How "News" Media Lie

by Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org

I happened to be reading at Huffington Post on March 6th their truthful top-of-homepage news-report:

Trump Forced To Water Down Executive Order On Immigration: The new order leaves out many of the most forceful points from the original one.”

…and I saw there also a March 3rd headline regarding a news-event that I happened to have researched in depth (as will be summarized below), this headline being:

Syria Rebels Want Trump To Know They’re The Ones Fighting ISIS: The Free Syrian Army is hopeful for more support despite the president’s praise of Bashar Assad.”

That was from HuffPo’s reporter, Akbar Shahid Ahmed, who writes:

Here are the facts, which I had reported and documented at the end of 2016, headlining “How Obama Overrode Kerry’s Agreements with Russia”. I documented there that on September 17th, Obama’s forces had bombed the Syrian Army at Der Zor, which brought to an end the U.S. participation in the peace-negotiations on Syria, “the sabotaging-event, which naturally caused Putin to instruct [Russia’s Foreign Minister] Lavrov to terminate all discussions with [Secretary of State] Kerry, because it displayed Obama’s unwavering determination to defeat Russia.”
Back on December 11th, I had headlined what had led up to this sabotaging-event: “Obama & Erdogan Move ISIS from Iraq to Syria, to Weaken Assad”, and I documented — based on reliable reporting in many countries, including a Turkish government site which even acknowledged — that Obama was working with Erdogan to leave an escape-route for Iraq’s ISIS terrorists in Mosul to relocate safely into Syria — to the key city of Palmyra via Der Zor — and so retake Palmyra from Syrian government forces. This required first that Syrian government forces be ousted from Der Zor which would be en-route to Palmyra. And this — Obama’s cooperation with Erdogan in their joint effort to overthrow Assad — is what actually had “lost Palmyra to ISIS,” as the (U.S.-Saudi-Qatari-Turkey created) ‘Free Syrian Army’ source that Huffington Post was quoted on March 3rd accusing against Assad. It wasn’t any failure by Assad’s forces; it was instead the success of the U.S.-Turkish operation — the operation that included Obama’s bombing Syria’s army at Der Zor (which then was promptly retaken by ISIS).
It’s not because “Assad’s coalition has focused most of its attacks on the Free Syrian Army.” Assad’s forces were at Der Zor, and in Palmyra, after having retaken both cities from ISIS — and now, because of Obama and Erdogan, ISIS again controlled both Syrian cities. HuffPo’s reporters are required to use anti-Russian — and this also includes anti-Syrian — sources for their ‘reporting’ (or propaganda). The solidly documented truth is that Obama and Erdogan were aiming to oust Assad; they were assisting ISIS in both Der Zor and Palmyra (and actually all along the route from Mosul to Palmyra).
Furthermore, as I also had reported (and in this recent in-depth article documented extensively), “Russia now runs the peace process to end Syria’s War,” and that war has actually been between the U.S. aristocracy versus Russia, and not only (nor even mainly) between Bashar al-Assad versus ‘the rebels’, who are almost totally controlled by Al Qaeda, which in Syria (under the name “Al Nusra”) is financed heavily by the Sauds who own Saudi Arabia, and by the Thanis who own Qatar, and armed largely by the U.S. government, and have freely brought new jihadist recruits into Syria mainly through Turkey.
Using liars as sources is routine in the press, but it’s done because the people who control those ‘news’media want their public to believe those lies; it’s not to be blamed only on the reporters and ‘news’-editors whom they hire. The ‘reporters’ and editors are merely doing their job. (That’s how they keep their jobs.)
As a mere blogger, Erik Wemple, headlined on 30 November 2016,

Lifelong Beltway media guy Jim VandeHei calls media a ‘scam’”

…and he linked to the euphemistic admission of this, by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen themselves, that “Media is broken — and too often a scam.” They were promising to provide an alternative, as they promised their readers (soft-peddling the harsh reality): “content they can trust — delivered way, way more efficiently. No bias. No nonsense.”
They think they can deliver it and make a profit doing so. That would be a novelty. It would certainly be a terrific thing to achieve, just as a perpetual-motion machine would be, but perhaps just as likely — which is to say: not. (And, of course, ‘non-profit’ and government ‘news’media are just as much controlled by the aristocracy, which controls the government. Anyone who trusts the ‘news’media has to be a person of faith, because only on that basis can it be trusted.)

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

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