As the US Senate holds its first hearing on the proposed Comcast-Time Warner deal—a $45 billion transaction that will affect millions of consumers and further pad some already well-lined pockets—it’s useful to get a look at how our elected officials have benefitted from the largesse of the two companies with an urge to merge. Continue reading
CNN is the 24/7 media trumpet for news about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 that is presumed to have crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean, southwest of Australia. On that flight were 227 passengers and 12 crew members. Continue reading
(WMR)—Roger Shuler, the Alabama blogger and former Birmingham newspaper reporter, was released from an Alabama jail on March 26. Continue reading
As usual, the mainstream media are a day late and a dollar short. Continue reading
In early May 2013, employees of the National Security Agency knew something big was up. Rumors began flying around the agency that there had been a massive security leak. Although few of NSA’s civilian and military rank and file knew the extent of the compromise, NSA director General Keith Alexander, his closest aides, and NSA’s internal security “Q Group” knew the ramifications about what was known to them about the leak. Continue reading
Gerald Celente calls the Western media “presstitutes,” an ingenuous term that I often use. Presstitutes sell themselves to Washington for access and government sources and to keep their jobs. Ever since the corrupt Clinton regime permitted the concentration of the US media, there has been no journalistic independence in the United States except for some Internet sites. Continue reading
RT presenter Abby Martin has bought herself a reputation as a 9/11 sceptic and a vocal opponent of Israeli‘s policies .Tuesday, she denounced Russian action in Crimea while she was live on air. Continue reading
Prominent journalists in the United States may as well be on the White House payroll. They are consistent cheerleaders for whoever occupies the oval office and the corporate corner office. They make no attempt to hide their allegiance to power and their lack of interest in informing the public. Continue reading
Last Wednesday’s announcement by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler that the FCC would write new rules to insure open access to the Internet—otherwise known as Net neutrality—generally was seen by consumers as a step in the right direction. But media reform advocates were concerned that it didn’t go far enough. Continue reading
The independent movie “The Last War Crime” begins with a docudrama presentation of the events of September 11, 2001, using actual quotations where available, actual NYPD helicopter footage the production team had to sue to get, and using dramatic license to fill in the blanks where necessary. The film then transitions to an entirely fictional section in which the writer, producer and director, a person known only as The Pen, speculates on what would happen if a courageous US district attorney, who stumbles on a trail of evidence leading to Dick Cheney as the mastermind behind the torture that has occurred in Iraq, struggles to do something about what he has found out. Continue reading
The worst fears of all free speech proponents are upon us. The Verizon suit against the Federal Communications Commission, appellate decision sets the stage for a Supreme Court review. The Wall Street Journal portrays the ruling in financial terms: “A federal court has tossed out the FCC’s “open Internet” rules, and now Internet service providers are free to charge companies like Google and Netflix higher fees to deliver content faster.” Continue reading
The highly controlled mainstream news always does the bidding of our Military Industrial Empire . . . always! As most folks should know, there is this constitutional caveat called sequestration that requires cuts in federal spending, to help balance budgets. Continue reading
The Big Story this past week was the Golden Globes awards. Continue reading
In the words of Howard Beale, the Mad Prophet of the Airwaves in the movie Network, “Woe is us! We’re in a lot of trouble!” And, as Beale would shout, we should be mad as hell. Continue reading
With the impending demise of World Wide Web “net neutrality,” which has afforded equal access for website operators to the Internet, the one percent of billionaire investors are busy positioning themselves to take over total control of news reporting on the Internet. Continue reading
Bill Keller, editorialist for The NY Times and former executive editor of the paper, has recently penned a strong attack on Vladimir Putin, arguing that Putin’s leadership “deliberately distances Russia from the socially and culturally liberal West,” describing the Kremlin’s policies as “laws giving official sanction to the terrorizing of gays and lesbians, the jailing of members of a punk protest group for offenses against the Russian Orthodox Church, the demonizing of Western-backed pro-democracy organizations as ‘foreign agents,’ expansive new laws on treason, limits on foreign adoptions.” Continue reading
The mass media have a fixation upon throwing up lists. Continue reading
Ten years ago, when Moyers & Company guests John Nichols and Robert McChesney appeared on the series Now with Bill Moyers, they protested the lack of public involvement in decisions concerning mass media. “There are a handful of very interested parties who are deeply engaged,” Nichols said then, “ who think about it every day, who hire lobbyists, who spend a great deal of money, not merely to lobby Congress, but also, to lobby the FCC.” Continue reading
Here in Manhattan the other day, you couldn’t miss it—the big bold headline across the front page of the tabloid New York Post, screaming one of those sick, slick lies that are a trademark of Rupert Murdoch’s right wing media empire. There was Uncle Sam, brandishing a revolver and wearing a burglar’s mask. “UNCLE SCAM,” the headline shouted. “U.S. robs bank of $13 billion.” Continue reading
The U.S. corporate-stream media embodied by ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, MSNBC, PBS, CNN and the major print media, etc., repeatedly and overwhelmingly demonstrates that it is the mortal enemy of truth and concomitantly of everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation and throughout Mother Earth. Continue reading
(WMR)—Ever since National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden first began releasing information and documents and PowerPoint slides amassed on thumb drives by him before he fled the United States for Hong Kong and Moscow, the information flow about NSA’s super-secret surveillance programs directed against U.S. citizens and foreigners alike has been plagued with redactions. These redactions have been engineered by agreements between newspaper, magazine, and TV network editors, publishers, and managers, on one hand, and NSA, British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron administration officials on the other. Continue reading
(WMR)—The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to hear the appeal of the decision of the U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ordering New York Times reporter James Risen to testify before a grand jury and reveal his CIA source, believed by the Justice Department to be former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling. Federal prosecutors believe that Sterling was Risen’s source for whom the Department of Justice believes revealed information to Risen that he published in his book State of War. Continue reading
(WMR)—WMR has been reporting on political and judicial malfeasance in Alabama for a number of years. Overall, Alabama Republican politicians and judges evoke memories of Al Capp’s Jubilation T. Cornpone, Hee Haw’s Junior Samples, and Green Acres’s Eustace Charleston Haney, otherwise known as “Mr. Haney.” Bumbling, goofball, ignorant, and corrupt vestiges of a bygone plantation-era South don’t even come close to describing what passes for judges and political leaders in the state that refers to itself as the “Heart of Dixie.” Continue reading
While driving on my usual errands’ run the other day, I listened a little to Limbaugh’s radio show. As usual I was completely amazed at the incredible misinformation vomited by the champion of stupidity. Continue reading
Free Speech Radio News, a daily international news program produced for and carried by community radio stations primarily in the United States, aired for the last time on Friday, September 27, 2013. Continue reading
Guardian reporter Lisa O’Carroll last Friday wrote, “Seymour Hersh has some rogue ideas on how to fix journalism: close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider.” Right on, Sy. Continue reading
After a long absence, to be exact five years, since President Obama took office, Seymour Hersh is back, out, and talking. And by that I mean really talking. He is calling the reports on Bin Laden’s so-called assassination, by that I mean the mainstream media reports, those dictated by Obama’s White House and Pentagon, big lies, pure bullshit, and not a single word of it true. Continue reading
Mark Landler is a White House correspondent for The New York Times. Under the title “Through Diplomacy, Obama Finds a Pen Pal in Iran,” Landler wrote of President Barack Obama’s deep “belief in the power of the written word,” and of his “frustrating private correspondence with the leaders of Iran.” (NYT, Sep. 19) Continue reading
Twenty years ago several journalists expressed concern that the number of major news sources in America had diminished to fifty. Today, conglomerates have bought up most of those news sources; and the number of major news sources controlling the media has been reduced to six! Continue reading
As soon as Kevin Drum at Mother Jones absolved the CIA of spewing poison gas as a provocation, many on the Liberal Left cautiously threw their weight behind Obama and the thrill of waging a punitive war on Syria. Continue reading
Television anchors and their guests waste hours of viewer’s time. Continue reading
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Were chemical attacks in Syria false flags?
Posted on April 16, 2014 by Linda S. Heard
There was a time when journalistic standards meant reporting facts and not taking sides, but nowadays the news is editorialised; sometimes by presenting one facet of a story; on other occasions by omission. Continue reading →