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Washington Post reporter spreads blacklist of independent journalist sites

by Pam Martens and Russ Martens, December 1, 2016, via Wall Street on Parade

Craig Timberg, a Washington Post reporter with an interesting history (which we’ll get to shortly), doubled down last night with a new article suggesting that Congressional legislation may be coming to further crack down on independent journalists not properly adhering to the dogma of Washington.

 craig-timberg-washington-post-reporter-interviews-googles-eric-schmidt-at-the-cato-institute  Craig Timberg (right) of the Washington Post Interviews Google’s Eric Schmidt at the Koch Brothers’ Financed Cato Institute.

Timberg has become the deserving piñata of writers like Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, Ben Norton and Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, Max Blumenthal of AlterNet, Robert Parry at Common Dreams and numerous other writers at alternative media.
Timberg and the Washington Post, which is owned by the billionaire CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, are being stridently called out as McCarthyites for an article published on Thanksgiving Day that cited unnamed “experts” at a shadowy group called PropOrNot to smear 200 alternative media sites as tools of Russia. The blacklist included some of the most informed and courageous voices on the Internet like Naked Capitalism, Truthout, CounterPunch, and Truthdig, where the brilliant Chris Hedges, part of a New York Times team that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002, regularly asks the uncomfortable questions — like this one: “When we look back on this sad, pathetic period in American history we will ask the questions all who have slid into despotism ask. Why were we asleep? How did we allow this to happen? Why didn’t we see it coming? Why didn’t we resist?”
Theories abound as to why Timberg would write such a shoddily sourced article and smear some of the best writing and thinking on the Internet. One line of thought is that corporate media is struggling to survive financially and needs to take out its competition. Others see something far more nefarious. Max Blumenthal sums it up this way at AlterNet:

“Fake news and Russian propaganda have become the great post-election moral panic, a creeping Sharia-style conspiracy theory for shell-shocked liberals. Hoping to punish the dark foreign forces they blame for rigging the election, many of these insiders have latched onto a McCarthyite campaign that calls for government investigations of a wide array of alternative media outlets.”

The Black Agenda Report’s Executive Editor, Glen Ford, builds on Blumenthal’s theory, writing:

“Had Clinton won the election, she would have begun a campaign of repression against the Left along the same national security lines as the Washington Post article, with that paper probably leading the propaganda charge.

“The Obama administration and Post owner Bezos are quite tight, politically. Back in 2013, when Obama was still trying to reach a ‘grand bargain’ with the Republicans in Congress, he proposed lower corporate tax rates as a way to spur economic growth, and showcased the Amazon distribution center in Chattanooga, Tennessee, as a model — despite the deplorable working conditions, low pay (less than $12 an hour, to start) and heavy use of part-time and contract workers at the plant. His White House economist, Gene Sperling, told the press, ‘We should be looking for other avenues of progress, other grand bargains that can be for middle class job growth.’ Bezos closed the deal on the Washington Post the same year. His paper is clearly the go-to media for the Democrats’ brand of fascism, which is crazily cloaked as an anti-fascist crusade.”

The Black Agenda Report was also listed on the 200-website blacklist as a tool of Russia.
The Thanksgiving Day article by Timberg currently has 14,800 reader comments, many heaping ridicule on Timberg and the Post. A comment from “dmarney” illustrates the intellectual savvy of the Post’s readership:
dmarney 11/29/2016 6:42 PM EST

“A fake news story about fake news sourced to fake researchers writing in a now-fake news organization that once brought down a sitting US president with investigative journalism back in the day when cynics still ran the place.

“You can’t make this stuff up.”

Another commenter with the name, Room V, writes:

“Now WaPo reduces itself to being merely a McCarthyite rag. The black list produced by the shadowy group Propornot and shamelessly promoted by this former newspaper includes online publications such as truthout, truthdig, and consortiumnews, each of which practices journalism to a degree no longer seen at this location. People should turn their backs on the preachers of the New McCarthyism.”

Many of the articles trashing Timberg refer to him as a “technology reporter” for the Post because that’s currently the description under his articles. His background is far more complicated. For starters, his agent, Gillian MacKenzie, states on her web site that she “was a five year term member of The Council on Foreign Relations.” The Co-Chair of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is Robert Rubin, the Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton who played a major role in the deregulation of Wall Street and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act which set in motion the historic financial collapse in 2008. CFR’s Corporate Program includes approximately 200 multi-national corporations.
Timberg’s official bio shows that his earlier tenure at the Washington Post included a stint as Bureau Chief in Johannesburg where he covered political crises in Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast and Nigeria. He later became Deputy Editor for National Security and finally moved to his current post as Technology Correspondent. But when we say “technology,” we’re not talking about laptops. In this 2013 C-Span video, Timberg talks about facial recognition technology being used by law enforcement for surveillance. In this 2014 C-Span video, Timberg interviews Google Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, on the revelations of the NSA’s mass surveillance program. The interview is conducted at the right-wing Cato Institute – a nonprofit that was secretly under the partial ownership of the Koch Brothers for decades.
Timberg’s father, the late Robert Timberg, had been a political writer at the Baltimore Sun and author of two books on the Vietnam War. The earlier work, “The Nightingale’s Song,” traced the lives of five of Timberg’s fellow Naval Academy graduates: Senator John McCain; Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North; Navy Secretary and Senator Jim Webb; and National Security Advisers John Poindexter and Robert McFarlane. (North, Poindexter and McFarlane were central figures in the Iran-Contra scandal.)
Wall Street On Parade has its own theory about these McCarthyite attacks coming on the heels of the discrediting of the Democratic National Committee as a propaganda outlet for continuity government in Washington and a saboteur of Senator Bernie Sanders’ genuinely populist campaign for President. Many of the web sites that made it onto the blacklist were those that carried in-depth reports on the WikiLeaks’ emails that opened a heretofore closed window on the Wall Street corruption inside the Democratic Party.
When Wall Street On Parade broke the bombshell story from the WikiLeaks emails showing that an executive from the collapsing, corrupt and massively bailed out Wall Street mega bank, Citigroup, was making key hiring decisions for President Obama’s first term, we expected to see the story quickly move to the front page of the Washington Post.  Instead, it has yet to see the light of day there.  The same is true for the New York Times.  Both the Post and Times editorial boards endorsed the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, for President.  An article documenting with actual emails how Wall Street continued to control the reins of power in Washington, even during an epic economic crash it had created, was apparently censored by both papers.
WikiLeaks, which made these emails available in the public interest, was included on the 200-website blacklist. The Washington Post and New York Times, which withheld this blockbuster story from their readers in an outrageous form of censorship, did not make the cut as a propaganda tool.
© 2016 Wall Street On Parade.
 
 

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Terje M
Terje M
Dec 12, 2016 5:22 AM

Off-guardian is off to international fame. I came across this leader in a MSM Swedish newspaper, nominally social-democratic, which takes the time to sneer at Off-guardian. A leftist site that writes something nice of Castro – how inconceivable!
The Putin-left has also their own alternative media world, [like the extreme right]..
the site off-guardian often shows up in this torrent. The site writes that it was created as a reaction to the western medias distorted view of the wars in Syria, Ukraine and Libya. The articles is a mix of anti-Hillary, articles critical of Obama and many articles defending Putin’s act in the Ukraine and Syria. But Off-guardian describes itself as a leftist site and recently published a panegyric of the recently dead Fidel Castro. It is also interesting that Off-guardian, like the extreme right sites, regularly spread hateful articles of the Jewish American/Bulgarian [sic] financier George Soros…
and so forth
I wonder if sites like Off-guardian and Moon of Alabama are subject to extra vitriol because you are so obviously independent of any state. It makes you all the more dangerous to the official narrative.

Kit
Admin
Kit
Dec 12, 2016 4:53 PM
Reply to  Terje M

Hi Terje, would it be possible to get a link or source to that article?

Sav
Sav
Dec 20, 2016 10:19 PM
Reply to  Terje M

Soros is originally from Hungary. Maybe that Swedish newspaper should get someone who does research.

rtj1211
rtj1211
Dec 9, 2016 1:20 PM

It is the new propaganda line, that of ‘spreading propaganda’.
MI5 is full of it right now. I would very much like to see psychological profiles of MI5 leaders and minions, as it is a near certainty that few if any of them will be emotionally integrated. I would like the death sentence introduced for the vast smount of snooping done not for national security but for private sector gain and I would like an audit of all MI5/6 surveillance of undergraduate students published , as 99.99% of it is worthless intrusions into innocent young people’s lives.
Lest non UK people are unaware, Oxford and Cambridge are both infested with spooks, the Master of Pembroke College was/is Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6, obviously parachuted in to continue the out of control unaccountable behaviours of the fruity public school communities.
It is also virtually impossible to become a consultant doctor in London without being a spook.
I ask you to consider the likely ability of medics engaged in spookery to put the emotional, spiritual and mental health of their patients first when they adhere to organisations for whom MK Ultra and similar programmes were core activities of the security services…
Hopefully, like me, you will come to demand a list of professions for which it is a life sentence in jail for entering whilst working for the spying fascists who purport to defend us but in reality organise false flag events to kill us…..

Vaska
Vaska
Dec 9, 2016 5:32 PM
Reply to  rtj1211

Spooks in universities is an old McCarthy-Era ploy, and it never went away. You mention consulting doctors in London; the American spook who tried to recruit me as a graduate student at UC Berkeley in the early 1980s was a doctor at the university’s medical centre. I doubt that’s changed either.

labrebisgalloise
labrebisgalloise
Dec 7, 2016 9:37 PM

The BBC are promoting a story tonight – “Pope Francis condemns media disinformation,” and quickly linking the holy father’s remarks to “fake news” “social media” – you get the idea. Here is the story.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38244274
Absolutely nowhere to they even begin to intimate that he might actually be talking about the Rupert Murdoch press, the Wapo, The Daily Mail , The Guardian or even, God forbid, the good old BBC itself. For the record, here is what Pope Francis actually said.
“The communications media have a very great responsibility. Nowadays they have in their hands the possibility and the capacity to form opinion: they can form a good or a bad opinion. The means of communication are the builders of a society. In and of themselves, they are made to build, to interchange, to fraternise, to make us think, to educate. In themselves they are positive. It is obvious that, given that we are all sinners, also the media can – we who use the media, I am using a means of communication here – become harmful. And the communications media have their temptations. They can be tempted by calumny, and therefore used to slander, to sully people, especially in the world of politics. They can be used as a means of defamation: every person has the right to a good reputation, but perhaps in their previous life, or ten years ago, they had a problem with justice, or a problem in their family life, and bringing this to light is serious and harmful; it can annul a person. In slander we tell a lie about a person; in defamation, we leak a document, as we say in Argentina, “Se hace un carpetazo” – and we uncover something that is true, but already in the past, and which has already been paid for with a jail sentence, with a fine, or whatever. There is no right to this. This is a sin and it is harmful. A thing that can do great damage to the information media is disinformation: that is, faced with any situation, saying only a part of the truth, and not the rest. This is disinformation. Because you, to the listener or the observer, give only half the truth, and therefore it is not possible to make a serious judgement. Disinformation is probably the greatest damage that the media can do, as opinion is guided in one direction, neglecting the other part of the truth. And then, I believe that the media should be very clear, very transparent, and not fall prey – without offence, please – to the sickness of coprophilia, which is always wanting to communicate scandal, to communicate ugly things, even though they may be true. And since people have a tendency towards the sickness of coprophagia, it can do great harm. Thus, I would say that there are these four temptations. But they are builders of opinion and can construct, and do immense good, immense.”

Brian Harry
Brian Harry
Dec 8, 2016 4:07 AM

“Pope Francis condemns media disinformation”. I’m calling it “Gobbledigook”. A rambling meaningless piece of rubbish. The Pope also refers to “perhaps in a previous life”? I thought you either went to Heaven or Hell when this one was over???
The Pope is part of the Status Quo, and anything he says should be treated with bemused contempt. I don’t recall the Pope appealing for the USA to restrain the carpet bombing of Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian peasants in the ’60’s and ’70’s, when millions died at the hands of God’s Christian soldiers.
Not so much as a peep out of him when his priests, Bishops and Cardinals etc were violating innocent children, too young to even understand what was happening to them.
When I see the Pope purging the vile human filth from the “World’s largest Paedophile Sanctuary”, maybe I might give him the time of day, but. probably not. (Confession. I was raised as a Catholic, but now want nothing to do with them, or their God.)

pretzelattack
pretzelattack
Dec 8, 2016 5:30 AM
Reply to  Brian Harry

those were different popes.

Brian Harry
Brian Harry
Dec 8, 2016 8:38 AM
Reply to  pretzelattack

“those were different popes”………You’re kidding me…….?
So……..when “pope’s” die…….their actions are completely absolved?
Wake Up!…..The “Pope” is no better than Jimmy Swaggart………These people are “Salesmen” …who sell you “Hocus Pocus”
And, just like the Scientologists, and other “Religions”…They run TAX FREE organisations(and in the case of the Catholic Church)…..They are completely Excised from the World’s Legal System……………Wake UP !!

Brian Harry
Brian Harry
Dec 8, 2016 8:48 AM
Reply to  Brian Harry

……my apologies for being SO emphatic………

Arrby
Arrby
Dec 8, 2016 6:58 AM
Reply to  Brian Harry

If you compare Christianity with media, then you would have a section of Christianity that is false and a section that is an alternative to that. One would be powerful and one would be, in a worldly sense, much less powerful. Christendom (so named by the widely maligned Jehovah’s Witnesses) is the former section of Christendom, namely the one that is powerful. It aligns itself with the secular realm that it’s supposed to try to keep on the straight and narrow. The kings of the earth, namely those political ruling classes with whom commercial and religious (all denominations) authorities work and rule over the people possess power and influence that the Christians who work with them, as collaborators rather than spiritual guides, desire for themselves. And until now, they have succeeded in acquiring that. Because they are in that position of close collaboration with the fascist ruling classes, working against the best interests of the people and against God’s will, they in that way rule, jointly, with the political classes who in turn take their direction, and, often, marching orders, from the corporate world. They are therefore a kingdom, as the Christian Bible states. They are Christendom. The alternative Christian viewpoint is represented in a minority of Christians who expose that arrangement and reality – and are attacked for it, of course.
Many otherwise progressive minded folks know Christendom’s Christianity only. They don’t even see the real thing (in which there are no false teachings about heaven [which isn’t a place where all good people go] and hell [which doesn’t exist]. And when they go after Christendom’s leaders and denounce actions by it’s members, they make no distinctions and that is always hurtful to the few Christians who are now identified with the spiritual lawbreakers.
Readers here – just possibly – might be interested to know that this Pope has baggage, as Robert Parry himself (tries to) discuss (http://bit.ly/2h8HUtQ).

Schlüter
Schlüter
Dec 7, 2016 8:27 PM

McCarthy lives on! They want this to come true:
„A Quotation We Should Never Forget!“ https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2016/08/09/a-quotation-we-should-never-forget/
Regards

Brian Harry
Brian Harry
Dec 7, 2016 7:08 PM

“200-website blacklist”
Is it possible to get a list of the 200(unacceptable Web Sites) so we can visit them in future, rather than waste our time reading ‘traditional, MSM’ news?

mohandeer
mohandeer
Dec 7, 2016 6:37 PM

Reblogged this on Worldtruth.

Greg Bacon
Greg Bacon
Dec 7, 2016 6:30 PM

Any news outlet or blog that made the list should feel proud, so ‘way to go,’ OFFG! BTW, if you notice traffic dropping severely in the coming weeks, thank some butthead at the NSA or Google, who will try valiantly to resurrect the dead MSM.