WaPo, CNN pile on in attempt to discredit American Herald Tribune
Who wins and who loses in the fake news sweepstakes?
Prof. Anthony Hall
In responding to an attack on a media venue about which I care a lot, this Canadian from Alberta Canada is being pulled into the swamp. I find myself showering repeatedly to try to wash away the scum from the quagmire created by CNN and the Editorial Board of the Washington Post. These media operations have decided to band together as protagonists in a smear campaign aimed at discrediting American Herald Tribune.
AHT is a news site that I helped get off the ground beginning in 2015 when I agreed to become Editor in Chief of the small but exceptionally lively Internet publication. In wrongfully accusing AHT, CNN and Washington Post are adding to the scale of a wide constituency that is coming to the conclusion that these media operations are serial manufacturers of fake news.
In doing research into the antics of the two media ventures I came across the story of a well-publicized move by a member of the Tennessee Legislature to have CNN and Washington Post legally reprimanded. Representative Micah Van Huss formulated a resolution asserting “the State of Tennessee recognizes CNN and Washington Post as fake news and part of the media wing of the Democratic Party.” The text of Resolution 779 continues,
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that we condemn them [CNN and Washington Post] for denigrating our citizens and implying they are weak-minded followers instead of people exercising their rights that our veterans paid for with their blood.
I see something new in this formal enactment in a US Legislature of such severe animosity to mainstream media. New too is the decision to divide mainstream venues in the United States into partisan publicity networks closely connected to one of the two major political parties. These developments have ominous implications.
In prior times it seemed that a major function of mass communications in the USA was to create and marshal popular support for the invasions of foreign countries. These days the agenda has widened to include preparing the conceptual ground for civil war within the United States.
The promotion of the conditions for civil war are unfolding concurrently with a new stage of the campaign to pull the United States into war with Iran.
This agenda was advanced in the opening days of the 2020s when Donald Trump shocked the world by immediately claiming credit for the grotesque drone assassination in Baghdad of top officials in both the Iraqi and Iranian governments. The assassinations extended to members of the entourage travelling with them.
This graphic proof that US Commander In Chief, Donald Trump, had gone rogue was followed by perhaps the largest, most solemn, most public and most extended funeral I can remember. As the funeral procession went between eight cities in Iraq and Iran, there was a huge outpouring of heart-felt emotion as people turned out by the millions to commemorate the life and martyrdom of General Qassem Soleimani.
Soon after the funeral the Facebook Corporation provided one of the indicators that the US war machine was being revved up by dehumanizing the possible future targets of mass murder by the US Armed Forces. Those who follow the machinations of Facebook closely will understand the social media giant has been successfully recruited as an instrument of militarized propaganda for the Israeli and US governments.
The Facebook crew removed posts that in words or in pictures expressed grief for the loss of General Soleimani or expressed any sort of positive recognition of the values he embodied throughout his life.
In a world of many armed forces and many career soldiers, it seemed for a brief moment that a wide diversity of people on all sides of numerous military divisions could agree on something. Many individuals found in the persona of the departed Qassem Soleimani an embodiment of the universal qualities residing in martial dignity and steadfastness.
Facebook is setting very menacing precedents with its decision to censor the opinions of the great mass of humanity who laments the outcome of the Baghdad drone assassinations. In order to justify its actions the officers of Facebook invoked the pseudo-laws of the post-9/11 era. They argued that Facebook was acting in conformity with Donald Trump’s very political move to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) as a terrorist organization.
As is now becoming clear, this designation amounted to a virtual Declaration of War on Iran. The “unprecedented” move to declare the armed forces of another country as terrorists came as part of Donald Trump’s obsequious effort to help Benjamin Netanyahu win re-election in Israel. The designation came days before the Israeli vote of April 2019. As he faced the Israeli electorate, Netanyahu sent out a tweet in Hebrew thanking Trump for “acceding to another one of my important requests.”
The Attack on AHT as Part of the Promotion of a US War with Iran
There can be no doubt about the underlying causes of the decision of CNN and Washington Post to put so much of their severely overstretched journalistic capital on the line in attempting to demonize American Herald Tribune.
Like Facebook’s decision to prohibit anything but Trump-supporting characterizations of General Soleimani’s life and death, the attacks on AHT are all about preparing the conceptual terrain for a US-Iran war. It is all about socializing the audiences of mainstream media to support raining death and destruction down on Iran’s 80 million people.
Here is how the Washington Post followed up on the original smear job introduced by the CNN’s notorious “disinformation reporter.”
CNN reported last month on American Herald Tribune, a self-professed “genuinely independent online media outlet” that cybersecurity experts have determined is part of a far-reaching Iranian influence campaign. The strategy is simple: create a network of inauthentic news sites, then enlist associated accounts on popular platforms to spread the stories not only here but also in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.
American Herald Tribune’s modus operandi matches what we’ve already learned about online disinformation: Adversaries “launder” their campaigns through sympathetic citizens of target countries, or just citizens they offer money to — from authors on propagandistic or outright deceptive news sites to run-of-the-mill social media users. The byline on the KKK story, for instance, belongs to a man from Salem, Ore., who told CNN he believes the site is run by a man named Sam who lives in Brazil.
In my article, “Donie O’Sullivan and the ‘Garbage State’ of Media,” I discussed my visits to Iran since 2014 to take part in conferences including an academic event at the University of Tehran.
In those travels I developed friendships and collegial relations with some Iranian people including fellow academics. This experience is reflected in the wide range of AHT’s content created by correspondents coming from many perspectives and from many different lands all over the world.
I proudly affirm that AHT is opposed to any US-led war with Iran. For those seeking to avoid the scourge of war, the pursuit of peace obviously favors dialogue and exchange rather than animosity and sword-rattling. AHT intends to continue favoring dialogue and exchange.
None of these subjects are fairly or honestly addressed in the alarmist Washington Post smear piece. Rather the author representing the Washington Post’s Iranophobic Editorial Board rattles off jargon paraphrasing a deeply flawed study that provides no evidence whatsoever for the extravagant claims being irresponsibly asserted.
The basis for the Washington Post’s claim goes back to a glossy document put together in Milpitas California by an organization named Fire Eye. Fire Eye’s CEO is Kevin Mandia who cryptically describes his company’s specialty as the defense against “cyberattacks.”
The title of the Fire Eye report is Suspected Iranian Influence Operation: Leveraging Inauthentic News Sites and Social Media Aimed at U.S., U.K., Other Audiences. No specific individuals have permitted their names to appear as authors. Thus no one takes specific responsibility for the report’s contents, an understandable absence given the shoddy quality of the study.
There is absolutely no information given about the funders of the report. Why? What is there to hide? Did CNN or the Washington Post or a subsidiary company help fund the study? Did the Israeli or US government have a role? The question of the sponsorship of such an investigation is crucial to an assessment of its credibility. Everything points to the fact that there is apparently much about the origins and genesis of this mysterious study that is being kept under lock and key.
There is no clear explanation or justification of the methodology used. There are no specific references to other studies of a similar nature except for vague references to the Democratic Party’s hunt for Russian influences on US politics. There are no scholarly references nor is there a bibliography.
I did not see anywhere in the anonymously authored document a single reference to American Herald Tribune. Not one. Instead the report is organized as individual studies devoting a few pages including screen shots to several sites. These sites are Liberty Front Press, US Journal, Real Progressive Front, British Left, Critics Chronicle and Instituto Manquehue. Before doing research for this essay I had not heard of any of these sites. When I looked them up on Internet search engines, I found in several places adjacent to the named sites results linking to the Fire Eye document.
My biggest criticism concerning the supposed “research” done by CNN and Washington Post in preparing their respective smears, is that their reporters did not attempt to contact the Editor In Chief of AHT, namely me. Instead of doing due diligence in a case like this one, the protagonists of the smear campaign used a report that seemed to depend more on lawyers and weasel words than on any genuine analysis of the topic.
The very first sentence indicates, “Fire Eye has identified a suspected operation that appears to originate from Iran. (my italics). The unnamed authors report that they “assess with moderate confidence that this activity originates with Iran actors.” Why “moderate confidence”? What this qualification apparently means, is that “some possibility remains that this activity could originate from elsewhere [than Iran].”
I’m not really sure what the unnamed authors mean when they refer to “this activity.” What activity? Who do they mean when they refer to “Iran actors.” Is it the implication of the Fire Eye report than any Iranian person who publishes something on the Internet is doing something subversive? Are war obsessions already so advanced in the fervid imaginations of the authors of the Fire Eye, CNN and Washington Post pieces that they imagine that it is verboten for an Iranian to express himself or herself on the Internet?
So in the final analysis Fire Eye comes up with nothing that goes beyond the level of “suspicion.” My response to Fire Eye’s suspicion is to hold a mirror up to this group. If there is any party in this fiasco that falls under a cloud of deserved suspicion, it is the people at Fire Eye. This suspicion extends to those in mainstream media who report Fire Eyes “suspicions” as gospel fact. Such a failure of honest reporting, I should think, meets any reasonable criterion of fake news.
Following the Real Stories in the Face of Specious Attacks
The preoccupation of CNN and the Washington Post with stick handling for the discredited Hillary Clinton wing of the Democratic Party and with advancing the Zionist agenda of war with Iran has had serious deleterious effects on the quality of their news reporting. At exactly the same time that the Washington Post was intent on drawing a specious connection linking American Herald Tribune to the Fire Eye report, it remained mum on a very significant breaking news that remains extremely germane to mounting US-Iranian tensions.
The Taliban in Afghanistan are reported by Iranian, Russian and Italian sources to have shot down a very advanced US Air Force jet containing highly sophisticated spy and communications features. The high-tech aircraft was a Bombardier/Northrop Grumman E-11-A whose still-smoldering burned-out hulk was filmed in Ghazni province in Afghanistan. Some reports indicate the CIA’s most prominent figure in the Middle East, Mike de Andrea, was among the casualties. Other reports indicate the Mike de Andrea had a lead hand in the drone strikes that dramatically advanced the agenda of a full-fledged Iran-US war in the opening days of the 2020s.
Yet another possibility is that such reports concerning de Andrea’s role in the assassination of General Soleimani have been introduced to divert attention away from other possible scenarios. Much depends on getting at the truth of what really happened in the hours, days and weeks leading up to the most destabilizing drone strike in history.
Whatever the reality of the situation, reporting on the episode called attention to the many hundreds of murders by drone conducted by de Andrea in the course of an exceptionally violent career of murder and torture conducted largely outside the parameters of international criminal law. Readers who would like to see how the American Herald Tribune is covering this fast-breaking story are encouraged to check out the essay of Dr. Philip Giraldi, a former high-ranking CIA official who publishes regularly in AHT.
We at AHT are proud to publish much of the cutting-edge and courageous journalism by Philip Giraldi, Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest. Dr. Giraldi stands at the front of a long list of contributors at all stages of their journalistic careers. The essays of writers hosted at AHT will definitely bring readers much closer to the truth than the blatant and laughable propaganda at CNN and the Washington Post.
Originally published by the American Herald Tribune, re=published here at their request. Please share widely.
Anthony James Hall has been Editor In Chief of the American Herald Tribune since its inception. Between 1990 and 2018 Dr. Hall was Professor of Globalization Studies and Liberal Education at the University of Lethbridge where he is now Professor Emeritus. The focus of Dr. Hall’s teaching, research, and community service came to highlight the conditions of the colonization of Indigenous peoples in imperial globalization since 1492.
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
“The promotion of the conditions for civil war are unfolding concurrently with a new stage of the campaign to pull the United States into war with Iran.” After having finally watched Trump’s error-ridden, obscene State of the Union Address last night, I have to say that the above statement by professor Hall is absolutely correct. I’m gathering material for a blog post to be titled “Rightwing And Deranged,” and will include one WSWS article explaining exactly how Trump’s railing against socialism (as though the ruling class in the States doesn’t do it themselves) was actually an attack on the working classes, in America and elsewhere. As Americans find that their country isn’t there for them, (the idea of) socialism becomes far more interesting to them, hence the arrogant, unprincipled, stubborn ruling class’s targetting of socialism.
What passes for “socialism” or “communism” in the US covers relatively modest social welfare provision that was a feature even of Bismarck’s Germany, let alone modern western European societies.
I have found Philip Giraldi’s articles to be worth a read. I find this interesting however: “Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.” There is, as (pre imperialist) Noam Chomsky points out, no such thing as a national interest.
I can’t wait for the garden Noam fans to make up excuses again when Chomsky says vote buttigieg
I can’t wait for him to announce that he’s co-authoring a new book with Christopher Steele!
Thanks for publishing OffG – as despite writing for AHT – on Iran of all things…I find recently I can’t access the site. Neither am I getting OffGuardian’s daily updates. It’s almost as if it’s something I said!
This website censors too make no mistake about it
OG isn’t perfect. I have been wronged here (one editor). But I am not anywhere near writing it off. But in my experience, sadly, you can be disappointed suddenly and thoroughly. When I find OG to be off in an egregious manner, I’ll just blog about it and move them into my ‘Selected Mainstream’ bookmarks folder, which I visit far less often than my ‘Alt Media/Progressive’ bookmarks folder. That’s really all I can do. (My blogging puts an emphasis on, and therefore gives support to, the alt/progressive media.) My non celebrity status blog (83 followers) isn’t going to influence society, I realize, and censorship (which I’m affected by it seems; with supposedly alt/progressive orgs censoring me!) is ramping up to extreme levels so that we will soon all be enemies fighting with each other on a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean. (For my own reasons, I welcome that.)
I like American Herald Tribune. But I can’t ignore the fact that they have repeatedly disappeared my polite, on topic comments.
First, “it” is not fake news, by some would-be faker. It is Establishment propaganda, condoned and encouraged (often ordered) by the rulers though vassal outlets such as WaPo, NYT, Time, Economist, FT, even Readers Digest and Popular Mechanics!
These publishers are usually willing “Mockingbirds” following the Establishment’s, though not always the current Government’s, line.
Brave little beacons of hope and truth reach their few faithful, preaching to the choir, though they are drowned out by the Establishment cacophony of propaganda, oddly increasing their righteousness.
This is the nature of fascism. A controlled opposition, vociferous but ultimately ineffectual, is allowed, even encouraged to flourish, for two reasons: First, it’s a harmless outlet for proletarian frustration. Second, more sinisterly, the outlet “rounds up” potential agitators for future indoctrination, or incarceration, thus assisting the very Establishment it criticizes. Protest all you like, but obey…
Yes indeed the shooting of messengers is underway.
BUT where is the message of what happened in retaliation of Soleimani and his entourages cold blooded murders?
Where are the reports of the casualties? Why is there no coverage of the cover up of these? And of WHY no retaliation to an attack on the major US base in that region?
I mean Magnier has it all and he ain’t being shut down is he?
https://ejmagnier.com/2020/02/01/how-iran-decided-to-bomb-us-bases-and-how-trump-avoided-an-all-out-war/
I used to enjoy the IHT and its wonderful capital letters in every word of a sentence. Such Innocent Days!
Just as the Western MSM sewer and its faecal inhabitants universally find the fate of one Chinese opthalmologist VASTLY more important than the suffering of thousands, the deaths of hundreds and the fantastic efforts of the Chinese Government. Those latter, in fact, are being reviled by denizens of states where the streets are littered with thousands and thousands of homeless, existing in squalour.
Excellent description Prof. Hall.
I wonder if the news media breaking into recognisably partisan halves is such a bad thing, although it does add to the pre-civil strife atmosphere that appears to exist in the US. Partisan media is ‘yellow press’
by definition….thus the previously trusted are now seen as corrupt and untruthful, surely a step in the right direction.
The term “moderate confidence” is US intelligence agencies’ jargon.
Indeed, which translates as “we have zero evidence to back our assertions but want you to believe them anyway.”
Basically what I said before seeing your comment. Remember the WMD hoax?
Don’t you know that “moderate confidence” in spook speaks really means “there’s not one shred of viable evidence so we’ll make shit up”?
Reading this American herald tribune could be all that is needed to dislike it: Reaffirming the Revolution: The Islamic Republic of Iran at 41
Not everything anti American is good.
The article is not so much about whether or not Iran is good or bad: we could just as easily be taking about Iraq, Libya, the Yemen, Afghanistan or Venezuela, i.e. countries where the US is killing people or has plans to do so in order to secure control of oil, gas or territory.
Prof Hall rightly points to a lack of plurality across America’s MSM – this is because powerful corporate entities are now using their platform to spread sectarian propaganda rather than produce actual news.
Anybody who points this out is immediately smeared – doesn’t matter if you are a rival news source, British political leader fighting an election, or a general in one the countries America is trying to control.
Building a career in the MSM now depends on media personalities or journalists recognising these unwritten rules – needless to say speaking out about them is likely to be a career ending decision.
I recommend reading Harry Stotle below.
“Anti-American” is a silly term in any case.
The crucial point is that being anti-Washington-politics is not at all the same thing as anti-American.
Americans themselves are no better or worse than the citizens of any other nation, while “Exceptionalists”, like Obama, are beneath contempt.
It certainly is. If you criticize something are you against it? Well – yes. That’s what led you to criticize it. And as long as you give an intelligent criticism, then you justifiably invite an answer. Thus use of the term “Anti-American” as a pejorative has the same devious aim as similar use of the term “conspiracy theory”. It’s OK to be “Anti-American” just as it’s OK to put forward a “conspiracy theory” – as long as you give reasons for your position.
No one who criticised Blair or Johnson, or Sarkozy or Macron, would be described as “anti British” or “anti French.”
Sorry, Harry is above, not below…
Just as being anti-Zionist is not Judeophobic.
Exactly. It’s the nationalistic club/clique/cult which is so offensive here, not the normal people of the nation.
Iran is by no means a perfect society. But in comparison to the Zionassty garrison state on the east coast of the Mediterranean, viciously racist, insanely aggressive, bloodthirsty to the point of religious mania, a global centre of financial crime, ‘blood diamonds’, human organ trafficking, surveillance, police training in murderous repression, sex trafficking, pornography, drug trafficking etc, hugely unequal even among its Chosen Herrenvolk, practising apartheid for its 20% Arab minority (subject to at least sixty discriminatory laws)and much,much, worse for the imprisoned Palestinians and the global centre of virulent Islamophobic hate propaganda, it seems a virtual demi-paradise.
Indeed, but don’t forget arms production and sales.
Most Islamic states don’t have “the luxury of ” minorities…. ever wondered why?
Mono cultural nations.
No more need for Apartheid, imprisonment, racism etc. etc.
Bonus: no criticism from Western patsies, naives and riyal receivers.
Syria is a patchwork quilt of different religious and ethnic communities and sects.
As is Iraq.
As is Iran.
The bloodthirsty Zionist Regime has long planned and agitated and schemed and bribed and lied and blackmailed and murdered its way to try to smash these diverse countries into tiny fragmented defenceless little statelets that can be incorporated into their terrorist state.
It is the Zionist Regime that is the world’s only self declared racist state. Where all non Jews can be expected to be treated as tenth class citizens at best if they are not simply exterminated as goy insects.
The article that Antonym mentions that Iranian-origin healthcare reforms were sufficiently appealing to some communities in the Mississippi Delta region of the US that they actually adopted the reforms into their own systems. I guess that must make those Americans … anti-American.
Antonym, do you ever read the stuff you quote?
Did any US communities copy the present Iranian policies towards homosexuals or women ‘s dress codes? Or the impeachment of a non clerical Iranian president ( Abolhassan Banisadr in 1981) ?
Present Iran is not a role model; the only good thing about it that it is independent of the US deep state.
No state is a role model, but Iran, despite its faults, is less dangerous and odious than Israel, despite its virtues.
Did any US communities copy the present Zionist policies of shooting 9 year olds in the head with dum dum bullets and murdering and robbing the goyim?
Or terrorising secular Jews who refuse to kowtow to Talmudic hate policies?
I didn’t know you could read Antonym! Your just full of surprises! Now try understanding and comprehending what you’ve read.
William Safire coined the term sif for people like you. It stands for single issue fanatic. Btw, corn futures are up at the Chicago Mercantile, and the Canadiens beat the Leafs in overtime. Is that good for Israel?
Antonym? How’s the weather in tel Aviv rodent
What’s more dangerous than a psychopath with a gun?
A psychopath with a media empire.
AHT is a great publication with excellent writers. Probably one of the few that employs actual journalists as opposed to prestitutes who sell their journalistic souls for filthy lucre. All Judases and Judas Goats:
https://ia800902.us.archive.org/20/items/JudasGoats_201904/Judas%20Goats.pdf
Hey the good news is Consortium News is also suing Global’s ass off up in Canada too:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/01/24/cons-j24.html
Keep up the good fight!
Consortium News fails. Jonathan Cook wrote an article, which CN picked up, lambasting anyone who would dare question the integrity of the Green New Deal and point out how Greta Thunberg was being used. I was disgusted and left a few polite comments expressing that disgust. They were disappeared. And I’ve found CN to be off in other ways as well. It’s still good, but it there’s rot at its core.
See “Progressives – part 4” / https://arrby.wordpress.com/2019/11/04/progressives-part-4/
It’s going the same way as Counterpunch and Democracy Now.
Acknowledged.
Yeah I personally think that Amy Goodman was replaced by one of those pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. They’ve became NPR’s doppelganger. Counterpunch actually has gotten better to an extent. I remember back when 9/11 happened that the late Alex Cockburn was railing against all us “conspiracy theorists” who didn’t accept the official story about hijacked aircraft impossibly bringing down the WTC and hitting the Pentagon at the same altitude as a Mac Truck competently flown in a almost perfect spiral by some guy who according to his trainers couldn’t safely fly a kite.
Anyone who even mentioned “controlled demolition” was immediately ostracized from polite company. Same thing on Antiwar. com even though they did manage to do some yeoman journalism on the Israeli angle based on Cameron’s mysteriously vanishing series over at Fox news.
In fact I’ve noticed that CP has quietly questioned the official fairy tale lately but not to the extent that many of us did right from the beginning. Take away the 9/11 aspect and they still do a pretty good job about questioning the neoliberal order.
You are allowed to criticise the official 9/11 conspiracy theory provided you highlight the Saudi involvement, just so long as you remain shtum about the involvement of certain other Levantine folk.
Exactly this is why I question Tulsi’s campaign for 9/11 “Truth” to release the so called 28 pgs which is just a red herring. All the evidence of Israeli involvement covers hundreds if not thousands of pages of police reports subsequent interrogations and intel gathered by Able Danger that has basically been suppressed.
Though CP isn’t the only alt publication colluding with the Government on this.
I don’t know if there’s a “rot at its core” though I think some “independent” writers lead it astray at times. One has to sort the chaff from the wheat and use discernment. Mint press goes that way sometimes until its slapped in line by its readers. Off G ended up in a comments Donnybrook because one of its writers wrote about Ashkenazi mental superiority etc. Shit happens. For the most part they’re straight arrows and we must forgive them for their occasional transgressions even if many of us are “pagan savages” 😉
Recently I’ve forgiven Veterans Today even though much of the stuff Gordon Duff writes is politically biased trash but hey that’s Duff.
At least it’s better than what’s out in the Mainstream which is just one long river of ‘journalistic” sewage.
Acknowledged.