How Much Less Newsworthy Are Civilians in Other Conflicts?

A lot less, particularly when they’re victims of the US

Julie Hollar

Fair | March 18, 2022

Jeff Cohen (Common Dreams, 2/28/22): “Unfortunately, there was virtually no focus on civilian death and agony when it was the US military launching the invasions.”

As US news media covered the first shocking weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, some media observers—like FAIR founder Jeff Cohen (Common Dreams, 2/28/22)—have noted their impressions of how coverage differed from wars past, particularly in terms of a new focus on the impact on civilians.

To quantify and deepen these observations, FAIR studied the first week of coverage of the Ukraine war (2/24–3/2/22) on ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News. We used the Nexis news database to count both sources (whose voices get to be heard?) and segments (what angles are covered?) about Ukraine during the study period. Comparing this coverage to that of other conflicts reveals both a familiar reliance on US officials to frame events, as well as a newfound ability to cover the impact on civilians—when those civilians are white and under attack by an official US enemy, rather than by the US itself.

Ukrainian sources—no experts

One of the most striking things about early coverage has been the sheer number of Ukrainian sources. FAIR always challenges news media to seek out the perspective of those most impacted by events, and US outlets are doing so to a much greater extent in this war than in any war in recent history. Of 234 total sources—230 of whom had identifiable nationalities—119 were Ukrainian (including five living in the United States.)

It’s Different, They’re White: Media Ignore Conflicts Around the World to Focus on Ukraine

Alan Macleod

MintPress News | March 02, 2022

KIEV, UKRAINE — We are living in dangerous times. All around the world, intense military actions are taking place. Last week alone, Russia launched a huge military invasion of Ukraine; Saudi Arabia carried out dozens of strikes on Yemen; Israel launched a wave of deadly missile attacks against Syria; and the United States restarted its bombing campaign in Somalia.

These four deadly incidents happened concurrently. Yet judging by media coverage, it is highly unlikely that many will even be aware of the final three. A MintPress News study of five leading Western media outlets found that overwhelming attention was paid to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while the others were barely mentioned, if at all.

Our Broken Media and What To Do About It

Alan Macleod

MintPress News | October 27, 2021

Virtually nobody trusts what they read any more. The United States ranks dead last among 46 nations surveyed in confidence in the press. Only 29% of Americans say they broadly believe what they read, see or hear in mainstream media. And more than three quarters of the public think that big outlets knowingly publish fake news.

The term “fake news” first came into common usage around the contentious 2016 election, where both the Trump and Clinton campaigns attempted to weaponize the term against their opponents. Clinton claimed that Trump was being buoyed by false information put out by Eastern European bloggers and shared on sites like Facebook, while Trump shot back at her, claiming the likes of Clinton-supporting networks CNN and MSNBC were themselves fake news.

Media in the USA

Meshed Gears

HomeABOMINATIONS Media in the USA

Media in the USA

July 21, 2021Print this post.Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.

This is an article from our series on septic media

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WikiLeaks tried to break the disinformation stranglehold, and see what happened: the Empire quickly moved to make an example of Assange. Disinformation is the lifeblood of a criminal world order.

Canonical URL: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Tot1iLWpVitnP90-d4mnsWVNCb5tUhQqBTU2SzjUCYg
Short URL: http://bit.ly/OnUSMedia “Media in the USA”
Refer Also: http://bit.ly/USAOligarchy “The USA is an oligarchy”
http://bit.ly/PoliticalTerminology “Political Terminology – The 3 minute FAQ to knowing everything necessary to understand everything in American politics”

http://bit.ly/OnFreedomOfSpeech “Freedom of Speech – Why Technocrats Should Not be Allowed to Block Expression Or Filter Audiences” © Hermit 2020-2021 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Rather than copying, please link to this document using the Short URL http://bit.ly/OnUSMedia so that any updates will be seen.

What Americans call “the right” and “the left” do not exist. In reality, there are a few oligarchs (rulers in an oligarchy, rule by the wealthy and powerful) on top. The rest of us are bottoms who influence nothing and control less. Tops, working through the political,  security and media establishment (today including social media),  promote divisions within the bottoms to distract the bottoms and keep them from joining together to throw out the tops. 

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.