In what appears to be a highly coordinated maneuver, our self-declared "impartial" corporate news media suddenly goes 180 degrees on a story with no explanation. I'd like to know who is pulling these levers.
Matt Orfalea has created another excellent mashup, this one featuring the severe cognitive impairment of Joe Biden combined with eerily uniform corporate media commentary that Joe Biden is "sharp."
Youtube version:
How is it possible for all of these "news" outlets to chime in unison?
As George Carlin stated, "You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge."
And oops! Axios says the quiet part out loud:
Finally, to the crowd that admits that the CIA has intensely meddled in domestic politics, including election integrity, in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80, 90s, 00s and 10s, but that they are now well behaved, here's yet another tantalizing possibility: Operation Mockingbird.
Operation Mockingbird is a real thing and it manipulated millions of Americans.
I'll end with a few disturbing modern-day stories by Tucker Carlson ...
Proven: The extent to which the corporate news is willing to lie about Biden's cognitive function (and lie about every other major issue).
Rarely are so many lies dispelled in a single moment. Rarely are so many people exposed as liars and sycophants. Last night’s debate was a watershed on both counts.The debate was not just a catastrophe for President Biden. And boy—oy—was it ever.
But it was more than that. It was a catastrophe for an entire class of experts, journalists, and pundits, who have, since 2020, insisted that Biden was sharp as a tack, on top of his game, basically doing handstands while peppering his staff with tough questions about care for migrant children and aid to Ukraine.
Anyone who committed the sin of using their own eyes on the 46th president was accused, variously, of being Trumpers; MAGA cult members who don’t want American democracy to survive; ageists; or just dummies easily duped by “disinformation,” “misinformation,” “fake news,” and, most recently, “cheapfakes.”
This is how intensely they have been gaslighting us. From 3 months ago . . .
From Matt Taibbi's article today, The Democratic Coup:
When the most deranged and disturbing presidential debate in our history was over, the event’s cable hosts, CNN, tossed to mild-mannered John King for instant reaction. The silver-haired anchor, whose normal specialty is fussing over the “Magic Wall” electoral map on election nights, performed a grimmer duty last night:There is a deep, a wide, and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party… It involves party strategists, it involves elected officials, it involves fundraisers. And they’re having conversations about the president’s performance, which they think was dismal… They’re having conversations as to what they should do about it. Some of those conversations include, “Should we go to the White House, and ask the president to step aside?”
Whoa. Murder on the CNN Express continued around a table of analysts who’ve been telling us for years that Joe Biden is a fit president. Each now echoed King. “The panic that I am hearing from Democrats is not like anything that I have heard,” concurred Abby Phillip. “They are now seeing a President… they do not necessarily believe can do this for another four years.” Barack Obama’s right hand David Axelrod said: “I can’t argue with either of them about how Democratic leaders are reacting.”
Biden's incompetence has been plain to see for years, but corporate media and Biden's cheerleaders have been denying it . . . until last night. Perhaps one might like to spin this this process by invoking Thomas Kuhn's anodyne phrase, "paradigm shift."
Thomas Kuhn argued that science does not evolve gradually toward truth. Science has a paradigm that remains constant before going through a paradigm shift when current theories can’t explain some phenomenon, and someone proposes a new theory. A scientific revolution occurs when: (i) the new paradigm better explains the observations and offers a model that is closer to the objective, external reality; and (ii) the new paradigm is incommensurate with the old. For example, Lamarckian evolution was replaced with Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.
Because the process has been intentional and manipulative all along, I prefer to use the term "gaslighting"
Gaslighting is an insidious form of manipulation and psychological control. Victims of gaslighting are deliberately and systematically fed false information that leads them to question what they know to be true, often about themselves. They may end up doubting their memory, their perception, and even their sanity. Over time, a gaslighter’s manipulations can grow more complex and potent, making it increasingly difficult for the victim to see the truth.
At this site I have offered more than 270 incidents where the corporate media pumps out narratives that are false or lack evidence or where important stories are being actively suppressed. I use the tag "Narratives in Media" to label these articles.
For instance, how can you explain that more then ten million people pour across the U.S. southern border in coordinated fashion, yet our major media outlets don't even find this interesting? Even when this pouring in of unvetted people is combined with government efforts to hand these people the right to vote in the upcoming elections?
I'm very suspicious about what is going on with undocumented people pouring over the border and attempts to give these people the right to vote, even in municipal elections. But wouldn't it be nice if our "news" outlets showed some sense of curiosity? I can think of dozens of questions they could ask about this situation. For instance, they could trace the flow of money enabling this. They could skewer Biden's claims that his hands were tied even though he was the one who threw open the borders. Instead, we have nonchalance and see-no-evil. That silence is our corporate media doing what it considers to be its job, to re-elect Joe Biden. To them, everything else is reverse-engineering.
I no longer use the phrase "mainstream media" to refer to the primary culprits of this concocted news: NYT, CNN, MSNBC, NPR and WaPo. Instead, following in the footsteps of Glenn Greenwald and Comedian Dave Smith (in an excellent all-round discussion), I use the term "corporate news," although the big corporations that control these outlets are inextricably entangled with the federal government and its security state (FBI, CIA and NGO cutouts funded by these agencies, such as the Atlantic Council and USAID). The "news" these corporations offer is no longer believed by many Americans. Check out these findings:
The news media is the only industry mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. Without trustworthy news, we don't have informed citizens, the type that can vote meaningfully.
"Whenever the people are well informed, they may be trusted with their own government." Thomas Jefferson"Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost." Thomas Jefferson
"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy.” James Madison
Yet the above findings, especially the AP poll from 2024, show that the great majority of us are extremely, very or somewhat that we are being misled by our "news outlets" on the issue of election coverage and these concerns are buttressed by my own articles on media narratives.
I'll end with this graphic by KanekoaTheGreat, setting out dozens of falsehoods pumped out by the corporate media over the past few years. I don't agree with everything on this list, but I think the list shows that the corporate media repeatedly pumps out false stories. It shows that the corporate media lacks credibility on important issues. THIS is the track record of our corporate media and there is no reason to think that it will be any better going forward.
Better late than never, NYT.
