Media Critique (Media on Trial event on the left)

Editor of the vehemently anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer, Streicher was convicted of, in the words of the judgment, “incitement to murder and extermination at the time when Jews in the East were being killed under the most horrible conditions clearly constitut(ing) … a crime against humanity.”

(The) pattern of the major U.S. news figures advocating aggressive wars even predated 9/11. Three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman published a strident call for war crimes including collective punishment of Serbs and the destruction of their water supplies over the Kosovo crisis (..) Sadly, the words of Nuremberg Prosecutor Griffith-Jones concerning the propaganda of German journalist Julius Streicher hold considerable meaning today for some of the most prominent journalists in the country which, 60 years ago, provided the guiding light at Nuremberg: 'Streicher “made these things possible – made these crimes possible which could never have happened had it not been for him and for those like him.'

(...) Unfortunately, 60 years later, little progress has been made. War propaganda is still legal and very much alive – flourishing, in fact, as demonstrated by periodic calls for one more invasion of a country which has never threatened the U.S.: Iran. As matters stand today, with the United States still the world's preeminent military power, the American propagandists who enabled Operation Iraqi Freedom and other wars of aggression have little need to worry about their legal responsibilities under the Nuremberg principles. - A strong case can be made, though, that they have blood on their hands."

-- Peter Dyer, US Journalists & War-Crime Guilt, 2008, Consortium News

As a sociologist, who has researched Western media reports on NATO-targeted nations for years now, I must conclude that the Western media (corporate and state) today function as one single propaganda apparatus. Homo Sociologicus, Lars Jorgensen
Did RT Sell us the Afghani War? Did RT Sell us the Iraq War? Did RT Sell us the Libyan War? Did RT Sell us the Syrian War? Did RT Sell us the Yemen War?
- by Clarity of Signal
 
"In 2010 (..) Washington Post reported that the national security state had swelled into a “fourth branch” of the federal government ― with 854,000 vetted officials, 263 security organizations, and over 3,000 intelligence units, issuing 50,000 special reports every year." Exploring the Shadows of the US Security State: How I Learned Not to Love Big Brother." ----- Professor Alfred McCoy, 2017 
 
"In the West, scribblers and ‘scholars’ have been paid to soften every barbarity committed by the rulers, soldiers and even common citizens. - The cults of formal learning, of facts and information have been erected. Holed in innumerable officially recognized institutions, the scholars, certified demagogues, researchers and media people have been ‘studying’ each other, recycling and quoting each other, filling millions of books with essentially the same narrative. ‘New’ and ‘revolutionary’ academic discoveries mostly lead to the same old conclusions, to stale intellectual and moral passivity, cowardice and spinelessness." The Entire World is “Fake News”, 2017, Andre Vltchek
 
“Those who claim to be objective, like the BBC or The New York Times, are actually the most professional propagandists for the Western Empire.”, 2018, A Conversation with Andre Vltchek, Danny Haiphong 
 
See more about the colossal matrix: HS CIA's Global Propaganda Apparatus
 
"To understand the Iraq war you don’t need to consult generals, but the spin doctors and PR flacks who stage-managed the countdown to war from the murky corridors of Washington where politics, corporate spin and psy-ops spooks cohabit." How They Sold the Iraq War, March 2018, Jeffrey St. Clair, Counter Punch
 
A few articles to explain the manipulation on Syria today:
 
All information in the mainstream media on Syria since (at least) 2013 have been provided in collaboration with Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, ISIS etc. Who supplies the news? Patrick Cockburn, Feb. 2017, London Review of Books 
 
"Michael Weiss — One of the most widely quoted western experts on Syria — and an enthusiast for western intervention. Director of communications and public relations at the neo-con Henry Jackson Society. The Henry Jackson Society’s international patrons include: James “ex-CIA boss” Woolsey, Michael “homeland security” Chertoff, William “PNAC” Kristol, Robert “PNAC” Kagan, Joshua “Bomb Iran” Muravchick, and Richard “Prince of Darkness” Perle. The Society is run by Alan Mendoza, chief adviser to the all-party parliamentary group on transatlantic and international security.” Syrian Opposition’s Amazing CIA Credentials, 2012, Lew Rockwell
 
"Pro-Israel neocon hawk Michael Weiss brags, in a new piece in Foreign Affairs Magazine, that he has drafted a blueprint adopted by the Syrian opposition, which includes a call for foreign military intervention", 2012 Tikun Olam
 
"Indeed, a number of key figures in the Syrian opposition movement are long-term exiles who were receiving US government funding to undermine the Assad government long before the Arab spring broke out." The Syrian opposition: who's doing the talking?, 2012, Charlie Skelton, The Guardian
 
"... the war against Syria has triggered an avalanche of propaganda. And the use of children is always a winning strategy." 2016, For London, propaganda is an artby Thierry Meyssan
 
Read this article to see, which media are important to run with US fabricated 'news': The fake terror threat used to justify bombing Syria, 2014, Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
 
 
"Investigative reporter Parry details how CW (conventional wisdom) regarding national and international issues is deliberately manipulated, and how journalists find themselves in trouble when they try to go beyond.", Fooling America: How Washington Insiders Twist the Truth and Manufacture the Conventional Wisdom, 1992, Robert Parry
 
One example of how the big US media attack true journalism: "January 30, 2000, Robert Parry talked about his book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press and "Project Truth". The book tells the story of the reporters that broke the secret Contra operation in Iran. The operation became known as the Iran-Contra Affair. Mr. Parry talked about how similar stories went underreported or unreported by the media during the 1980s." Robert Parry: Lost History, The Contras & 'Project Truth' (listen esp. at 15. minutes+]
 
Please notice a pattern in the Western demonization of targeted nations in the mainstream media's reporting. Besides the pattern of evidence afterwards showing that the reportings were ALWAYS completely false. Not only do the reporting imply that the people of the targeted nation are willing to accept the destruction of their country to remove their leader. Also, it should at least make people suspicious that the reporting on the targeted leaders implies that the targeted leaders are the stupidiest people on Earth. See, every time Western politicians set up a target and the Western media focus in for an excuse to 'intervene', the targeted leaders 'reportedly' do exactly, that which will get them bombed. So, Saddam Hussein gets his soldiers to kill hundreds of babies in incubators [later fact: fabrication]; Gadaffi (for the first time in his forty years in Libya) attacks and kills his own people [later fact: British Parliamentary Report 2016 Gadaffi did not kill his own people and Al Qaeda presence was much bigger than reported]; Syria's Assad both torture, gas and bomb his own people and hospitals. And of course, the Syrian Army's most important gas attack came the very same day that the UN inspectors landed in Damascus to investigate allegations of the Syrian Army using chemicals (in 2013) [later fact: UN's Carla Del Ponte complete rejected that the Syrian Army was behind stating that it most probably were the 'rebels' that were behind].    
 
After researching the most credible information and academic literature on the wars, I can conclude that basically all information from all Western politicians and media were false with regard to Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria  and earlier with regard to Korea, Vietnam, Chile, Latin American nations etc. Logically, even children easily understand this: Western politicians and the media systematically lie on foreign politics. 
 
"... if you [look at] the current wars in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Ukraine, and others, it is clear that something has changed. There is one dominant narrative that is being pushed by literally every mainstream media source, irrespective of their ostensible ideological bent. No matter where you turn, you read or hear about Assad’s “barrel bombs”, Gaddafi’s “massacres”, or “Russian aggression.” These reports invariably represent a point of view that is not only completely one-sided, but also factually wrong, even on the most basic of issues. How did US and NATO manage to achieve such an amazing discipline within the supposedly free and independent Western media? - There are essentially three parts to the answer: state oversight of the media; co-opting individual reporters; disseminating propaganda through covert means." War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, NATO Information Operations, 2017, South Front
  
"Whether it’s a Friday leak to the press (meant to overtake a damaging narrative on Sunday news programs) or a Friday “document dump” of damaging material (meant to be overlooked by reporters ready to start their weekend), such news events rarely happen as a result of a reporter’s intrepid independent digging. They’re orchestrated, leaked, planted and timed. And too often, we in the media serve as willing repositories for propaganda, talking points and spin du jour, whether generated by Democrats, Republicans or corporate interests. Deals are cut in secret. Backs are scratched. One hand washes another." 'Let's start giving media manipulation the attention it deserves', Oct 2016, Attkinson
 
"In a word, the American MAVM (Mass Audio Video Media) now hold precisely the same position regarding Washington, as Dr. Goebbel's propaganda machinery held vis-à-vis the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, and the Nazi Party. They have become nothing less than the propaganda arm of the state. Thus we saw 'embedded' journalists from CNN, Fox Network, ABC-TV, etc., reporting directly from Iraq, wearing their 'objective' USA combat uniforms - and having precisely the same role as the German Wehrmacht cameramen who stormed across Poland, bringing newsreel images of the blitzkrieg to non-critical and manipulated audiences throughout the Third Reich. 

Striking as well, was the religious zeal with which the American MAVM adopted this posture - thereby abandoning their own officially proclaimed professional standards of 'journalistic objectivity'. One wonders what is happening at this present time, within media education across the United States? Is professional media training also taking on board this agenda of manipulative nationalism, and inventing new 'codes of ethics and professional standards' to justify its practices? 
At the same time, we should remember that - as far as the media goes - all of this has happened before." Access (Britain's greatest filmmaker) Peter Watkins' Indispensable Book Media Crisis, here
 
"The lies and fabrications of the MSM are not the result of “sloppy journalism”. They are deliberate and are intended to mislead the public." Who is Behind “Fake News”? Mainstream Media Use Fake Videos and Images, 2016, Prof Michel Chossudovsky
 
"The ‘New Hitlers’ - Milosevic, Hussein and Gaddafi - who we were told were the ‘biggest threats’ to world peace, are dead and buried. But guess what? The killing goes on." Read: 'Three countries, three continents: One imperial Western project', 2017, Neil Clark
 

Jonathan Cook on Trusting Politicians and the Media (FB, Sept, 2017)

"The biggest division on the left is not on substantial political matters but between those who understand that the political and media elites are manipulating the public discourse to weaken us and those who accept *their* argument that claims of such manipulations, smears and mind-games are just conspiracy theories.

I and others have been seeking to expose these manipulations for many years - there are lots of examples on my blog. And it is not as if we lack evidence for this. Nick Davies of the Guardian had a chapter (number 6) in his book Flat Earth News with shocking details of the extent to which the major western security agencies had penetrated media around the world, including in Britain and the US.

Now we have a whole book that develops this theme further: The Smear, by former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson. She points out that political operatives have brought the CIA's dark arts into the world of modern social media. It was the CIA that promoted in the 1960s the idea of the "conspiracy theory" to discredit dissidents and regime opponents. In his review of the book, Neil Clark observes:

'The CIA internal memo of April 1967 goes on to advise station chiefs to "employ propaganda assets" – adding that "book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose." In 1977, Carl Bernstein revealed that over 400 American journalists had secretly carried out assignments for the CIA in the previous 25 years.
'Which begs the question: How many journalists, are working for it – and other allied intelligence agencies today – pushing the Deep State line on foreign policy and seeking to marginalize those who dare to challenge?'

Attkisson argues that nowadays, in our inter-connected world, these assets / smear merchants are working everywhere: government agencies, PR firms, "think-tanks," Super PACs, media conglomerates, and other lobby groups. She concludes with a warning whose importance I cannot emphasise enough: develop your critical thinking.
'One thing you can count on is that most every image that crosses your path has been put there for a reason. Nothing happens by accident. What you need to ask yourself isn't so much, "Is it true," but "Who wants me to believe it – and why?" 
 
 
The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him, the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free.
Aldous Huxley
All Western media reporting from Syria, since at least 2013 have been done in collaboration with Al Qaeda, Al Nusra etc. 'Who supplies the news?', 2017, Patrick Cockburn, London Review Books
 

Risk of Totalitarian Control

 
 
 
 
 
Facebook censorship is basically hung up on the 'Russian Hack' Lie (above): "“It is important that people understand how foreign actors tried to sow division and mistrust using Facebook before and after the 2016 US election,” the company said in its announcement."  Facebook To Inform Users If They Fell For Russian Election Propaganda, Nov 2017, HuffPost
 
 
 
 
"The stakes in U.S.-Russia relations could not be higher – possible nuclear conflagration and the end of civilization – but the U.S. MSM, Still Living in Propaganda-ville
 
 
 

Corporate Control 'Alt. Media'

 
Cook: 'Google’s new search engine bias no accident': "...the claim of “fake news” does usefully offer western security agencies, establishment politicians and the corporate media a powerful weapon to silence their critics. After all, these critics have no platform other than independent websites and social media. Shut down the sites and you shut up your opponents." Sept. 30, 2017