U.S. — CNN reported another peaceful night in Los Angeles, as the overwhelming majority of cars in the city were not currently on fire.
Additionally, the network reported that most police officers had not had bricks thrown at them, most federal agents had not been shot at, and most of the stores in the city had not been looted.
“It’s another quiet night in L.A.,” reported anchor Wolf Blitzer. “As you can see, the majority of cars in the city are not burning to ashes, and most people have not been assaulted or murdered. Only a very small percentage of buildings have been broken into and had everything stolen by armed mobs. President Trump’s characterization of the unrest and violence in L.A. is way overblown.”
CNN reporters then traveled to a suburb of L.A. where no violence was reported, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the city was under control. “We interviewed two random guys on the street in this wealthy neighborhood, and neither of them have seen any cars on fire,” said journalist Daisy Raleigh. “Clearly, the Trump administration is lying about what is really happening on the ground in L.A.”
At publishing time, the National Guard had stated that all was indeed peaceful as most CNN journalists had not been shot with non-lethal rounds.
The long and colorful history of major media promotion of false, government-serving narratives has a new chapter.
Last week, CNN aired a melodramatic report from reporter Clarissa Ward that was supposed to show a CNN crew amazingly rescuing a victim of the Assad regime from the bowels of a Damascus dungeon. After days of mounting skepticism and pointed questions ricocheting across social media, alternative new sites and here at ZeroHedge, CNN now says the “rescued” man was actually a regime intelligence officer, and there are reports that he himself perpetrated crimes against civilians.
Salama told Clarissa Ward he hadn’t seen the sun in three months, but his eyes seemed to need little adjustment
The man identified himself as Adel Ghurbai, and said he lived in the central Syrian city of Homs. However, over the weekend, the self-described Syrian fact-checking site Verify-Sy said he was actually Salama Mohammad Salama, aka “Abu Hamza”, an infamous and cruel first lieutenant in Syrian Air Force Intelligence:
Abu Hamza reportedly managed several security checkpoints in Homs and was involved in theft, extortion, and coercing residents into becoming informants. According to locals, his recent incarceration—lasting less than a month—was due to a dispute over profit-sharing from extorted funds with a higher-ranking officer. This led to his detention in one of Damascus’s cells, as per neighborhood sources.
…
Despite his seemingly innocent and composed demeanor in the CNN report, Salama has a grim history. He participated in military operations on several fronts in Homs in 2014, killed civilians, and was responsible for detaining and torturing numerous young men in the city without cause or on fabricated charges. Many were targeted simply for refusing to pay bribes, rejecting cooperation, or even for arbitrary reasons like their appearance. These details were corroborated by families of victims and former detainees who spoke with Verify-Sy.
On Monday, CNN posted a report — written by Tim Lister and Eyad Kourdi but not Ward — revealing the network had been duped.
ATLANTA, GA – Fooling thousands of readers in a prank that the cable news organization said was “just for fun,” CNN published a real news story for April Fools’ Day this year.
The story simply contained a list of facts, with no embellishment, editorializing, or invented details. The story also didn’t cite shaky “anonymous sources” and only quoted firsthand witnesses to the event. It was completely factual without any errors whatsoever.
Baffled CNN fans immediately knew something was up.
“I was reading this story, and I was like, ‘Wait, what is this?'” said one man in New York who relies on CNN for his fake news every morning. “They really got me good. Then I looked up at the calendar and I realized I’d been duped. A classic gag!”
“Those little rascals!” he added, shaking his head and laughing goodnaturedly. “As long as they return to their regularly scheduled fake news tomorrow, we’re good. We’re good.”
CNN has a new report out showing that (surprise!) Israel lied about the Flour Massacre in which IDF troops fired machine guns into a crowd of starving Gazans waiting for food this past February, killing over a hundred people. CNN found that Israel’s timeline and version of events doesn’t line up with video footage, witness testimony, and forensic evidence.
Which of course was obvious from the beginning to anyone who isn’t deeply invested in pretending Israel ever tells the truth about these things. Within hours of the massacre Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor had a preliminary report up saying that video, audio and material evidence shows that the IDF had been firing into the crowd in contradiction of Israel’s claims that the injuries and deaths sustained on the scene were mostly due to Gazans trampling on each other in a mad rush upon the convoy of aid trucks. Now here’s CNN, a month and a half later, telling us essentially the same thing.
I don’t know if there’s a word for when a government does something evil and then churns out a bunch of easily disprovable lies with the understanding that by the time those lies are debunked public attention will have moved on from the controversy, but there should be. Over and over again we’ve seen the Israeli regime do just enough lying to dampen the initial burst of attention and outrage and get people doubting themselves, only to discover far too late that it was all a bunch of crap after the initial crime has been forgotten.
Whether reporting from the Middle East, the United States, or anywhere else across the globe, every CNN journalist covering Israel and Palestine must submit their work for review by the news organization’s bureau in Jerusalem prior to publication, under a long-standing CNN policy. While CNN says the policy is meant to ensure accuracy in reporting on a polarizing subject, it means that much of the network’s recent coverage of the war in Gaza — and its reverberations around the world — has been shaped by journalists who operate under the shadow of the country’s military censor.
Like all foreign news organizations operating in Israel, CNN’s Jerusalem bureau is subject to the rules of the Israel Defense Forces’s censor, which dictates subjects that are off-limits for news organizations to cover, and censors articles it deems unfit or unsafe to print. As The Intercept reported last month, the military censor recently restricted eight subjects, including security cabinet meetings, information about hostages, and reporting on weapons captured by fighters in Gaza. In order to obtain a press pass in Israel, foreign reporters must sign a document agreeing to abide by the dictates of the censor.
CNN’s practice of routing coverage through the Jerusalem bureau does not mean that the military censor directly reviews every story. Still, the policy stands in contrast to other major news outlets, which in the past have run sensitive stories through desks outside of Israel to avoid the pressure of the censor. On top of the official and unspoken rules for reporting from Israel, CNN recently issued directives to its staff on specific language to use and avoid when reporting on violence in the Gaza Strip. The network also hired a former soldier from the IDF’s Military Spokesperson Unit to serve as a reporter at the onset of the war.
“The policy of running stories about Israel or the Palestinians past the Jerusalem bureau has been in place for years,” a CNN spokesperson told The Intercept in an email. “It is simply down to the fact that there are many unique and complex local nuances that warrant extra scrutiny to make sure our reporting is as precise and accurate as possible.”
The spokesperson added that the protocol “has no impact on our (minimal) interactions with the Israeli Military Censor — and we do not share copy with them (or any government body) in advance. We will seek comment from Israeli and other relevant officials before publishing stories, but this is just good journalistic practice.”
One member of CNN’s staff who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal said that the internal review policy has had a demonstrable impact on coverage of the Gaza war. “Every single Israel-Palestine-related line for reporting must seek approval from the [Jerusalem] bureau — or, when the bureau is not staffed, from a select few handpicked by the bureau and senior management — from which lines are most often edited with a very specific nuance” that favors Israeli narratives.
(Continued from headline) Trump calling Charlottesville neo-nazis “fine people,” COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness, Bubba Wallace garage noose, Trump telling people to inject themselves with bleach, BLM riots being “mostly peaceful,” Border Patrol agents whipping migrants, Trump commandeering his own limo, Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot, Jan 6 “insurrection,” Duke University lacrosse team rape allegations, critical race theory not being taught in public schools, the weather, the Los Angeles Dodgers having any chance of winning the World Series, how much money Michael Bloomberg could give every American, the effectiveness of wearing masks, “two weeks to flatten the curve,” Joe Rogan and Ivermectin, Bidenflation, Jeffrey Epstein, no irregularities in the 2020 election, right-wing extremists planning to attack all 50 state capitals, Don Lemon being described as a journalist, RT hacking C-SPAN, Dewey defeating Truman, the McRib being made from actual meat, only 10 years left to stop climate change, Trump will start World War III, Joe Biden had no involvement in Hunter’s international business dealings, Trump encouraged his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol, Hillary Clinton had a 91% chance of winning the 2016 election, Rings of Power was a critically acclaimed show, and claiming to be “Most Trusted Name in News.”
Reading through the stupid disinformation stuff one stumbles over this sentence:
[T]he information released by the United States on Friday is designed to show how much deeper Russian influence operations are than those efforts to sow dissent on the internet.
That is quite revealing. The information contained in the CIA release was ‘designed’ or construed to create a certain propaganda narrative.
Russian intelligence is operating a systematic program to launder pro-Kremlin propaganda through private relationships between Russian operatives and unwitting US and western targets, according to newly declassified US intelligence.
One of the craziest things happening in our world today is how westerners are being trained to overlook the massive amounts of western propaganda they’re inundated with day in and day out and focus instead on “Russian propaganda”, which has no meaningful existence in the west. In 2017 before RT was shut down in the UK, it accounted for 0.04 percent of the UK’s total TV audience. A New York University study published earlier this year found that the supposed Russian Twitter influence campaign ahead of the 2016 election which dominated headlines for years had had “no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior”. An earlier study found that suspected Russian accounts showing up in Facebook’s news feed during that time amounted to “approximately 1 out of 23,000 pieces of content.” A study by Adelaide University found that despite headline after headline warning us about a massive wave of Russian bots manipulating online discourse after the invasion of Ukraine began last year, the overwhelming majority of fake accounts they examined (more than 90 percent) were pro-Ukraine accounts.
Contrast this microscopic smattering of influence with the fact that westerners are continually getting their news reporting from western propaganda outlets which openly publish CIA press releases disguised as news on a regular basis. These people are absolutely telling us the truth when they say we’re under constant bombardment by propaganda and influence operations — they’re just lying about who’s really doing it to us.
CNN was not the only outlet that plugged the stupid CIA press release. The New York Times had it too and its report is a bit more revealing:
Reading through the stupid disinformation stuff one stumbles over this sentence:
[T]he information released by the United States on Friday is designed to show how much deeper Russian influence operations are than those efforts to sow dissent on the internet.
CNN has a new article out titled “Newly declassified US intel claims Russia is laundering propaganda through unwitting Westerners,” and it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect if you’ve been critically observing the western mass media over the last several years. An anonymous source making vague and unevidenced claims of an unverifiable nature about a longtime target of the US intelligence cartel, based solely on information provided by that same intelligence cartel.
CNN’s Kate Bo Lillis reports:
“US intelligence agencies believe that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) is attempting to influence public policy and public opinion in the West by directing Russian civilians to build relationships with influential US and Western individuals and then disseminate narratives that support Kremlin objectives, obscuring the FSB’s role through layers of ostensibly independent actors.
“‘These influence operations are designed to be deliberately small scale, the overall goal being US [and] Western persons presenting these ideas, seemingly organic,’ a US official authorized to discuss the material told CNN. ‘The co-optee influence operations are built primarily on personal relationships … they build trust with them and then they can leverage that to covertly push the FSB’s agenda.’”
“But the official stressed that the Western voices that eventually became mouthpieces for Russian propaganda were almost certainly unaware of the role they were playing,” CNN adds.
CNN exists to provide US intelligence with a vehicle for laundering its propaganda. Its top hosts enthusiastically manipulate the American public on behalf of their handlers in Langley, Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon. This is pure projection. https://t.co/TDQORPvyyo
As usual, there is no way to prove or disprove these extremely vague claims about “small scale” actions supposedly being orchestrated by a foreign intelligence agency to create mouthpieces for Russian propaganda who don’t know they’re mouthpieces for Russian propaganda. We’re meant to simply take the word of an anonymous US official citing unsubstantiated assertions by US intelligence agencies.
And it brings up a few questions.
Firstly, what precisely are we meant to do with this very vague information about this very broad supposed trend? It kind of seems like we’re meant to just generally feel more paranoid and suspicious about anyone who isn’t toeing the official western line on issues pertaining to Russia. Whose interests would that serve? Would it perhaps serve the information interests of the US empire, which the US intelligence cartel exists to promote?
Secondly, if the US intelligence cartel believes this very broad, vague threat exists, why not just tell us themselves? Why not just issue some public statements from named officials, instead of funneling it through the news media disguised as a news story? What a weird charade.
Now, however, major media figures are shrugging off free speech concerns and supporting censorship as what former CNN media host CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter called a “harm reduction model.” While once fiercely opposed to censorship and government-supported blacklists, many in the media are echoing Mattingly’s view that the natural default should be to obey the government and its directions on permitted speech. After all, this is all for our own protection. Censorship just “makes sense.”
As a long-standing free speech advocate, the last few years have been alarming and, frankly, depressing. The censorship efforts of the government are, unfortunately, not new. However, what is new is the support of the media and the Democratic Party in such censorship. That was on display on various channels after the recent opinion finding that the Biden Administration had violated the First Amendment in “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” However, the New York Times immediately warned that the outbreak of free speech could “curtail efforts to combat disinformation.” Yet, no one expressed more simply and chillingly than CNN Chief White House Correspondent Phil Mattingly who stated that it “makes sense” for tech companies to go along with government censorship demands.
Mattingly admitted that social media platforms “more often than not” gave in to the censorship demands by the Biden administration. However, he insisted that it “makes sense,” and is “probably what we should do on public health grounds.”
“[T]he Biden administration would regularly reach out to Twitter and Facebook and other companies in kind of the early stages of their COVID response and say, this person is spreading lies about vaccines, this account is spreading misinformation that is inhibiting — not just our efforts, the administration’s efforts to address COVID — but also public health, do something about it. And often, I think more often than not, the companies would respond and say, okay. And there are emails that came out during the course of this case that that was something that I think — when it was explained to me at the time, I thought, alright, that makes sense, that’s probably what we should do on public health grounds.”
What is striking is not just the blind acceptance that the government should be protecting us from harmful thoughts. It is also the failure to recognize that the government was wrong on many of these points while experts were being banned and blacklisted.
Many people were routinely censored on Twitter and other platforms for daring to challenge the official position on masks.
The Centers for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC) initially rejected the use of a mask mandate. However, the issue became a political weapon as politicians and the press claimed that questioning masks was anti-science and even unhinged. In April 2020, the CDC reversed its position and called for the masking of the entire population, including children as young as 2 years old. The mask mandate and other pandemic measures like the closing of schools are now cited as fueling emotional and developmental problems in children.
Nobody in congress lobbied as aggressively to start World War Three as Kinzinger did last year; he tried to advance a bill authorizing hot war against Russia if Moscow crossed specified red lines in Ukraine but couldn’t get cosponsors because even his fellow congressional hawks thought it was too insane.
CNN has shattered the speed of light in its haste to recruit former representative Adam Kinzinger to its punditry lineup the millisecond he left congress.
Nobody in congress lobbied as aggressively to start World War Three as Kinzinger did last year; he tried to advance a bill authorizing hot war against Russia if Moscow crossed specified red lines in Ukraine but couldn’t get cosponsors because even his fellow congressional hawks thought it was too insane. He was the loudest voice in the US government publicly advocating a no-fly zone over Ukraine in the early weeks of the war, an idea that was slammed by the mass media as it would necessarily have entailed the US military shooting down Russian war planes and aggressively tempted nuclear war.
MCViewPoint 