94

Fake News Curated by the Deep State: Government Spin Doctors Control the News Cycle

John & Nisha Whitehead

Image source here.

“We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth.”
Former New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg

Let’s talk about fake news stories, shall we?

There’s the garden variety fake news that is not really “news” so much as it is titillating, tabloid-worthy material peddled by anyone with a Twitter account, a Facebook page and an active imagination. These stories run the gamut from the ridiculous and the obviously click-baity to the satirical and politically manipulative.

Anyone with an ounce of sense and access to the Internet should be able to ferret out the truth and lies in these stories with some basic research. That these stories flourish is largely owing to the general gullibility, laziness and media illiteracy of the general public, which through its learned compliance rarely questions, challenges or confronts.

Then there’s the more devious kind of news stories circulated by one of the biggest propagators of fake news: the U.S. government.

In the midst of the government and corporate media’s carefully curated apoplexy over fake news, you won’t hear much about the government’s own role in producing, planting and peddling propaganda-driven fake news—often with the help of the corporate news media—because that’s not how the game works.

Why?

Because the powers-that-be don’t want us skeptical of the government’s message or its corporate accomplices in the mainstream media. They don’t want us to be more discerning when it comes to what information we digest online. They just want us to be leery of independent or alternative news sources while trusting them—and their corporate colleagues—to vet the news for us.

Indeed, in recent years, Facebook and Google have conveniently appointed themselves the arbiters of truth on the internet in order to screen out what is blatantly false, spam or click-baity.

Not only does this establish a dangerous precedent for all-out censorship by corporate entities known for colluding with the government but it’s also a slick sleight-of-hand maneuver that diverts attention from what we should really be talking about: the fact that the government has grown dangerously out-of-control, all the while the so-called mainstream news media, which is supposed to act as a bulwark against government propaganda, has instead become the mouthpiece of the world’s largest corporation—the U.S. government.

As veteran journalist Carl Bernstein, who along with Bob Woodward blew the lid off the Watergate scandal, reported in his expansive 1977 Rolling Stone piece, “The CIA and the Media”:

“More than 400 American journalists … in the past twenty‑five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency… There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services… Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters… In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.”

Bernstein is referring to Operation Mockingbird, a CIA campaign started in the 1950s to plant intelligence reports among reporters at more than 25 major newspapers and wire agencies, who would then regurgitate them for a public oblivious to the fact that they were being fed government propaganda.

In some instances, as Bernstein shows, members of the media also served as extensions of the surveillance state, with reporters actually carrying out assignments for the CIA.

Executives with CBS, the New York Times and Time magazine also worked closely with the CIA to vet the news. Bernstein writes: “Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York HeraldTribune.”

In fact, in August 1964, the nation’s leading newspapers—including the Washington Post and New York Times—echoed Lyndon Johnson’s claim that North Vietnam had launched a second round of attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. No such attacks had taken place, and yet the damage was done. As Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon report for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, “By reporting official claims as absolute truths, American journalism opened the floodgates for the bloody Vietnam War.”

Fast forward to the early post-9/11 years when, despite a lack of any credible data supporting the existence of weapons of mass destruction, the mainstream media jumped on the bandwagon to sound the war drums against Iraq. As Los Angeles Times columnist Robin Abcarian put it, “our government … used its immense bully pulpit to steamroll the watchdogs… Many were gulled by access to administration insiders, or susceptible to the drumbeat of the government’s coordinated rhetoric.”

John Walcott, Washington bureau chief for Knight-Ridder, one of the only news agencies to challenge the government’s rationale for invading Iraq, suggests that the reason for the media’s easy acceptance is that “too many journalists, including some very famous ones, have surrendered their independence in order to become part of the ruling class. Journalism is, as the motto goes, speaking truth to power, not wielding it.”

If it was happening then, you can bet it’s still happening today, only it’s been reclassified, renamed and hidden behind layers of government secrecy, obfuscation and spin.

In its article, “How the American government is trying to control what you think,” the Washington Post points out “Government agencies historically have made a habit of crossing the blurry line between informing the public and propagandizing.”

Thus, whether you’re talking about the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the government’s invasion of Iraq based upon absolute fabrications, the Russo-Ukrainian War, or the government’s ongoing war on terror, privacy and whistleblowers, it’s being driven by propaganda churned out by one corporate machine (the corporate-controlled government) and fed to the American people by way of yet another corporate machine (the corporate-controlled media).

“For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it,” writes investigative journalist Nick Davies. “The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news.”

But wait.

If the mass media—aka the mainstream media or the corporate or establishment media—is merely repeating what is being fed to it, who are the masterminds within the government responsible for this propaganda?

Davies explains:

The Pentagon has now designated “information operations” as its fifth “core competency” alongside land, sea, air and special forces. Since October 2006, every brigade, division and corps in the US military has had its own “psyop” element producing output for local media. This military activity is linked to the State Department’s campaign of “public diplomacy” which includes funding radio stations and news websites.

This use of propaganda disguised as journalism is what journalist John Pilger refers to as “invisible government… the true ruling power of our country.”

Clearly, we no longer have a Fourth Estate.

Not when the “news” we receive is routinely manufactured, manipulated and made-to-order by government agents.

Not when six corporations control 90% of the media in America.

Not when, as Davies laments, “news organizations which might otherwise have exposed the truth were themselves part of the abuse, and so they kept silent, indulging in a comic parody of misreporting, hiding the emerging scandal from their readers like a Victorian nanny covering the children’s eyes from an accident in the street.”

And not, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, when media outlets have become propagandists for the false reality created by the American government.

After all, as Glenn Greenwald points out, “The term propaganda rings melodramatic and exaggerated, but a press that—whether from fear, careerism, or conviction—uncritically recites false government claims and reports them as fact, or treats elected officials with a reverence reserved for royalty, cannot be accurately described as engaged in any other function.”

So where does that leave us?

What should—or can—we do?

I’ll close with John Pilger’s words of warning and advice:

Real information, subversive information, remains the most potent power of all — and I believe that we must not fall into the trap of believing that the media speaks for the public. That wasn’t true in Stalinist Czechoslovakia and it isn’t true of the United States. In all the years I’ve been a journalist, I’ve never known public consciousness to have risen as fast as it’s rising today…yet this growing critical public awareness is all the more remarkable when you consider the sheer scale of indoctrination, the mythology of a superior way of life, and the current manufactured state of fear.

[The public] need[s] truth, and journalists ought to be agents of truth, not the courtiers of power. I believe a fifth estate is possible, the product of a people’s movement, that monitors, deconstructs, and counters the corporate media. In every university, in every media college, in every news room, teachers of journalism, journalists themselves need to ask themselves about the part they now play in the bloodshed in the name of a bogus objectivity. Such a movement within the media could herald a perestroika of a kind that we have never known. This is all possible. Silences can be broken… In the United States wonderfully free rebellious spirits populate the web… The best reporting … appears on the web … and citizen reporters.

The challenge for the rest of us is to lift this subjugated knowledge from out of the underground and take it to ordinary people. We need to make haste. Liberal Democracy is moving toward a form of corporate dictatorship.

Originally published by the Rutherford Institute
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected]

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.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

94 Comments
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
TFS
TFS
Apr 11, 2023 1:27 PM

Dont forget Udo Ulfkotte, and the CIA interwinned with the German Media.

Udo Ulfkotte
https://www.greanvillepost.com/2017/08/10/media-front-german-bombshell-bestseller-exposing-cia-media-control-blocked-in-us-ulfkotte/

Thomas L Frey
Thomas L Frey
Apr 10, 2023 8:52 PM

The scariest part is that if we do not win this war, TPTB will write history again.

Balkydj
Balkydj
Apr 11, 2023 10:20 AM
Reply to  Thomas L Frey

‘Tis already programmed & being repeated.
Mistakes compounded daily, regardless of Science,
since WW1 began…

All legal, too, from 1997 onwards, given the jurisdictions…

From Chemical Weapons to Psyops & Mind Control, with Nuclear Weaponry, existing
Regulation & Control Organs to enforce Any Treaty internationally, even Eco-Terror,
Are not just Amiss in Denmark !
Any Automated intelligence,
Surely recognises D.U.M.D.U.M.
Depleted Uranium Munitions
Heritage & Legacy. . .
A Monstrous Cancer !
See refugee/migration…
Nothing to wonder.
Sell more liferafts &
Chemical Agents…
Destroy Food Supply.
Project. Light-gas.Genie.A.i.
Aladdin&AliBaba BlackRock’s Vanguards’
inter-StateHighStreet realising realty ‘assets’,
M.I.C. Controlling Bodily Sovereignty. ?
A mental footing… as in Foundation.
Human Guinea Pigs.
Critical Times,
Indeed.
Balky.

wardropper
wardropper
Apr 10, 2023 7:47 PM

Good stuff.
A small quibble:
“…or treats elected officials with a reverence reserved for royalty…”

Let’s say, traditionally reserved for royalty…
‘Royalty’ today are no more significant than Marie Antoinette’s head in a basket is significant.
There is no such thing as ‘royalty’.
Only money, bullying and propaganda.

A cream pie in “King” Charles’s face is exactly the same as a cream pie in anybody else’s face: Just a bit of common foolery.
Too bad if ‘his majesty’ thinks his face is deserving of more reverence than that.
Trust me: It isn’t.

Linda Ferland
Linda Ferland
Apr 9, 2023 9:35 PM

Real journalists are exceedingly difficult to find. Most I just call ‘reporters’ for those who pay them to report as dictated.

oddly
oddly
Apr 10, 2023 12:10 PM
Reply to  Linda Ferland

They dont report, they regurgitate.

Thom
Thom
Apr 9, 2023 5:19 PM

Bernstein conveniently doesn’t mention his own Watergate ‘exposee’ which had CIA all over it. Another deep state ‘regime change’ that alleged journalists colluded in and covered up for.

el Gallinazo
el Gallinazo
Apr 9, 2023 6:53 PM
Reply to  Thom

The Watergate exposé was simply that Nixon probably had full knowledge of the break-in prior to its occurrence and definitely covered it up after the fact. What the WaPo and Bernstein and Woodward didn’t reveal was that their informant was the number two man under Hoover in the FBI. Woodward’s position in his 5 year stint in the navy indicates that he had an above top secret ‘security’ classification. Felt’s identity as Deep Throat was only revealed after his death in 2008 at the age of 95. Thus it becomes obvious with this post mortem information that the real story behind Watergate was the take down and expulsion of Nixon from the White House to be replaced by the publicly bumbling but in reality highly satanic Gerald Ford. Also the ousting of Spiro Agnew, October 1973, 15 months before the break-in, paved the way for Ford to gain the presidency, and demonstrates that the operation was several years in the making. The removal of Agnew, a truly obnoxious political grifter but sand lot baseball evil when compared to Ford, demonstrates the high level Deep State planning of the psyops. As to why the Deep State wanted Nixon out, there are a large number of speculations, but none which warrants a conclusive ‘bingo.” However, it was a near shoe-in that Nixon would have won a second term in 1974. But with the release of Deep Throat’s identity and position after his death in 2008, the only reasonable conclusion was that it was a well orchestrated take-down of Nixon with the full cooperation of Felt’s immediate boss, Hoover and other Deep State top bananas.

Paul Vonharnish
Paul Vonharnish
Apr 12, 2023 1:39 PM
Reply to  el Gallinazo

Yes. Good analysis. Mr. Nixon was drummed out of office due to his embracement of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970.

The entrenched East coast mafia and CIA, make sure RICO Act provisions are never prosecuted. Spiro Agnew was thrown under the bus due to his stance against the Jewish owned media…

Paul Vonharnish
Paul Vonharnish
Apr 9, 2023 3:14 PM

Journalists calling out other journalists as propagandists, when all of journalism has become a propaganda factory in which journalists complain about.propaganda… Sheeeesh!

“Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves”

– Eric Hoffer –
(July 25, 1902 – May 21, 1983)

Straight Talk
Straight Talk
Apr 9, 2023 1:49 PM

Corrupt UK Parliament Flees During COVID Truth Speech
“Andrew Bridgen MP presented to Parliament the extremely important evidence regarding the serious harms and deaths as a result of the experimental mRNA Covid 19 ‘vaccines’.  We see the MPs scurrying out, akin to rats deserting the sinking ship, frightened by the truth maybe? Or ordered by their masters to leave?

In the wake of this presentation, there has been a public announcement for the case of misfeasance and misconduct in public office to be reopened in light of this new information.”

oddly
oddly
Apr 10, 2023 12:11 PM
Reply to  Straight Talk
Daniel Stormy
Daniel Stormy
Apr 9, 2023 11:16 AM

Fast forward to the early post-9/11 years when, despite a lack of any credible data supporting the existence of weapons of mass destruction…

Never mind “the early post-9/11 years”. The focus should be on the fraudulent 9/11 “event” itself, designed, partly, to enable the later tyranny.

switchedON
switchedON
Apr 9, 2023 9:56 AM

Astro theology ritual.

Scripted sport – UFC last night.
Trumps got ring side seats.
Jorge Masvidal gets the audience to chant ‘lets go brandon’
next scene..
‘The king is back!’ They say
‘Israel’ Adesanya. Wins.

Just as ‘scripted’ as Boris Covid Easter ICU (fake) hospitalization then resurrected on Sunday.

George Mc
George Mc
Apr 9, 2023 9:11 AM

https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/the-death-of-culture-how-lies-killed

Interesting article on the apparent disappearance of the last three years from any commentary by the very people you would expect to wax most loquaciously and indignantly. Miss Wolf affects puzzlement, but she needn’t. “The Plague Years” – still being held on the back burner – are basically a movie franchise. And the publishing houses are part of that franchise. We are now in the intermission where the ice cream and hot dogs are coming down the aisle. And the “dissidents” are in the changing rooms enjoying a little break before being called up again for the next act.      

CO-
CO-
Apr 9, 2023 12:21 PM
Reply to  George Mc

“The Plague Years” – still being held on the back burner – are basically a movie franchise. And the publishing houses are part of that franchise. We are now in the intermission where the ice cream and hot dogs are coming down the aisle. And the “dissidents” are in the changing rooms enjoying a little break before being called up again for the next act.  

You summed that one up nicely George, all we have to do now (as usual) is wait for the next act in the dog and pony show to appear on the global movie screen, since very little else is being done to curb the action of the “dissidents” whose performance so far has managed to mystify the majority of the audience ! 

Lazaro
Lazaro
Apr 10, 2023 6:14 AM
Reply to  George Mc

The poor lady who wrote that substack seems to really believe that her and her brothers ‘and sisters’ “struggle” were what brought “freedoms” back to the USA. More than interesting, reading her is sad, dumfounding and pathetic. How delusional must someonebe to actually believe such nonsense…. The need to believe one’s sacrifices and losses have actually yielded something positive can be quite pernicious.

switchedON
switchedON
Apr 9, 2023 9:02 AM

Look over there – small boats.

Billionaire pseudo president with an fake arrest.

An ‘energy price cap’ that doesn’t cap energy prices, a pensions ‘triple lock’ that doesn’t lock pensions, ‘affordable housing’ that few can afford, and a ‘national living wage’ that’s not enough to live on. Everything is a lie. @BladeoftheS

ENERGY BILLS

Electricity prices in
February Italy – €136.2/MWh.
France – €111.8/MWh.
Germany – €102.4/MWh;
Spain – €89.6/MWh;
Belgium – €109.5/MWh. U.K. – €130.8/MWh.

IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE
RIP OFF BRITAIN.

Wholesale gas now 7 x CHEAPER today than August.
5 x cheaper than March 2022 half price it was in October 2021
There’s NO justification for prices climbing 20% this week,
a cost which will be met by YOU.
It’s a racket.

Oil and gas firms have given £1m to Boris Johnson’s Conservatives

@Britain_People

comment image

mgeo
mgeo
Apr 9, 2023 8:17 AM

In the 1830s, showman PT Barnum exhibited an elderly Black slave as the 161-year-old ex-nurse of George Washington. When the crowds dwindled, he attracted them back by announcing that she was a robot made of “whalebone, india-rubber and numerous springs”, responding to the “slightest touch” of a ventriloquist. When she died at the age of about 79, he sold 1,500 tickets to her autopsy. -Chris Hedges, 2018

fertility
fertility
Apr 9, 2023 7:46 AM

Fake News Curated by the Deep State: Government Spin Doctors Control the News Cycle.

Your aware that also includes Alternative media…

Johnny
Johnny
Apr 9, 2023 6:10 AM
Johnny
Johnny
Apr 9, 2023 5:45 AM
Shola
Shola
Apr 9, 2023 12:47 PM
Reply to  Johnny

Manipulating statistics (in this case miscarriage) so that harm-causing drugs or treatments can fly under the radar, appearing to have limited negative effects.

You can bet your house this tactic is used for all diseases and risks; hyping up the severity or prevalence so that sickness and harm caused by treatments can be buried.

Clive Williams
Clive Williams
Apr 9, 2023 3:10 PM
Reply to  Shola

Quite right, disease risk of see talk to your doctor or provider if * is right for you:
Disclaimer: **
Data stats are out.. Its the old adage joined under Science Medical Tech. It IS no-one else’s business. Or you can carry-on ‘linking’ selfies empowering science med. tech even furthermore like inbreeding rabbits.

Johnny
Johnny
Apr 9, 2023 5:19 AM
switchedON
switchedON
Apr 9, 2023 3:40 PM
Reply to  Johnny

Fauci really old/ he looks young maybe he washes in blood.

Clive Williams
Clive Williams
Apr 9, 2023 4:02 PM
Reply to  Johnny

That site is a global mainstream read magazine a Public microsoft news agent Publication on your High St. I don’t go get it anymore personally,

Johnny
Johnny
Apr 9, 2023 1:33 AM

It’s not about science, it’s about consensus, apparently.
Or should that be spelt CON$EN$U$?

https://covidreason.substack.com/p/del-bigtree-takes-down-neil-degrasse?utm_campaign=post_embed

fertility
fertility
Apr 9, 2023 7:43 AM
Reply to  Johnny

Takedown. ? Bigtree (bell end) performance is aimed at the weak minded.
Neil degrasse PR team knew exactly what they was doing.
They only appear on stage with people in the same club.

Shola
Shola
Apr 9, 2023 1:00 PM
Reply to  fertility

Maybe. But it makes DeGrasse look fucking stupid. So if that was the plan, it worked.

Summary:
Tyson: “I only care about consensus”

Bigtree: “The consensus is nonsense because the scientific method is corrupted”

Tyson: “I don’t care about individual scientists, only a consensus of scientists”.

Big tree “The method is broken and scientists are being excluded”

Tyson: “ I don’t care”.

Great PR. If you’re a fucking retard.

switchedON
switchedON
Apr 9, 2023 3:44 PM
Reply to  Shola

3 years after covid is Theatre.
Even Msm last years said similar.
Nothing groundbreaking.
Entertainment for the half woke clueless.

Straight Talk
Straight Talk
Apr 9, 2023 1:52 PM
Reply to  Johnny

“Consensus” is the rebranding of “lockstep”, which fascism requires.

Straight Talk
Straight Talk
Apr 9, 2023 4:56 PM
Reply to  Straight Talk

Michael Crichton Explains Why There Is ‘no Such Thing as Consensus Science’
“I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”

~ Michael Crichton

GR-Watch
GR-Watch
Apr 9, 2023 1:32 AM

1. Iran and Saudi Arabia are mending ties

2. US deploys nuclear sub to Middle East

mgeo
mgeo
Apr 9, 2023 7:53 AM
Reply to  GR-Watch

It hurts to be irrelevant.

niko
niko
Apr 9, 2023 1:27 AM

comment image

Linda Ferland
Linda Ferland
Apr 9, 2023 9:33 PM
Reply to  niko

Amen!!!

Sonny-Raye Hayes
Sonny-Raye Hayes
Apr 9, 2023 1:11 AM

All very true, I believe; but dated. Things are worse now and no mention is made at all of the same controls, deceits and manipulations associated with the years and ongoing pharma hoax. I also think it counter productive to refer to something as “news”, fake or otherwise, when it is not news at all. In an effort to identify the masquerade, the term ” fake news” sneaks in a misleading association. If I were to lie straight to your face would you call what I was telling you news? No, you’d call it what is.

Johnny
Johnny
Apr 9, 2023 1:10 AM

Once upon a time journalists told the stories of the people.
Now they tell the stories of THE people.

eman
eman
Apr 9, 2023 12:28 AM

antitrust.. Monopolies are illegal.
Let’s talk about fake news stories, shall we? <==No! Talk about the un-constitutionality, in a democratic state. of allowing a branch of its government (Article II of the constitution; which is the executive branch of the USG to create an agency that engages in anti trust practices) to monopolize the information and dialogue space.
Monopolizing either access to the media, or allowing a media to monopolize the information and dialogue space is a violation of the 1st amendment, the principles of democracy, and the anti trust laws.
Break up the monopolies in media. Deny all branches or agencies of government and all private parties the ability to violate the US constitution! Suppressing freedom of speech violates the constitution. Allow everyone including the President and the Pentagon to put forth their stories,truthful or not but allow equal time for all others. President of Iran once said “all voices should be heard.” In a democracy It should be possible for everyone to be heard if citizens are to be united in one nation under God”.

Break up the media monopolies.

moneycircus
moneycircus
Apr 8, 2023 10:36 PM

Fukushima from The Guardian:

“I wanted to scream at other parents: ‘You don’t know how lucky you are’ – how cancer in my 30s brought me face-to-face with death”

“Why don’t whales get cancer? Cracking one of medicine’s greatest mysteries”

Ah… coz whales don’t take vaccines?

The first part of this post is sponsored by Bill and Melinda Gates. Fakt Cheka that last sentence.

niko
niko
Apr 8, 2023 10:11 PM

comment image

Johnny
Johnny
Apr 9, 2023 1:17 AM
Reply to  niko

Don’t believe ANYTHING.
We don’t ‘believe’ we are hungry or thirsty, in pain or in Love. We know.
We don’t believe the sun is shining or it’s raining. We know.
The same applies to beliefs.
Test it, in your own experience.

wardropper
wardropper
Apr 10, 2023 7:55 PM
Reply to  niko

I’ve quoted this from Buddha before, but it does bear repeating:

“Never believe anything just because somebody said it”.

Tom Larsen
Tom Larsen
Apr 8, 2023 10:09 PM

This article on disinformation, linked to in CJ’s article last week, is an excellent companion to this one.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/guide-understanding-hoax-century-thirteen-ways-looking-disinformation

hotrod31
hotrod31
Apr 8, 2023 10:07 PM

A great article.
From my two-neuron fired brain … it is painfully obvious that the majority of the well-researched and informative journalists, together with their published work – end up dead. It is obvious that journalism has become an extremely hazardous occupation, so, before we rush to judgement of the brave-souls who risk their lives to bring us the ‘news’ – bear in mind the constant dangers they face. Kudos to all who do their jobs well despite the adversity.

Placental_Mammal
Placental_Mammal
Apr 9, 2023 12:21 AM
Reply to  hotrod31

Who did their jobs well ? Few if any.

Straight Talk
Straight Talk
Apr 9, 2023 2:00 PM
Reply to  hotrod31

Tides appear to be turning.

The process of Assange’s release is beginning.

Washington Says ‘Journalism Is Not A Crime’

You don’t get to say “journalism is not a crime” while literally working to criminalize journalism, writes Caitlin Johnstone.

“It’s worthwhile to point out the hypocrisy of U.S. empire managers, not because hypocrisy in and of itself is some uniquely grave evil but because it shows that these people do not stand for what they pretend to stand for. The U.S. empire does not care about press freedoms, it cares about power and domination, and the noises it makes in support of journalism are only ever made as a cynical ploy with which to bludgeon disobedient foreign governments on the world stage.

Assange exposed many inconvenient facts about the U.S. empire in his work with WikiLeaks, but none have been so inconvenient as what he’s exposed by forcing them to come after him and reveal their true face in their brazen persecution of the world’s greatest journalist.”

niko
niko
Apr 8, 2023 9:58 PM

comment image

niko
niko
Apr 8, 2023 9:57 PM

comment image

niko
niko
Apr 8, 2023 9:49 PM

comment image

niko
niko
Apr 8, 2023 9:45 PM

comment image

niko
niko
Apr 9, 2023 4:45 AM
Reply to  Johnny

Thanks; subscribed.

niko
niko
Apr 8, 2023 9:40 PM

comment image

Johnny
Johnny
Apr 9, 2023 1:20 AM
Reply to  niko

Oh how they strut, these wanna be Messiahs.

dom irritant
dom irritant
Apr 9, 2023 5:46 AM
Reply to  Johnny

they know what is what
but they don’t know what is what
they just strut, what the fk

star 69 fat boy slim…….a top tune i mite add

niko
niko
Apr 8, 2023 9:39 PM

comment image

mjh
mjh
Apr 9, 2023 3:21 AM
Reply to  niko

They look ridiculous. And how did they get that way? Easy: $$$$
What can’t money do?

niko
niko
Apr 8, 2023 9:36 PM

comment image

Johnny
Johnny
Apr 9, 2023 2:54 AM
Reply to  niko

No wonder they locked him up.
He made them squirm.

rubberheid
rubberheid
Apr 9, 2023 4:59 PM
Reply to  niko

indeed.

niko
niko
Apr 8, 2023 9:35 PM

comment image

Johnny
Johnny
Apr 9, 2023 2:55 AM
Reply to  niko

And the pins?
Carrots or parsnips?

niko
niko
Apr 8, 2023 9:32 PM

comment image

Clive Williams
Clive Williams
Apr 8, 2023 11:17 PM
Reply to  niko

Because it’s a Republican Federal City.

wardropper
wardropper
Apr 10, 2023 8:06 PM
Reply to  niko

Anybody can do it, just as anybody can get into Harvard today.
Only one thing is needed, and we all know what that is.

Look at this little sentence by the author of a book which I dipped into today on the years leading up to WW2:

“… after that, I was sent to Harvard …”

It hit me like a hammer.

One might ask, “To study what, exactly?”, or, “Are you intelligent and informed in any particular discipline?
But the NYT will not ask such questions.

That’s a great picture.

paul
paul
Apr 8, 2023 9:31 PM

In 1945, Julius Streicher, a Nazi journalist, was put on trial at Nuremberg and subsequently hanged.

He was a rather unpleasant individual. Even Hitler couldn’t stand him and sacked him from his job at the beginning of the war. The charge against him was inciting hatred, though he was not personally involved in any crimes. But propaganda and inciting hatred were considered sufficient to cost him his life.

Applying the same standard, the Judith Millers and the Luke Hardings and the Melanie Phillipses and the David Aaronovitches and the Elliott Higginses and all their ilk should all be in the dock on trial for their lives. They are a thousand times worse than any of the most depraved serial killers and child killers who have ever seen the inside of a prison cell. Many of those people were damaged individuals with few advantages in life. The number of people they killed was quite small and they did their own dirty work. The others never get their hands dirty, but they have the blood of thousands, and millions, on their hands.j

GR-Watch
GR-Watch
Apr 9, 2023 1:27 AM
Reply to  paul

outstanding comment thanks!!

Please is there a way to apply the same standard to the australian religious extremists liberal party elites: the howards the morrissons the tudges the porters the abbotts???

“”The charge against him was inciting hatred, though he was not personally involved in any crimes. But propaganda and inciting hatred were considered sufficient to cost him his life.

Applying the same standard, the Judith Millers and the Luke Hardings and the Melanie Phillipses and the David Aaronovitches and the Elliott Higginses and all their ilk should all be in the dock on trial for their lives.””

paul
paul
Apr 9, 2023 2:09 AM
Reply to  GR-Watch

The Juice Media do a good job of cutting them down to size.

Rhisiart Gwilym
Rhisiart Gwilym
Apr 8, 2023 8:43 PM

“…Knight-Ridder, one of the only news agencies…”

Surely, John, one as literate as you isn’t going to use the meaningless, illiterate word-string ‘one of the only’, are you? Resist Popular-Illiterate USAmerican English! Say ‘the only one’, OR ‘one of the few’.Those phrases at least mean something…

moneycircus
moneycircus
Apr 8, 2023 11:00 PM

Knight-Ridder finances the most odious Fakt Cheka.
My former employer Reuters through its foundation assists Color Revolutions ™. BBC does the same, as The Grayzone has laid out in Technocolor.

Rhisiart Gwilym
Rhisiart Gwilym
Apr 9, 2023 9:57 AM
Reply to  moneycircus

I hold no brief for Knight Ridder. Just quoting from John’s article. I wouldn’t expect them to be any better than the rest of lying lamestream media.

Joe Van Steenbergen
Joe Van Steenbergen
Apr 8, 2023 8:41 PM

MICE – money, ideology, coercion and ego. These are the tools of subversion and corruption, and they have been so successfully employed by agents of the WEF, in particular, and the lettered agencies over the years that it is difficult to impossible to find people of character, either in business or politics, who can withstand these pressures. TPTB have perfected their subversion machine, and no amount of attempted intrusion of principled peoples from the outside will ever penetrate these institutions. We could waste time and money trying, but in the end it still is wasted.

The most amazing aspect of all this is that people are nearly completely unable to see behind the curtain, if they even try to pull the curtain back, at the clown show that the media offers continuously. Once we put cell phones in everyone’s hands, and these became the conduit through which many (most?) people get their news (amazingly), we lost all ability to resist their ubiquitous propaganda. Truly tragic.

TRT
TRT
Apr 9, 2023 4:13 PM

Yes, but most people were incapable or unwilling to resist the propaganda long before cell phones.

tonyopmoc
tonyopmoc
Apr 8, 2023 8:33 PM

Whilst it might be true, I don’t believe the latest news

“British sisters shot dead in West Bank terrorist attack namedPhotographs of the young women, aged 15 and 20, were released to Israeli media”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/04/08/british-sisters-shot-dead-named-rina-maya-dee-west-bank/

I reckon more bollocks. More fake news, but almost everyone will believe it.

Sad World.

Clown World.

Why should Palestinians Murder two pretty British Girls?

The main reason why girls such as Rachel Corrie go to Palestine, is to stand in the way of bulldozers, and the fact of the matter do not make any sense.

A few rockets fired into Northern Israel, whilst Israel has been bombing the sh1t out of Palestinians and Syrians as normal – and these two kids get caught in the crossfire??

A bit of a coincidence ????

Or totally made up for propaganda purposes to make us all sad?

rubberheid
rubberheid
Apr 8, 2023 7:34 PM

pilger, whom i always respected (“Hidden Agendas” being a confirmation of what I perceived), never said boo to the pandemic….

: /

Johnny
Johnny
Apr 9, 2023 2:59 AM
Reply to  rubberheid

Unfortunately Pilger, Hedges et al know which side their bread is buttered on.

TRT
TRT
Apr 9, 2023 4:14 PM
Reply to  rubberheid

Or 9/11.

wardropper
wardropper
Apr 10, 2023 8:09 PM
Reply to  rubberheid

Same with Chomsky, but I can’t in all honesty claim to know how far my journalistic leanings towards justice would take me in Pilger’s or Chomsky’s shoes…
Deliberately inviting a black future isn’t for everybody.

T Greenfield
T Greenfield
Apr 8, 2023 7:17 PM

Dear John & Nisha Whitehead, all the links to Bernstein’s article – The CIA and the media – are not working.

mjh
mjh
Apr 9, 2023 3:19 AM
Reply to  T Greenfield

Yes you are right. But instead try going to Carl Bernstein’s own website (just carlbernstein.com) and you can find them there easily.

T Greenfield
T Greenfield
Apr 9, 2023 12:27 PM
Reply to  mjh

Thanks a lot! That works.

George Mc
George Mc
Apr 8, 2023 7:15 PM

One thing I am now more convinced of than ever is that very few people around me are “internet savvy” and frankly just rely on the old TV and radio media. Which of course confines them to the most narrow world view imaginable (“everything from A to B” as Randy Newman once sang). This is why my friend so causally and complacently assures me that he would eat insects if “the experts” said it was OK. There is no point in arguing with him. You may as well try to engage a dog in the Socratic method.

And this is it! For many people, there has been no change from the days when the national anthem closed transmission. All is well when “The Management” say it is. In the meantime these citizens will keep drilled with the Home Guard. 

jubal hershaw
jubal hershaw
Apr 8, 2023 9:19 PM
Reply to  George Mc

I stopped arguing with my TV set ages ago because it doesnt listen.
I still dont argue with my TV set because now it does listen.
And i’m not yet sure about the ‘fridge

Johnny
Johnny
Apr 9, 2023 3:04 AM
Reply to  jubal hershaw

You’ve just gotta get a Smart Fridge Jubal. You’ll never need a shopping list again.
But there are risks:

‘In 2000, Russian anti-virus company Kaspersky Lab warned that in a few years Internet-connected fridges and other household appliances may be targets of net viruses, such as ones that could be designed to make your fridge door swing open in the middle of the night.‘

Ort
Ort
Apr 9, 2023 8:30 PM
Reply to  Johnny

I drifted away from comedian and social critic Harry Shearer during The Fog of the Scamdemic. But his weekly radio “Le Show” used to occasionally feature a segment dedicated to “The Internet of Things”. Mostly these were horror stories, albeit hilarious, of the various flaws and shortcomings in “smart” devices and household systems.

I’m sure advocates and defenders of “Internet of Things” smart technology would insist that these unfortunate dysfunctions are expectable and even unavoidable whenever a new technology is implemented– jes’ shakin’ out the bugs, boss!

Anyway, just off the top of my head, Harry’s reports of “smart” technology backfires included things like “smart” sex toys that recorded usage data unknown to the customers– data that could be retrieved by the manufacturer and even casual hackers. (Harry wondered rhetorically why anyone would even want an Internet-capable sex toy.) 

And then there was a major US consumer electronics retail chain that abruptly discontinued support for their “smart” household systems– which meant that the servers that processed commands for the “smart” devices would simply be turned off. Perhaps in the face of legal threats the corporation eventually devised a workaround to replace the servers, but at the time of the report hapless customers were, er, left to their own devices.

I haven’t checked, but I suppose the Internet is full of similar Internet of Things fails. BTW, as your comment suggests, one of the themes to Harry’s horror stories was that manufacturers of “smart” devices and systems typically “grabbed” existing commercial software that was notoriously buggy and vulnerable– and cheap– and tweaked it for use in their proprietary merchandise; the manufacturers were either oblivious or indifferent to the software’s flaws.

mgeo
mgeo
Apr 10, 2023 7:57 AM
Reply to  Ort

The major concern is a lack of protection from spying. This is partly deliberate. It offers a chance to sell an “improved” version. The acclaimed AI ChatGPT can even be coaxed to reveal methods or details useful to criminals.

Clive Williams
Clive Williams
Apr 8, 2023 9:58 PM
Reply to  George Mc

Internet isn’t real conscience understanding other than a percieved consumers real world adherence to the letter. If you want to physically take show a note book tablet like offering a friend a magazine article., remembering its technical ability is transcending your own meaning so you can form a discussion.

niko
niko
Apr 8, 2023 10:01 PM
Reply to  George Mc

comment image

Oldsage
Oldsage
Apr 9, 2023 5:17 PM
Reply to  niko

This is why the call it a tell a vision.

tonyopmoc
tonyopmoc
Apr 8, 2023 6:46 PM

30+ years ago, I used to really like Americans initially working with me in the UK, and sometimes working in the USA. I used to work shifts, and because of the time difference, the British management had gone home, and Americans were on the same time slot as me. We just kind of naturally got on, and I found Americans very supportive of me, whilst I never worked for an American company, and have never been to the USA.

I didn’t particularly use to like Howard James Kunstler, but this is a brilliant analysis of the USA, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

I have bought his book. I think he is a very decent man. I wish he could fix his voice.

The Hero’s Journey
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-heros-journey/

Lovely spring day in the UK

Happy Easter,

Tony

Clive Williams
Clive Williams
Apr 9, 2023 12:59 AM
Reply to  tonyopmoc

Of course you didn’t know happy Easter Tony.

NickM
NickM
Apr 8, 2023 6:11 PM

“U$ reveals the country with the MOST Trusted Government in World”

https://youtu.be/Al-s41UhGZ8