The Media is the Message > UK Interference in Russian State? 3 of 4 Murderers of Journalist Jailed; CNN, MSNBC Ignored Lincoln Project Pervert

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This is a report from RT and so should be read with some caution.

However, it seems to be well-documented, and the premise of the UK and allies

demonizing Russia has been obvious for many years now.

Leaked papers allege massive UK govt effort to co-opt Russian-language anti-Kremlin media & influencers to ‘weaken Russian state’

18 Feb, 2021 18:32

©  Andrew Aitchison / Getty Images

By Kit Klarenberg, an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.

For all its alarmism about Russian ‘propaganda’ and ‘misinformation’, the UK government appears to be behind a multi-million-pound push to boost negative coverage of the Russian state, both in Russia and neighbouring countries.

At a European Union summit in November 2017, then-UK prime minister Theresa May announced plans to designate Russia a “hostile” state, and pledged to spend in excess of £100 million over the next five years on tackling the alleged threat of Kremlin “disinformation” internationally. 

Now, hacktivist collective Anonymous has released what appear to be internal UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) files that shed significant light on the true purpose, and ominous dimensions, of these vast efforts.

According to the papers, Whitehall has sought contractors to covertly infiltrate media and civil society at multiple levels – all under the aegis of schemes to, among other things, improve literacy, promote cultural activities, ensure “balance and plurality” in media reporting, and counteract propaganda.

Supporting anti-Kremlin media

One of these contractors, Zinc Network (more on them later) explained in its pitch documents that it was in the process of “delivering audience segmentation and targeting support for two of Russia’s leading independent media outlets – Meduza and MediaZona”.

The former is a Russian-language online newspaper and news aggregator based in Riga, Latvia. The latter is an investigative platform focused on Russia’s judicial, law enforcement and penal system, founded by two members of controversial punk rock band Pussy Riot.

As the pair “[lacked] the expertise and tools” to “promote content effectively to new audiences”, Zinc was working diligently to ensure their output reached as many eyes and ears as possible. In the process, the contractor conducted “weekly mentoring sessions with specialists from the outlets”, “adjusting their editorial and commercial strategy accordingly” and creating “common framings of issues.”

Prior to the release of these documents, any suggestions that Meduza and MediaZona – which both consistently publish content highly critical of the Russian state – were not only privately coordinating to ensure a consistent editorial line, but receiving assistance from the UK government to do so, would surely have been dismissed as Russian propaganda, conspiracy theory, fake news, or worse. 

It seems likely Meduza’s relationship with Whitehall, direct or indirect, conscious or unconscious, extends far further than this collaboration. Several contractors reference the outlet in the leaked files, in relation to numerous other FCDO-funded and directed projects. 

For instance, in pitch documents submitted by another contractor, Albany, Meduza is mentioned alongside ETV+, which is the Russian-language service of the Estonian broadcaster; Latvia’s LTV, Lithuania’s LRT Re:Baltica – the website of the Baltic Centre for Investigative Journalism – and other Russian-language platforms as a potential “long-term partner”, for which “new programming” could be funded and developed.

That this programming was to be explicitly anti-Moscow in character is starkly underlined by a section on “creating narrative games which encourage participation through social media and mobile platforms.”

“Meduza is a leading proponent of these games which, for the most part, embrace political themes (e.g. Putin Bingo, ‘help Putin get to his meeting with the Pope on time’ and ‘help the Orthodox priest get to his church without succumbing to earthly pleasures’),” Albany notes. 

These “satirical games” would make the “valid point” that “the offer of a fairer, respectful and caring society is better than that of an arrogant, nationalistic regime.” Proposed themes include helping “the whimsical Russian exile preserve his cultural identity in the face of British political correctness”, and “the oligarch’s son conceal his unseemly wealth on his first day at university”. 

Such surreal proposal excerpts would be laughable, were it not for the fact they amply underline the extraordinary lengths London is determined to go to in service of demonizing, destabilizing and isolating Russia nationally and internationally. 

The contractors

The contractors involved – including the aforementioned Zinc and Albany – all boast staff possessed of such clearances, individuals who previously served at the highest levels of government, the military and security services. They furthermore have extensive experience in conducting information warfare operations on London’s behalf the world over. For instance, several shadowy companies named in the leaked papers feature prominently in leaked documents related to Whitehall’s far-reaching propaganda blitz in Syria.

As such, the companies clearly wouldn’t be at all obvious candidates to lead programs genuinely concerned with strengthening civil society, improving journalistic standards, or combating disinformation – but of course, the programs aren’t.

Zinc Network (previously known as Breakthrough Media) is a seasoned veteran of clandestine Whitehall-funded information warfare campaigns at home and abroad. It has a long, deplorable history of cynically co-opting genuine civil society voices to covertly further Whitehall’s interests, without their knowledge or consent, and often with serious real-world consequences.

One programme Zinc bid for is Support for Independent Media in the Baltic States. The leaked papers include the FCO’s statement of requirement for the project, as well as the details that were spelled out to contractors at a meeting convened June 2018 by FCDO Counter Disinformation & Media Development (CDMD) chief Andy Pryce, along with a parallel operation in Eastern Partnership countries.

Stating openly the endeavor – set to cost up to £6 million in 2018-2021 – is ultimately concerned with “weakening the Russian state”, Pryce warned attendees against “unauthorised disclosures of activity”, and noted that “for security reasons”, some suppliers “will not wish to be linked to the FCDO.” 

He went on to list numerous ways in which journalists and media organizations in target countries could not only be co-opted via funding, but outright “acquisition” of content. Sponsoring public broadcasters was said to provide “easy wins” given “light touch governance” locally, a euphemism for corruption and lack of regulation.

He professed to be “audience agnostic” when asked whether there were issues targeting people under-18, and said there was “scope for gender sensitivity in programming” – “Girls on HBO is the type of thing but in Ukraine.” 

It’s a bizarre suggestion which amuses at first glance, until one considers at least five television serials in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were produced by Zinc Network (more on them later) under the auspices of the program, including the region’s first Russian-language kids show.

It’s troubling in the extreme that millions of people – among them many children – may have watched this programming, without any idea it was created to surreptitiously extol anti-Russian, pro-Western propaganda, let alone that the UK government bankrolled its production as part of a dedicated psyops effort.

Such disquiet is amplified by Albany specifically seeking to exploit “young Russian speakers” in the Baltics “as agents of change”, to “influence their parents’ and grandparents’ generations and amplify a distinct ‘Euro-Baltic’ identity” in a separate project.

Co-opting social media influencers

Other leaked documents reveal Zinc’s activities in the region were already sizable by the time it submitted proposals for the project, to the extent of maintaining “an in-house team of Russian speaking producers, digital researchers and digital growth strategists.”

Zinc maintained a secret network of Russian-speaking social media influencers, to promote “media integrity and democratic values” – curiously, its relationship with these individuals is said to have involved “daily management”. 

Recruited via YouTube, Facebook, VK and Instagram, the company “[helped] them build their brands and improve their content in order to grow their audience share,” and “[established] a co-owned channel on YouTube to host their content, help them access one another’s audiences, co-creating content that tackled complex social issues.”

Moreover though, one file indicates Zinc taught these influencers how to “make and receive international payments without being registered as external sources of funding” and “develop editorial strategies to deliver key messages”, while minimizing their “risk of prosecution” and managing “project communications” to ensure the network’s existence, and indeed the UK government’s central role in creating it, were kept “confidential”. 

In other words, they operated, and may continue to, as effective paid agents of the British state, Zinc “assisting” them in crafting slick propaganda furtively propounding Whitehall-approved “key messages”, which was then broadcast globally under the guise of citizen journalism.

The identities of the influencers, and their cognisance of the insidious role they were playing by collaborating with the company, is presently unknown. Although, unlike viewers, the influencers would’ve at least known their “independent” content was in fact scripted, produced and edited in the firm’s London offices.

ENGAGE, ENHANCE, ENABLE, EXPOSE

There are hundreds of papers in Anonymous’ leak, and the above is just scratching the surface. The FCDO’s wide-ranging, secret campaign apparently consists of four pillars, or ‘strands’ – ENGAGE, ENHANCE, ENABLE, EXPOSE. One document circulated to contractors pitching for the assorted, lucrative programmes therein – dubbed “Theory of Change” – sets out the activities, output, outcome, and impact of the respective strands, both in isolation and in tandem with one another. 

EXPOSE’s activities are defined as “real-time debunking, support to investigative journalism, capacity building, networking between NGOs” – yet its output, outcomes, and impact are redacted, hidden in an already classified document, indicating its operations and objectives are extremely sensitive indeed, and one requires a senior security clearance to know them. 

For all the mainstream media’s alarmist chatter of the threat of Kremlin “disinformation”, not a single example of anything even remotely comparable to the full-spectrum, multi-channel, on- and offline, global assault on perceptions outlined in this article has ever been attributed to Moscow, or any other “hostile” state. 

It’s truly staggering that for all the documents’ references in the documents to transparency, truth and democracy, these mammoth, multi-million-pound initiatives have been conducted in total secrecy for years without any public oversight, or even awareness among British citizens – let alone target audiences overseas – of their operation.

The message of the media, when accompanied by great character and courage, sometimes has to be shut down by lesser people to protect their dishonest interests and send a message to other reporters who might want to clean up the slime.

Suspect pleads guilty to assassination of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017, sentenced to 15 years

23 Feb, 2021 14:59

A protester holds a picture of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia during a demonstration to demand justice over her murder, outside the Office of the Prime Minister at Auberge de Castle, in Valletta, Malta, (FILE PHOTO) © REUTERS/Yara Nardi

One of three men on trial in Malta for the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia has been sentenced, after admitting to his part in the assassination of the journalist and activist in a car bombing near her home in October 2017.

On Tuesday, Vincent Muscat pleaded guilty to the murder of the Maltese anti-corruption journalist. Muscat along with two others, George Degiorgio and his brother Alfred Degiorgio, are accused of planning and carrying out the assassination of Caruana Galizia.

A fourth man, multimillionaire businessman Yorgen Fenech, has been charged with being an accomplice to the killing, but denies any involvement.

Following his guilty plea, Muscat has been sentenced to 15 years in prison and will have to pay €42,000 in court expenses following an agreement with prosecutors over him providing more information about Caruana Galizia’s murder.

Muscat’s confession was noted by presiding Judge Edwina Grima, who emphasized the gravity of the charges he was admitting to. The accused said he did not need to have the charges read back to him.

On Monday, Muscat was granted a presidential pardon over the 2015 murder of lawyer Carmel Chircop, who was shot dead in a garage, according to the Times of Malta.

The pardon was granted after he offered up information about the case, and he will not be prosecuted for his alleged role in that murder.

Caruana Galizia was killed on October 16, 2017 when a car bomb went off inside her vehicle. Her death drew widespread local and international condemnation.

The journalist was well-regarded for her reporting on government corruption, nepotism and allegations of money laundering, as well as links between Malta’s online gambling industry and organized crime. 

In 2016 and 2017, Caruana Galizia investigated and reported a number of stories relating to the Panama Papers scandal which revealed compromising information about many prominent people in Malta, including high-level politicians. She had been arrested twice and was facing numerous defamation suits at the time of her murder.

Anti-Trump Lincoln Project received $32mn in free media coverage since sexual harassment scandal broke – report

24 Feb, 2021 16:17

The statue of Abraham Lincoln by artist Daniel Chester French is seen at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC

© Mandel Ngan / AFP

Since the Lincoln Project’s co-founder John Weaver was accused of sexually harassing multiple young men, the controversial anti-Trump group has received tens of millions in free media coverage, according to a new analysis.

Weaver’s alleged misconduct broke in a story on January 11 in a report from the American Conservative, but Lincoln Project members have still been aplenty on both CNN and MSNBC – two networks that have heavily promoted the organization, run by anti-Trump Republicans, since its inception.

According to the new analysis from the conservative Washington Free Beacon, media coverage between January 11 and February 11 for the group is worth a whopping $32 million, based on advertising value estimated by media monitoring service Critical Mention. In that time, there were 40 appearances by founders and advisers – 10 on CNN and 30 on MSNBC.

Earlier this month, Weaver resigned from the group he co-founded after being accused of making unwanted sexual advances on numerous young men, often offering professional advances in exchange for sexual favors. He apologized for sending “inappropriate” messages, but reports since have indicated his behavior was known about by others, including co-founder Steve Schmidt, who has denied such knowledge. 

Only hours after Weaver’s departure, Schmidt appeared on ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’, where he faced no questions about his fellow co-founder but was grilled about the group’s tens of millions in funding and where it goes. That subject has become yet another controversy for the group, as it has been revealed much of the money was funneled into separate organizations involved with the founders.

The lack of questioning about Weaver was a regular occurrence, according to the Beacon’s report. In fact, members of the group made 23 appearances on network news channels before one of them, George Conway, was asked directly about it. 

As Weaver’s conduct has been more widely covered and subsequent reports have indicated possible knowledge of his actions within the super PAC, Lincoln Project media darlings have slowly seen their relationships with mainstream media deteriorate. MSNBC ended its relationship with contributor Schmidt, for example, and Daily Beast “paused” appearances from co-founder Rick Wilson on its podcast ‘The New Abnormal’. 

While the Lincoln Project’s future has been questioned, with former members like Kurt Bardella even calling for its end, the group appears to have no plans to retire their anti-Trump platform. They recently hired the law firm Paul Hastings to conduct a “comprehensive review” of the group’s “operations and culture,” though that relationship has led to an entirely new controversy as it was revealed that employees of the firm have donated to Lincoln Project in the past – though they claim no donors will be part of the review.

This is how the media works these days. Little or no judgement for perverts or paedophiles as long as their message is in line with the acceptable narrative.

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The Media is the Message - Indian TV Anchor Discusses Air-Strikes Before They Happen; US Faith in News Media Falls Below 50%, as it Should

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Indian TV anchor’s texts spark cries for security leak inquiry after he discussed Pakistan airstrikes before they happened

18 Jan 2021 16:32

FILE PHOTO: Indian Air Force fighter jets on May 3, 2020. © REUTERS/Amit Dave

Opposition politicians in India have called for an investigation into a potential national security leak after a TV anchor’s messages showed he had prior knowledge of airstrikes launched against Pakistan in February 2019.

Amid a series of text messages sent from Arnab Goswami, news anchor and editor-in-chief of Republic TV network, to the head of a TV ratings agency, Goswami mentioned that India would launch a “bigger than normal strike” on Pakistan. The messages were sent on February 23, 2019, just three days before India struck military targets in Pakistan, but weren’t made public until earlier this month as part of a separate investigation.

A transcript of the messages was included in a charge-sheet filed by Mumbai police as part of an investigation into allegations of rate fixing by Republic, which the network denies. 

“On Pakistan, the government is confident of striking in a way that people will be elated. Exact words used,” Goswami’s message reportedly read.

The anchor has denied having any prior knowledge of the military action, arguing that his message was in reference to the officially stated government position that India would “hit back at Pakistan after the Pulwama attack.”

On February 14, 2019, a Pakistan-based group launched the deadliest single attack against Indian forces in Kashmir since 1989, killing 46 soldiers in a suicide bombing. In response, India launched airstrikes against militants in Pakistani locations, escalating tensions and nearly bringing the two neighboring states to the brink of war.

Addressing the calls for an investigation into a potential government leak, Goswami criticised India’s opposition parties, accusing them of being a “mouthpiece” for Pakistan. 

The Indian government has not responded to the demands from the opposition parties, nor to suggestions of impropriety or leaking. 

Alongside the internal issues caused by the content of the messages, the issue also risks international outcry. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has suggested the texts show that the strikes were a political act, and not a military move, to help Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi secure re-election.

Americans’ trust in mainstream media has never been lower –

but journalists insist it’s the audience’s fault, not theirs

22 Jan 2021 03:59

FILE PHOTO. ©  Reuters / Shannon Stapleton

Fewer than half of Americans trust mainstream media, according to PR firm Edelman’s annual “trust barometer.” But rather than attempt to repair the relationship, media outlets blame their audience’s poor ‘information hygiene.’

Long headed for collapse, Americans’ trust in the media establishment hit an all time low in 2021, falling three points overall to just 46 percent, according to Edelman’s most recent annual survey. The figure marks the first time Americans’ trust of journalism sank below the 50 percent mark.

Americans’ trust in social media also hit rock bottom, clocking in at a miserable 27 percent, according to Edelman’s annual “trust barometer.” Globally, people’s faith in social media wasn’t much better, with just 35 percent of users deeming it a trustworthy source for “general news and information.”

Survey respondents did not hesitate to expound on their dim view of the journalistic profession, either – 56 percent of Americans agreed the media was “purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations,” while 58 percent agreed most outlets were “more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than informing the public.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, breaking the numbers up by political party revealed a sharp contrast between Biden and Trump voters, with only 18 percent of the latter crowd deeming the media trustworthy in the wake of November’s presidential election. Even among Democrats, however, only 57 percent deemed the media trustworthy.

Conservatives, including the offspring of former president Donald Trump, took to social media to roll their eyes at what for them was stating the obvious. Most establishment outlets had after all been gushing about President Joe Biden's inauguration in truly outrageous terms, comparing his inaugural speech to that of JFK and waxing poetic about Vice President Kamala Harris' hair.

Others brought up dubious connections to “independent” media – including Edelman itself – suggesting the trust crisis had less to do with the media losing its touch than it did with Americans becoming more savvy regarding their manipulation.

The only group trusted by a majority of Americans out of Government, Media, NGOs, and Business in 2021 was, ironically, Big Business – even though corporations largely pull the strings of the media, politics, and the other institutions so many Americans seem to agree are not trustworthy.

Axios and other opportunistic journalists reading Edelman’s 2021 report have called for these CEOs to “visibly embrace the news media” in order to burnish the media’s public image.

'Visibly embrace', is that as opposed to 'invisibly embrace'?

“Now it’s time for [CEOs] to use the trust they’ve built up to help rebuild our civic infrastructure,” Axios concluded, specifically referring to outreach to Trump voters, whose trust in CEOs (61 percent) runs 40 points higher than their trust in the media. However, given conservatives’ unabashed loathing for mainstream media, the plan could backfire and drag corporations down a few notches in the MAGA crowd’s estimation.

Even while admitting that media distrust was a global issue rather than “a function of Donald Trump’s war on ‘fake news,’” Axios appeared to blame its audience for their refusal to put their faith in the Fourth Estate, posting a series of links tipping worried journalists off on why their propaganda might be missing the mark. Clutching pearls on topics from the Covid-19 pandemic and “vaccine hesitancy” to the US election scandals, the overarching message was simple – don't confuse your audience with opinions other than the one you want them to have.

However, Americans’ own distrust in the majority of their institutions does not bode well for the US’ “brand,” Edelman’s survey revealed. Other countries have apparently been paying attention, as trust in companies headquartered in the US fell four points to what was reportedly an all-time low of 51 percent.

Fox News’ Ratings Slide as Americans’ Mistrust of Mainstream Media Grows

6 Corporations own 90% of American news media

Media is the Message - MSNBC Had List of Democratic Candidates Who Were Blacklisted

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Former MSNBC producer claims her show had blacklist that included Andrew Yang & ‘several other’ candidates

23 Nov, 2020 00:33 

FILE PHOTO: Former Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidate and entrepreneur Andrew Yang

© REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Former MSNBC producer Ariana Pekary has claimed that she was told by the bosses not to interview former Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang and “several others” as the race for the nomination was heating up.

Pekary, who left the liberal cable news network in August, dropped the bombshell about her former employer’s alleged election bias in a series of tweets on Sunday, after Yang teased her appearance on his podcast.

“Actually, I just reviewed my journal. On 4/25/19, I was told that we were never to pursue Andrew for an interview on our show (along with several others),” Pekary tweeted, adding that the names of welcome and unwelcome guests were “dictated” from above without any explanation given.

The list of candidates was dictated, but the reasons for allowing them or not were not explained

The same day Pekary claimed she was given the message Joe Biden announced his run for presidency.

I'm sure that was just a coincidence! Pfft!

Pekary further explained that she couldn't speak for the whole network, saying that “the list was unique to The Last Word" (The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell show) and, presumably, did not come from MSNBC’s higher-ups.

Falling short of disclosing other names on the approved list of guests, Pekary said that she was “somewhat surprised” as to who had made it and who turned out to be personae non gratae.

“And looking back, I’m somewhat surprised by the list - who was in, who was out (“somewhat” but not entirely). Some “friends” of the show were out, others were in," she tweeted.

Pekary’s admission has sparked a guessing game as to who else might have been barred from appearing on the show, and whether the same rules applied to the network as a whole.

“Are you legally bound around this stuff, or can you post a bunch of screenshots for us?” one asked.

“Do you know if other shows on MSNBC had similar lists? Was it common to not invite presidential contenders on the network?” another tweeted. 

Yang, who now works for CNN as a political commentator, appeared to be taken aback by the revelation.

While the show or the network itself has yet to comment on Pekary’s claim, it’s not the first time the cable channel faces accusations of muting non-mainstream political voices.

Late newsman Ed Schultz, who worked for MSNBC before joining RT America, claimed in a 2018 interview that he was barred from covering Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid announcement five minutes before he was to come on air. Schultz said that he received a last-minute call from then-president of the network, Phil Griffin, who told him he was not “covering this.”

MSNBC’s sister channel, CNBC, raised eyebrows earlier this year after they replaced Yang’s face with that of a similarly-named businessman, and the face of another Democratic presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard with that of New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand during their segment on election fundraising. The channel eventually apologized for the mistake.

Diversity of Thought and Reporting Disappearing from MainStream Media - Vox Co-founder Abandons His Own Journal

Veteran Reporter Quits NBC with Biting Critique of Corporate Newsroom

OPCW Put Lid on Key Evidence in Douma Chemical Incident – Watchdog Whistleblower

Did John Bolton corrupt the OPCW in order to demonize Syria

and create an excuse for more war?

A scene at a Douma hospital that was used to push a claim of a chemical weapon attack by the Syrian government. Screengrab via Reuters.

The international chemical weapons watchdog likely skewed its own investigation of the 2018 chemical weapons incident in Douma, Syria to come to a predetermined decision, a damning conclusion based on whistleblower testimony said.

The April 2018 incident in the Damascus suburb was quickly blamed on the Syrian government by the West. Within days, the US, the UK and France launched barrages of cruise missiles in retaliation. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the international chemical weapons watchdog, later backed the justification, all but pointing the finger at Syria in its final report, which was released in March.

Now a panel of experts says the report was based on a flawed conclusion and likely deliberately steered toward the West-favored outcome. The accusation is based on evidence and testimony of an OPCW investigator, who came forward with damning evidence that his own organization had breached its mission.

After talking to the whistleblower and examining internal reports, text exchanges and other evidence, the panel was convinced that “key information about chemical analyses, toxicology consultations, ballistics studies, and witness testimonies was suppressed, ostensibly to favor a preordained conclusion,” it said in a statement.

The statement said the OPCW took effort to exclude dissenting investigators and silence their attempts to raise concerns about the report, which is “a right explicitly conferred on inspectors in the Chemical Weapons Convention.” The experts called on the organization to revisit its investigation and allow those not agreeing with the conclusion put in the final report to voice their concerns without fear of reprisal.

The panel convened by the Courage Foundation, which accepts donations for the legal defense of whistleblowers and journalists that report on leaks, includes several prominent specialists and public figures, including José Bustani, a Brazilian diplomat who served as the OPCW’s first Director General before being strong-armed from the office by US superhawk John Bolton.

Bustani said the whistleblower confirmed his doubts about the report, which “seemed incoherent at best” right from the start.

“My hope is that the concerns expressed publicly by the Panel, in its joint consensus statement, will catalyze a process by which the Organization can be resurrected to become the independent and non-discriminatory body it used to be.”

The panel did not make public the name of the whistleblower or any previously unpublished evidence of the OPCW’s alleged misconduct. WikiLeaks, whose editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson was a member of the panel, re-printed a draft engineering assessment penned by an OPCW investigator, which was leaked in May. The document rejects the claim that chlorine cylinders, which were used for delivery of the toxic gas in Douma, had been dropped from the air, which was used as a key argument in accusing the Syrian army for the attack.

Actually they attacked even before the OPCW had time to investigate. It was all about moving the military inventory and ramping up the excuse to continue the war they should never have been in in the first place.

UK Reporter Astounded By What He Found in Douma

BBC Producer Says Hospital Scenes After 2018 Douma ‘Chemical Attack’ Were Staged

German Reporter Says Douma was Completely Staged - MSM Won't Report It

Neither Nerve Agents, Nor Any Banned Chemicals Found in Samples From Syria's Douma - OPCW

The World: What is Really Happening - Craig Murray

Top MIT Scientist Slams OPCW Leaders for Repressing Dissenting Report on Douma

Mainstream News Networks Refuse to Cover Senate’s ‘No Russia Collusion’ Report

The massive demonization of Russia by western countries

is beginning to unravel

but not if Mainstream Media can help it

AFP/Brendan Smialowski

The same networks that spent 2,202 minutes of collective airtime to push the Russia Collusion Media-Hoax are refusing to cover the Senate Intelligence Committee bipartisan report, which found no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The Media Research Center (MRC) did the research and found that between January 21, 2017, and February 10, 2019, “ABC’s World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News, and the NBC Nightly News [spent] 2,202 minutes on the Russia investigation [, which] accounted for nearly 19 percent of all Trump-related reporting [, and now] none of those three shows have even mentioned the investigation since NBC’s report came out on February 12.”

The same is true elsewhere on the left-wing networks.

“Neither CBS This Morning nor NBC’s Today have even acknowledged this new information from Senate investigators since the news broke on February 12,” MRC reports. “ABC’s Good Morning America briefly touched on it in a news brief totaling less than one minute on February 13.”

What’s especially fascinating is that NBC’s Ken Dilanian broke the original news of the Senate report, and NBC is still refusing to cover the story.

The reasons for this are quite obvious: the media know a reckoning is on the horizon, and they are buying time in the hopes of finding a way to wriggle out of it.

Anyone with even a lick of sense knew from the beginning that the Russia Collusion Media-Hoax was a hoax. Not only is the whole idea of it preposterous; everything involving Russia and the Trump campaign points to the opposite of a conspiracy. Look at the Trump Tower meeting. If there was a conspiracy between Trump and the Kremlin, why was Rob Goldstone, a British publicist, needed as an intermediary to set up the meeting?

If there was all this collusion between Trump and Putin, why was Michael Cohen left to send proposals to blind email addresses regarding the proposed Trump Tower deal in Moscow?

Even the stuff we are told is the most “sinister” proof of collusion points in the opposite direction.

But that is not what the media have been telling us for the last two years.

Rather, again and again and again, they have promised that Watergate is right around the corner, that the other shoe is about to drop (and please ignore the fact that the first shoe has yet to drop); have told us not to worry because the aberrational nightmare, the virus in the system, the national mistake that is President Trump is about to be removed.

For two years the media have been selling the Resistance a bill of goods and have gone so far as to manufacture a mountain of fake news to keep these suckers on the hook.

So, no, they are not going to cover a bipartisan report that debunks their hoax, especially one as detailed as this one, that involved two years, 200 interviews, and a gazillion documents.

MSM is not interested in the truth, only in pushing their agendas.

BACK TO THE USSR: HOW TO READ WESTERN NEWS

Patrick Armstrong explains, much more eloquently than I ever could, why I have such distrust for Mainstream Media.

BY PATRICK ARMSTRONG 
IN PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE; THE WORLD IS CHANGING; WAR ON RUSSIA

The heroes of Dickens’ Pickwick Papers visit the fictional borough of Eatanswill to observe an election between the candidates of the Blue Party and the Buff Party. The town is passionately divided, on all possible issues, between the two parties. Each party has its own newspaper: the Eatanswill Gazette is Blue and entirely devoted to praising the noble Blues and excoriating the perfidious and wicked Buffs; the Eatanswill Independent is equally passionate on the opposite side of every question. No Buff would dream of reading the “that vile and slanderous calumniator, the Gazette”, nor Blue the ”that false and scurrilous print, the Independent”.

As usual with Dickens it is both exaggerated and accurate. Newspapers used to be screamingly partisan before “journalism” was invented. Soon followed journalism schools, journalism ethics and journalism objectivity: “real journalism” as they like to call it (RT isn’t of course). “Journalism” became a profession gilded with academical folderol; no longer the refuge of dropouts, boozers, failures, budding novelists and magnates like Lord Copper who know what they want and pay for it. But, despite the pretence of objectivity and standards, there were still Lord Coppers and a lot of Eatanswill. Nonetheless, there were more or less serious efforts to get the facts and balance the story. And Lord Coppers came and went: great newspaper empires rose and fell and there was actually quite a variety of ownership and news outlets. There was sufficient variance that a reader, who was neither Blue nor Buff, could triangulate and form a sense of what was going on.

In the Soviet Union news was controlled; there was no “free press”; there was one owner and the flavours were only slightly varied: the army paper, the party paper, the government paper, papers for people interested in literature or sports. But they all said the same thing about the big subjects. The two principal newspapers were Pravda (“truth”) and Izvestiya (“news”). This swiftly led to the joke that there was no truth in Pravda and no news in Izvestiya. It was all pretty heavy handed stuff: lots of fat capitalists in top hats and money bags; Uncle Sam’s clothing dripping with bombs; no problems over here, nothing but problems over there. And it wasn’t very successful propaganda: most of their audience came to believe that the Soviet media was lying both about the USSR and about the West.

90% of US media owned by 6 corporations

But time moves on and while thirty years ago 50 corporations controlled 90% of the US news media, today it’s a not very diverse six. 

As a result, on many subjects there is a monoview: has any Western news outlet reported, say, these ten true statements?

People in Crimea are pretty happy to be in Russia.

The US and its minions have given an enormous amount of weapons to jihadists.

Elections in Russia reflect popular opinion polling.

There really are a frightening number of well-armed nazis in Ukraine.

Assad is pretty popular in Syria.

The US and its minions smashed Raqqa to bits.

The official Skripal story makes very little sense.

Ukraine is much worse off, by any measurement, now than before Maidan.

Russia actually had several thousand troops in Crimea before Maidan.

There’s a documentary that exposes Browder that he keeps people from seeing.

I typed these out as they occurred to me. I could come up with another ten pretty easily. There’s some tiny coverage, far in the back pages, so that objectivity can be pretended, but most Western media consumers would answer they aren’t; didn’t; don’t; aren’t; isn’t; where?; does; not; what?; never heard of it.

Many subjects are covered in Western media outlets with a single voice. Every now and again there’s a scandal that reveals that “journalists” are richly rewarded for writing stories that fit. But after revelations, admissions of bias, pretending it never happened, the media ship calmly sails on (shedding passengers as it goes, though). Coverage of certain subjects are almost 100% false: Putin, Russia, Syria and Ukraine stand out. But much of the coverage of China and Iran also. Many things about Israel are not permitted. The Russia collusion story is (privately) admitted to be fake by an outlet that covers it non stop. Anything Trump is so heavily flavoured that it’s inedible. And it’s not getting any better: PC is shutting doors everywhere and the Russian-centred “fake news” meme is shutting more. Science is settled but genders are not and we must be vigilant against the “Russian disinformation war“. Every day brings us a step closer to a mono media of the One Correct Opinion. All for the Best Possible Motives, of course.

It’s all rather Soviet in fact.

So, in a world where the Integrity Initiative is spending our tax dollars (pounds actually) to make sure that we never have a doubleplusungood thought or are tempted into crimethink, (and maybe they created the entire Skripal story – more revelations by the minute), what are we to make of our Free Media™? Well, that all depends on what you’re interested in. If it’s sports (not Russian athletes – druggies every one unlike brave Western asthmatics) or “beach-ready bodies” (not Russian drug takers of course, only wholesome Americans) – the reporting is pretty reasonable. Weather reports, for example (Siberian blasts excepted) or movie reviews (but all those Russian villains). But the rest is some weird merger of the Eatonswill Gazette and Independent: Blues/Buffs good! others, especially Russians, bad!

So, as they say in Russia, что делать? What to do? Well, I suggest we learn from the Soviet experience. After all, most Soviet citizens were much more sceptical about their home media outlets than any of my neighbours, friends or relatives are about theirs.

My suggestions are three:

Read between the lines. A difficult art this and it needs to be learned and practised. Dissidents may be sending us hints from the bowels of Minitrue. For example, it’s impossible to imagine anyone seriously saying “How Putin’s Russia turned humour into a weapon“; it must have been written to subversively mock the official Russia panic. I have speculated elsewhere that the writers may have inserted clues that the “intelligence reports” on Russian interference were nonsense.

Notice what they’re not telling you. For example: remember when Aleppo was a huge story two years ago? But there’s nothing about it now. One should wonder why there isn’t; a quick search will find videos like this (oops! Russian! not real journalism!) here’s one from Euronews. Clearly none of this fits the “last hospitals destroyed” and brutal Assad memes of two years ago; that’s why the subject has disappeared from Western media outlets. It is always a good rule to wonder why the Biggest Story Ever suddenly disappears: that’s a strong clue it was a lie or nonsense.

Most of the time, you’d be correct to believe the opposite. Especially, when all the outlets are telling you the same thing. It’s always good to ask yourself cui bono: who’s getting what benefit out of making you believe something? It’s quite depressing how successful the big uniform lie is: even though the much-demonised Milosevic was eventually found innocent, even though Qaddafi was not “bombing his own people”, similar lies are believed about Assad and other Western enemies-of-the-moment. Believe the opposite unless there’s very good reason not to.

In the Cold War there was a notion going around that the Soviet and Western systems were converging and that they would meet in the middle, so to speak. Well, perhaps they did meet but kept on moving past each other. And so, the once reasonably free and varied Western media comes to resemble the controlled and uniform Soviet media and we in the West must start using Soviet methods to understand.

Always remember that the Soviet rulers claimed their media was free too; free from “fake news” that is.

A Deafening Media Silence on the Obama-Hezbollah Scandal

By David Harsanyi, AP, New York Times

Politico published a jaw-dropping, meticulously sourced investigative piece this week detailing how the Obama administration had secretly undermined US law enforcement agency efforts to shut down an international drug-trafficking ring run by the terror group Hezbollah. The effort was part of a wider push by the administration to placate Iran and ensure the signing of the nuclear deal.

Now swap out “Trump” for “Obama” and “Russia” for “Iran” and imagine the eruption these revelations would generate. Because, by any conceivable journalistic standard, this scandal should’ve triggered widespread coverage and been plastered on front pages across the country. By any historic standard, the scandal should elicit outrage regarding the corrosion of governing norms from pundits and editorial boards.

Yet, as it turns out, there’s an exceptionally good chance most of your neighbors and colleagues haven’t heard anything about it.

Days after the news broke, in fact, neither NBC News, ABC News nor CBS News — whose shows can boast a collective 20 million viewers — had been able to find the time to relay the story to its sizeable audiences. Other than Fox News, cable news largely ignored the revelations as well.

Most major newspapers, which have been sanctimoniously patting themselves on the back for the past year, couldn’t shoehorn into their pages a story about potential collusion between the former president and a terror-supporting state.

Perhaps if President Trump had tweeted about the story, outlets would’ve squeezed something in.

Even when outlets did decide to cover the story, they typically framed it as a he-said/she-said. “Politico Reporter Says Obama Administration ‘Derailed’ Hezbollah Investigation,” reads the NPR headline. Did Josh Meyer of Politico say something about Obama or did he publish a 14,000-word, diligently sourced, document-heavy investigative piece? If you get your news from NPR, you’d never know.

Fact is, the Drug Enforcement Agency began its classified investigation (called Project Cassandra) into Hezbollah in 2008. It found that the Iranian proxy had laundered nearly a half a billion dollars and was moving cocaine to the United States. According to Politico, the Obama administration not only threw obstructions in front of investigators but failed to prosecute major players in the enterprise.

What makes the media blackout particularly shameful is that the story isn’t a partisan hit job. It was written by a well-regarded journalist at a major outlet. The story has two on-the-record sources — which is more than we can say for the vast majority of so-called scoops about the Russian “collusion” investigation. One of these sources, David Asher, was an illicit finance expert at the Pentagon who was tapped to run the investigation. There’s no plausible reason to ignore him or the story.

Then again, ignoring or diminishing Obama’s shady dealings with Iran isn’t new. Obama administration officials bragged to the New York Times Magazine last year that they’d created an echo chamber, relying on the ignorance, inexperience and partisan dispositions of reporters to convey their lies to the American people.

We saw this when the Obama administration claimed it was releasing 14 Iranian civilians on humanitarian grounds, when in fact it was releasing spies and weapons dealers. Or when Team Obama claimed diplomacy had won US hostages’ release, when it fact it had sent hundreds of millions of euros, Swiss francs and other currencies on wooden pallets in unmarked planes to Iran. The press was uninterested in those stories, too.

“Journalism is about covering important stories.

With a pillow, until they stop moving.”

Establishment media personalities will often point out that none of us would have any knowledge of these incidents if not for their reporting. This is true. There are intrepid journalists at media institutions who aren’t swayed by partisan considerations.

The preponderance of editors, journalists, pundits and bookers, on the other hand, still coddle Democrats. They may do it on purpose or unconsciously, but it’s destroying their credibility. Because as David Burge once noted, “Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.”

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist.

Fox News’ Ratings Slide as Americans’ Mistrust of Mainstream Media Grows

Is America beginning to wake up to the truth about mainstream media?

© Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

Nearly two-thirds of US voters believe that the mainstream media is producing fake news, according to a new poll. Many also believe that fake news is purposely published to push an agenda. Fox News appears to be hurt the most by viewers’ mistrust.

Across the political spectrum, 65 percent of voters believe there is a lot of fake news in the mainstream media, including 80 percent of Republicans, 60 percent of independents and 53 percent of Democrats, according to the latest Harvard-Harris poll provided exclusively to The Hill. In total, 84 percent of voters said it is hard to know what news to believe online.

Those numbers have increased since the end of March, when six in 10 Americans believed the mainstream media report fake news regularly or occasionally, with 54 percent thinking that online news websites report fake stories on purpose in order to push an agenda, according to a Monmouth University poll. A whopping 80 percent of respondents believed that online outlets report fake news regularly or occasionally.

The March poll also found that Republicans (79 percent) were most likely to say that major news outlets transmit fake news stories, compared to 66 percent of Independents and 43 percent of Democrats. Of those, Republicans were also more likely to say that major news sources reported fake news deliberately, rather than by mistake or due to poor fact checking.

I have to agree with the Republicans here; they do report fake news intentionally, except that often they don't actually know that it is fake. They may believe they are reporting the truth because they are reporting through eyes that see things from a biased perspective. 

When Fox News was initiated, it was under the premise that the unbiased truth would finally be reported. Unfortunately, we find too often that Fox is every bit as biased as the liberal news media. As we are becoming aware of that, it gets more and more difficult to discern the truth as both Fox and the liberal media think they are telling the truth and their truths conflict. 

There cannot be 2 truths on a particular story. There can only be one truth and it is becoming increasingly obvious that we cannot find that on any of the mainstream media outlets, they all have agendas.

In April, Gallup found that 62 percent of Americans said that the news media favor one political party over another, with 64 percent saying media favor the Democrats over the GOP. Less than a quarter (22 percent) said that the media was biased towards the Republicans. Among GOP respondents, 77 percent said the media was biased towards one party, compared to 59 percent in 2003. Less than half (44 percent) of Democrats said that the media showed political favoritism, the same as in 2003.

“Much of the media is now just another part of the partisan divide in the country with Republicans not trusting the ‘mainstream’ media and Democrats seeing them as reflecting their beliefs,” said Harvard-Harris co-director Mark Penn. “Every major institution from the presidency to the courts is now seen as operating in a partisan fashion in one direction or the other.”

Between 2012 and 2015, trust in the media remained historically low, with 40 percent of Americans saying they had “a great deal” or “a fair deal” of trust and confidence in the mass media, according to an annual Gallup survey. That dropped to 32 percent in 2016, however. The decrease in trust was dramatic among Republicans, with only 14 percent expressing trust, down from 32 percent the previous year.

The Harvard-Harris poll comes as one mainstream outlet, Fox News, has had to retract a major story it had been following. On Tuesday, the cable network and the Washington, DC-based affiliate it owns were forced to walk back their reporting on the July 2016 murder of Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer who Fox claimed had been in contact with WikiLeaks director and investigative journalist Gavin MacFadyen. Rich’s parents condemned the speculation around their son’s death in an opinion piece in the Washington Post on Tuesday.

“The article was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting. Upon appropriate review, the article was found not to meet those standards and has since been removed,” Fox News said in a statement.

The Rich retraction is the latest in a series of scandals rocking Fox News, including sexual harassment and racial bias lawsuits filed by current and former employees, which led to the firing of host Bill O’Reilly and the resignation of co-president Bill Shine. Before O’Reilly’s ouster, advertisers fled from his program, “The O’Reilly Factor.” More than 60 companies pulled ads from his show, leaving him with a mere seven sponsors by April 8.

Now it appears that viewers are fleeing from O’Reilly’s old employer. Last week, Fox News placed third among cable news networks in primetime ratings among 25-54 year-old viewers, the most coveted advertising demographic, Adweek reported.

MSNBC came in first with 611,000 viewers in the demographic and 2.44 million viewers overall. CNN came in second with 589,000 viewers and 1.65 million viewers overall, while Fox had 497,000 viewers in the coveted demo and 2.4 million viewers overall.

It was the first time in 17 years that Fox came in third for a full week. The last time was the week of June 9, 2000, when the network was still in its infancy.

Despite the setback, though, Fox News still ranked as the top basic cable network in Total Day audience for the 20th consecutive week, according to Adweek. It also finished second in total primetime viewers across cable, behind TNT, which was airing the National Basketball Association’s Eastern Conference finals.

MSNBC, which placed first during primetime among 25-54 year-olds last week, actually ranked behind Fox News if Saturday and Sunday ‒ when the liberal-leaning network aired reruns ‒ were taken into account. All three cable news channels ‒ CNN, Fox News and MSNBC ‒ were among basic cable’s top 5 networks for the entire week.