Exhibit A: How the Corporate Media Gaslights You

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 ...

Continue ReadingExhibit A: How the Corporate Media Gaslights You

Exposed: The Extent to Which the Corporate Media Lies

Proven: The extent to which the corporate news is willing to lie about Biden's cognitive function (and lie about every other major issue).

Bari Weiss writes:

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.

Continue ReadingExposed: The Extent to Which the Corporate Media Lies

Corporate Media Narratives Corrupt Democracy

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.

Continue ReadingCorporate Media Narratives Corrupt Democracy

Piers Morgan to Jeffrey Sachs: Why Do You Trust Putin?

Piers Morgan to Jeffrey Sachs: Why Do You Trust Putin? Jeffrey Sachs proceeds to school Morgan on the history of United States meddling in the affairs of other countries, including the fact that we have repeatedly overthrown democratically elected governments. Here is the discussion:

Piers Morgan:

You seem very reliant on accepting Putin's world view rather than perhaps the stark reality of the barbarism with which he's executed this war.

Jeffrey Sachs:

Yeah, maybe because I know too much about the United States.

Because the first war in Europe after World War II was the US bombing of Belgrade for 78 days to change borders of a European state. The idea was to break Serbia, to create Kosovo as an enclave, and then to install bond to steel, which is the largest NATO base in the Balkans, in the southwest Balkans. So the US started this under Clinton, that we will break the borders, we will illegally bomb another country. We didn't have any UN authority. This was a quote NATO mission to do that.

Then I know the United States went to war repeatedly, illegally in what it did in Afghanistan, and then what it did in Iraq, and then what it did in Syria, which was the Obama administration, especially Obama and Hillary Clinton, tasking the CIA to overthrow Bashar Al Assad. And then what it did with NATO illegally bombing Libya to topple norm or Gaddafi.

And then what it did in Kyiv in February 2014 I happened to see some of that with my own eyes. The US overthrew Yanukovych, together with right wing Ukrainian military forces, we overthrew a president. And what's interesting, by the way, is we overthrew Yanukovych the day after the European union representatives had reached an agreement with Yanukovych to have early elections, a government of national unity and a stand down of both sides that was agreed. The next thing that happens is the opposition, quote, unquote, says, we don't agree. They stormed the government buildings and they deposed Yanukovych, and within hours, the United States says, Yes, we support the new government. It didn't say, Oh, we had an agreement that's unconstitutional. What you did.

So we overthrew a government contrary to a promise that the European Union had made. And by the way, Russia, the United States and the EU were parties to that agreement, and the United States, an hour afterwards, backed the coup. Okay, so everyone's got a little bit to answer for in 2015 the Russians did not say we want the Donbas back. They said peace should come through negotiations. And negotiations between the ethnic Russians in the east of Ukraine and this new regime in Kyiv led to the Minsk two agreement. The Minsk two agreement was voted by the UN Security Council unanimously. It was signed by the Government of Ukraine. It was guaranteed explicitly by Germany and France. And you know what? And it's been explained to me in person. It was laughed at inside the US government. This is after the UN Security Council unanimously accepted it. The Ukrainians said, We don't want to give autonomy to the region. Oh, but that's part of the treaty. The US told them, Don't worry about it. Angela Merkel explained in design in a notorious interview after the 2022 escalation, she said, Oh, you know we knew that Minsk two was just a holding pattern to give Ukraine time to build its strength. No, mins too. Was a UN Security Council unanimously adopted treaty that was supposed to end the war.

So when it comes to who's trustworthy, who to believe, and so forth, I guess my problem, Piers, is I know the United States government. I know it very well. I don't trust. For a moment, I want these two sides actually to sit down in front of the whole world and say, these are the terms then the world can judge, because we could get on paper clearly for both sides of the world, we're not going to overthrow governments anymore. The United States needs to say, we accept this agreement, the United States needs to say, Russia needs to say, we're not stepping one foot farther than whatever the boundary is actually reached, and NATO is not going to enlarge. And let's put it for the whole world to see. You know, once in a while, treaties actually hold.

Continue ReadingPiers Morgan to Jeffrey Sachs: Why Do You Trust Putin?