Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Caitlin Johnstone — MSM Is Frantically Attacking Dissenting Syria Narratives, And It Looks Really Bad

Many of these recent hit pieces are coming out of the UK, which is interesting given the way a BBC reporter recently admonished her interviewee for questioning the official story about the alleged Douma chemical attacks because his words could hurt the “information war” effort against Russia. If this view is widespread among British journalists (and recent headlines by the Times, the Independent and the Telegraphsuggest that it may be), this means we’re looking at an environment wherein reporters aren’t even pretending it’s their job to be truthful, tell all sides of a story and hold power to account, but rather to manufacture support for escalations against Russia and undermine anyone who resists....

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
Caitlin Johnston

See also

Ed Schulz, Cenk Uygur, Mika Brzezinski, Phil Donahue, Ashleigh Banfield.
People scoff at state-funded channels like RT, while singing the praises of channels like MSNBC and CNN. Those networks benefit hugely from the myth that because they are not state-funded, they are somehow independent.
These are networks owned by giant parent corporations with plenty of skin in the political game — yet, it is rarely acknowledged that these corporations have a detrimental influence on the quality of journalism produced by their employees. The truth is rarely uttered, that network stars like Rachel Maddow are completely beholden to those corporate and political interests — and that this basic fact massively influences their reporting....
And this is just MSNBC, hardly the worst of the lot of US media.

Former MSNBC journalists expose the channel’s ‘pro-establishment bias’
Danielle Ryan, Irish freelance journalist

ht Naked Capitalism for both links.


Konrad said...

The corporate media outlets are losing both market share and advertisers to the Internet.

In desperation, the media outlets are labeling anyone who questions their lies as a “conspiracy theorist,” “Assad apologist,” “Putin agent,” “Russian bot,” and so on. They label anyone who steals their advertisers as a “Nazi” and a “right wing extremist” (no matter how leftist they actually are).

The media outlets have nothing to offer except Russia-gate and political correctness. They go wild when Trump misspells a trivial word in a Tweet. They have lost their mojo, and they are sweating. Their advertising revenue keeps plunging, yet people like Rachel Maddow have contracts to be paid $30,000 per show, per day. Average people are more skeptical than ever about media claims concerning “gas attacks” and “gas poisonings.” No one outside the media echo-chamber believes such nonsense.

YouTube and Facebook are working hard to censor truthful content, but they are limited in this, since they don’t want to lose advertising revenue.

There was a time when the media outlets could use political correctness to whip the masses into a frenzy. Today, liberals and conservatives still battle over Social Justice Warrior trash, but when it comes to endless war, or things like Single Payer health care, many liberals and conservatives are now on the same side. This makes it harder for the media outlets to create controversies and “sell copy.”

It’s a case of what Tom Hickey calls media “overreach.” The corporate media giants thought they were omnipotent, but they have been subverted and overthrown by the Internet and social media, and now they are whining about it, and lashing out.

Here’s an example of how irrelevant the media outlets are today. All of the British media is obsessing on a single issue: the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge had another child (their third). My god. I mean, WHO CARES???

For a graphic representation of this silliness, take a look at all the British newspaper covers...


Konrad said...

Scratch that last part. Today's British newspapers have moved on from the "royal baby" drivel. But it was up all day yesterday and Sunday.

Kaivey said...

In the Guardian CiF a year or so back there was plenty of people backing the Western line and calling people like me, Putinbots, and Comrade Vlad, and I used to despair seeing how vamped up for war they were. But now I see manly people with views similar to mine and they are very skeptical of the Guardian's articles. The Guardian would once remove these posts but they are so common place now they would have no CiF left if they did.

So, I wondered where these people are getting their info from, and it is the internet, of course, and they are going to the same sites as I do. Consortium News, Jimmy Dore, RT, Strategic Cultures etc. Of course, the majority of the population are oblivious to the truth because they are not all that interested in politics, but a significant section of the population are interested in politics and they seem to be getting the truth.

I have some old school friends on Facebook, some friends in a Hi Fi club, my family and my girlfriends family and friends. I started putting out the real news on fb, like PCR and his articles on WW3 and the end of the world. They put out photos of their children, their pets, the cakes they have baked, and stuff about football, and then there are my depressing articles, but no one comments on them or likes them. They probably think I'm crazy.

Matt Franko said...

This is a bullshit article those networks spend ALLLLL DAY attacking Trump who is the head of the government...

They are just biased leftist Democrat..

Tom this is like your bias where if the Democrats do something stupid you say “it’s the US!” but then if the GOP does something stupid you say “it’s the GOP!”...

Same thing ...

Tom Hickey said...


The two links above are about Dems doing something stupid.

But MSNBC is a bit late to the game. Fox beat them by years.