Media
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Slapping an Israeli Soldier More Newsworthy Than Shooting a Palestinian Child in the Face By Gregory Shupak
Israeli soldiers shot 14-year-old Palestinian Mohammad Tamimi point-blank in the face with a rubber-jacketed bullet on December 14, 2017, in Nabi Saleh, a small village in the occupied West Bank. The boy had to undergo six hours of surgery and was placed in a medically induced coma. An hour later, Mohammad’s cousin, Ahed Tamimi, slapped… Continue reading
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Coverage of Iran Protests Illustrated With Protests Not in Iran–Organized by Fringe Cultists By Adam Johnson
When it comes to covering protests in other countries, it seems any vague picture of brown people protesting can stand in for those actually on the streets expressing their grievances. Since the outbreak of protests across Iran three weeks ago, several major outlets have used pictures of demonstrations in the United States, France, or United… Continue reading
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The Two-FacedBook By William Bowles
The World Wide Web is very difficult to control without overt, and very public, central, i.e. state control. But control had to be reasserted. It was a dilemma for the elite. How to do it without blowing away the illusion of a free and democratic media? Enter ‘fake news’. Continue reading
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Think Tank-Addicted Media Turn to Regime Change Enthusiasts for Iran Protest Commentary By Adam Johnson
Since the outbreak of mass demonstrations and unrest in Iran last week, US media have mostly busied themselves with the question of not if we should “do something,” but what, exactly, that something should be. As usual, it’s simply taken for granted the United States has a divine right to intervene in the affairs of… Continue reading
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NYT Trumpwashes 70 Years of US Crime By Adam Johnson
Trumpwashing—defined as whitewashing, obscuring or rewriting the broader US record by presenting Donald Trump as an aberration (FAIR.org, 6/3/16)—was on full display Thursday in a nominally straight news report from the New York Times’ Mark Landler (12/28/17) on how Trump has reshaped US foreign policy. Buried in the otherwise banal analysis was this gem of… Continue reading
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Why the Documentary Must Not be Allowed to Die By John Pilger
Telling the truth, and dissenting from the official truth, can be hazardous for a documentary film-maker. This is an edited version of an address John Pilger gave at the British Library on 9 December as part of a retrospective festival, ‘The Power of the Documentary’,held to mark the Library’s acquisition of Pilger’s written archive. Continue reading
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Ghost in the Machine, Part 1 — Drug Safety and Media Shaped by Big Pharma
A Brutally Honest Analysis of Who’s Really Pulling the Strings Just when you might have thought industry’s influence couldn’t get any worse, we’re now looking at a situation that could dwarf the past. A dark cloud is brewing, as this new venture capitalist-turned-Commissioner with financial links to Pharma since 2005 moves closer to taking over… Continue reading
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'Whataboutism' Runs Amok as Jake Tapper Rattles Off Trump Talking Points By Adam Johnson
For over a year, US media have insisted that the tactic of deflecting criticism by pointing to others’ flaws was the devious Soviet tool of “whataboutism,” and anyone using it was practicing “one of Russia’s favorite propaganda tactics.” If so, when it came time for CNN’s Jake Tapper (12/21/17) to spin for the Trump administration’s… Continue reading
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Suman Raghunathan on Muslim Ban Return, Bruce Stanley on Don Blankenship
22 December 2017 — FAIR by CounterSpin MP3 Link (cc photo: Fibonacci Blue) This week on CounterSpin: The Supreme Court has OKed full implementation of Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban—despite the fact that its constitutionality is still being challenged in lower courts. Despite the fact that even Department of Homeland Security reports show no relationship… Continue reading
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Why the Revolution Will Not (but Must) Be Televised By Jim Naureckas
The problem is, the energy companies are some of the richest, most powerful entities on Earth. Corporations are designed to act like organisms with a single goal, maximizing profits. And the fossil fuel industry’s future profits—roughly four-fifths of them—depend on extracting that excess carbon and burning it, climate and civilization be damned. They have been… Continue reading
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NYT Failed to Note Op-Ed Authors' Funder Has $2 Billion Motive for Attacking Argentina By Eli Clifton/LobeLog
Mark Dubowitz and Toby Dershowitz, two executives at the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), took to the op-ed pages of the New York Times (12/11/17) to celebrate last week’s announcement that Argentina’s former president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, would face treason charges for her alleged role in covering up Iran’s alleged involvement in… Continue reading
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Judge Tells Jury: Informing Public May Be Criminal Conspiracy By Jim Naureckas
Reporting the news can be punished as criminal conspiracy, federal Judge Lynn Leibovitz told jurors at the so-called J20 trial in Washington, DC, where journalists and protesters alike are being prosecuted for property damage that they didn’t commit during the Donald Trump inauguration. Continue reading
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Net Neutrality Repeal Is Only Part of Trump’s Surrender to Corporate Media By Reed Richardson
The FCC is under attack—and so too is the First Amendment. As the primary regulator of how media and information gets to our nation’s citizens, the Federal Communications Commission has a critical role to play in protecting the open Internet, free speech, and free press in our democracy. Though the agency has always enjoyed a… Continue reading
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NYT Prints Government-Funded Propaganda About Government-Funded Propaganda By Adam Johnson
An op-ed by the president of the right-wing human rights group Freedom House, published in the New York Times Monday (12/11/17)—later boosted by New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker—warned of the menace of “commentators, trolls, bots, false news sites and propaganda,” and their negative effects on democracy. Missing from its analysis was… Continue reading
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Russia or Corporate Tax Cuts: Which Would Comcast Rather MSNBC Cover? By Eoin Higgins
At the beginning of December, liberal TV hosts Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow—the anchors of MSNBC‘s primetime schedule—were confronted with ever-escalating breaking news. In the span of a week, from December 1 through December 7, President Donald Trump shrank two national monuments, recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, saw his travel ban upheld by… Continue reading
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Media Downplay Class Warfare as 'GOP Victory' By Ben Norton
The fallacy of “neutral,” “both sides” journalism rings loud and clear in corporate media reporting on the Republican Party’s tax plan. The GOP bill, passed by the Senate in the early hours of December 2 and described by major media outlets as a “tax cut,” is in reality an explicit handout to large companies and… Continue reading
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'This Is Very Much a US/Saudi War on Yemen By Janine Jackson
More than a half million children suffer from severe acute malnutrition, and millions more lack access to any healthcare at all. This while Yemen faces an outbreak of cholera that’s being called possibly the worst in history. Yet Americans have heard little about what’s happening in Yemen, and still less about how it relates to… Continue reading
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‘This Is Very Much a US/Saudi War on Yemen By Janine Jackson
More than a half million children suffer from severe acute malnutrition, and millions more lack access to any healthcare at all. This while Yemen faces an outbreak of cholera that’s being called possibly the worst in history. Yet Americans have heard little about what’s happening in Yemen, and still less about how it relates to… Continue reading
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Video Preview: #stopmurdoch Sky Takeover
30 November 2017 — CPBF The #stopmurdoch video is being crowdfunded and this is a preview and an opportunity to fund it. The Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom One of CPBF’s aims is to: ‘To challenge the myth that press freedom is best served by current forms of ownership and control, and by ‘self-regulation’… Continue reading
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Backlash Against Russian ‘Fake News’ Is Shutting Down Debate for Real By Robin Andersen
A few days before the Halloween hearings held by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, where powerful tech companies would provide testimony about their roles disseminating “fake news” during the 2016 election, Twitter announced it would no longer accept advertising from the Russian government-sponsored broadcast channel Russia Today (RT), or the state-owned Sputnik. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 