Media
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Liberals, Conservatives Worry About Korean Peace Threat By Gregory Shupak
Commentators across the spectrum of acceptable establishment opinion are alarmed by the possibility of peace breaking out on the Korean peninsula. Continue reading
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‘Modernization’: Media's Favorite Euphemism for Military Buildup By Adam Johnson
One of the most effective rhetorical tools in normalizing massive military budgets is to treat spending billions—and sometimes trillions—of dollars as something one has to do in order to be “modern.” “Modernization” is, after all, a normative label; who doesn’t want to be modern? Continue reading
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Media Erase US Role in Syria’s Misery, Call for US to Inflict More Misery By Gregory Shupak
7 March 2018 — FAIR Simon Tisdall argues in the Guardian (2/10/18) that “the West let down Syria”—not by fueling a murderous civil war, but by failing to ensure that its chosen side prevailed in that war. In the Guardian (2/10/18), Simon Tisdall described the US and its Western partners as “hovering passively on the sidelines in Syria,”… Continue reading
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Top NYT Editor: ‘We Are Pro-Capitalism, the Times Is in Favor of Capitalism’ By Adam Johnson
1 March 2018 — FAIR The Huffington Post piece (2/27/18) that revealed editorial page editor James Bennet’s declaration that “the New York Times is in favor of capitalism.” Media criticism is, more often than not, a practice of inference: seeing patterns and inferring from those patterns the political make-up of media. Occasionally, however, decision-makers from major media outlets come… Continue reading
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‘The United States Is Driving a Wedge Between the Two Koreas’ By Janine Jackson
Janine Jackson: Many were stirred by the sight of North and South Korean athletes parading together at the Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Pyeongchang. And that’s a big problem, says Vice President Mike Pence, who declared, to some media applause, that he would “seize every opportunity” to stop North Korea from using the games as… Continue reading
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Painting an Israeli Attack on Syria as Israeli ‘Retaliation’ By Gregory Shupak
Israel claimed that it intercepted an Iranian drone in Israeli airspace on Saturday, February 10; Iran denied that it had a drone there. Israel then bombed a Syrian airbase, saying it was the command-and-control center from which Iran had launched the drone. The Syrian government shot down an Israeli jet that had bombed the base,… Continue reading
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US Media Turn to ‘Superhero’ Pence to Combat Korean Olympic Peace Threat By Adam Johnson
North Korea, like virtually every country on earth, is using the Olympics this week as an opportunity for political theater, and this has greatly upset many in US media. Ostensibly this is because North Korea, marching with South Korea in the opening ceremonies and sending a squadron of cheerleaders to the Winter Games, is getting… Continue reading
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Facebook details plans to censor news feeds and manipulate public opinion By Andre Damon
Over the past two weeks, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced plans to reduce the amount of news shown to Facebook users and to ensure that the news that does appear comes from vetted sources, to introduce censorship to the world’s largest social network. Continue reading
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WaPo Defends Its Owner Against Charges That He's Very Wealthy By Jim Naureckas
Awkwardly enough, one of the world’s six wealthiest people is the owner of the paper doing the factchecking. Or as the Post coyly put it, “(Among the names on the list: Jeffrey P. Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post.)” The Post’s Nicole Lewis didn’t say that Sanders was wrong,… Continue reading
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Murdoch-Sky Merger Update: Good News?
Today, the Competition and Markets Authority announced that it is recommending a provisional block on the Fox-Sky merger on plurality grounds. This is welcome news, but far from a done deal. We still need to make sure that the merger doesn’t win approval on the basis of superficial undertakings offered by the Murdochs. Continue reading
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Participate in Copyright Week with us!
Copyright law has now been captured by major media interests all over the world. That’s why digital rights organisations in Brazil, Pakistan, Canada and Austria all fight to make it better for everyone: accessible and open, not just owned by a few huge corporations. Continue reading
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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
