The Media is the Message > WaPo's Opinions are changing, apparently

 

Bezos’ WaPo overhaul prompts key editor to quit

The publication is making major changes to its opinion section, and the move has already sparked controversy among readers and staff

Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, speaks during the New York Times annual DealBook summit, New York City, December 4, 2024. © Getty Images / Michael M. Santiago

The Washington Post is revamping its opinion section to focus on American values, with an emphasis on “personal liberties” and “free markets,” the newspaper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, announced in an email to staff on Wednesday. The move has led to the resignation of opinion editor David Shipley and sparked debate among journalists and readers.

As part of the overhaul, the newspaper will publish daily op-eds supporting the two core pillars outlined by Bezos, while viewpoints opposing them “will be left to be published by others,” he stated.

“I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion,” Bezos wrote, adding that traditional opinion sections have become outdated and have lost readership to digital platforms.

He added that the content will now be based on the American principle of “freedom,” which he described as “ethical” and “minimizing coercion.”

READ MORE: Washington Post web traffic plummets nearly 90% – media

Bezos said he offered Shipley the opportunity to “lead this new chapter,” but the editor declined. In an internal email seen by CNN, Shipley explained that his departure came “after reflection on how I can best move forward in the profession I love.”

It would seem to me to be an opportunity to grow as an editor, but I guess he doesn't see it that way.

A number of employees have publicly criticized the changes, including chief economics reporter Jeff Stein, who called the shift a “massive encroachment” and warned that he would quit if Bezos tries to “interfere with the news side.” Philip Bump, a columnist, reacted on Bluesky, writing: an adolescent, vulgar, comment.

Billionaire Elon Musk, the owner of SpaceX and close adviser to US President Donald Trump, praised the move in a post on X: “Bravo, @JeffBezos!”

Musk’s endorsement triggered debate online, with some arguing that Bezos’ emphasis on ‘freedom’ is an admission that the newspaper has up till now been “out of alignment with good ethics.” Others suggested that the shift is an attempt to align the editorial stance with Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda.

Washington Post executives have downplayed concerns about political bias. In a staff memo obtained by CNN, CEO Will Lewis insisted that the change “is not about siding with any political party,” but rather “being crystal clear about what we stand for as a newspaper.”

Executive editor Matt Murray also sought to reassure staff, saying the newspaper’s independent newsroom “remains unchanged” and that Bezos’ policy shift only affects the opinion section.

Jeff Bezos’ Amazon to donate $1 million to Trump

Bezos’ decision comes at a turbulent time for the Washington Post, which has faced internal challenges and backlash from readers. It recently abandoned its long-standing tradition of endorsing candidates in US presidential elections, prompting three members of its ten-person editorial board to resign. The policy change also reportedly led to more than 250,000 digital subscribers – over 10% of its paying readership – canceling their subscriptions.

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The Media is the Message > WaPo's web traffic drops 90% - What does it mean?

 

The question is, what message is WAPO's sudden decline telling us? Is it in the process of switching from far-left to something else? Is it a sign that the days of far-left media are coming to an end? I doubt it, but what?

Washington Post web traffic plummets nearly 90%

The outlet’s online visitor average has tanked by around 20 million daily active users since 2021, Semafor has reported

© AP Photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais

The Washington Post’s web traffic has cratered over the past four years, with daily active users dropping from a high of 22.5 million in January 2021 when outgoing President Joe Biden took office, to around 2.5-3 million by the middle of 2024, according to internal data shared with news website Semafor.

Internal financial and editorial struggles are rampant at the Jeff Bezos-owned broadsheet, according to various reports, with the paper’s rivals poaching talent, ad revenue falling dramatically, and layoffs on the horizon.

In April last year, the Washington City Paper reported that the nosedive in the Post’s traffic was so staggering that the paper stopped sharing its traffic information publicly. An ‘Audience & Traffic’ tag on the website, which had been regularly updated for years, has not been updated since January 2023.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Post’s advertising revenue fell from $190 million in 2023 to $174 million in 2024.

Leaders at the paper are “struggling to convince staff that they have a clear editorial vision and continuing commitment to hard-hitting journalism” and rivals have poached top talent, with more exits on the way, the WSJ said, citing over a dozen insiders.

Read more

 WaPo loses 200,000 subscribers over Bezos’ Harris block – media

The reader exodus gathered steam in October last year, when Bezos decided to withhold an expected endorsement of outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris during the presidential election against now-President-elect Donald Trump. In an op-ed, Bezos argued that endorsements from newspapers “do nothing to tip the scales in an election,” and “create a perception of bias.”

The move backfired, however, resulting in a reported 250,000 canceled subscriptions just weeks before election day, or about 10% of the Post's 2.5 million paid subscribers, according to NPR. 

Last week, the Post announced it was laying off around 4% of its staff. The cuts will affect nearly 100 workers in the paper’s business division, including sales and marketing, as well as its IT units, it said.

The job cuts are “all in service of our greater goal to best position The Post for the future,” the paper’s statement said.

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The Media is the Message > WAPO can't see connection between Islam and anti-LGBTQetc

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Washington Post Writes Entire Article About Middle Eastern

Opposition to Gays Without Mentioning ‘Islam’

AUG 6, 2023 12:00 PM BY DANIEL GREENFIELD

Really? Who lives in the Middle East?

A free society has a combative press that vehemently argues, debates and takes on all comers. A totalitarian society has a bizarre dystopian press whose articles make no sense because they leave out crucial pieces of the puzzle. The degree to which the media is haunted by the ‘elephant in the room’ reflects the degree of political censorship that any kind of reporting now undergoes. Take this bizarre article.

Anti-LGBTQ backlash grows across Middle East, echoing U.S. culture wars

– Washington Post

Really? Who lives in the Middle East?

Don’t ask Mohamad El Chamaa who focuses on Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon without ever mentioning what they have in common. Most of the article is dedicated to Turkey and its dictator, Erdogan, the leader of an Islamist party that took power in order to Islamize Turkey.

You would think that this might be relevant, but it never gets mentioned.

“In Lebanon as well, LGBTQ issues have been seized on by political heavyweights. Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia — the country’s most powerful political and military force — claimed in a televised speech in March that the United States was spearheading a campaign to change curriculums around the world to ‘promote a culture of homosexuality in schools and universities.’”

What is ‘Hezbollah’? It means the Party of Allah.

The Washington Post article keeps talking about the Middle East as if accidents of geography explain what’s going on here. It can’t bring itself to mention Islam because the Left is still in denial about the contradiction between their sexual identity politics and their alliance with Islam. So the ‘I’ word never gets mentioned even when the article is talking about Islamic parties.

Anyone who doesn’t believe the media is heavily censored need look no further.

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Antisemitism > In NY increased by 125% in Nov.; Berkeley Law School's Antisemitism investigated; WaPo writer attacks Jewish journo

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Kanye West has decided that Jews need to get past the Holocaust and forgive Hitler. Hitler, who committed genocide against European Jews, annihilating 2/3rds of all Jews in Europe, will not be forgiven by Jews nor by God. His determination to destroy all Jews was an act of Evil incarnate against the chosen people of God. One wonders if West's madness, or perhaps evil spirit's sudden appearance has anything to do with drugs? Drugs open the door to all kinds of evil, some of it profoundly horrid. 

New York antisemitic hate crimes up 125% in November, NYPD says

 

December 5, 2022

New York antisemitic hate crimes up 125 percent in November, NYPD says. Members of the Flatbush Shomrim

assist the NYPD in arresting a criminal in Brooklyn, New York. (Flatbush Shomrim Safety Patrol)

The NYPD recorded 45 antisemitic hate crimes in November 2022. In November 2021, it recorded 20.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

Antisemitic hate crimes in New York City during the month of November increased by 125 percent when compared to last year, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) reported on Monday.

The NYPD recorded 45 antisemitic hate crimes in November 2022. In November 2021, it recorded 20. According to the data, Jewish New Yorkers were the most targeted group, accounting for 60 percent of all hate crimes that occurred.

There were several incidents of note in November, including a series of antisemitic and racist notes sent to several restaurants in the City Island neighborhood of the Bronx, the shooting of Hasidic Jews with a gel gun, and the uncovering of a plot to attack synagogues in Manhattan.

“The scariest part of reviewing these numbers is the lack of a concrete plan or solutions on how to combat the hate crimes against the most discriminated ethnic minority in New York City,” New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov told The Algemeiner on Monday.

More antisemitic incidents were recorded in New York than in any other state, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported in April, noting that it tallied 416, which “accounted for an astounding 15 percent of the total reported antisemitic incidents across the country.”

  JEWISH SCHOOL BUS IN U.S. STORMED BY MEN DOING HEIL HITLER AND SHOUTING ANTISEMITIC SLURS

New York City has also experienced a recent uptick in crime. Overall crime numbers are up by over 32 percent over the past two years, according to city data.

Year to year comparisons show increases in antisemitic hate crimes for every month in 2022 except for April and May. Recently, a mobile Jewish education and social services center was vandalized in New York City during the early morning hours of October 30, with someone graffitiing “Palestine” on a “Mitzvah Tank” operated by the Chabad Jewish movement. Days later, a Jewish day school in the Upper East Side section New York City was vandalized.

On October 24, three yeshiva students were walking home in the Midwood section of Brooklyn when a gang of 11 students approached them, punched one of their group in the face and hurled eggs at the others, according to eyewitness accounts. The gang ordered them to say “Free Palestine” during the attack.

One of the victims, the son of Michael Einhorn, who spoke to The Algemeiner, was assaulted while his friends managed to run away. After the incident, the NYPD released surveillance footage and photographs of several suspected assailants, which showed five young men walking toward Yeshiva Ohr Shraga, a Jewish school in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, with eggs in their hands.

The NYPD has arrested and charged two of the young men suspected of participating in the assault.

Feds Open Investigation Into ‘Deep-Seated Anti-Semitic Discrimination’

at Berkeley Law School

by Adam Kredo, 

Washington Free Beacon, 

December 15, 2022:

The Department of Education is investigating the University of California, Berkeley, Law School over allegations that the school is fostering “profound and deep-seated anti-Semitic discrimination” that has created an unsafe environment for Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus.

The Education Department earlier this week disclosed its investigation after attorneys raised concerns over a cadre of student groups at Berkeley that banned Zionist speakers from campus. The attorneys said the ban constitutes a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prevents recipients of federal funds from discriminating based on race and national origin, according to the original complaint.

Federal authorities will investigate Berkeley to determine if the school “failed to respond appropriately in the fall 2022 semester to notice from Jewish law students, faculty, and staff that they experienced a hostile environment at the law school based on their shared Jewish ancestry when university-recognized student organizations passed a bylaw against inviting speakers who support ‘Zionism, the state of Israel, and the occupation of Palestine,'” according to the Education Department.

The investigation is the culmination of a prolonged battle between Israel’s defenders and anti-Semitic Berkeley student groups that have been trying to intimidate and threaten Jewish and pro-Israel students. Berkeley has become a poster child for the rising tide of anti-Semitism plaguing many college campuses across the nation. Jewish and pro-Israel students are being targeted at historic levels, with one study showing that these types of assaults on Jewish identity doubled in the 2021-2022 academic year. The federal investigation into Berkeley Law School is a sign that the Education Department is aware this trend is dangerous.

Florida-based attorney Gabriel Groisman and the International Legal Forum, a global watchdog that fights anti-Semitism in late November first petitioned the Education Department’s Office on Civil Rights to open an investigation into the prestigious law school.

Taylor Lorenz Lashes Out at Younger, More Successful Journalist

in Cruel Anti-Semitic Tirade

by Andrew Stiles, 

Washington Free Beacon, 

December 15, 2022:

Taylor Lorenz, (right), a semi-prominent China apologist and internet reporter at the failing Washington Post, on Tuesday lashed out at a fellow journalist in a Twitter tirade many people are calling anti-Semitic.

The target: Bari Weiss, the successful Substack writer and friend of the Washington Free Beacon. Lorenz reacted poorly to an Axios article about Weiss’s new media company, the Free Press, and decided to vent her rage on the immigrant-owned social networking website.

“Notable what gets framed as a ‘buzzy media startup,'” Lorenz seethed. “If u start off rich, have a rich spouse, rich friends, don’t follow any journalistic ethical rules, and focus your content solely on serving the interests of extremely powerful rich ppl, you can go far!”

A number of Twitter users observed that Lorenz’s rant was rife with projection and petty jealousy. Weiss is younger, better looking, and more successful as a journalist and as a human being. Why wouldn’t Lorenz be jealous? But that was hardly the most scandalous aspect of the so-called reporter’s public tantrum. Weiss also happens to be Jewish, and Lorenz’s tweet was a textbook example of an anti-Semitic trope about how all Jews are rich and powerful, conniving, and immoral.

Lorenz has a history of targeted harassment against Jews. Earlier this year, for example, she publicly identified—or “doxxed”—the anonymous woman behind the popular Twitter account “Libs of TikTok.” Doxxing is an explicit endorsement of physical violence. The woman who operates the account is Jewish. Lorenz also attempted to ruin the lives of four Instagram influencers by revealing their true identities. They are the daughters of a prominent Jewish political activist. Coincidence?

Deep State > Biden Delays JFK Files Release Again; WaPo's Contradiction; Who Runs American Democracy?

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Release of JFK records delayed again, with Biden citing

Covid-19 and national security

23 Oct, 2021 13:31

John F Kennedy rides in the presidential limousine with his wife Jacqueline and Texas Governor John Connally,

minutes before his assassination in Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963 © Wikipedia

Is it just me or was John Connolly's door not shut?

President Joe Biden has ordered the remaining files on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination to remain hidden until next December, citing the coronavirus pandemic. He’s not the first president to delay releasing the files.

In a memo on Friday, Biden wrote that the remaining files concerning the assassination “shall be withheld from full public disclosure” until December 15 next year, nearly 60 years after Kennedy was shot dead as his motorcade rolled through Dallas, Texas.

Biden’s memo states that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the National Archivist have been prevented from checking in with every agency affected by the files, and can’t determine whether releasing the unredacted documents would impact national security.

Therefore, Biden wrote, “temporary continued postponement is necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations.”

Some information already deemed appropriate will be released this December, while the remainder will stay secret until at least next December.

Although Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for Kennedy’s murder, he never stood trial as he was shot dead two days later by Jack Ruby. As a result, Kennedy’s murder has spawned countless conspiracy theories, and a majority of Americans still believe that sinister forces were behind the assassination.

Sinister forces like Deep State working through American intelligence. Apparently, they still are.

These theories have persisted for decades, and in 1992, Congress ruled that all records surrounding the shocking murder “should be eventually disclosed to enable the public to become fully informed about the history surrounding the assassination.” However, multiple administrations since have stalled on this disclosure.

Former President Donald Trump promised via tweet in 2017 to allow the “long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened.” Despite Trump’s promise, a pledge that many thought he’d follow through on due to his status as a political ‘outsider’ in Washington, only a selection of material was released, and some of this material remained redacted.

Whenever the Biden administration releases the rest of these documents, they will at least be easier for the general public to view. At present, the 250,000 or so records released so far are viewable only at NARA’s location in College Park, Maryland. Biden’s memo orders NARA to digitize these files and make them available online.

Washington Post's ‘conspiracy theory’ quiz declares existence of

‘deep state’ fake news, contradicting its own reporting

8 Oct, 2021 15:49

FILE PHOTO: A protester holding a sign referring to the QAnon conspiracy theory speaks at a protest against the 2020 presidential election results in Phoenix, Arizona, November 5, 2020 © Reuters / Cheney Orr

If you believe in a “Deep State” embedded in the US government, then you’re falling down the conspiracy “rabbit hole,” the Washington Post claims. Yet the Post believes this theory too. It just doesn’t call it a ‘Deep State’.

Nine in 10 Americans believe at least one conspiracy theory, researchers found earlier this summer. Yet conspiracy theories run the gamut from ‘Bigfoot exists’ to ‘the Holocaust never happened’, and the Washington Post published a quiz this week to remind its readers which ones to believe and which to discard. The answers tell a story in themselves.

In a series of multiple-choice questions, the statement “There is a ‘deep state’ embedded in the government that operates in secret and without oversight” is marked as false. 

“For much of the past four years, Republicans have speculated that a ‘deep state’ was working to undermine President Donald Trump,” the Post explained, adding: “While the FBI and CIA do conduct covert operations, there’s little evidence for a separate Deep State.”

Yet this is untrue, according to the Washington Post’s own reporting. The Post revealed in 2013 that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence maintains a “black budget” of $52.6 billion mapping “a bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny,” which spends these funds on spy operations and occasionally lethal action abroad. The public didn’t know that the NSA spied on Americans’ communications for a long time, until the Post published Edward Snowden’s leaks that same year, and the Post was instrumental in drawing attention to the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program.

Even before Snowden’s revelations, the Post in 2010 described the US national security and intelligence apparatus as “a hidden world, growing beyond control.” This leviathan, the paper described, is “hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight,” while “no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it, or exactly how many agencies do the same work.”

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who first reported Snowden’s leaks, described the Post’s about-turn on the existence of the Deep State as an example of “how the Trump era corrupted almost every mainstream institution in the US, especially media corporations.”

The CIA’s experiments with mind-control and psychological torture, which were carried out on Americans during multiple presidential administrations, are not the stuff of conspiracy theory. These experiments took place between 1953 and 1973, with some information on the program, known as MKUltra, only declassified in 2001. Another question in the Washington Post’s quiz even highlights this CIA program as an example of a conspiracy that actually took place.

The term ‘Deep State’ has been used in recent years to describe the bureaucrats and intelligence agency operatives who worked to frustrate and stymie former President Donald Trump’s agenda. When invoked by Republicans and Trump supporters, the term is ridiculed as a conspiracy theory, but those involved openly admit to working against the former president from behind the scenes.

General Mark Milley, commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went behind Trump’s back to assure his Chinese counterpart that he and the national security establishment wouldn’t let Trump do anything “rogue” after his election loss last year. Milley admitted to consorting with Beijing, and with Democrat politicians, in a recent book by Washington Post reporters Robert Costa and Bob Woodward.

Time Magazine lionized the “well-funded cabal of powerful people” who worked to ensure that Trump lost his re-election bid. In the words of the magazine, “they were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.” 

New Yorker author David Rohde, who has written a book on the Deep State and the conspiracies surrounding it, told Vox last year that the Deep State exists, and can be described as “a permanent government or an institutional government” made up of “incredibly large and powerful organizations like the FBI and the CIA and the NSA.” Whether by the FBI’s ‘Russiagate’ investigation – which was predicated on several lies – or unnamed ‘intelligence sources’ planting false stories in the media to hamper Trump’s planned withdrawal from Afghanistan, this “permanent government” did work against Trump before and during his four years in office. 

Curiously, the Washington Post’s quiz now describes the claim that “Donald Trump colluded with Russians to steal the presidency in 2016” as false, after four years of articles pushing the notion that there was, in fact, “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The difference between conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact, it seems, largely depends on who’s in office.

It's not the people who run US democracy, Ron Paul tells RT

2 Nov, 2021 22:44 

Former Congressman Ron Paul on RT, November 2, 2021

A new poll showing other countries unimpressed with American democracy and healthcare is not a surprise, as the US has turned corporatist and has too much democracy but too little freedom, former congressman Ron Paul tells RT.

A new Pew Research poll of 16 advanced economies showed widespread belief that the US healthcare system is below average or downright bad, while only 17% thought American democracy was a good model for other nations.

“We deserve a lot of that criticism,” Paul told RT on Tuesday. He blamed the results on “corporatism,” which he says is the underlying philosophy of the government as currently practiced in the US.

The retired physician who represented Texas in Congress for decades added that “it’s not the people voting, it’s really the corporations that run things,” from healthcare to schools and the military-industrial complex.

We’re a long way off from what people think is democracy.

No, we’re a long way off from freedom.

Democracy is fine when electing officials, Paul explained, but when it gets to the majority dictating to the rest how to live, what to believe, even how to practice medicine, it becomes a problem. What the US has now is a combination of big business and big government running things, he added.

“A good republic, a good system, wouldn’t have us spending trillions and trillions of dollars, taking advantage of the fact that we have the reserve currency of the world and people still trust us to take care of the dollar. But that’s ending, and that’s why I think people are starting to say ‘Can we really trust the Americans?’” Paul said, adding that the US is headed for a “major” financial and banking crisis as a result.

He also believes the entire US pandemic response was “essentially wrong,” from the initial lockdowns to mandates and government interference in how doctors practice medicine – which Paul contrasted with the way things were back when he was a practicing physician.

The Pew poll, made public on Monday, showed that 16 developed nations ranked the US highly on technology, entertainment and education. However, a median of 48% thought American healthcare was below average and 18% considered it the worst. Meanwhile, only 17% thought the US political system set an example worth following, while 57% said it used to, but not in recent years. American democracy ranked the highest in Italy at 32%, and the lowest in New Zealand, where only 8% of respondents said it was a good example.

Americans were far more critical of their own political system, with only 19% telling Pew it was a good example, while 72% said it used to be, but no longer.

When did the transition occur? Probably when the military-industrial complex began to take over during Eisenhower's presidency. The US has been largely controlled by  Deep State ever since.

The Media is the Message - Hong Kong Media Mogul Arrested Again; MSM Paid to Print Chinese Propaganda

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Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai ordered back into custody

days after release on bail

By Elizabeth Shim

Hong Kong media tycoon and founder of Apple Daily Jimmy Lai (C) is being ordered back to prison after being released on $1.29 million bail. File Photo by Jerome Favre/EPA-EFE

Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Hong Kong dissident and media mogul Jimmy Lai has been ordered back to prison more than a week after he was freed on bail.

Lai, 73, a critic of China's increasing grip on Hong Kong, had been charged under the new Hong Kong national security law for his support of pro-democracy movements.

Lai was released on $1.29 million bail before Christmas, but was ordered back to jail Thursday after Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal ruled in favor of the prosecution.

Lai, publisher of local tabloid Apple Daily, is appealing the court decision. His hearing is scheduled Feb. 1.

The Hong Kong businessman also faces charges of breaching office land-lease terms. Senior executives at Next Digital, founded by Lai in 1981, also face the charges.

Lai resigned from the company Tuesday, when he said he wanted to "spend more on dealing with his personal affairs," according to Hong Kong Free Press.

Thursday's court decision came from Chief Justice Andrew Cheung, Justice Roberto Ribeiro and Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma. Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam selected the judges, according to the report.

Lai's bail drew a response from Beijing earlier in the week. Chinese state media, including People's Daily, condemned the decision as "inconceivable" and described Lai as "notorious and extremely dangerous."

And, of course, courts in China are extremely political.

Lai has been charged with colluding with foreign powers, and encouraging countries like the United States to place sanctions on Chinese Communist Party officials for passing the Hong Kong security law.

Prosecutors who sought the reversal of Lai's bail Thursday cited Article 42 of the security law, which specifies, "no bail shall be granted to a criminal suspect or defendant unless the judge has sufficient grounds for believing that the individual will not continue to commit acts endangering national security."

Analysts including political scientist Joseph Cheng told Al Jazeera the "whole process" is a threat to the independence of the Hong Kong judiciary.

"Jimmy Lai was initially denied bail, then he appealed and was granted bail by the high court -- at this juncture, the pro-Beijing media in Hong Kong ... severely attacked the judge's decision," Cheng said.

And consequently, it was reversed. Third-world justice system!

China: Paying US Media to Publish Propaganda

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'Borrowing a Boat to Go Out on the Ocean'

by Judith Bergman

January 2, 2021 at 5:00 am

The Chinese government-controlled English language newspaper, China Daily, in 2020 paid a variety of US media outlets nearly $2 million for publishing propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to a disclosure that China Daily filed in late November with the US Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), according to Daily Caller.

China Daily has reportedly been registered as a foreign agent under FARA since 1983, which means it is required to report its activities and financial transactions to the Justice Department.

In June, China Daily filed a disclosure with the Justice Department showing that, since November 2016, it had paid $19 million to U.S. media outlets, including $12 million to newspapers such as the Washington Post and New York Times. Other newspapers included the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Seattle Times, Houston Chronicle and Foreign Policy.

China Daily's ads come in the form of advertising supplements, inserts called "China Watch," in a strategy known as "borrowing a boat to go out on the ocean." According to Sarah Cook, Senior Research Analyst for East Asia, Freedom House, in 2017 testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission:

"This phrase refers to disseminating Chinese state-media content via the pages, frequencies, or screen-time of privately owned media outlets that have developed their own local audiences... In recent years, its robust expansion to English-language media has garnered much attention and public debate. One of the most prominent examples has been the emergence of China Watch — a paid insert sponsored by the state-run China Daily — that has appeared both in print and online in prominent U.S. papers like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal."

According to The Guardian, Australia: It was an eight-page Communist party newspaper each month in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and the Australian Financial Review.

This form of advertising is sometimes also known as advertorials, or native advertising: the stories are camouflaged to look like the other news content of the media outlets in which they appear.

The Wall Street Journal's "China Watch" website, for example, has published a number of articles promoting China's handling of the pandemic, including articles with titles such as, "Apple CEO: China Getting Outbreak Under Control", "US Sister Cities Get Help From Chinese Friends in Virus Fight", "WHO Chief Highlights China-Africa Cooperation on COVID-19 Fight", and a number of articles criticizing the US for its questioning of China's handling of the pandemic, such as "Washington's Wuhan Travel Claim Rebutted" and "Trump's China Remark Rebuked".

China is not the only foreign government paying to advertise its national propaganda in the US. In 2007, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a Russian government newspaper, began to publish its advertorials, "Russia Beyond the Headlines," in The Washington Post, although the ads reportedly disappeared from the newspaper in 2015. In the past, Rossiyskaya Gazeta reportedly also published Russia Beyond the Headlines supplements in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

"China needs to strengthen media coverage...and use innovative outreach methods...to tell a good Chinese story and promote China's views internationally", Xi Jinping said at the National Meeting on Propaganda and Thought Work in August 2013. Since then, he has regularly repeated this message. "To present good images," Xi told an August 2018 National Meeting on Ideology and Propaganda, "we should improve our international communication capability, tell China's stories well, disseminate China's voice, show an authentic and comprehensive China to the world, and raise the country's soft power and the influence of Chinese culture".

As pointed out by James Fallows in The Atlantic back in 2010, when The Washington Post was already publishing China Watch, it is one thing when such a supplement is clearly labeled as a paid advertisement, but quite different when such ads are published online and made to look similar to the outlet's other news articles, that only "the tiny words 'A Paid Supplement to the Washington Post' in the upper right hand corner distinguish them from the rest of the content".

This is a disgrace to China that they have to pay media to tell their stories. It is even more of a disgrace to mainstream media that they are willing to dupe their readers and lead them astray. There is no integrity there whatsoever. Publishers, like lawyers, know that readers don't read very fine print. 

Mainstream media's credibility is falling at an astonishing rate. It's not because reporters are liars, though some are more political than truthful. It's the editor, publishers, and owners who determine what stories to investigate, what to publish, what spin to put on them. Can you imagine the NYT, WAPO, or the Globe doing a very serious story on China when they are making a killing on China Watch? It would never get to the investigation stage.

It's disturbing that MSM publishers couldn't care less that their readers read the truth. It's like Big Pharma couldn't care less if their customer's health improves, they are only interested in our money. That's why Big Pharma will fight tooth and nail to keep Ivermectin out of the news and social media. Ivermectin is off-patent and is very inexpensive to make. It is arguably as good as, or better than the Covid19 vaccines on the market, but Big Pharma will keep it off the market (3rd story on link) and unapproved by Health ministries as long as possible, regardless of how many die.

"Those who engage in this form of propaganda hope to exploit the higher credibility of the hosting media site to enhance the persuasiveness of their message", wrote researchers Yaoyao Dai and Luwei Luqiu, who did an online survey on the effect of China Daily's ads on American and British readers of The Washington Post and The Daily Telegraph. Their findings showed that readers actually struggled "to distinguish political advertisements from standard news stories regardless of their level of education and media literacy".

China does not lack for English language media giants of its own to disseminate the Chinese Communist Party narrative about China across the world. According to Professor Anne-Marie Brady, a fellow at the Wilson Center:

"In early 2009, Beijing announced that it would invest ¥45 billion (roughly US$7.25 billion) into its main media outlets in order to strengthen its international news coverage and global presence. As part of this campaign, known as 'big propaganda' (da waixuan), Xinhua News Service increased its number of overseas bureaus from 100 to 186. That same year, the Global Times (a popular tabloid with an international focus owned by People's Daily) launched an English-language edition. CCTV International also began broadcasting in Arabic and Russian, and in 2010 rebranded itself as CCTV News. China's massive investment in these media attracted considerable international interest and debate".

In a December 2018 report, "Assessment on US Defense Implications of China's Expanding Global Access," the Pentagon assessed China's media expansion:

"Xinhua News Agency, China's official state-run news agency, launched 40 new foreign bureaus and doubled the number of overseas correspondents between 2009 and 2011. Xinhua counted 162 total foreign bureaus in 2017 and aims to have 200 by 2020. China's expanding official media presence reflects a concerted effort on the part of its leadership to shape opinions about the country and promote China's view on key topics. President Xi Jinping urged China Global Television Network, Xinhua's international media service, to 'tell the China story well' and "spread China's voice... a 2015 Reuters report revealed that China Radio International (CRI), a Chinese state-owned entity, was using subsidiaries to mask its control over 33 radio stations in 14 countries, including the United States. These radio stations broadcast pro-China content but have not registered as agents of a foreign government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)".

The reason China did not rely solely on its own state media, according to Brady, was because the strategy of using state media was "widely regarded by Chinese mass-communication experts as a failure. If foreign audiences know that a piece of information comes from an official Chinese media source, they are likely to interpret it as 'propaganda' rather than 'news.'"

With "social justice" having become something of a mantra across the Western mainstream media landscape, the promotion of Chinese regime propaganda to unsuspecting Americans constitutes an oddly incongruent and unethical business practice that the media industry does not appear to have reflected upon publicly, if at all. While several newspapers no longer engage in the practice – The Wall Street Journal, Washington Times and New York Times among them – the practice does not seem to have caused any sort of actual uproar in those media circles that engage in it, such as the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, the UK-based Financial Times, Chicago Tribune and Seattle Times. This reticence is odd, not so much because those newspapers want and need revenues, which is understandable, but because so many journalists and editors consider themselves as standing up against racism, ethnic and religious discrimination, and human rights abuses. Taking money from the Chinese Communist regime in exchange for spreading its propaganda would seem to indicate that this stance is simply empty posturing.

Judith Bergman, a columnist, lawyer and political analyst, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

==========================================================================================

More Obvious Evidence that Deep State is Running America

Trump’s ‘favorable’ policy instincts obstructed by neocons,

foreign interests & the arms lobby at every turn – Ron Paul

©  Global Look Press / DPA / Saeid Zareian

Despite President Trump’s periodic calls to scale back some of America’s “endless wars,” they continue unabated thanks to pressure from an elite sect of pro-war interests in Washington and beyond, former lawmaker Ron Paul told RT.

While the president “wants to back away from some of the interventions that have been dragging [on] for many, many years,” Paul said there are “different factions in our country” that put up fierce resistance to even the prospect of non-intervention.

If [Trump] does move in this direction, there are neocons here who would get hysterical over it and they do not think that we should give an inch. It is a battle.

In addition to the neocons – who wield a powerful network of influential think tanks and media organizations – Paul pointed to a number of other forces that come together to propel Washington’s lust for war, singling out “pressure from Saudi Arabia” and Israel, as well as arms manufacturers who profit immensely from continued conflicts overseas.

Arms manufacturers who profit immensely from continued conflicts overseas

It is difficult because of all the warmongers and people who like to sell weapons – they have to have an enemy and all that nonsense – they believe that they could make a lot of money out of it.

It is absolutely necessary for the USA to continue to support Israel. The moment they abandon her, Islam will attempt again to annihilate her. I believe God requires us to support Israel and judgment will be swift and terrible if we should fail.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is using the USA to help fight its sectarian wars and proxy wars with Iran. All the better for Deep State arms manufacturers and sellers. Not so good anyone else.

Even with the president’s “favorable” foreign policy instincts, his decisions have been erratic under the influence of the Washington establishment, Paul said, citing Trump’s premature Syria withdrawal announcement, which has largely been reversed since it was made in October for the sake of defending oil fields.

Defending oil fields for whom? For Syria? Or, are they stealing Syria's oil?

“That is a confusing and unpredictable position,” Paul said. “I would like him to stick to his guns when he says that it is time to leave Syria and for us to just leave.”

On Afghanistan, too, the president’s rhetoric has been encouraging for those seeking an end to America’s longest war – stuck in mission creep for nearly two decades – but beyond mere lip service, his policies there have ultimately served the hawks.

“He talked about leaving Afghanistan – so often his talk does not match his actions, and his actions are what is important,” Paul said. “We are still building up our forces over there.”

Talks with the Taliban resumed last week after President Trump scrapped nearly a year of negotiations with the group in September, perhaps the closest the United States ever came to finally ending the conflict. The fresh round of talks was announced just as a trove of internal government documents were published in a report at the Washington Post, detailing how senior officials spun lies and falsehoods about the war for years, at times even fabricating data to suggest “victory” was within reach.

Insisting the United States can no longer be a “global policeman,” threatening the rest of the planet with everything from sanctions to drone strikes, Paul called for a clean break in foreign policy thinking in Washington and urged for a total withdrawal of American soldiers from the Middle East.

“So our position is: stay out of it, there is nothing to be gained and nobody from that part of the world is going to come and bomb or attack us, so we do not see any benefit in staying there,” he said.

What a crazy idea! How can you keep the war inventory moving? Next thing he'll be say they can reduce the military and get out of NATO! What heresy! 

As I wrote in the story immediately below this one, Deep State is running America. It has been since Nov 22nd, 1963. And if they can't get Trump in line, they will get rid of him one way or another. But there is no possibility of another 4 years as President.