too numerous to list”). The specific crime of Rolling Stone is “lack of skepticism,” which is “in many ways the most insidious” of the three categories.
It is refreshing to see the commitment of the Times to the integrity of journalism.
On page 7 of the same issue, there is an important story by Thomas Fuller headlined “One Woman’s Mission to free Laos from Unexploded Bombs.” It reports the “single-minded effort” of a Lao-American woman, Channapha Khamvongsa, “to rid her native land of millions of bombs still buried there, the legacy of a nine-year American air campaign that made Laos one of the most heavily bombed places on earth” – soon to be outstripped by rural Cambodia, following the orders of Henry Kissinger to the US air force: “A massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves.” A comparable call for virtual genocide would be very hard to find in the archival record. It was mentioned in the Times in an article on released tapes of President Nixon, and elicited little notice.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How The Media Deceive The Public About “Fast Track” And The “Trade Bills”
How The Media Deceive The Public About “Fast Track” And The “Trade Bills”
The way that “Fast Track” is described to the American public is as an alternative method for the Senate to handle “Trade Bills” (TPP & TTIP) that the President presents to the Senate for their approval; and this alternative method is said to be one in which “no amendments are permitted, and there will be a straight up-or-down vote on the bill.”
But, in fact, the “Fast Track” method is actually to require only 50 Senators to vote “Yea” in order for the measure to be approved by the Senate, whereas the method that is described and required in (Section 2 of) the U.S. Constitution is that the President “shall have the Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.” That’s not 50 Senators; it’s 67 Senators, that the Constitution requires.
In other words: “Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority” (which was invented by the imperial President Richard Nixon in 1974, in order to advance his goal of a dictatorial Executive, that the Presidency would become a dictatorship) lowers the Constitutionally required approval from 67 Senators down to only 50 Senators.
This two-thirds rule is set forth in the Constitution in order to make especially difficult the passing-into-law of any treaty that the United States will have with any foreign country. The same two-thirds requirement is set forth for amending the Constitution, except that that’s a two-thirds requirement in both the House and the Senate: it can be done “by either: two-thirds (supermajority) of both the Senate and the House of Representatives …; or by a national convention assembled at the request of the legislatures of at least two-thirds (at present 34) of the states.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
A TOTALITARIAN SOCIETY HAS TOTALITARIAN SCIENCE
A TOTALITARIAN SOCIETY HAS TOTALITARIAN SCIENCE
The government, the press, the mega-corporations, the prestigious foundations, the academic institutions, the “humanitarian” organizations say:
“This is the disease. This is its name. This is what causes it. This is the drug that treats it. This is the vaccine that prevents it.
“This is how accurate diagnosis is done. These are the tests. These are the possible results and what they mean.
“Here are the genes. This is what they do. This is how they can be changed and substituted and manipulated. These are the outcomes.
“These are the data and the statistics. They are correct. There can be no argument about them.
“This is life. These are the components of life. All change and improvement result from our management of the components.
“This is the path. It is governed by truth which science reveals. Walk the path. We will inform you when you stray. We will report new improvements.
“This is the end. You can go no farther. You must give up the ghost. We will remember you.”
We are now witnessing the acceleration of Official Science. Of course, that term is an internal contradiction. But the State shrugs and moves forward.
The notion that the State can put its seal on favored science, enforce it, and punish its competitors, is anathema to a free society.
For example: declaring that psychiatrists can appear in court as expert witnesses, when none of the so-called mental disorders listed in the psychiatric literature are diagnosed by laboratory tests.
For example: stating that vaccination is mandatory, in order to protect the vaccinated (who are supposed to be immune) from the unvaccinated. An absurdity on its face.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Effort by Japan to Stifle News Media Is Working
Effort by Japan to Stifle News Media Is Working
It was an unexpected act of protest that shook Japan’s carefully managed media world: Shigeaki Koga, a regular television commentator and fierce critic of the political establishment, abruptly departed from the scripted conversation during a live TV news program to announce that this would be his last day on the show because, as he put it, network executives had succumbed to political pressure for his removal.
“I have suffered intense bashing by the prime minister’s office,” Mr. Koga told his visibly flabbergasted host late last month, saying he had been removed as commentator because of critical statements he had made about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Later in the program, Mr. Koga held up a sign that read “I am not Abe,” a play on the slogan of solidarity for journalists slain in January at a French satirical newspaper.
The outburst created a public firestorm, and not only because of the spectacle of Mr. Koga, a dour-faced former top government official, seemingly throwing away his career as a television commentator in front of millions of viewers. His angry show of defiance also focused national attention on the right-leaning government’s increased strong-arming of the news media to reduce critical coverage.
Many journalists and political experts say the Abe government is trying to engineer a fundamental shift in the balance of power between his administration and the news media, using tactics to silence criticism that go beyond anything his predecessors tried and that have frustrated many journalists. These have included more aggressive complaints to the bosses of critical journalists and commentators like Mr. Koga, and more blatant retaliation against outlets that persist in faulting the administration. At the same time, Mr. Abe has tried to win over top media executives and noted journalists with private sushi lunches.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Japan seizes passport of journalist planning Syria trip
Japan seizes passport of journalist planning Syria trip
Move follows brutal killing of Japanese by ISIL and comes amid soaring ratings for PM over handling of hostage crisis.
Japan has seized the passport of a journalist planning to travel to Syria following the brutal killing of two Japanese hostages by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group there, according to local media.
It was the first time Tokyo had taken such a measure on the grounds it was needed to protect the passport-holder’s life, the Asahi Shimbunand other news reports said on Sunday.
They said the foreign ministry on Saturday confiscated the passport of Yuichi Sugimoto, a freelance photographer who had planned to enter Syria on February 27 to cover refugee camps among other places.
But the 58-year-old, who has covered conflict zones in Iraq and Syria over the years, said he had no plans to enter areas controlled by ISIL, Kyodo News reported.
“Tonight, an official with the foreign ministry’s passport division came and took my passport,” Sugimoto told the Asahi.
“What happens to my freedom to travel and freedom of the press?”
The passport confiscation came in the wake of the beheadings of journalist Kenji Goto and self-styled security consultant Haruna Yukawa by ISIL.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Cowardly and Despicable American Presstitutes
The Cowardly and Despicable American Presstitutes
February 5, 2015. There is a brouhaha underway about an American journalist who told a story about being in a helicopter in a war zone. The helicopter was hit and had to land. Which war zone and when I don’t know. The US has created so many war zones that it is difficult to keep up with them all, and as you will see, I am not interested in the story for its own sake.
It turns out that the journalist has remembered incorrectly. He was in a helicopter in a war zone, but it wasn’t hit and didn’t have to land. The journalist has been accused of lying in order to make himself seem to be “a more seasoned war correspondent than he is.”
The journalist’s presstitute colleagues are all over him with accusations. He has even had to apologize to the troops. Which troops and why is unclear. The American requirement that everyone apologize for every word reminds me of the old Soviet practice, real or alleged by anti-communists, that required Soviet citizens to self-criticize.
National Public Radio (2-5-15) thought this story of the American journalist was so important that the program played a recording of the journalist telling his story. It sounded like a good story to me. The audience enjoyed it and was laughing. The journalist telling the story did not claim any heroism on his part or any failure on the part of the helicopter crew. It is normal for helicopters to take hits in war zones.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
NYT’s Tom Friedman: Propaganda Shill For The War Party’s Ukrainian Coup
NYT’s Tom Friedman: Propaganda Shill For The War Party’s Ukrainian Coup
If you wonder how the lethal “group think” on Iraq took shape in 2002, you might want to study what’s happening today with Ukraine. A misguided consensus has grabbed hold of Official Washington and has pulled in everyone who “matters” and tossed out almost anyone who disagrees.
Part of the problem, in both cases, has been that neocon propagandists understand that in the modern American media the personal is the political, that is, you don’t deal with the larger context of a dispute, you make it about some easily demonized figure. So, instead of understanding the complexities of Iraq, you focus on the unsavory Saddam Hussein.
This approach has been part of the neocon playbook at least since the 1980s when many of today’s leading neocons – such as Elliott Abrams and Robert Kagan – were entering government and cut their teeth as propagandists for the Reagan administration. Back then, the game was to put, say, Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega into the demon suit, with accusations about him wearing “designer glasses.” Later, it was Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and then, of course, Saddam Hussein.
Instead of Americans coming to grips with the painful history of Central America, where the U.S. government has caused much of the violence and dysfunction, or in Iraq, where Western nations don’t have clean hands either, the story was made personal – about the demonized leader – and anyone who provided a fuller context was denounced as an “Ortega apologist” or a “Noriega apologist” or a “Saddam apologist.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Russia In The Cross Hairs
Russia In The Cross Hairs
Washington’s attack on Russia has moved beyond the boundary of the absurd into the realm of insanity.
The New Chief of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors, Andrew Lack, has declared the Russian news service, RT, which broadcasts in multiple languages, to be a terrorist organization equivalent to Boko Haram and the Islamic State, and Standard and Poor’s just downgraded Russia’s credit rating to junk status.
Today RT International interviewed me about these insane developments.
In prior days when America was still a sane country, Lack’s charge would have led to him being laughed out of office. He would have had to resign and disappear from public life. Today in the make-believe world that Western propaganda has created, Lack’s statement is taken seriously. Yet another terrorist threat has been identified–RT. (Although both Boko Haram and the Islamic State employ terror, strictly speaking they are political organizations seeking to rule, not terror organizations, but this distinction would be over Lack’s head. Yes, I know. There is a good joke that could be made here about what Lack lacks. Appropriately named and all that.)
Nevertheless, whatever Lack might lack, I doubt he believes his nonsensical statement that RT is a terrorist organization. So what is his game?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
When elected independents are seen as interlopers – The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
When elected independents are seen as interlopers – The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
According to the elite members of the Australian press gallery, any politician who isn’t from a major party is a pet to be managed by the grown-ups, writes Tim Dunlop.
Guy Rundle’s Quarterly Essay, Clivosaurus, is ostensibly about Clive Palmer, but it actually deals with something more fundamental than the pros and cons of PUP.
At its heart, it is a discussion of the press gallery and the narrow lens through which they interpret federal politics. It is a discussion of how we the people are fundamentally short-changed by a media who too often let their unexamined prejudices of what constitutes “good governance” colour the way they report the federal parliament.
Rundle argues that press gallery journalists have a basic distrust of small parties and independents. He notes that Palmer is not the first to be at the receiving end of their ire, suggesting, “The political media displayed the same irritation with him as they had displayed towards the Democrats and then the Greens.” (To which we could easily add the names of Oakeshott and Windsor.)
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
