Israel/Palestine Coverage Presents False Equivalency Between Occupied and Occupier

STRUGGLE OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE 

Gregory Shupak

FAIR | May 18, 2021

The Wall Street Journal headline (5/10/21) presents the Gaza violence as a clear-cut case of aggression and retaliation.

Media coverage of heightened violence in Israel/Palestine has misrepresented events in the Israeli government’s favor by suggesting that Israel is acting defensively, presenting a false equivalency between occupier and occupied, and burying information necessary to understand the scale of Israeli brutality.

Corporate media have presented Israel’s killing spree as defensive, as a reaction to supposed Palestinian aggression. A Financial Times headline (5/10/21) read, “Hamas Rocket Attacks Provoke Israeli Retaliation in Gaza.” The New York Times’  description (5/12/21) was, “Hamas launched long-range rockets at Jerusalem on Monday evening, prompting Israel to respond with airstrikes.” An article in Newsweek (5/12/21) had it that “Hamas rained down rockets on Israeli civilian targets, and the Israeli military responded with surgical air strikes against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza.” A CNN headline (5/12/21) said, “At Least 35 Killed in Gaza as Israel Ramps Up Airstrikes in Response to Rocket Attacks.”

We Can Defeat the Corporate Media’s War to Snuff Out Independent Journalism

MEDIA

 

Jonathan Cook

My talk at the International Festival of Whistleblowing, Dissent and Accountability on May 8. Transcript below.

I wanted to use this opportunity to talk about my experiences over the past two decades working with new technology as an independent freelance journalist, one who abandoned — or maybe more accurately, was abandoned by — what we usually call the “mainstream” media.

Looking back over that period, I have come to appreciate that I was among the first generation of journalists to break free of the corporate media — in my case, the Guardian — and ride this wave of new technology. In doing so, we liberated ourselves from the narrow editorial restrictions such media imposes on us as journalists and were still able to find an audience, even if a diminished one.

SOCIALIST RHETORICAL AND DIALECTICAL COMMUNICATION: OVERCOMING BRAINWASHING, PROPAGANDA, ENTERTAINMENT

FIGHTING PROPAGANDA 

Bruce Lerro

PERSPECTIVES |  April 28, 2021

ORIENTATION

How effective is the socialist left at winning over people in public meetings who are not already socialists? I would think that being socialists would make the people practicing socialism very good at being social. How true is this? There are two purposes in this article. One is to identify the similarities and differences between six forms of information control. The second part is to assess how good leftists are in using the two forms of control called “rhetoric” and “dialectic” at making their points. My claim is that the socialist left knows or cares little for these argumentation forms. This is one of many reasons why it is difficult to persuade or convince the public to become socialists or support socialist programs. These attempts could be in public gatherings such as rallies, city council meetings or in the workplace.

Silicon Valley Algorithm Manipulation Is The Only Thing Keeping Mainstream Media Alive

MAINSTREAM MEDIA 

Caitlin Johnstone

The emergence of the internet was met with hope and enthusiasm by people who understood that the plutocrat-controlled mainstream media were manipulating public opinion to manufacture consent for the status quo. The democratization of information-sharing was going to give rise to a public consciousness that is emancipated from the domination of plutocratic narrative control, thereby opening up the possibility of revolutionary change to our society’s corrupt systems.

But it never happened. Internet use has become commonplace around the world and humanity is able to network and share information like never before, yet we remain firmly under the thumb of the same power structures we’ve been ruled by for generations, both politically and psychologically. Even the dominant media institutions are somehow still the same.

The Mass Media Will Never Regain The Public’s Trust

MAINSTREAM MEDIA 

Caitlin Johnstone

This year has marked the first time ever that trust in news media dropped below fifty percent in the United States, continuing a trend of decline that’s been ongoing for years.

Mass media punditry is divided on where to assign the blame for the plummet in public opinion of their work, with some blaming it on Russia and others blaming it on Donald Trump. Others, like a recent Forbes article titled “Restoring Public Trust In Technology And Media Is Infrastructure Investment” blame it on the internet. Still others, like a Washington Post article earlier this month titled “Bad news for journalists: The public doesn’t share our values” blame it on the people themselves.

The one thing they all seem to agree on is that it’s definitely not because the billionaire-controlled media are propaganda outlets which manipulate us constantly in conjunction with sociopathic government agencies to protect the oligarchic, imperialist status quo upon which the members of the billionaire class have built their respective kingdoms. It cannot possibly be because people sense that they are being lied to and are fed up with it.

“Shame on You, New York Times!” Scientists Speak Out Over Media Disinformation on China

HYPOCRISY OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA 

Alan Macleod

MintPress News | February 15, 2021

ATexas teenager has been forced to use her entire college savings to prevent her single mother from being evicted after she lost her job amid a raging pandemic. Alondra Carmona of Houston made the appeal on crowdfunding site GoFundMe, noting that she had been accepted into prestigious New York university Barnard College, but that she used the money she had saved for tuition in order to save her mother.

Some of the world’s top scientists are condemning The New York Times for what they describe as a highly misleading hit job on their recent visit to Wuhan, China.

Questionable Time – Elite Bias on the BBC’s Flagship Debate Show

MAINSTREAM MEDIA

Preference for millionaires and top-10% earners revealed in new analysis by STEVEN McCRACKEN and SEAN RANKIN

Morning Star | February 12, 2021

BBC director-general Tim Davie raised eyebrows in October 2020 when he told a virtual Ofcom conference that reflecting “socio-economic diversity, different types of people, different voices” was a “big issue” for the BBC.

Specifically, Davie conceded that Oxbridge graduates are disproportionately represented within the organisation.

His point was neatly illustrated that lunchtime on BBC2’s Politics Live.

Mass Media Propaganda is Enemy #1: Notes From The Edge of The Narrative Matrix

MAINSTREAM MEDIA

Caitlin Johnstone

Though numerous, the pseudo diversity of content and opinion is one of the most egregious conceits of the tightly controlled Western media.

The most Orwellian tool of our rulers which does the most damage and affects the most lives is not surveillance, nor police militarization, nor government secrecy, but domestic mass media propaganda. It’s also the most overlooked. It’s good to protest the other mechanisms of authoritarian control, but propaganda is enemy number one.

BBC Urged to Reveal Costs of Countering Equal Pay and Race Discrimination Claims

THE HYPOCRISY OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA

Lamiat Sabin

Morning Star | December 18, 2020

BBC Broadcasting House in London

MPs have expressed dissatisfaction after the BBC claimed that it could not provide a breakdown of the legal costs it incurred in opposing equal-pay and race-discrimination claims in employment tribunals.

The digital, culture, media and sport committee had asked BBC director-general Tim Davie to provide further information about the broadcaster’s spending on lawyers to fight such cases.

Corporate Media Silence Deafening as Former Clinton Aide Confirms Ties to Jeffrey Epstein

MAINSTREAM MEDIA

Alan Macleod

MintPress News | December 07, 2020

Atop Clinton insider has revealed that the former president visited the Caribbean home of notorious sex predator Jeffrey Epstein. In a long interview last week with Vanity Fair, longtime aide to Bill Clinton, Doug Band, noted that, contrary to the official line, his boss did indeed spend time on Little Saint James, the private island that the billionaire pedophile used as a base to traffick and rape women and children.