No 1523 Posted by fw, November 25, 2015
Dave Lindorff
“…the evidence should be obvious and incontrovertible that the mainstream corporate media are working essentially in lockstep supporting US foreign policy in ways that involve presenting the world to the US public in a very warped pro-government manner. Why this is happening, when these news organizations are, for the most part, not directly funded or controlled by the government as they are in countries where we expect the media to be propaganda arms is a complicated story, long ago explained clearly by experts like Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman. But whether one reads such analyses or not, the reality should be clear to anyone who pays attention: the US media, particularly when it comes to foreign affairs, but also when it comes to matters like intelligence and domestic spying, cannot be trusted to present the truth, or anything approaching the truth.” —Dave Lindorff, counterpunch
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Are the American corporate media largely propaganda organs, or news organizations?
Here are a few points to consider, and then you the reader can decide. Check out how one should objectively answer these questions below, and then check how the US corporate media generally answer them:
Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: Yes
Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: No
Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: Yes
Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: No
Objective answer: Yes
US Media answer: No
Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: Yes
Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: Yes
Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: No
Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: Yes
10: If the US provides funds to organizations inside another country, which then
organize protests, marches and bloody assaults, and ultimately drive the elected
government out of office, as the US did in Ukraine, is that subversion?
Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: No
Objective answer: No, since there is already a powerful nuclear nation in the
Middle East with the capability of totally obliterating Iran — namely Israel.
Media answer: Yes
12: If Israel, which has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which refuses to allow
inspections of its nuclear facilities, and which is known to have hundreds of nuclear
weapons as well as the planes and missiles to deliver them anywhere, is that a
grave threat to regional stability in the Middle East and to world peace?
Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: No
13: If a person discloses discloses, for money, to a foreign power, the inner workings of
the National Security Agency’s signal intercept system, as well as the identities of
hundreds of US undercover intelligence operatives, as just-paroled Israeli spy
Jonathan Pollard did, is he an enemy of the US?
Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: No
Objective answer: No
US media answer: Yes
Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: Yes
16: If videos show Israeli Defense Forces firing kill shots into the head of a wounded
Palestinian lying on the street, is that an example of barbarism and a war crime
worthy of world-wide condemnation?
Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: No. (It’s not even worth reporting on)
Clearly one could go on and on with this kind of a list, but the evidence should be obvious and incontrovertible that the mainstream corporate media are working essentially in lockstep supporting US foreign policy in ways that involve presenting the world to the US public in a very warped pro-government manner.
Why this is happening, when these news organizations are, for the most part, not directly funded or controlled by the government as they are in countries where we expect the media to be propaganda arms is a complicated story, long ago explained clearly by experts like Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman.
But whether one reads such analyses or not, the reality should be clear to anyone who pays attention: the US media, particularly when it comes to foreign affairs, but also when it comes to matters like intelligence and domestic spying, cannot be trusted to present the truth, or anything approaching the truth.
I would point out here that solid evidence of this willful disregard for the truth and for truthtelling on the part of the corporate media can be found by looking at just the stories that have been broken here in our own small and virtually penniless news organization, ThisCantBeHappening!. Over the past four years, we have exposed:
* The CIA’s role in orchestrating terrorist sectarian mayhem in Pakistan
* The advance knowledge, and utter lack of concern or action by the FBI regarding a documented plot in Houston by some known but unidentified group or organization to assassinate leaders of that city’s Occupy movement using “suppressed sniper rifle fire.” (The Houston FBI sent memos about this plot to other FBI regional bureaus and to central FBI headquarters but never acted to prevent it and never made any arrests of those involved in the plot.)
* The Obama administration’s deliberate deep-sixing of hard forensic evidence by Turkish coroners showing that Israeli Defense Force members had brutally executed Furkan Dogan [5], a 19-year-old American kid aboard the Gaza Peace Flotilla’s flagship, the Mavi Marmara, and then did nothing to demand punishment for the killers
* The murder, by an FBI agent, of a young Chechen immigrant, Ibragim Todashev, in Florida who was being interrogated by the agent and a Boston cop in his own apartment. (Todashev may have had evidence that the FBI had been working with the Tsarnaev brothers before the Boston Marathon bombing.) Three part series: Dark Questions, Part I, Dark Questions, Part II, Dark Questions, Part III
These and other stories which we reported and published, and which were picked up widely in the alternative media, were never even mentioned by the US corporate media. Nor are most other important breaking news stories reported by other alternative media given any notice in the corporate press. Such information is thus kept largely away from the broader US population which gets its information entirely from mainstream corporate sources.
Dave Lindorff is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an online newspaper collective, and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).
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