Why has so much journalism succumbed to propaganda? Why are censorship and distortion
standard practice? Why is the BBC so often a mouthpiece of rapacious power? Why do the
New York Times and the Washington Post deceive their readers?
Why are young journalists not taught to understand media agendas and to challenge the
high claims and low purpose of fake objectivity? And why are they not taught that the
essence of so much of what's called the mainstream media is not information, but power?
These are urgent questions. The world is facing the prospect of major war, perhaps
nuclear war - with the United States clearly determined to isolate and provoke Russia
and eventually China. This truth is being turned upside down and inside out by
journalists, including those who promoted the lies
that led to the bloodbath in Iraq in 2003.
. . . had journalists done their job, had they questioned and investigated the
propaganda instead of amplifying it, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children
might be alive today; and millions might not have fled their homes; the sectarian war
between Sunni and Shia might not have ignited, and the infamous Islamic State might not
now exist. . . .
The most effective propaganda is found not in the Sun or on Fox News - but beneath a
liberal halo. When the New York Times published claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons
of mass destruction, its fake evidence was believed, because it wasn't Fox News; it was
the New York Times.
The same is true of the Washington Post and the Guardian, both of which have played a
critical role in conditioning their readers to accept a new and dangerous cold war. All
three liberal newspapers have misrepresented events in Ukraine as a malign act by Russia
- when, in fact, the fascist led coup in Ukraine was the work of the United States,
aided by Germany and Nato. . . .
The Fine Art of Propaganda, Alfred McLung Lee & Elizabeth Bryant Lee:
"Science flourishes on criticism. Dangerous propaganda crumbles before it."
JohnSwinton:
"There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in
country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you
who dares to express an honest opinion. If you expressed it, you would know beforehand
that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of
the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar
things. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, I
would be like Othello before twenty-four hours: my occupation would be gone. The man who
would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for
another job. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie
outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country
and his race for his daily bread, or for what is about the same as his salary. You know
this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an "Independent Press"! We are the
tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the
string and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the
property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
[Half a century ago, when the perceived enemy was communism, the United States spent
millions of dollars to subvert private groups in order to advance U.S. positions. Today,
the perceived enemy are the "Islamists," and the new White House Office of Faith-Based
and Community Initiatives has the potential for stifling dissent, and dividing religious
communities.--Enver Masud, "Millions Spent
Subverting 'Enemies,' Stifling Dissent," The Wisdom Fund, February 15, 2001]
[Russia is being encircled by US and Nato bases and missiles in violation of a pledge by
the United States not to expand Nato "one inch to the east".--John Pilger, "The New World War -- The Silence Is A
Lie," johnpilger.com, September 24, 2008]
[3000+ military, intelligence, industry professionals do not believe the official
account of 9/11--"American Patriots:
Muslims Didn't Do 9/11," The Wisdom Fund, September 11, 2011]
[In July, as Israel began its massive assault on
Gaza, Ahmed published a post revealing a plausible motivation - Gaza's natural gas
reserves - for Israel's endless belligerence towards the enclave's Hamas government. . .
. Israel wanted to keep control over large gas reserves in Gaza's waters so that it
could deny Hamas a resource that would have bought it influence with other major players
in the region, not least Egypt.--Jonathan Cook, "Guarding a Taboo --
Why the Guardian Axed Nafeez Ahmed," counterpunch.org, December 5, 2014]
NOTE: "GE does not own NBC (or Comcast or any media) anymore. So that 6th company is now Comcast. And Time Warner doesn't
own AOL".
[It mattered little that Donahue had won nine Daytime Emmys and a Lifetime Achievement
Emmy in 1996. MSNBC claimed Donahue's ratings were too low to justify keeping the show
on the air, even though Donahue was the highest rated show on MSNBC at the time it was
canceled and beat out Chris Matthews's Hardball, which was then on CNBC.
After Donahue was cancelled, AllYourTV.com reported it had obtained a copy of an
internal NBC memo that stated Donahue should be fired because he would be a "difficult
public face for NBC in a time of war."--Dennis J. Bernstein, "Silencing
Donahue and Anti-War Voices," consortiumnews.com, January 15, 2015]
[If I could I would like to send a message to the mainstream media. It might go
something like this: "Please tell your readers the truth for a change. The only thing
exceptional about America at the present time is our hubris. We helped create al-Qaeda
by attacking the Soviets in Afghanistan. Iraq is a basket case because we invaded it
without cause. Syria is in chaos because we have never seriously sought a peaceful
solution with Bashar al-Assad. What we have done in Iraq and Syria taken together has
produced ISIS. Libya is a toxic mess because we overthrew its government on phony
humanitarian grounds. Afghanistan is about to copy Iraq because we have occupied it for
thirteen years without a clue how to get out. We started the troubles in Ukraine and
with Russia when we broke our promise by expanding NATO and then worked to overthrow an
elected government. And finally there is Israel. Israel is not an ally and is the source
of many of the problems in the Middle East. American and Israeli interests do not
coincide, frequently quite the contrary."--Philip Giraldi, "Making War on Everyone:
Blame the media," unz.com, March 3, 2015]
[Assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador to the Ukraine "is
about to take control, for herself, of Datagroup, the Ukraine telecom company that
controls 85 percent of the Ukranian telecom market."--Robert Wenzel "Criminal: Former US State Department Official to Buy Ukraine's
Largest Telecom Company," ronpaulinstitute.org, April 13, 2016]
[But how are Russian troops deploying inside Russia "provocative," while U.S. troops on
Russia's front porch are not?--Patrick J. Buchanan, "Why Russia
Resents Us," antiwar.com, May 3, 2016]
[Ray explains how Victoria Nuland, Obama and his national security council planned this
coup--"Ray McGovern on
the Coup in Ukraine," registremblay.com, June 10, 2016]
[Substantial control of the media is almost always an absolute prerequisite for any
successful conspiracy, the greater the degree of control the better. So when weighing
the plausibility of any conspiracy, the first matter to investigate is who controls the
local media and to what extent.--Ron Unz, "American Pravda: How the CIA Invented 'Conspiracy
Theories'," unz.com, September 5, 2016]
[Bell Pottinger's output included short TV segments made in the style of Arabic news
networks and fake insurgent videos which could be used to track the people who watched
them--"Pentagon
Paid for Fake 'Al Qaeda' Videos," Bureau of Investigative Journalism, October
16, 2016]
[No Shelley speaks for the poor, no Blake for utopian dreams, no Byron damns the
corruption of the ruling class, no Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin reveal the moral
disaster of capitalism. William Morris, Oscar Wilde, HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw have
no equivalents today. Harold Pinter was the
last to raise his voice.--John Pilger, "The
Issue is Not Trump, It is Us," counterpunch.org, January 17, 2017]
[The United States, McKinley argued, could not possibly tyrannize faraway lands, as
European powers did, because the tyrannical impulse is foreign to America'scharacter and
tradition. He said that since the United States set its foreign policies with "unselfish
purpose," its influence in the world could only be benevolent. The essential goodness of
the American people, he argued, is the supreme and sole necessary justification of
whatever the United States chooses to do in the world.--Stephen Kinzer, "The True
Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire," Henry
Holt and Co. (January 24, 2017) p.132, p.134, p.235]
"Noam Chomsky: The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine," Al Jazeera, March 2, 2017
[When the U.S. military takes a bunch of journalists on a press junket to a foreign
country it has a certain intention and prepares every detail in advance. There will be
witnesses and local people who are briefed for their two minute talk with the
journalists to convey exactly what the military wants them to convey. After enjoying
local flair, for ten minutes max, some U.S. diplomatic official or a general will treat
the journos to some good whiskey and a genuine local steak. The official will speak a
few prepared lines on the record that will reinforce the story the locals were tasked to
tell.
["To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to
criticize."--Chuck Baldwin, "Zionism, Not Islam, Is America's Biggest Threat,"
chuckbaldwinlive.com, July 27, 2017]
[In the United States, facts, an important element of truth, are not important. They are
not important in the media, politics, universities, historical explanations, or the
courtroom.--Robert Parry, "The
Weaponization Of History And Journalism," paulcraigroberts.org, July 28, 2017]
[Erasing old content and restricting searches is not so much different than George
Orwell's Winston Smith watching the evidence for no longer politically-acceptable events
being dropped down the memory hole.--Philip Giraldi, "How I Believe Facebook Was Censoring My Political
Speech," theamericanconservative.com, September 15, 2017]
[the President raises a topic about which "we can't talk about it publicly," namely
Jewish influence in Hollywood and the media. . . .
[The success of Western propaganda in creating non-existent virtues for itself is the
greatest public relations success in history.--Paul Craig Roberts, "Integrity Has Vanished From The West,"
zerohedge.com, March 27, 2018]
[Filmed inside the Capitol, this Grayzone special explores the National Endowment
for Democracy, a taxpayer funded organization that has interfered in elections,
mobilized coups, and orchestrated public relations campaigns against nations that resist
Washington's agenda.--Max Blumenthal, "Inside America's
Meddling Machine: The US Funded Group that Interferes in Elections Around the
Globe," grayzoneproject.com, August 20, 2018]
[The Syria Campaign, set up by a New York PR agency, Purpose, funds a group known as the
White Helmets, who claim falsely to be "Syria Civil Defence" . . .
The White Helmets are appendages to the jihadists with whom they share addresses. Their
media-smart uniforms and equipment are supplied by their Western paymasters.--John Pilger, "Hold
the Front Page, the Reporters are Missing," counterpunch.org, September 20, 2018]
[Media giant Facebook recently announced . . . it would combat "fake news" by partnering
with two propaganda organizations founded and funded by the US government: the National
Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI). The social
media platform was already working closely with the NATO-sponsored Atlantic Council
think tank--Alan Macleod, "Facebook's New
Propaganda Partners," fair.org, September 25, 2018]
"Wikipedia - A Tool Of The Ruling Elite," YouTube, October 20, 2018
He lays bare the "Arab Spring," the "revolutions" against Gaddafi and Assad, and the
rapid rise of the jihadist monster ISIS, as masked operations of the US empire, "leading
from behind."--Thierry Meyssan, "Before Our
Very Eyes: Fake Wars and Big Lies From 9/11 to Donald Trump," Progressive Press (February 22, 2019)
RT CrossTalk Bullhorns: Assange, YouTube, April 11, 2019
[In the 1970s, I met one of Hitler's leading propagandists, Leni Riefenstahl, whose epic
films glorified the Nazis. We happened to be staying at the same lodge in Kenya, where
she was on a photography assignment, having escaped the fate of other friends of the
Fuhrer. She told me that the 'patriotic messages' of her films were dependent not on
'orders from above' but on what she called the 'submissive void' of the German
public.--John Pilger, "Silencing
the Lambs: How Propaganda Works ," counterpunch.org, September 8, 2022]
A Century of Repression offers an unprecedented and panoramic history of the use of the
Espionage Act of 1917 as the most important yet least understood law threatening freedom
of the press in modern American history. It details government use of the Act to control
information about U.S. military and foreign policy during the two World Wars, the Cold
War, and the War on Terror. The Act has provided cover for the settling of political
scores, illegal break-ins, and prosecutorial misconduct.
"A
Century of Repression: The Espionage Act and Freedom of the Press," University of
Illinois Press (October 4, 2022)
[Jeff Gerth's
investigation for The Columbia Journalism Review exposes the dark heart of the news
media's coverage of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections.--Patrick
Lawrence, "The Press Reckoning on Russiagate," consortiumnews.com, February
7, 2023]
Why are young journalists not taught to understand media agendas and to challenge the
high claims and low purpose of fake objectivity? And why are they not taught that the
essence of so much of what's called the mainstream media is not information, but power?
