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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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’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
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 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
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
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
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 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
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
The term “fake news” can be interpreted in various ways. Are we referring only to information that originates in the minds of those who serve as messengers . . . journalists, newscasters, news analysts, the cinema, government officials, etc.? Continue reading
Every day Donald Trump exemplifies the contradictions of this era. He may make a statement that the left can agree with, but not because of shared political beliefs or motives. That is the case with his latest twitter statement regarding the media. “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” Continue reading
First Amendment rights are too precious to lose. Without them, all others are at risk. Continue reading
When I began reading the work of Douglas Valentine about six years ago, I had not read his books, only the articles that the US online journal CounterPunch had published. In fact I only began reading CounterPunch because of the accident of having been introduced to the two original editors of what was then only a printed newsletter. Later I was even able to publish a few pieces in that journal before its more famous founding editor’s demise. Why do I preface a book review with such personal observations? To that question, I will return later. Continue reading
It came to this, on Day 1 of the New Order: Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, summoned reporters to a scolding more officially known as a “briefing,” in the course of which Spicer (1) lied to them repeatedly, (2) scolded them for lying, and (3) refused to permit questions. Andy Borowitz summarizes the scene nicely, in The New Yorker: “DISTURBED MAN GETS PAST WHITE HOUSE SECURITY, GIVES PRESS CONFERENCE.” Continue reading
Donald Trump no longer needs to launch Trump TV. Continue reading
Tyrants don’t allow open questioning, and they hate the free press. They want total control. Continue reading
For several months, Western officials and media outlets repeated thousands of times that there were between 250,000 and 300,000 civilians trapped under Syrian and Russian bombardment in East Aleppo. Western reports rarely mentioned the Syrian government’s estimate that there were only one-third that number of civilians in the rebel-controlled enclave—nor that its estimates were solidly based on what it had found in Homs and other rebel-held areas after it restored state control. Continue reading
For corporate media to be successful at lying to us on behalf of the portfolios of their owners, board members and advertisers, they must pretend to offer diversity in their reporting so as to convince the majority that different sides of issues are being aired. Continue reading
If the corporate media had raised a ruckus over the fact that some 50 members of the Electoral College were illegally seated and just one US senator had joined with one member of the House to challenge the certification of the electoral vote, Donald Trump might not be taking the presidential oath of office on Jan. 20. Continue reading
If the last name of the individual offering up news or intelligence is Kagan, Friedman, Kristol, Rubin, Brooks, Cohen, Goldberg, Podhoretz, Ledeen, Woolsey, Krauthammer, Goldfarb, Hayes, Senor, Zakheim, or Weiss, it should simply be disregarded as fake. Continue reading
I believe that the murder of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, was the result of the influence of fake news dominating the corporate media around the world. The shooter, identified as a 22-year-old Turkish riot police officer, shouted that he was upset about what is happening in Aleppo after committing the murder on video. Continue reading
When a veteran war reporter like Robert Fisk constructs his argument regarding the siege of Aleppo based on ‘watching’ video footage, then one can truly comprehend the near impossibility of adequate media coverage on the war in Syria. Continue reading
The other day David Ignatius, a columnist at the Washington Post, declared sententiously that “truth is losing.” He meant of course “the truth” according to the US government. Ignatius recently interviewed Richard Stengel, a State Department official responsible for “public diplomacy,” someone who had previously worked for Time magazine, a stellar source of “truth” and the “American way.” Things are getting tough, Stengel said. We’ve entered “a ‘post-truth’ world, where the facts are sometimes overwhelmed by propaganda from Russia and the Islamic State.” You can see right away where this conversation is headed. And how outrageous to compare Russia and the IS, when the original purveyors of Salafi-Jihadism are located in Washington, DC. Continue reading
I have watched incredulous as the CIA’s blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story—blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton’s corruption. Yes this rubbish was the lead Sunday in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also. Continue reading
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Journalism, history and war: Sit, type and bleed
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 →