The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism

[Martin Gisser]

Meanwhile I have a WaPo subscription. The Dave Weigel piece mentioned above has a link to an RT piece and explains why it is BS.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/20/the-seth-rich-conspiracy-shows-how-fake-news-still-works/
Required reading for those who haven't yet sorted out the DNC-Bernie thing - and more evidence for my recent statement here about spreading Trumputin propaganda.
Quotes later.

(my striking out)
The article is incomplete on the DNC-Bernie thing, but that wasn't its purpose anyhow. What is missing is Donna Brazile's leaking of primary debate questions. But that is a nothingburger, too. (Who da thunk someone in Flint MI would ask about lead in water. Who da thunk someone would ask about death penalty. Anyhow the questions came out differently.)

Yet, RT makes a big thing about this frivolous lawsuit by some Berners:

‘Total blackout’: Lawyer suing DNC for fraud speaks out on lack of media coverage
https://www.rt.com/usa/388882-dnc-lawsuit-media-blackout/

-------------------
Another similar thing I might dig out from German RT: The case of Lisa F, an underage German-Russian girl supposedly abducted and raped. That was all over Russian media and sparked demonstrations in Germany by the Russian infiltrated right wing. (The AfD party even had it's crazy party program printed in Russian). German RT recently had a follow-up, to stir that crock again.

Else I simply don't follow RT (and Sputnik) anymore, as I have cleaned my Facebook feeds of trolls and weirdos. I even de-friend real.world friends of mine on FB if necessary.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


Back to Jimmy Dore. Once I used a swear word on him. Meanwhile the armchair psychiatrist has a diagnosis: Mediocre psychopathy. (*) That might explain why some non-Aspergers find him convincing. Here's is what triggered my finding.

Quoth WaPo's David Weigel:

Briefly, before Wheeler recanted his story, the Young Turks network's “Jimmy Dore Show” chewed over the revelation that Rich was in contact with WikiLeaks.

(my emph. of the bone of contention.)

Below is Jimmy Dore's reply. Note the exact text of the tweet sarcastically dismissed by Weigel. Dore makes a whole long rant out of it. Great example of projection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

(Yes, Amazon Web Services won a contract with the CIA in the same year Bezos bought the WaPo. But that is an entirely different thing. AWS were simply better than IBM and already widely used by govt. And sure the CIA isn't that stupid to let Bezos read their stuff. They have serious encryption at the very base of the technology.)

Washington Post Reporter Dave Weigel Caught Publicly Lying About Conflicts (Part 1)


It is said that Bezos did some internet-age tech overhaul of the WaPo. The mediocre search engine does not hint at that. And only goes back to 2005. (Where's all the yummy Iraq stuff? )

For the following it is good enough. This link gives 60 articles for "bezos cia cloud":
https://www.washingtonpost.com/newssearch/?query=bezos%20cia%20cloud&sort=Date&datefilter=All%20Since%202005&spellcheck
They are obviously not keeping silent about this deal.


--------
(*) http://www.minddisorders.com/Flu-Inv/Hare-Psychopathy-Checklist.html

[sidd]

Malik at irishtimes argues that a crisis like Brexit was inevitable. And necessary.

"It feels like the last days in the compound of a cult that once flourished but is now finally and fatally besieged."

"The end of such a cult, that operates outside the bounds of common sense, is inevitable. Not only that, it should be welcomed. It is time. It is time for the country to come to terms with the fact that it has for too long been in denial about some of its fundamental flaws  ..."

"Brexit has kicked off important discussions about Britain that we were otherwise probably never going to have."

"We now realise that the business of serious politics in this country rewards those whose only skill is keeping up the appearance of having a skill."

"Also finally exposed is the unbridgeable gap, both economic and cultural, between centre and peripheries, between the winners and the losers"

" Once the question was asked – in or out? – all the grievances, justified or not, could be projected on it, with “in” being widely seen as a vote for the status quo. Within this frame, nothing else matters – not economic predictions, not warnings about medicines running out, nor threats of the need to stockpile foods. The remain campaign could not have done anything differently: it lost the moment the question was asked ..."

"And so, maybe, in the end, we will finally believe that immigration is necessary for an economy and an NHS to function, that the inequality between the south-east and the rest of Britain is unsustainable, that our political class is over-pedigreed and under-principled. We might even believe that other crises, such as climate change, are real, too."

Read the whole thing:

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/britain-needs-a-day-of-reckoning-brexit-will-provide-it-1.3797754

sidd

[Martin Gisser]

Funny. What is the thread title?

P.S.: The Russian girls I've met gave me totally different impression.

[Martin Gisser]

(Looks like I have to purge another real.world friend from my Facebook feed. Thus: )

Surely people of good will can disagree about interpretations when a world away from actual events?


Real ‘obscene masquerade’: How BBC depicted staged hospital scenes as proof of Douma chemical attack

Vanessa Beeley is an independent investigative journalist and photographer. She is associate editor at 21st Century Wire.

[...]

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/451623-bbc-staged-footage-douma-chemical-attack/

Vanessa Beeley... 21st Century Wire... Well-known bullshitter.


https://www.polygraph.info/a/russian-embassy-media-falsely-report-bbc-producer-s-claim-about-douma-hospital-video-/29779459.html

Russian Embassy Misleads on BBC Producer’s Claim About Douma Hospital Video
February 20, 2019

[...]

So, what do we know?

* Independent journalists and forensic experts conclude a chlorine canister was dropped on the apartment building.
* The OPCW in a preliminary report says chlorine was detected at the scene.
* Dalati alleges the scene at the hospital, well away from the apartment building, was staged.
* He further tweets "the ATTACK DID HAPPEN."
* The Russian Embassy in the UK omits that conclusion from its own Twitter account -- which leads to our "misleading" verdict.

It's important to consider the possibility Dalati's allegation that the hospital video was staged could be true, but so far he has provided no verifiable evidence for the claim, which he said he could "conclusively" prove. In the future, if he does provide such evidence, we will weigh that on its own merit.

Polygraph.info also sought information and comment from the BBC regarding Dalati's status with the BBC - whether he was posted in the Douma area at the time and if the findings that he tweeted were considered BBC reporting and discussed with editors. We have received no response, If we do so, we will update this fact check.

https://medium.com/@Brian_Whit/vanessa-beeley-the-syrian-conflicts-goddess-of-propaganda-2c84f850dba4

Vanessa Beeley — the Syrian conflict’s goddess of propaganda
[...]
Vanessa Beeley, a supporter of the Assad regime whose reports from Syria have turned her into a social media celebrity. The Russian propaganda channel, RT, describes her as “an independent investigative journalist” and, in addition to her Russian TV appearances, she is associate editor of 21st Century Wire, the conspiracy theory website that publishes most of her work.

[...]

The truth, though, is that her reports from Syria are basically crap. To see why, let’s look in detail at one of her recent articles — a long one published by 21st Century Wire on April 8 and headed: “SYRIA: The Egregious Western Media ‘Chemical Weapon’ Fraud in Eastern Ghouta”.

[...]
[...]

[Martin Gisser]

FLACK - aka Discrediting Journalists and Sources - This is Fourth Filter used to Manufacture Consent See here  

This time the focus is upon Vanessa Beeley, the Journalist doing the reporting along with the default dismissing of RT as the publisher.

Nice case of projection!

Quoth Vanessa Beeley at RT loc. cit.

On two significant occasions to date, Dalati appears to deviate from the BBC narrative road map in Syria. However, Dalati had participated in the corporate media lynching of journalists and academics who had dared to question the dominant “chemical attack” narrative, at the time of the alleged incident in Douma, dismissing them as conspiracy theorists.

Dalati himself tweets: "The ATTACK DID HAPPEN," (His uppercase)
Open source: https://web.archive.org/web/20190214082919/https:/twitter.com/Dalatrm

So, Vanessa makes something much more out of Dalati's criticism of staged hospital scenes AFTER the attack. This is the very definition of bullshit. (It is meanwhile practically beyond doubtability that Assad dropped chlorine. Not Sarin etc. Still, a chemical attack.)


------------------
Note I revisited your troll treasure trove just because I had to wash a friend's head. Else I consider your ramblings a waste of time. The internet is full of trolls...

=============================
P.S: When I see polit bullshit, first I google, then I look at Neven's polit threads. I know it is bad to engage trolls or bone heads. But sometimes it is fun to make them scream. I learned that last century with Bundeswehr Feldwebels, thus my nom de guerre, Gissbo. A friend of mine was very likely a East German/KGB trained polit troll (or, how they were called back then: a paper tiger). He got out of this by faking hebephrenia (Jugendirresein).
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/german-english/jugendirresein

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Lurk's extraordinarily rich output hints he is paid for this waste of life time. Dollars or Rubles?

[end edit]
[quit thread]

[sidd]

Hickel at Jacobin savages Pinker's narrative of progress:

"the period 1820 to circa 1950 was one of violent dispossession across much of the Global South ... colonizers had immense difficulty getting people to work on their mines and plantations. As it turns out, people tended to prefer their subsistence lifestyles, and wages were not high enough to induce them to leave. Colonizers had to coerce people into the labor market: imposing taxes, enclosing commons and constraining access to food, or just outright forcing people off their land."

"The Maddison database on which you rely might tell us what the dispossessed gained in GDP per capita (eventually), but it does not tell us whether those gains offset their loss of lands, commons, supportive communities, stable local economies. And it tells us nothing about what Global South economies might be like today had they been free to industrialize on their own terms ..."

"Using the $1.90 line shows that only 700 million people live in poverty. But note that the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that 815 million people do not have enough calories to sustain even “minimal” human activity. 1.5 billion are food insecure and do not have enough calories to sustain “normal” human activity. And 2.1 billion suffer from malnutrition. How can there be fewer poor people than hungry and malnourished people? "

" if we look at absolute numbers, the trend changes completely. The poverty rate has worsened dramatically since 1981, from 3.2 billion to 4.2 billion"

"What matters, rather, is the extent of global poverty vis-à-vis our capacity to end it. As I have pointed out before, our capacity to end poverty (e.g., the cost of ending poverty as a proportion of the income of the non-poor) has increased many times faster than the proportional poverty rate has decreased (to use your preferred measure again). By this metric we are doing worse than ever before. Indeed, our civilization is regressing. Why? Because the vast majority of the yields of our global economy are being captured by the world’s rich ... only 5 percent of new income from global growth goes to the poorest 60 percent of humanity"

"it will take more than one hundred years to end poverty at $1.90/day and over two hundred years to end it at $7.40/day. "

"We can end poverty right now simply by making the rules of our global economy fairer for the world’s majority "

"A higher life expectancy among the poor is no justification for condemning them to a tiny and ever-shrinking share of global income. That is not a morally defensible position."

"According to the FAO’s earlier methodology, both the number and proportion of people in hunger was higher in 2009 than in 1995 "

Read the whole thing:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/02/steven-pinker-global-poverty-neoliberalism-progress

sidd

[sidd]

And in the vein of the last post, a charming Will Self aided by Rod Little eviscerates the position that our times are, historically, the best times. An hour and a half plus.



sidd

[Martin Gisser]

_________________

Contra my intentions I herewith propose yet another important category of journalism from beyond Good and Bad and the AND....

Hopefully some history in the making next week...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/opinion/mueller-report-trump-democrats-barr.html

“it would be unthinkable if this material were kept from the House of Representatives in the course of the discharge of its most awesome constitutional responsibility.” -- March 1974, Peter Rodino, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee

[Martin Gisser]

Apropos history lessons via MSM...
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article226577419.html

[Susan Anderson]

Returning to topic, some excellent journalism from my favorite source, short enough to post in full: The House Takes on America’s Voting-Rights Problem: H.R. 1 is an ambitious set of responses to the most pressing challenges facing American democracy, almost all of which were brought into sharper focus by the 2016 election. (Jelani Cobb) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/18/the-house-takes-on-americas-voting-rights-problem

The crisis of democracy that has attended Donald Trump’s Presidency has visibly manifested itself in challenges to the free press, the judiciary, and the intelligence agencies, but among its more corrosive effects has been the corruption of basic mathematics. Since the 2016 election, Trump has periodically rage-tweeted about an alleged three million non-citizens whose ballots delivered the popular-vote majority to Hillary Clinton. His fulminations were a fanciful extension of the Republican Party’s concern, despite all evidence to the contrary, that American elections are riddled with voter fraud. The math does, however, support a different number—one that truthfully points to how American democracy is being undermined.

Nearly two million fewer African-Americans voted in the 2016 election than did in 2012. That decline can be attributed, in part, to the fact that it was the first election since 2008 in which Barack Obama was not on the ballot and, in part, to an ambivalence toward Clinton among certain black communities. Civil-rights groups and members of the Congressional Black Caucus point to another factor as well: 2016 was the first Presidential election since the Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court decision, which eviscerated sections of the Voting Rights Act. Suppressive tactics, some old, some new, ensued—among them, voter-roll purges; discriminatory voter-I.D. rules; fewer polling places and voting machines; and reductions in early-voting periods. After an election in which some two million Americans went missing, the Administration concluded that three million too many had shown up at the polls. (The equation here is: reality minus delusion equals three million.)

Last week, with these events in mind, a hearing on H.R. 1, the For the People Act, took place in the House of Representatives. Elijah Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, the new chair of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, referred to the bill, in his opening remarks, as “one of the boldest reform packages to be considered in the history of this body.” He added, “This sweeping legislation will clean up corruption in government, fight secret money in politics, and make it easier for American citizens across this great country to vote.” That statement was not partisan hyperbole. The bill is a broad, imaginative, and ambitious set of responses to the most pressing challenges facing American democracy, many of which preceded the 2016 election, but almost all of which were brought into sharper focus by it.

Implicit in the choice to take up an electoral-reform bill as the first act of the new Democratic majority in the House was the decision to confront not only these injustices but, more fundamentally, the forces that have allowed them to come into existence. The bill contains provisions to insure access to paper ballots, in order to verify the accuracy of voting results; to establish early voting in all states for federal elections; and to launch independent redistricting commissions, to address the problem of partisan gerrymandering.

A federal matching system for small-dollar political contributions would serve as a counterbalance to the sums that wealthy individuals and corporations pour into spending for political elections. Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates would be required to release their tax returns. The bill also includes provisions for mandating transparency in digital-ad spending, strengthening disclosure policies regarding foreign gifts to officeholders, and strictly enforcing the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

A section focussing on voting rights is of particular interest. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelby essentially held that the Voting Rights Act was outmoded, relying on presumptions about racism, especially in Southern states, which didn’t reflect the progress that had been made since 1965, when the bill was signed. The Court, however, left open the possibility that Congress might bring it in line with more recent circumstances, if warranted. H.R. 1 could spur the creation of new formulas for determining which states should be subject to federal oversight. It might, for example, be possible to take into account recent voter-suppression efforts in Ohio, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and other states, thereby expanding the reach of the Act.

For those progressives who were wary of what the Democrats would do with their new majority in the House, H.R. 1 is as reassuring a start as anyone could have hoped for. But the civic fervor behind it has not been entirely welcomed on Capitol Hill. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, denounced H.R. 1 as “a power grab that’s smelling more and more like exactly what it is.” Setting aside the question of what a power grab smells like, McConnell’s outrage was striking, even in a period as cynical as this one. Taking aim at a provision that would make Election Day a day off for federal employees (with the idea that private companies would follow suit for their employees), McConnell said, “Just what America needs—another paid holiday,” then predicted that federal employees would use the time to volunteer for Democratic campaigns.

It’s not uncommon for a single bill to encompass such a wide range of concerns. But the concerns presented in H.R. 1 point to another unanswered question. For the past twenty months, public attention has been focussed on the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 election. Intelligence agencies, media outlets, and independent researchers have consistently pointed to Russian intentions to sway the electorate in Trump’s favor. Possible motivations for these efforts—from belated score-settling for the Cold War to alleviating sanctions—aren’t hard to discern. But we’ve seldom asked about American motivations in creating the conditions that facilitated such meddling. Russian attempts to influence American voters—including ad purchases on social media intended to foment racial division—coexisted with and benefitted from domestic attempts to discourage people from casting a vote.

American democracy is threatened by a hydra of vulnerabilities, most of them of our own making, but none of them beyond the notice of our adversaries. H.R. 1 is the most cogent corrective to these matters which we have yet seen. The calculations around it will most certainly be partisan, but it is the best hope for ending the corrosive practices that subtract citizens from the electorate. ♦

[Martin Gisser]

So, according to the resident troll, Jimmy Dore has now officially defected to Russia Today. (Well, things can always get more hilarious according to Florifulgurator... (*) )

So (again) history. You shure don't want to hear from lesbian atomic war provocing Rachel Maddow, spanning the fathom from GHWB vs. Q to Saudi Arabia (not Russia, but fossil...). Alas leaving out the potatoe [sic] incident...

fuck, yet another category of journalism, meeting history in a Rachel Maddow Venn diagram.


---------------------------
P.S.: For full appreciation of the joke, study Carlo Rovelli's Relational Quantum Mechanics - the possibly best resolution of the Einstein-Podolski-Rosen paradox.

[Martin Gisser]

As everyone can guess Flori has meanwhile gone guerilla and fulgurated his own mainstream media (U.S. eng. sing. of lat. sing. "medium")...

(I will click "like" or whatever for the first correct guess at whose nemesis I'm cheering to and then frop the beer.)

[sidd]

Kavanaugh at counterpunch: Imperialism is the new black

"elections don’t count unless you get the result the Serious People want."

“Juan Guaidó is a character that has been created for this circumstance”

" “We’ve got the power, so we’ll do what we want” actions, the Trump administration is wiping the lipstick off the imperial pig "

"When someone is being kidnapped, and your family is the home invasion gang, you do not get to make a statement that criticizes the hostage for being a poor housekeeper."

" the U.S. is the most anti-democratic force in the world. It always intervenes to prevent or destroy democracy—the empowerment of the mass of people—and to enforce the rule of a wealthy elite."

"Imperialism is the enterprise that anyone who will ever be allowed to be elected as President must accept, embrace, and captain ... The U.S. is an imperialist country and the Democratic and Republican parties are fully committed to that. "

" There’s that game, which liberals love so much and played so well with Iraq and Libya and Syria—and Chile—where you take a “nuanced” position on the aggression in progress, and wait a few years to admit the true horror of what actually happened, and then bemoan its unfortunate “excesses” ... "

"Imperialism is a project of capitalism, and therefore of class power."

“They just want the simple narrative that socialism failed.”

"And if AOC or Bernie or John Oliver stand with Trump and McConnell and Rubio on this, it’s not because they all stand for “democracy,” it’s because they are all standing with the same class."

Read the whole thing:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/15/the-siege-of-venezuela-and-the-travails-of-empire/

sidd

[Susan Anderson]

More good journalism: https://bylinetimes.com/2019/02/18/explosive-uk-parliamentary-report-exposes-the-molten-core-of-the-trump-brexit-russia-scandal/

Explosive UK Parliamentary Report Exposes the Molten Core of the Trump, Brexit, Russia Scandal

The House of Commons’ Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s final report on Disinformation and “Fake News” reveals new evidence and calls for new investigations into dark data, dark money and Russian influence in British elections.

The day after Carole Cadwalladr in the Observer revealed Special Counsel Robert Mueller has subpoenaed Brittany Kaiser, director of the now-defunct data company Cambridge Analytica who worked on Nigel Farage’s Leave EU campaign, this landmark parliamentary report provides yet more evidence that the Trump Campaign, the EU referendum and Russian interference are all closely linked.

The report also reveals that the National Crime Agency, currently investigating potential illegal foreign funding of major Leave EU donor Arron Banks, has also been asked to look at potential collusion with Russia over data, following evidence submitted to it by the Information Commissioner’s office.

These revelations follow an exclusive report by the Byline Times last week that multiple investigations by the Metropolitan Police, into up to 14 political figures involved in potential election crimes, are currently stalled.

The report will intensify pressure on Prime Minister Theresa May to launch a full public inquiry into both dark money and dark data in British elections.

Labour MP David Lammy told the Byline Times that “the scale and depth of malicious disinformation and foreign interference this report uncovers demands an urgent response from the Prime Minister on behalf of the British Government”.

“It is now blindingly obvious that we need a criminal investigation – equivalent to the US’ Mueller inquiry – to investigate any possible links between the 2016 Leave campaign, Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russia,” Lammy said.
....
The DCMS committee, chaired by conservative MP Damian Collins, has been sitting for two years and has provided the most comprehensive account so far of the impact of Russia’s hybrid warfare on Western democracies and its interaction with the populist movements associated with the Brexit vote in 2016 and the election of Donald Trump six months later.

It’s obviously of some concern to the Kremlin. According to the report published today, nearly two-thirds of the views of the interim report, published online last July, were from foreign IP addresses. (The average for most parliamentary publications is only a fifth.) Over half of these foreign views were from Russia. The July report was more popular in Moscow than in London.

[Susan Anderson]

The New Yorker does a more interesting and complete job, including a lot of detailed information about Facebook and the [successful] attempt to influence Brexit voters.

Why the U.K. Condemned Facebook for Fuelling Fake News https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/why-the-uk-condemned-facebook-for-fuelling-fake-news

Facebook was also used to surreptitiously influence the Brexit vote in the U.K. In arcane detail, the commission explains why it believes an obscure Canadian company called Aggregate I.Q. (A.I.Q.) harvested Facebook users’ profiles and linked them to voter files in order to “precisely target” them with pro-Leave messages. According to the report, “The work of [A.I.Q.] highlights the fact that data has been and is still being used extensively by private companies to target people, often in a political context, in order to influence their decisions. It is far more common that people think.” Indeed, in a ten-month period during 2018, an anonymous, “highly misleading,” pro-Brexit Web site called Mainstream Network spent an estimated two hundred and fifty-seven thousand pounds on Facebook ads that reached nearly eleven million users. “Mainstream Network is yet another, more recent example of an online organisation [sic] seeking to influence political debate . . . and there is no good case for [it] to hide behind anonymity”
....
If a RICO prosecution seems unlikely, how will governments hold Facebook to account? Facebook is global and the Internet is borderless, but laws are not.
....
While the big tech companies have stated publicly that they are open to regulation, in the United States they have deployed armies of lobbyists to block government oversight—or at least to neuter it.
....
has unearthed incontrovertible evidence that propagandists intent on undermining social cohesion were largely enabled by the arrogance, irresponsibility, and rapaciousness of the executives of a single company.

[sidd]

Oldie but a goodie. Surprising how many names are still familiar. If one is forced to watch mainstream media, it makes for an interesting game to pick out which ones are part of the Mighty Wurlitzer.

http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php

sidd

[Neven]

It's such a subtle form of climate risk denial that establishment journalists push (because subconsciously they know that their paycheck depends on pleasing the masters):

[sidd]

Frost at columbia journalism review on why she prefers FT to NYT:

"And when it comes to journalism, committed capitalists are always better materialists than the liberals. And that’s why I read FT. Sure, they’re rooting for the other team, but at least they know the game."

https://www.cjr.org/special_report/why-the-left-cant-stand-the-new-york-times.php/

sidd

[sidd]

Scheer has a really nice interview with Morrison on Scheer Intelligence at truthdig: the glory days of journalism were quite seedy too, but they have hope in these internet days. They do bemoan the loss of smalltown coverage, as do i.

This is a wonderful slice of history of the press in the USA from two people who were there for a lot of it. I include a couple of excerpts for the flavour,  but anyone with an interest really ought read and listen to the whole thing.

"The paradox,” Morrison says, “is that [journalists] were always in the hands of rich people, because those were the people who owned the printing presses. Some of them were only comparatively rich, some of them were truly rich, like the Jeff Bezoses of the world."

"Only now are we seeing a more demotic turn—as newspapers are disappearing, what’s rushing in to fill the void is those voices we didn’t hear from before"

"That crowd that is allowed to take part now, thanks to the internet, can make reporting more honest, more diverse, and more reflective of what’s actually going on."

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-journalisms-glory-days/

sidd

[vox_mundi]

The Making of the Fox News White House
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/11/the-making-of-the-fox-news-white-house

Fox News has always been partisan. But has it become propaganda?

In January, during the longest government shutdown in America’s history, President Donald Trump rode in a motorcade through Hidalgo County, Texas, eventually stopping on a grassy bluff overlooking the Rio Grande. The White House wanted to dramatize what Trump was portraying as a national emergency: the need to build a wall along the Mexican border. The presence of armored vehicles, bales of confiscated marijuana, and federal agents in flak jackets underscored the message.

But the photo op dramatized something else about the Administration. After members of the press pool got out of vans and headed over to where the President was about to speak, they noticed that Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, was already on location. Unlike them, he hadn’t been confined by the Secret Service, and was mingling with Administration officials, at one point hugging Kirstjen Nielsen, the Secretary of Homeland Security. The pool report noted that Hannity was seen “huddling” with the White House communications director, Bill Shine. After the photo op, Hannity had an exclusive on-air interview with Trump. Politico later reported that it was Hannity’s seventh interview with the President, and Fox’s forty-second. Since then, Trump has given Fox two more. He has granted only ten to the three other main television networks combined, and none to CNN, which he denounces as “fake news.”

Hannity was treated in Texas like a member of the Administration because he virtually is one. The same can be said of Fox’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch. Fox has long been a bane of liberals, but in the past two years many people who watch the network closely, including some Fox alumni, say that it has evolved into something that hasn’t existed before in the United States. Nicole Hemmer, an assistant professor of Presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and the author of “Messengers of the Right,” a history of the conservative media’s impact on American politics, says of Fox, “It’s the closest we’ve come to having state TV.” ...

----------------------

Fox News’s Propaganda Isn’t Just Unethical — Research Shows It’s Enormously Influential
https://www.vox.com/2019/3/4/18249847/fox-news-effect-swing-elections

Fox’s propaganda broadcasting matters. It’s a somewhat underexplored topic in political science research, but the information that’s available suggests that right-wing propaganda broadcasting — led by Fox but also including Sinclair Broadcast Group — has a decisive influence on American politics.

A study by Emory University political scientist Gregory Martin and Stanford economist Ali Yurukoglu estimates that watching Fox News translates into a significantly greater willingness to vote for Republican candidates. ... they find that if Fox News hadn’t existed, the Republican presidential candidate’s share of the two-party vote would have been 3.59 points lower in 2004 and 6.34 points lower in 2008. Without Fox, in other words, the GOP’s only popular vote win since the 1980s would have been reversed and the 2008 election would have been an extinction-level landslide.

[Rob Dekker]

Investigative journalism group Bellingcat has been awarded €500,000 of funding which it will use to set up an office and training centre in The Hague.

The publisher, which revealed the identity of the Salisbury poisoning suspects last year, was awarded the cash prize by the Dutch postcode lottery at the 2019 Goed Geld Gala yesterday.

https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/bellingcat-to-establish-new-office-in-the-hague-after-e500000-funding-win-through-dutch-postcode-lottery/

[ASILurker]

2016 produced doco by Al Jazeera about the Israel govt influence in the UK
https://www.aljazeera.com/investigations/thelobby/

I came across an interesting connection @7:40 in part two regarding the Labour MP Joan Ryan. She is one of the 8 UK MPs who have very recently resigned/split from Labour to start their own "Independent Group" along with some Conservatives.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47300832   
https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/ckdkngd45nlt/labour-and-conservative-resignations

Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) is still under fire from within her own ranks, the media and in social media
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,2273.msg191193.html#msg191193

While AOC is continually being pilloried in some sections over the GND etc etc
quick grab from RCP homepage

The Anti-Semitism of AOC, Omar, and Tlaib
David Catron, The American Spectator
 Dems' Resolution Condemning Anti-Semitism Is a Joke
David Harsanyi, The Federalist
Ilhan Omar Has a Point
Jordan Weissmann, Slate

Green New Deal Is Responsible. Climate Inaction Is Not
Zorn & Beachy, The Guardian
Why Green New Deal Is Unworkable & Unaffordable
Sen. John Barrasso, USA Today
Trump Signals a Great Debate on Socialism
New York Sun
Critics Must Do More Than Mock Green New Deal
USA Today
The Good News About a Green New Deal
John Cassidy, New Yorker
Environmental Radicalism Gets Murderous
Noah Rothman, Commentary


Can you imagine what it might be like in October 2020?

[Neven]

Investigative journalism group Bellingcat has been awarded €500,000 of funding which it will use to set up an office and training centre in The Hague.

The publisher, which revealed the identity of the Salisbury poisoning suspects last year, was awarded the cash prize by the Dutch postcode lottery at the 2019 Goed Geld Gala yesterday.

https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/bellingcat-to-establish-new-office-in-the-hague-after-e500000-funding-win-through-dutch-postcode-lottery/

We already knew it pays well to push establishment narratives, thanks. Eliot Higgins has got what he wanted.

[Neven]

I'm not letting you post that Bellingcat stuff, Rob. Bellingcat started with a conclusion and then worked backwards, an example of bad journalism. The amount of victims and their position makes no sense at all if it was just chlorine, never mind the coincidence that the gas canister landed like it did.

[sidd]

Greenwald rips US media for warmongering lies:

"What we have here is classic Fake News – spread on Twitter, by U.S. officials and U.S. media stars – with the clear and malicious intent to start a war. But no western proponents of social media censorship will call for their accounts to be cancelled nor call for their posts to be deleted. That’s because “Fake News” and the war against it is strictly a means of combating propaganda by U.S. adversaries; the U.S. and its allies maintain extensive programs to spread Fake News online and none of those anti-Fake News crusaders call for those to be shut down."

"That’s not because U.S. media stars are ordered to do this. They don’t need to be ordered. They know propaganda is their job. More to the point, they are über-patriotic jingoists who revere U.S. officials "

https://theintercept.com/2019/03/10/nyts-expose-on-the-lies-about-burning-humanitarian-trucks-in-venezuela-shows-how-us-govt-and-media-spread-fake-news/

sidd

[Rob Dekker]

   

You have no evidence of who set the aid truck on fire and these photos indicate your guarimberos had a hand in it. pic.twitter.com/VsvMDo2XaS

    — Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) February 24, 2019

    .@marcorubio’s lie debunked: This video shows an opposition protester throwing a Molotov cocktail at the aid truck on the Francisco de Paula Santander bridge connecting Venezuela and Colombia. pic.twitter.com/4IgTt2u4pJ

    — Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) February 24, 2019

Those last two tweets – using video footage to debunk the lies spread by Marco Rubio, CNN and the U.S. Government – happen to be from a correspondent with RT America.

Please tell me: who was acting here as lying propagandists and agents of State TV, and who was acting like a journalist trying to understand and report the truth?

Specially I am asking Rob and Martin and Sterks for the answer to that question

Neven has just deleted my response to that question, as well as the OPCW response to the Syrian Douma chemical attack.

[Neven]

It wasn't a response to the question, Rob, and you already posted that comment in the Venezuela thread.

[Hefaistos]

Some new news related to BDS, The Lobby, Israel and the uptick in hyperbolic smear accusations about 'anti-Semitism' on social media and 'politician' circles etc etc

Netanyahu reminds the world about the truth and reality as it really is

“Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the Nation-State Law that we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, and them alone.”

Why do I think about 'racism'  and 'apartheid' when I read these quotes?

[Neven]

[Neven]

The cross-pollination is pretty astounding. But Corporate Democrats don't exist, of course.

[sidd]

Taibbi at rollingstone recalls the liars of yesteryear: amazing how many of the same beat the McCarthy drums today

"the multiple rounds of post-[Iraq] invasion deceptions that followed, issued by many of the same pols and press actors. These were designed to rewrite history in real time, creating new legends that have now lasted 16 years."
 
"It’s been forgotten this was actually a business-wide consensus, which included the enthusiastic participation of a blue-state intelligentsia."

"Exactly one major news organization refused to pick up pom-poms, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain. "

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/iraq-war-media-fail-matt-taibbi-812230/

sidd

[sidd]

Johnstone in no mood to take prisoners:  Never stop mocking them

"We must never let mainstream Democrats forget how crazy they got, how much time and energy they wasted, how very, very wrong they were and how very, very right we were."

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/03/22/the-mueller-report-is-in-they-were-wrong-we-were-right/

I'm not so sure. This is almost like the hate levelled toward Trump voters from some democrats. Neither side, in my experience, is totally crazy. Sure, they're all crazy about some things, but then, hell, so am I.

At the end of the day, in my neck of the woods, regardless of my neighbours' views on politics or religion or race or war or much else, we still help each other out. We raise each other's barns, fix each other's tractors, attend each other's christenings and weddings and festivals and funerals. We comfort each other in grief and we share in joy.

Sure they're all nuts, but about different things. And none are irredeemably evil and none irredeemably lost.

sidd

[sidd]

Morrow at city journal on editorial groupthink:

"Both papers [NYT,Wapo] have in effect declared a state of emergency because of Trump and have granted themselves the editorial equivalent of dictatorial powers ...  The newspaper becomes the Pequod: President Trump is the white whale."

" ... opinion and dogmatic speculation are the currency of politics and journalism. Facts have become elusive or even unnecessary ... the world is fluid and angry and ideological ... the new journalism—more theater than journalism, a slugfest of memes—is a lot easier to practice. Much of it, on either side, is little more than noise. "

https://www.city-journal.org/media-bias

sidd

[sidd]

Taibbi: Russiagate is the new WMD

"news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media. "

"The Special Prosecutor literally became a religious figure during the last few years"

"in a brutal irony everyone should have seen coming, the press has now handed Trump the mother of campaign issues heading into 2020. "

"Nothing Trump is accused of from now on by the press will be believed by huge chunks of the population, a group that (perhaps thanks to this story) is now larger than his original base. "

"There was never real gray area here. Either Trump is a compromised foreign agent, or he isn’t. If he isn’t, news outlets once again swallowed a massive disinformation campaign, only this error is many orders of magnitude more stupid than any in the recent past, WMD included. "

"As a purely journalistic failure, however, WMD was a pimple compared to Russiagate ...  it’s led to most journalists accepting a radical change in mission. We’ve become sides-choosers, obliterating the concept of the press as an independent institution whose primary role is sorting fact and fiction."

Read the whole thing:

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-million

sidd

[Neven]

Thank God for people like Taibbi, and I mean that. A prime example of good journalism.

[sidd]

Scheer interviews Gordon in his latest at Scheer Intelligence: Nuremberg on the Potomac

Gordon: "We have destroyed human life out of all proportion."

Gordon: "what they do to you in basic training is actually a slightly lighter version of what they do when they train torturers. "

Gordon: " especially among upper-class liberals in the United States, the objection to Trump is his manner, and his manner is crude and obnoxious, as you say. But what he’s really doing is not only continuing to kill people, and in fact increasing the number of drone strikes, for example, over the already great number that the Obama administration–

Sheer: "A man of impeccable manners. Barack Obama. I even feel that way about Bill Clinton. When Bill Clinton’s on television, I smile. I like him. He’s warm, he’s encouraging. And then I forget, he’s the guy that ended the welfare system"

Scheer: "American exceptionalism ... to my mind, is a really, it’s the most profound problem that American people have to face."

Gordon: "By definition, the United States is a country that does not torture. Therefore, whatever it is that you are observing, it cannot be torture, because that would be a logical contradiction, because we are the nation that doesn’t do that. And it’s almost impossible to enter into that understanding of the world, because no amount of evidence that you can present to the person who believes that is going to break that worldview. And so American exceptionalism allows us not only to have military bases in over 100 countries around the world; not only to conduct secret wars that the people in this country don’t even know about ... This whole idea that we are a unique bearer of human rights and democracy in the world–it’s very hard to break, because it’s a concealed, hermetically sealed worldview that people imbibe in grade school. And they imbibe it as they grow up, and it takes a lot of effort to break through."

Scheer: "most of the terrible wars since World War II have been fought under democrats, and financed enthusiastically."

Gordon: " It’s no accident that the reservists who were downstairs at Abu Ghraib, they were from West Virginia, and most of them in their civilian life were prison guards."

Gordon: "torture actually is a red thread that runs through the entire history of the United States, beginning with the Native American population ... Slavery itself would not have been as successful as it was at allowing the amassing of capital ... unless, the farmers figured out, they were caused physical pain. And it was the use, the concerted, intentional, well-documented use of physical pain in the cotton fields a century later that forced people to develop a physical technology of their bodies that allowed them, in the course of 40 years, to multiply by eight times the amount of cotton a human being could pick in a day, because the alternative was to have the skin taken off your back with a whip."

Scheer: " we don’t care about the people we bomb, and we don’t care–they’re expendable, they’re throwaway people. You want them out of sight, out of mind. It’s very deliberate ... the wars don’t make sense. And growing that cotton that way didn’t ultimately make sense. And slavery didn’t make sense. Except–except if we have a barbaric part of our nature, if we have a need to exploit others. Not just for economic reasons; if power corrupts. "

Listen or read: Scheer is a jewel

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-u-s-deserves-its-own-nuremberg-trials/

sidd

[sidd]

Hedges at truthdig on Mueller and media:

"It further erodes and may prove fatal to the credibility of a press that has steadfastly rendered most of the country invisible and functions as little more than an array of gossiping courtiers to the elites."

"The press endlessly repeated such allegations while ignoring the expanding social inequality and suffering of a country where half the population lives in poverty, as well as the collapse of our democratic institutions. These facts, not Russian manipulation, saw enraged American voters elect a demagogue ..."

Read at:

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/mueller-report-ends-a-shameful-period-for-the-press/

sidd

[sidd]

Bivens at medium writes a requiem for the media:

"It smacks of the famous Senator Joseph McCarthy speeches in the 1950s: “I have in my hand a list of 205 [or 57, or 81]…”

And yet no one ever seemed to mind."

"I was not surprised to see politicians up on their hind legs, panting mindlessly about Russians. But to see journalists at CNN, The New York Times, NPR, MSNBC, competing to be even dumber … hot on the trail of a non-story, recklessly discarding fairness and professionalism … dragging us gleefully down every rabbit hole … applauding the collateral damage to bystanders, as they indulge their collective rage against Donald Trump, their hysterical certainty that he must be a Russian asset … What can I say? It’s been heart-breaking."

"Disappointed? I guess, as my friend Taibbi has noted, it would have been an immense relief had the U.S. president been found to be a high-level traitor. We could have all brought picnic lunches to his execution.

Right before the species-ending war with Russia."

" MSNBC reported, our intelligence services had intercepted Russian communications (!) revealing the sounds were “some kind of microwave weapon,” one so sophisticated that our top government minds were at a loss ...Crickets. Caribbean crickets ...  did MSNBC apologize, or retract? Crickets."

"What happened to us?"

"I suspect, however, that these two-plus years of journalistic malpractice — a politically-motivated Red Scare at a time when we don’t even have any Reds anymore, just Russians — has locked in his second term."

Read:

https://medium.com/@mattbivens_34439/russiagate-the-great-tragic-comedy-of-modern-journalism-fd2a451aaa25

sidd

[sidd]

Taibbi at rollingstone: new myths for old

"After all the insistence that we put our trust in St. Mueller because he “knows all,” the new story suddenly is that Mueller all along didn’t know and didn’t try to know."

" By not delivering the desired goods, Mueller is now being described as “The God that failed Democrats,” by Edward Luce of the Financial Times, who makes the shockingly belated observation that the Democrats putting all their hopes in the “magic bullet” of the Mueller investigation “postponed the harder, less glamorous work the party needs to be doing.”"

"This manipulative brand of news programming preyed upon the emotional devastation of liberal audiences"

"All you had to do was keep turning in, because the good news could come any minute now! The bombshell is coming! Never mind that this is causing our profits to soar. Don’t wonder about our motives, even though outlets like MSNBC saw a 62 percent bump in viewership in the first full year of Russiagate coverage. Just keep tuning in. The walls are closing in!"

"a member of the media looking sad that Democrats would have to resort to actual democracy to win the White House back."

"They’ve trained audiences to expect bombshells. What will they sell now?"

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/taibbi-russia-investigation-conclusions-813171/

sidd

[sidd]

Martin at wsws reads editorial pages so i dont have to: Thanks, Martin

"As the Washington Post put it, “The investigations into Trump’s acts both as a candidate and as president will now move into a more freewheeling phase, as multiple congressional committees and federal prosecutors’ offices look into a vast constellation of alleged misdeeds, including Russian efforts to interfere with the US election, Trump’s finances, his inaugural committee’s fundraising, his family foundation, his business operations after he assumed office and his alleged marital infidelities and payoffs related to them.” "

" In a remarkable editorial Saturday, the New York Times declared, “Mr. Trump is sure to be under investigation for the rest of his term in office, and probably in court for the rest of his life.” "

WaPo and NYT doubling down. He gets some digs in at the Democrats, too:

"The Democratic Party has made no appeal to popular opposition to the Trump administration’s ultra-right program of tax cuts and deregulation for corporate America, cuts in social programs, a massive military build-up, and persecution of immigrants. This is because the Democratic Party generally supports these policies and would, were it in office, continue them largely unchanged."

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/03/26/muel-m26.html

sidd

[Neven]

Bad journalism. Has anybody here changed his opinion on Rachel Maddow in the past couple of months? I used to think she was awesome, but she has sunk so low. Not as low as Keith Olbermann though. That guy lost his mind because of Trump.

Jimmy Dore: "See, with WMDs in Iraq, it actually led to a real war that they wanted. So, it worked. But with Russiagate, ehhh... Well, I guess what they really wanted, was a distraction from the Democrats' loss to Donald Trump, a political novice and game show host. How did they lose to him? So, it actually did fulfill its purpose."

[SteveMDFP]

Bad journalism. Has anybody here changed his opinion on Rachel Maddow in the past couple of months? I used to think she was awesome, but she has sunk so low. Not as low as Keith Olbermann though. That guy lost his mind because of Trump.

Jimmy Dore: "See, with WMDs in Iraq, it actually led to a real war that they wanted. So, it worked. But with Russiagate, ehhh... Well, I guess what they really wanted, was a distraction from the Democrats' loss to Donald Trump, a political novice. and game show host. How did they lose to him? So, it actually did fulfill its purpose."

 

Dore is being obtuse.  We don't have the Mueller report, we have the Barr summary of the report.
Mueller's grand jury is still going on, "robustly."
Many of his investigative leads have been handed off to other prosecutors.
Ratings aren't relevant.  If they were, the Kardashians would be more important than climate change.

The journalists who have been on the various Trump scandals aren't, as I see it, warmongering for war with Russia, they're trying to follow in the footsteps of Woodward and Bernstein.  W+B are seen (rightly, I think) as hero-journalists who were instrumental in bringing down a corrupt and criminal President through dogged, tireless journalism.  A whole generation of journalists were inspired to their profession by that legacy.  If some of these journalists try a bit too hard, I think it's understandable.

[sidd]

"The journalists who have been on the various Trump scandals aren't, as I see it, warmongering "

Agreed. Warmongering is not their primary motive.

They are after something much more important. Money. Remind me again how much Maddow's contract is worth ?

But don't get me wrong. If warmongering makes 'em money, sure, they give it a whirl.

sidd

[sidd]

Now here is a piece that encapsulates a great deal about the USA today: Joe Bageant would have had fun

https://apnews.com/2eaf8fcf7c3042c1b15d81530c78f350

Many questions arise:

1) " had driven 13 hours without stopping "

boy, he must get great mileage. what was he driving ? extra gas tank ? also how did he pee ? diaper or bottle ?

2) "being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm."

Would he have been prohibited if he didn't have a firearm ? How about crossbow ?

3) "was going 130 mph "

Now i really want to know what he was driving. At those speeds you might need two extra tanks to make it 13 hrs.

4) "interstate to be closed for nearly four hours."

Now that's a mess. Amazon and UPS slaves gotta hustle harder.

5) "he was traveling to the White House and that he was running late to a dinner he was invited to by Trump. The suspect also said he had to travel to the Pentagon “to meet with the leader of the Army to return a phone,” according to the complaint."

Well, well, well. That's the next Maddow story.

6) "the “special hearing” also told Charron to remove Satterfield’s gun from its holster "

Did he succeed ? Don't laugh, i seen that happen.

7) "Charron admitted using methamphetamine recently"

You don't say ?

8) "Charron was ordered held either on $10,000 cash bond or upon Trump’s signature. "

Say what ? Even with a Preston County, WV Magistrate ...

That boy drove from KC. That's probably 70 but i cant see him taking 70 at 130mph thru OH and making it without this being an ohio headline. Ohio freeway cops have no sense of humor. So mebbe off 70 at St Louis and 64 across, up on 79 to 68 where we was finally pulled over in Bruceton Mills. Nine hundred mile, 13 hrs, thats about 70mph, mebbe he coulda made it thru ohio. But it's hard to average 70 or more.

A great many people in the midwest have the same first question as in my list: what was he driving ?

Sad, ain't it ?

sidd

[sidd]

Taibbi at rollingstone: media still deluded

"The 2016 campaign season brought to the surface awesome levels of political discontent. After the election, instead of wondering where that anger came from, most of the press quickly pivoted to a new tale about a Russian plot to attack our Democracy."

"This narrative contradicted everything I’d seen traveling across America in my two years of covering the campaign. The overwhelming theme of that race, long before anyone even thought about Russia, was voter rage at the entire political system."

" ... the gift the end of Russiagate might give Trump by allowing him to spend 2020 peeing from a great height on the national press corps."

" Trump was gunning for votes in both parties. The core story he told on the stump was one of system-wide corruption, in which there was little difference between Republicans and Democrats."

"his general pitch, which claimed most Americans were struggling because both parties were feeding from the same campaign-finance teat, pimping themselves out to huge job-exporting corporate donors. Which, let’s face it, is more than a little true. "

"Perhaps just by luck, Trump was tuned in to the fact that the triumvirate of ruling political powers in America – the two parties, the big donors and the press – were so unpopular with large parts of the population that he could win in the long haul by attracting their ire, even if he was losing battles on the way."

"The subtext of Halperin’s pieces was that the Gang of 500 decided elections ... It’s hard to understand how it never occurred to Halperin or anyone else that people might be grossed out by the concept of 500 self-appointed guardians of democracy deciding the presidency for 300 million people."

"Trump would already be president-elect before he was taken seriously as an electoral phenomenon. "

"Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its complicity in what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming. Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into the camera and say, “I guess people hated us so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump.” "

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/taibbi-trump-russia-mueller-investigation-815060/

sidd

[sidd]

Taibbi in two good interviews, Katie Halper with Aaron Mate and a longer conversation with michael tracey.

Taibbi: And to me it seemed the only way we could possibly lose with the public in a contest with someone like Trump is if we completely abdicated the standards of the profession and did what he accused us of doing, which would be politicizing our jobs and using trumped-up evidence to try to make him look bad.

Mate:those who profited off of the Russiagate narrative, like the failed neoliberal, Democratic elites, who needed an excuse to cover for the fact that they lost to Donald Trump; FBI intelligence officials who opened up this investigation on very specious grounds and who suspected Trump, in part, because he was saying nice things about Vladimir Putin.

Taibbi: The overwhelming voter sentiment everywhere had to do with the rejection of the international global consensus. You saw votes like Brexit, a complete repudiation of a number of things. But Russiagate as a political solution, as a response to that electoral phenomenon, has been extraordinarily effective. Because what it’s done is it’s completely changed the attitude of a huge portion of the population, which now sees the international security services, the global consensus, as the only saviors who are going to rescue them from the evil Trump. And therefore, we have to pursue this case and celebrate authoritarianism and celebrate the FBI and CIA and their heroism, and the European Union and NATO. This story has had some benefit from a propaganda perspective as well.

Mate:  fundamentally undermines the idea of democratic government, where it’s the elected president, whether you like that person or not, who’s supposed to make the decision, not unelected intelligence bureaucrats.

Taibbi: All propaganda works on multiple levels, but there has to be an emotional component in order for it to really sell. You have to be able to turn people’s minds off when it comes to this stuff. So the combination at work here was the emotional devastation of liberal audiences. People were crushed when Trump was elected. People likened it to 9/11 or losing a family member.

Mate: These people have invested so much into it that they’re forced to double down, and they’re already doing it. They can’t claim to be taken seriously as journalists. They’re basically, at this point, propagandists on this issue.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/journalists-matt-taibbi-and-aaron-mate-explain-how-the-russiagate-narrative-helped-trump/

The Tracey interview is also good, they bring up two questions that i have seen few others ask:

1) The genesis of the investigation is still unknown. Taibbi and Matre are uncertain, but they point out that the UK, through robert hannigan to josh brennan was a very early player.

2) Why were the media so submissive to the russiagate propaganda ? Taibbi says that he knows people in the business who were just cowed by the massive hate directed towards Taibbi, Greenwald, Mate, Tracey and the few who questioned. My feeling is that if you cant take the heat, you need to get outta the kitchen. If they can't do their job, find another line of business.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/matt-taibbi-on-25796637

sidd

[sidd]

van Buren at the american conservative looks at genesis of russiagate.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-primordial-ooze-of-the-collusion-conspiracy/

I'm not so sure. I don't think the FBI was running Halper, it was another actor.  I think the UK connection was seminal. And it entirely ignores Mifsud, whose allegiances remain murky. But read the whole thing.

sidd
 

[Klondike Kat]

“What if everything you know is fake?”

That’s the subtitle of my new book, “The Media Matrix,” which is an attack on what the president calls Fake News, but more importantly a recurring question about whether any of us is smart enough to penetrate the disinformation campaign being waged 24/7 by not just the mainstream media, but also by the “information technology” that has become the very environment in which we live. That includes the internet, social media, Wikipedia, Google, cable news, late-night comedy, talking heads, Hollyweird and, yes, the morning newspaper.

The ability to discern what we used to quaintly call “truth” from out of the information matrix that surrounds us is undoubtedly the primary survival characteristic of the next generation. With so many competing and contradictory sources of information — and an education system that devalues logic and critical thinking in favor of political correctness — only the most persistent and skeptical news consumers can be confident that they have an understanding that approximates “truth.”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/04/01/what_if_everything_you_know_is_fake_139906.html

Funny.  I just read that article, before I saw your post.  Makes you think.

[wili]

KK, think what?

Any article that talks about fake journalism that doesn't start with the utterly consistent falsehoods coming out of Faux News is simply right wing propaganda. And lo and behold, a quick search reveals that the author is...surprise surprise...a right wing propagandist!

It isn't hard most of the time to figure this shit out. I guess mostly people don't because they're too lazy, perhaps? Or just don't care?

[wili]

sidd, what's worth reading about it? It's just another tired rehashing of the standard, rightwing conspiracy theories.