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Corporate Media

Western Media Losing Enthusiasm For Failing Coup In Venezuela

July 25, 2019 Lucas Koerner and Ricardo Vaz, Fair.org , , ,
When previously unknown Venezuelan opposition politician Juan Guaidó stood up in an East Caracas plaza and declared himself “interim president” of the South American country, Western corporate media were ebullient. In those heady early days, corporate journalists could scarcely conceal their love affair with the 35-year-old politician, whom they likened to Barack Obama (CNN, 2/7/19) and described as a “freedom fighter” (Fox Business, 1/29/19) and Venezuela’s “only democratically elected figure” (MSNBC, 1/24/19), who had “captured the heart of the nation” (New York Times,3/4/19).

NY Times Admits It Sends Stories To US Government For Approval Before Publication

June 27, 2019 Ben Norton, Thegrayzone.com , , , ,
The New York Times has publicly acknowledged that it sends some of its stories to the US government for approval from “national security officials” before publication. This confirms what veteran New York Times correspondents like James Risen have said: The American newspaper of record regularly collaborates with the US government, suppressing reporting that top officials don’t want made public. On June 15, the Times reported that the US government is escalating its cyber attacks on Russia’s power grid.

The Trust Project: Big Media And Silicon Valley’s Weaponized Algorithms Silence Dissent

June 10, 2019 By Whitney Webb, Mintpressnews.com , ,
Given the Trust Project’s rich-get-richer impact on the online news landscape, it is not surprising to find that it is funded by a confluence of tech oligarchs and powerful forces with a clear stake in controlling the flow of news. After the failure of Newsguard — the news rating system backed by a cadre of prominent neoconservative personalities — to gain traction among American tech and social media companies, another organization has quietly stepped in to direct the news algorithms of tech giants such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.

Why We Need The New Yorker To Correct Its Error On Venezuelan Inequality

June 5, 2019 By Jim Naureckas, Fair.org , , , ,
My hat is off to Keane Bhatt, NACLA blogger and occasional Extra!contributor, for his tireless efforts to prod one of the United States’ most prestigious media outlets to live up to its professed standards of accuracy. The outlet is the New Yorker, a magazine whose name is practically synonymous with factchecking. It’s a tradition there; they brag about how seriously they take checking the facts. Which makes you wonder how Keane was able to find the glaring, major errors in the New Yorker‘s recent coverage of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, all perpetrated by longtime contributor Jon Lee Anderson.

The Western Media Is Key To Syria Deceptions

May 28, 2019 Staff, Jonathan-cook.net , ,
By any reckoning, the claim made this week by al-Qaeda-linked fighters that they were targeted with chemical weapons by the Syrian government in Idlib province – their final holdout in Syria – should have been treated by the western media with a high degree of scepticism. That the US and other western governments enthusiastically picked up those claims should not have made them any more credible. Scepticism was all the more warranted from the media given that no physical evidence has yet been produced to corroborate the jihadists’ claims.

US Press Reaches All-Time Low On Venezuela Coverage

May 23, 2019 Daniel Kovalik, Venezuelanalysis.com , , ,
As famed Latin American author Eduardo Galeano once wrote, “every time the US ‘saves’ a country, it converts it into either an insane asylum or a cemetery.” Of course, as we look over the wreckage left by the US in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, we see that this statement is demonstrably true. And yet, now that the US is poised for another intervention, this time in Venezuela, the press is right there again to cheer it along.

There’s Far More Diversity In Venezuela’s ‘Muzzled’ Media Than In US Corporate Press

May 22, 2019 By Lucas Koerner AND Ricardo Vaz, Fair.org , , , ,
The international corporate media have long displayed a peculiar creativity with the facts in their Venezuela reporting, to the point that coverage of the nation’s crisis has become perhaps the world’s most lucrative fictional genre. Ciara Nugent’s recent piece for Time(4/16/19), headlined “‘Venezuelans Are Starving for Information’: The Battle to Get News in a Country in Chaos,” distinguished itself as a veritable masterpiece of this literary fad. The article’s slant should come as no surprise, given Time’s (and Nugent’s) enthusiastic endorsement (2/1/19) of the ongoing coup led by self-proclaimed “interim president” Juan Guaidó.

It’s Never Really About The Bread

May 22, 2019 Eleanor Goldfield, Roarmag.org , ,
Corporate media often depicts major social upheavals as single-issue affairs — to see how movements and struggles connect we need to look beyond the headlines. The tip of the iceberg is not what sank the Titanic. The US is not an empire in decline just because of Trump’s presidency. Our environment is not collapsing because of one particular megafarm or one particular oil company. The tea tax was not what the American Revolution was about, just as the rise in the cost of bread after a long, harsh winter was not the cornerstone of the impending French Revolution.

The Propaganda Multiplier: How Global News Agencies And Western Media Report On Geopolitics

May 21, 2019 Staff, Truepublica.org.uk ,
The key role played by these agencies means Western media often report on the same topics, even using the same wording. In addition, governments, military and intelligence services use these global news agencies as multipliers to spread their messages around the world. A study of the Syria war coverage by nine leading European newspapers clearly illustrates these issues: 78% of all articles were based in whole or in part on agency reports, yet 0% on investigative research. Moreover, 82% of all opinion pieces and interviews were in favour of the US and NATO intervention, while propaganda was attributed exclusively to the opposite side.

Who’s Behind The Pro-Guaidó Crowd Besieging Venezuela’s D.C. Embassy?

May 16, 2019 By Jeb Sprague and Alexander Rubinstein, Mintpressnews.com , ,
The intimidation tactics by the pro-coup embassy besiegers not only failed to deter the peace activists around the embassy, they left Venezuela’s D.C.-based opposition with a serious PR problem. After a week of hateful outbursts, a handful of marketing strategists emerged as de facto spokespeople for the mob. After a rough and revealing start, the reins of the campaign to seize Venezuela’s embassy in Washington are being taken over by a group of well-connected marketing and online strategists.

US Press Reaches All-Time Low On Venezuela Coverage

May 13, 2019 Daniel Kovalik, Counterpunch.org , , ,
As famed Latin American author Eduardo Galeano once wrote, “every time the US ‘saves’ a country, it converts it into either an insane asylum or a cemetery.” Of course, as we look over the wreckage left by the US in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, we see that this statement is demonstrably true. And yet, now that the US is poised for another intervention, this time in Venezuela, the press is right there again to cheer it along. Analyzing 76 total press articles of the “elite” press from January 15 to April 15, 2019, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) could find not one voice that opposed Trump’s regime plans in Venezuela.

40,000 Dead Venezuelans Under US Sanctions: Corporate Media Turn A Blind Eye

May 6, 2019 Staff, Dissidentvoice.org , , , , ,
A new report on April 25 by a respected think tank has estimated that US sanctions imposed on Venezuela in August 2017 have caused around 40,000 deaths. This atrocity has been almost entirely blanked by the British ‘mainstream’ media, including BBC News. Additional sanctions imposed in January 2019 are likely to lead to tens of thousands of further deaths. The report was co-authored by Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs for the US-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. CEPR was founded in 1999 ‘to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people’s lives.’

Western Media Fall In Lockstep For Cheap Trump/Rubio Venezuela Aid PR Stunt

February 11, 2019 Adam Johnson, Fair.org , , , ,
All of the above articles—and scores more like it—repeated the same script: Maduro was blocking aid from the US “out of refusal to relinquish power,” preferring to starve “his own people” rather than feed them. It’s a simple case of good and evil—of a tyrannical, paranoid dictator not letting in aid to feed a starving population. Except three pieces of key context are missing. Context that, when presented to a neutral observer, would severely undermine the cartoonish narrative being advanced by US media.

Paying Off Climate Change, A Nostalgic War & The Thing About Jews

February 7, 2019 Eleanor Goldfield, Occupy.com , , ,
Here's what happens when you fine big polluters – plus a look at how intertwined law enforcement and pipeline companies are (hint: it's not you they're protecting and serving.) Next up, should we stay or should we go? Why corporate media is getting so nostalgic for perpetual war in the Middle East. And finally, Senate Bill 1, anti-zionism, anti-semitism – clearing the fog with Nora Barrows-Friedman.

Blacking Out The Yellow Vests On Cable News: Corporate Media Doing Its Job

December 13, 2018 Paul Street, Counterpunch.org , ,
The deletion of events that don’t fit with the reigning ideology is part of how ruling class-owned media works to manufacture mass consent to unjust hierarchy. I spent much of last week in a cable-television-equipped U.S.-American apartment with CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News at my fingertips. As I inhabited this abode, flicking between sports and cable news, a political crisis of the state was unfolding in one of the world’s richest and most powerful states.  France was gripped by an historic working- and middle-class uprising.  In the biggest popular unrest seen there since May of 1968, many hundreds of thousands of Gilets Jaunes (“yellow vests”) took to French roadways and other public space in their fourth straight week of explosive mass protests.
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