Category Archives: Media

Israel’s war on Palestinian media freedom
By Stephen Lendman
Posted on October 20, 2017 by Stephen Lendman

Israeli military censorship prohibits publishing anything about IDF high crimes against peace and daily persecution of Palestinians. Continue reading →

Journalist assassinated in Malta was on trail through Baku that leads to Trump
By Wayne Madsen
Posted on October 19, 2017 by Wayne Madsen

Maltese investigative journalist Caruana Galizia, 53, who was killed in a car bomb explosion in Valletta on October 16, was on a trail that not only implicated Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, his wife, and top aides in a scandal partly exposed by the release of the Panama Papers, but one that extended from Azerbaijan to the Trump Organization in New York. Galizia, whose blog generated more interest than Malta’s newspapers, had implicated the Muscat government in the sale of Maltese passports and receiving illegal funds from the government of Azerbaijan. Continue reading →

The unending state of emergency

The shocks are not normal, and order will not be restored.
By Todd Gitlin
Posted on October 18, 2017 by Todd Gitlin

It’s old news that Donald Trump abuses reason, knowledge, decency and dark-skinned people. You can’t tear your eyes away. You can already write tomorrow’s story: Today the vicious, deranged freak-show star trashed Enemy A, picked a fight with Failed Insider B, invited unconstitutional action C, insulted population D, declared his intent to abrogate Agreement E or make war on Country F, and denied facts G through Z. Fill in the blanks. Continue reading →

Trump threatens press freedom, FCC broadcast licenses
By Wayne Madsen
Posted on October 16, 2017 by Wayne Madsen

U.S. presidential strongman Donald Trump has issued a stark warning via Twitter to the American press. In an October 11 tweet, Trump wrote, “With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!” It is not the first time Trump has threatened the First Amendment constitutional right of a free press. Trump has already threatened to use anti-trust laws to punish CNN for unfavorable coverage of him. Trump encouraged the Justice Department to block a merger between CNN’s parent company Time Warner and AT&T. Continue reading →

This Sinclair-Tribune merger is a rotten deal for America

What’s to be done about ‘the most dangerous company most Americans haven’t heard of?’
By Michael Winship
Posted on September 7, 2017 by Michael Winship

Gather around, everyone, and let me tell you a story about rules. And greed and hypocrisy. Continue reading →

How mainstream U.S. ‘news’ media pump their government’s lies to deceive the public
By Eric Zuesse
Posted on August 7, 2017 by Eric Zuesse

Now that finally the U.S. government has officially terminated its arming and training of the jihadist gangs that are fighting to overthrow and replace Syria’s government, the neoconservative mainstream U.S. ‘news’ media are disagreeing with each other over how to communicate this fact to the American people without contradicting, or otherwise violating, the false ‘history’ they’ve all been presenting and preserving, throughout the past five years, which has described the U.S. government as being opposed to the jihadists in Syria, instead of as the U.S. government’s arming and training jihadists to overthrow and replace Syria’s government. That’s a pretty blatant ‘historical’ lie, which they’ve all been maintaining, now, for five years; and, they’re at loggerheads over whether or how they’ll deal with it, now that the program (whose very existence they’ve helped the government to hide from the public) has been so publicly and suddenly ordered to end. Continue reading →

Don’t let corporations pick what websites you visit

Broadband companies want the government to let them control the Internet as we know it. And they've got help.
By Razan Azzarkani
Posted on July 27, 2017 by Razan Azzarkani

Think about the websites you visit. The movies you stream. The music you listen to online. The animal videos that are just too cute not to share. Continue reading →

Public interest in the communications of ‘the commons’ about to be dealt a fatal blow
By Wayne Madsen
Posted on July 17, 2017 by Wayne Madsen

Ever since the dawn of modern telecommunications, the American public has been guaranteed by law certain inalienable rights. The law that established the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Communications Act of 1934, enshrined for all Americans the principle of universal access to communications services. Subsequent laws have expanded universal access from telephones to other services, such as high-speed Internet. There is a particular right of universal access to communications for those living in rural and insular areas, and low-income Americans. The other FCC law that guaranteed Americans the right of access to the communications conduits of the public commons, in this case, the public airwaves, was the Fairness Doctrine of 1949. The doctrine required holders of public broadcast licenses to provide honest, equitable, and balanced views of public importance. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine in order to please the wealthy GOP donors who owned various media conglomerates. Continue reading →

Trump rants endanger safety of journalists in the U.S.
By Wayne Madsen
Posted on July 13, 2017 by Wayne Madsen

U.S. strongman Donald Trump’s comments and tweets, which have blasted the “fake media” and “fake news,” have endangered journalists across the United States. In combining the unique powers afforded by the presidential “bully pulpit” to every American president since Theodore Roosevelt, who coined the phrase, with the “lying press” (lügenpresse), verbiage favored by Adolf Hitler, Trump has rallied to his side some of the most unsavory political activists and bottom-feeders seen in the United States since the days of the red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy. Continue reading →

Today, July 12, everyone can stand up for net neutrality

Imagine a world without Internet freedom. This week, a major protest on the web will show what it would be like.
By Michael Winship
Posted on July 12, 2017 by Michael Winship

Just over two years after the Federal Communications Commission, under President Obama, approved rules protecting a free and open Internet accessible to all, net neutrality is once again under fire. And once again, the public is being called upon to stand up and fight for freedom of speech. Continue reading →

Google ‘News’ is hideous
By Wayne Madsen
Posted on July 5, 2017 by Wayne Madsen

Even before its recent “redesign,” which was claimed to provide an “uncluttered” look, Google News was one of the worst news aggregator sites on the Internet. Many longtime Google News users have complained about the site’s quality and dubious “news” content. Google has offered no reasonable explanations for its poor business decisions that have resulted in Google News being a repository for misleading news links. Keeping in mind that Google received its initial seed investment from the CIA’s IN-Q-IT, now known as IN-Q-TEL, the agency’s venture capital firm in the Silicon Valley, the CIA may be playing some sort of massive social network experiment on Google News users. Continue reading →

Trump is right about fake news media, wrong about most everything else
By Stephen Lendman
Posted on July 5, 2017 by Stephen Lendman

Media scoundrels abhor journalism the way it should be—especially on domestic and geopolitical issues mattering most, notably on virtually everyting related to imperial wars, Russia and Trump. Continue reading →

Trump’s escalating assault on the press
By Robert Reich
Posted on July 4, 2017 by Robert Reich

On Sunday morning Trump seemed to promote violence against CNN. Continue reading →

What happens when America’s top investigative journalist reports what its media owners don’t want the public to know?
By Eric Zuesse
Posted on June 30, 2017 by Eric Zuesse

This isn’t only about U.S. President Barack Obama’s secret policy on Syria; it’s also about his successor, Donald Trump, adopting that secret policy, and about the U.S. press keeping this policy secret from the U.S. public—effectively blinding America’s voters so they can’t see, much less understand, the U.S. government’s ongoing international looting-operation, nor even the key parts of it. Continue reading →

Once again, mainstream media does Pharma’s bidding
By Martha Rosenberg
Posted on June 27, 2017 by Martha Rosenberg

Taxpayers are stuck paying for the opioid crisis created by Big Pharma to make more money. Late last year, the Senate approved $1 billion of our money for “opioid prevention and treatment programs” as part of the 21st Century Cures Act. Continue reading →

Former Commish Michael Copps: ‘Maybe the worst FCC I’ve ever seen’
By Michael Winship
Posted on June 21, 2017 by Michael Winship

In just a few short months, the Trump wrecking ball has pounded away at rules and regulations in virtually every government agency. The men and women the president has appointed to the Cabinet and to head those agencies are so far in sycophantic lockstep, engaged in dismantling years of protections in order to make real what White House strategist Steve Bannon infamously described as “the deconstruction of the administrative state.” Continue reading →

Journalism, history and war: Sit, type and bleed
By Ramzy Baroud
Posted on June 14, 2017 by Ramzy Baroud

The typical newsroom set-up, where journalists chase after news headlines dictated by some centralized news gathering agency—often based in some Western capital—does not suffice any more. Continue reading →

There is no media more hostile than Qatar’s

It is troubling to discover that one of Al Jazeera’s prime functions was to act as a mouthpiece for the Muslim Brotherhood
By Linda S. Heard
Posted on May 30, 2017 by Linda S. Heard

In response to the banning of Qatari websites by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, Qatar’s foreign minister announced that his country is the target of “a hostile media campaign.” Continue reading →

‘You can’t make this up’: Comcast threatens legal action against net neutrality proponents

If FCC chairman Ajit Pai's plan "is enacted, there would be nothing preventing Comcast from simply blocking sites like Comcastroturf.com that are critical of their corporate policies"
By Lauren McCauley
Posted on May 25, 2017 by Lauren McCauley

Open Internet proponents who have been fighting the Trump administration’s rollback of net neutrality protections, which has been enacted at the bidding of the telecom industry, said Tuesday that Comcast is now threatening legal action, saying the website Comcastroturf.com is infringing on its trademark. Continue reading →

The hidden bombshell in the Comey-Trump story

The president didn’t just want the FBI to stop investigating his friend Mike Flynn. He wanted it to arrest journalists.
By Peter Certo
Posted on May 19, 2017 by Peter Certo

How can you tell an authoritarian when you see one? We know the 20th century hallmarks—brown shirts, street rallies, and the like. But there’s an autocratic attitude, some historians suggest, that can easily be traced across the centuries. Continue reading →

Major media organize to rig web-search results
By Eric Zuesse
Posted on May 12, 2017 by Eric Zuesse

The New York Times, as Robert Parry has pointed out, “Cheers the Rise of Censorship”, but only of censorship of any allegations that expose the fraudulence of the NYT’s allegations. The Washington Post, Google, the TV networks, and practically all of the famous providers of ‘news,’ have joined forces in order to block from the internet any statements that contradict, or especially any evidence that disproves, what they collectively define to be ’true’; and, while they do this, they add a lie, that their sole aim in doing this rigging of web-search results is to prevent ‘misinformation’ from polluting your mind. They use as an excuse the existence of some flagrantly fabricated reports on obscure websites, but if the mainstream press can ban reports such as those, then they can also ban real news reports, which expose the mainstream’s own lies. In other words: they are implementing their collective power to block you from being able to know that they’re systematically lying. Will the public trust them with this power? Continue reading →

‘A scandal’: After FCC bent rules, right-wing Sinclair network to grow even bigger
By Deirdre Fulton
Posted on May 10, 2017 by Deirdre Fulton

Creating the nation’s largest local TV station conglomerate—and raising the frightening prospect of a network that would rival Fox News—conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group announced Monday it will buy Tribune Media for $3.9 billion. Continue reading →

Spicer confirms White House actively planning attack on press freedoms

Effort to rewrite libel laws, says press secretary, 'is being looked into substantively and logistically'
By Jon Queally
Posted on May 3, 2017 by Jon Queally

White House press secretary Sean Spicer confirmed Monday that the Trump administration is actively—and in his words “substantively”—reviewing the nation’s libel laws as it explores ways it could more easily sidestep First Amendment protections and target press coverage or news stories it deems objectionable. Continue reading →

Trump’s FCC gives Big Telecom ‘free reign’ with vote for major handouts

'This is the price we pay for the outrageous influence of money in politics. The public interest suffers, and we are poorer—economically and civically—for it'
By Nadia Prupis
Posted on April 25, 2017 by Nadia Prupis

At its April open meeting on Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to give yet more handouts to the telecommunications industry, lifting a price cap on broadband services and reinstating a loophole that lets broadcasters monopolize airwaves. Continue reading →

Google suppresses important news in addition to alternate media
By Wayne Madsen
Posted on April 21, 2017 by Wayne Madsen

Google’s now-infamous censorship programs and algorithms, built into the firm’s search engine software, are not merely suppressing alternate news sites, but also ignoring or diverting search results away from important news stories being reported by conventional news organizations. In an attempt to prioritize “reliable” news sites, Google News searches have been found to return as top stories links to a number of non-critical news subjects, including sports, travel, weather, and popular entertainment. Continue reading →

America plagued with fake news and fake TV experts
By Wayne Madsen
Posted on April 13, 2017 by Wayne Madsen

The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee recently held a hearing devoted, in part, to accusations that Russia initiated a massive “fake news” campaign against the United States during the 2016 election. It must be pointed out that the popularity of alternative foreign news sources for the American public came after the “dumbing down” of U.S. news consumers by a “infotainment” industry, headquartered in Los Angeles and New York, that dished massive amounts of “phony news” to America on a 24/7 basis. Continue reading →

Five top papers run 18 opinion pieces praising Syria strikes—zero are critical
By Adam Johnson
Posted on April 11, 2017 by Adam Johnson

Five major US newspapers—the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and New York Daily News—offered no opinion space to anyone opposed to Donald Trump’s Thursday night airstrikes. By contrast, the five papers ran a total of 18 op-eds, columns or “news analysis” articles (dressed-up opinion pieces) that either praised the strikes or criticized them for not being harsh enough. Continue reading →

A couple of things about Jimmy Breslin
By Michael Winship
Posted on March 29, 2017 by Michael Winship

Last Wednesday, I sat down to write a piece about the late Jimmy Breslin, the newspaper columnist whose blunt yet eloquent and crafted prose captured New York and its environs as no one has since Damon Runyon. Continue reading →

Truth, lies and democracy: Journalism in the age of Trump

Lies do more than debase political debate. Lies are the termites in the house of democracy.
By Olivia Ward
Posted on March 16, 2017 by Olivia Ward

In June 1972, a story about gang of American burglars caught red-handed with their pockets stuffed with hundred-dollar bills made journalistic history. Continue reading →

Harvard’s fake guide to fake news sites
By Stephen Lendman
Posted on March 15, 2017 by Stephen Lendman

Is this what parents pay $63,000 annually for tuition, room, board and fees, so their children can be ill-served and ill-taught? Continue reading →

The American media hide from the truth
By Paul Craig Roberts
Posted on March 14, 2017 by Paul Craig Roberts

The CIA created and accumulated from other sources a huge array of malware and cyber attack capability capable of stealing information from any individual, any government, any corporation, any intelligence agency and either leaving no trace or leaving a “fingerprint” of an innocent party. The CIA, being arrogant and incompetent, lost control over its monster which escaped and now is in the hands of we know not who. Floating around the Internet, it was sent to WikiLeaks. Listen to Julian Assange’s explanation of the capability of the CIA’s spyware, which includes end runs around encryption. Continue reading →

Who are John Schindler and Malcolm Nance and why should anyone care?
By Wayne Madsen
Posted on March 7, 2017 by Wayne Madsen

The 24/7 cable “news” networks are giving air time to any “national security experts,” regardless of their credentials and backgrounds, to bash Russia. The current political firestorm over Trump campaign officials meeting with Russian ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak has taken on the aura of the “Red baiting” of the 1950s and Senator Joe McCarthy looking for Communists in every nook and cranny inside the federal government. MSNBC has been the worst network regarding the mole hunt for modern-day Alger Hisses burrowed within the Trump inner circle. However, CNN follows a close second in the resurrection of a version of the John Birch Society among Democrats and Russia-bashing Republicans like Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Ben Sasse. Continue reading →