Why I Focus on Problems with Left-Leaning “News” Media

On FB, a reader criticized me for not criticizing the problems with FOX News. My response:

The faux journalism of FOX already gets lots of attention from many quarters. How many times do I need to agree with you that FOX is the PR wing for the Republican Party? That's exactly what FOX is. Anyone attempting to get real news solely from FOX is getting a ton of propaganda, along with some real news. What I do on FB is not my day job. I focus on stories that are NOT being well-covered, including the fact that people who are looking toward NYT/WP/CNN/MSNBC/NPR as their long-trusted sources of news are often getting propaganda for the DNC, assisted by the U.S. law enforcement/spy state (FBI/CIA/DHS etc).

I've never claimed to quantify how bad FOX is compared to the left-leaning news, but for several years I have covered many dozens of incidents from which I can confidently conclude that the "news" on both the left and the right is deplorable, often demonstrably false, presenting one false consensus after another and intentionally not-curious about major evidence in order to try to get certain people elected and not others. The "news" on both the right and the left often consists of brazen attempts to manipulative the public, as though we are infants who are not capable of thinking for ourselves. What I am discussing is not trivial. It is ruining our country, betraying the vision of the Founders of the United States.

Jim, when Joe Biden promises to make Nord Stream inoperable, a sophisticated operation blows it up--an act of war--then, the WH celebrates, then claims "Russia" blew up its own infrastructure, Seymour Hersh offers details on how Biden ordered the operation and a month later the left-leaning news media reports that Ukraine did it--while burying the lede about Joe Biden's solemn promise, are you confident that your favorite team of "journalists" are simply reporting the news? BTW, have you EVER criticized these left-leaning corporate media outfits? In your opinion, have they done a good job telling you what is going on regarding politically-charged stories? If you claim they have, how do you know this? Do you read independent journalists? Do you read right-leaning journalists? I do this constantly, even though I often disagree with all of the above.

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NYT Finally Mentions Seymour Hersh Article About the U.S. Destroying the Nord Stream Pipeline

The "news."

NYT finally mentions Seymour Hersh's investigative article that made a strong case that the U.S. destroyed the Nord Stream Pipeline. Laughingly, the NYT:

A) relies on "intelligence" by "U.S. Officials,"

B) lacks any meaningful details, instead serving as a stenographer for the WH in suggesting that "pro-Ukrainian" group was responsible, and

C) Barely mentions Hersh's investigation, intentionally suppressing the many details offered by Hersh and failing to follow up on any of the numerous leads offered by Hersh.

All of this nonsense could be made palatable if the NYT merely adopted a new mission statement: "We are dedicated to making shit up to get Biden re-elected."

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Evidence Showing Anthony Fauci’s Corruption Piles Up; Left-Leaning Corporate Media Continues to be Silent

There is now overwhelming evidence that Anthony Fauci

A) was responsible for funding the experiments that created COVID

B) misled the public on the lab origin of COVID,

C) funded and edited a paper to mislead the public, and

D) engaged in corruption to require doctors and researchers to cover up for his own responsibility.

All of this should be the biggest story in every news outlet, but you will be informed about these disclosures, including Fauci's intimate involvement in creating this shamefully corrupt research paper, in NYT, WaPo, NPR, MSNBC or CNN. None of these are respectable news organizations. They do the same thing on the left as FOX does on the right. At least FOX admits that it was created for the purpose of getting its favorite politicians elected.

Excerpt from Yesterday's NYP article on Fauci's corrupt article:

Former White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci repeatedly dismissed concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic began with a lab leak in Wuhan, China — after he commissioned a paper to “disprove” the theory, according to newly released emails.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released evidence Sunday that Fauci ordered, helped to edit, and gave final approval to a paper titled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” which was published on Feb. 17, 2020. Exactly two months later, Fauci used that same publication to wave away concerns that the virus might have come from a Chinese facility.

For those who are still skeptical, follow the links in this overview article,"Newly-released Emails Show Fauci Commissioned the 2020 Study Used to Disprove the Lab Leak Theory." Here is an excerpt:

But ironically, if he’d been forthright about what he knew and when he knew it and informed government officials that the NIH had been using American taxpayer dollars to fund the kind of exceedingly sketchy research at the WIV from which covid likely originated, it’s unlikely Fauci would’ve faced any real consequences (not that he will now). After all, even though he was the one to fund the research, and even though he effectively ignored the U.S. moratorium on gain-of-function experimentation by outsourcing it to arguably the shadiest and least trustworthy country in the world, and even though the Department of State had specifically warned that safety standards in specifically that lab were woefully insufficient and that such negligence could very well prove disastrous in the not too distant future,3 it’s not as if Fauci or any other American for that matter allowed the virus to escape. It was China. And I imagine that Fauci wouldn’t have found much difficulty in getting people to place blame on one of our staunchest adversaries.

But it’s clear that Fauci is obsessed with his legacy, which he was trying to protect. Now, however, not only is that legacy tarnished, but he’s been repeatedly exposed as a liar.

Here again it must be highlighted how the mainstream media failed to give any coverage at all to the fact that the individual in charge of our pandemic response just so happened to have very troubling ties to the lab from which covid could very well have originated. Instead, they lionized him. When it became clear that Fauci wasn’t especially fond of Trump, Democrats and their media handmaidens rallied to portray him as a symbol of authority, an expert whose public standing was integral to our continued health and safety, a valiant foil to the bad orange man and his mean tweets and his lack of respect for The Science™.

One more excerpt, this one from "Collapse of the COVID Truth Regime":

While mainstream media outlets pushed a propagandistic narrative to build popular acceptance of radical and unprecedented measures, government agencies pressured social media companies like Twitter and Facebook to suppress analysis from skeptics. From the lab leak hypothesis, to natural immunity, to mask mandates, much of this analysis has turned out to be entirely legitimate. By skewing the scientific debate, social media “content moderators” allowed state-sponsored misinformation to proliferate unchecked. Three years later, the alarming trend of non-COVID excess mortality in Western countries is an indictment of the COVID response and the censorship that accompanied it. If the job of public health officials was to minimize harm, ongoing excess mortality after the peak of COVID is evidence of failure.

As this failure becomes undeniable, we are witnessing the collapse of much of the censorship campaign that helped shield authorities from criticism. Under Elon Musk, Twitter ended its COVID “misinformation” policy and reinstated many banned accounts. The “Twitter files” and the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit have revealed that the White House, the CDC, and even Pfizer were all involved in a coordinated, systematic silencing of dissent around COVID policies and vaccines.

Continue ReadingEvidence Showing Anthony Fauci’s Corruption Piles Up; Left-Leaning Corporate Media Continues to be Silent

The Importance of Reporting on Large Media Corporations

An except of Glenn Greenwald's introductory comments from Episode 48 of Greenwald's System Update: "Interview: How the Media Got Cozy With Power, Abandoned Its Principles, & Lost the People, w/ Steve Krakauer." Transcript here.

We devote our program to one of the most scathing and insightful indictments of the modern-day corporate media, particularly their subservience to power centers and how they eagerly spread disinformation campaigns in service to that power.. .

Many corporate journalists are very fond of trying to draw a distinction between what they call real reporting, which is noble and elevated and honorable – even though for them it usually consists of little more than calling the CIA and the FBI and writing down what they tell you to say – as opposed to media criticism, which they regard as tawdry and trivial.

It is, of course, unsurprising that employees of corporate media outlets would seek to denigrate and minimize anything designed to put them and the many flaws of their work under a microscope. So, their antipathy to what they call media criticism or media critics – always said with a condescending sneer – can be reasonably dismissed as nothing more than self-interested whining. I actually regard the attempt to insist upon this distinction as quite revealing, one that provides insight into how these corporate outlets have come to see their role in the world.

There's no universal definition for what journalism is, or even what constitutes reporting – it can mean a lot of different things and a lot of different contexts but I think we can identify foundational values, and defining goals, that distinguish journalism from other activities. These are the goals and functions that render journalism, when it is done, well as genuinely necessary to a healthy and functioning democracy, the reason the American founders decreed it as a guaranteed right in the First Amendment, one that could not be infringed upon for any reason. They did that precisely, or presumably, because they believed that a free press was essential for maintaining the equilibrium with which they were obsessed with preserving, the system of checks and balances that will ensure that no one institution or individual can ever acquire the kind of unchecked power that allowed the British monarch to act with such arbitrary force and under such personal whim that they were willing to fight an extremely risky war against the then most powerful empire on Earth in order to liberate themselves from those abuses.

If journalism does nothing else, it must exist to impose checks and accountability on society's most powerful institutional actors. The unique attributes of journalism can impose on such institutions –transparency, investigative scrutiny, questioning, dissent – they are vital to ensuring that those actors remain limited, humble, and in check. I think very few people, even those who consider themselves journalists in the corporate world, would find those basic principles I just outlined objectionably. But what many of them overlook, or more accurately, what they choose to deny, is that near the top of the list of powerful institutional actors in need of journalistic scrutiny are the very gigantic media corporations that are their employers; highlighting the corruption and deceit of, say, Goldman Sachs and the CIA, is no more or less urgent than doing the same for NBC News and the New York Times.

[More . . . ]

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Crickets . . . The Sound We Will Hear from Corporate Media Instead of Apologies

The Washington Post reported a story today without mentioning that until today, the paper has been engaging in reckless journalism for many months prior. Here's today's headline:

"‘Havana syndrome’ not caused by energy weapon or foreign adversary, intelligence review finds: After a years-long assessment, five U.S. intelligence agencies conclude it is ‘very unlikely’ an enemy wielding a secret weapon was behind the mysterious ailment.

To be a modern corporate journalist, you don't need any evidence to publish a story. All you need is to know someone in the federal government who whispers something to you that furthers your employer's favorite narrative. Just look at these clowns go at it, convincing each other that the sounds made by crickets were caused by a Russian high tech weapon that was frying the brains of U.S personnel. WaPo published DOZENS of these xenophobic articles. How much of our Russia-hate these days is because of journalistic malpractice?

Glenn Greenwald adds (and I agree that this is an easy bet):

This is yet another hoax where any ethical and actual news organization would go on air and say: "for years we told you something that turned out to be false. Here's why we did it. We apologize and retract our stories."

That they don't tells you all you need to know about them.

I just checked (March 1, 2023 at 11pm CT): The corporate media refusing to mention that the story was a hoax include: NYT, Washington Post, NPR, MSNBC and CNN.

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