The pro-Israel bias in Western reporting makes the media utterly complicit in Israel’s war crimes, writes Jonathan Cook, including when Israeli soldiers throw Palestinians off a roof.
“CNN is facing a backlash from its own staff over editorial policies they say have led to a regurgitation of Israeli propaganda and the censoring of Palestinian perspectives in the networks’ coverage of the war in Gaza.”
The Duo’s strategy is only the latest blatant example of how Israel’s mainstream media apologists try to dismiss all criticism as “antisemitism” — which includes an ongoing and unfortunately largely successful effort to hide the truth that Jewish-Americans, whether on campuses or elsewhere, are among the loudest advocates against Israel’s war on Gaza.
CNN should remove the Duo from covering Palestine, because they can’t be trusted.
But to avoid bad luck, a word of advice for the next Persian president: be careful when getting on a helicopter, especially if your country is in a cold war with Israel, which has already blown up gas pipelines in Iran, assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists and less than two months ago bombed its embassy in Syria. Perhaps, due to technical problems or bad weather, a fatal accident could occur. See more at https://english.pravda.ru/opinion/159809-media_hypocrisy/
Major media face a reassessment of their Israel coverage after the ICJ judgement, writes Mick Hall.
“I don’t think the ICJ presents an imperative for media outlets like ABC to change their language. The Australian state is a close ally of the U.S. and Israel and their economic interests are deeply interwoven. Western states and media institutions, contrary to their own assertions, are largely anti-democratic in nature and strive, first and foremost, to protect the political and economic interests of their ruling class.”
Large numbers of Palestinians and Ukrainians were killed in missile strikes days apart, writes Jonathan Cook. The differing coverage of these comparable events is the clue to the media’s true function.
Tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese died after these perceptive remarks from Kissinger, a war criminal himself. How many Palestinians will have to die because Israel will not stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestine?
The Intercept is one of the many media outlets that have sued OpenAI and Microsoft over the past year for using journalists’ work to train ChatGPT without permission or credit. The case, which OpenAI and Microsoft are trying to get tossed from federal court, shows why digital news outlets are particularly exposed to AI grifters.
Rather than acting as a check on the powerful, media outlets like CNN and MSNBC are allowing police to give their interpretation of student Palestine protests with few challenges, even in cases where police are blatantly lying or distorting the truth.
It will take more than sunlight to reform our bounty-hunting, boys’ club that rules the roost in a corporate media captured by billionaires who care less about profit than ways their share of our attention can give themselves access to power. But it’s a good start. Ironically, our nation’s flawed defamation laws which so severely curtail speaking truth to power that our fourth estate is a tamed estate if not a fifth column – may have triggered an exposure of such rampant corruption, on such a wide scale, that the genie is now out of the bottle.
The ABC’s Managing Director, David Anderson, has at least admitted that funding obtained through its arrangements with Meta has been useful in supporting 60 journalists. News Corp, Nine Entertainment and Seven News Media have been less than forthcoming, ever keen using the shield of commercial confidentiality. In terms of employees, Nine Entertainment reported a fall in the number of employees from 5254 at the end of the 2022 financial year to 4753 at the end of 2023. “It is likely,” suggests Kim Wingerie in Michael West Media, “that the A$50 million or more they receive annually from Meta and Google is used predominantly to prop up their net profit.”
Australia’s old media companies and their propagandists the ABC, News Corp and Nine’s Neil Mitchell have joined forces to a attack and defame independent journalist Antoinette Lattouf.
BREAKING NEWS: Independent Australia joins forces with MFW to help adopt a #MurdochFreeWorld.
MFW has been fighting the good fight for many years. A fight against the malign journalism, practices and policies of Australia’s dominant media network, News Corp.
But yesterday’s announcement by Meta (Facebook’s parent company) that it will stop paying for Australian news content poses a different kind of threat to media freedom.
The fact that the New York Times assigned its investigation of October 7 sexual assault claims to Anat Schwartz, a non-journalist with anti-Palestinian beliefs and ties to the Israeli military, is an extreme reflection of the paper’s unflagging pro-Israel bias.
Beneath these surface layers of anti-Palestinian bias, though, there may be a deeper and simpler issue. As Noam Chomsky and his late coauthor Edward Herman argued in Manufacturing Consent, one of the defining biases of mainstream media in general — of which the New York Times was emblematic long before the beginning of these dramatic recent conflicts of interest — has been a deep deference to and ideological affinity with the US national security state.
That was true of how they covered the Vietnam War when Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon were carpet-bombing that country to crush a peasant revolution. That was true of the Iraq War when the Times uncritically published the George W. Bush administration’s lies about “weapons of mass destruction.” We should not be surprised to discover that it’s true about Gaza, where the mass slaughter and displacement of civilians is being carried out with American funds and American weapons.
Campaigns to discredit news are especially dangerous in a changing media landscape—and as threats within our power to resolve continue to increase, from pandemics to climate disruption to authoritarianism.
Nine News has plummeted to lower depths by attempting to lie to its audience and offering a safe haven for conservative politicians and the Right-wing media. Darren Crawford reports.
Therefore, the results of this study, while shocking, should not be surprising, given this context. Through examining the coverage of Yemen in four leading U.S. outlets, it is clear that corporate media are failing to inform the public of many of the basic realities of who Ansar Allah is, why they are carrying out their campaign, and what it would take to end the hostilities, they are perpetuating this war, and therefore are every bit as responsible as the politicians and military commanders who keep the bloodshed going.
In this moment of overwhelming barbarity, journalists of colour like me are whiplashed by the the monumental amorality of the newsrooms that we are told to look up to. The least Western journalists, with their significant power, could do at this moment is demand a permanent ceasefire and spare us yet another instalment of coloniser’s journalism.
Murdoch owns the WSJ and The Lobby and is a heavy influence MSM. Are Shock Jocks stealing their audience?
The nation’s leading newspapers were under fire this weekend after publishing opinion pieces seen as “Bigoted,” “Islamophobic,” “Racist,” and “Reckless.”
If Israel has proven to be lying why does Western media continue to state their unverified facts as if true? Is Israel the only source of their information being delivered as News? What has come to light “many women and children were killed” but not all by Hamas. When caught out the IDF tried to blame their fake and exaggerated figures on Hamas. The jury is still out on what really happened on Oct 7th no independent investigation has ever been allowed and the “crime scene” has been cleansed.
Currently, even Israeli journalists are beginning to question the IDF and government version. Israel is currently arresting and killing more journalists than any other country. Over 100 dead in Gaza and 17 arrested in Israel with no reason given.
“The attacks, in which many women and children were killed and bodies mutilated, drew worldwide revulsion and condemnation.”
Western Corp Media is increasingly becoming what seems like an Israeli weapon rather than a News Agency. Social Media is much the same and being flooded with videos and slick graphics making it seem professionals have taken on the Gobbellian role previously given to lesser professionals
The biggest problem with these stories isn’t just the continuing absence of any meaningful evidence for “systematic” rape; or Israel’s long track record of lying to justify state terrorism; or Israel’s refusal to cooperate with independent investigators; or the racist, anti-Arab tropes that pass for sophisticated analysis in western circles.
It is simply the outrageous improbability of so many of the evidence-poor rape stories being advanced.
The media’s reporting on the upcoming U.S. and UK elections will have significant political implications, and they must do so without bias, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.
Manipulative media are media organisations with an agenda. The best example of agenda-driven media is the Murdoch media. Murdoch outlets may claim to be producing “news”, but, like News Corp Australia did for the “No” campaign during the Voice referendum, during the U.S. and UK elections, they will be campaigning for the U.S. Republicans and the UK Conservative Party.
“He was a fearless challenger of imperialism and colonialism and used his talents behind the camera to expose genocide and war crimes, including the deceit of mainstream media,” said one British MP.
Five out of six major Australian media outlets have substantially imbalanced reporting when it comes to covering the Gaza conflict, new research claims.
While many Indigenous figures support the proposed Voice to Parliament, there are still some who oppose it, but the mainstream media won’t tell you why, writes Tom Tanuki.
While all this noise about the superior economic prowess of the Coalition hails from the Coalition itself, its symbiotic relationship with Australia’s media means even a murmur is soon amplified to a deafening cacophony.
For voters to make intelligent decisions about candidates, they must be well-informed. Sadly, that is very much not what is happening today in America. If we don’t confront this crisis, democracy itself will pay the price.
It’s why that “open letter” by Australian Journalists was a letter attempting to strengthen journalism and distinguish it from a product masqueraded, by Australian Corporate Mainstream Media, as “impartial” news. Journalism is rather a search for the facts that reveal truth and information for the common good.
Instead
US corporate media outlets allow IDF to vet ‘all materials’ from embedded reporters in Gaza. “Israel is killing the journalists that expose their crimes, then bribing the journalists that cover for them,” said one critic.
“The decision of Nine newspaper editors Tory Maguire, Patrick Elliget, Bevan Shields and David King to gag journalists who have called for balance in media coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict is the most serious assault on a free press since the Coalition government’s raids on Annika Smethurst and the ABC — but is one wholly self-inflicted.
The West Bank is simply forgotten but extremely active.
Dr Shamekh Abu Rub was executed today while standing with his brother at the entrance of their home in Jenin. An armored Israeli military vehicle fired directly at them with the intent of executing them. His brother remains in a very critical condition. Their father, Kamal, is Jenin’s deputy governor. He is a friend.
Another heartless crime that brings the number of murdered Palestinians in the West Bank since October to over 230.
IT IS POSSIBLE to find out what is happening and why, in Gaza, to a certain extent, despite the din of arguments and raving bilge on social media.
Open one social media platform and you’re hit with a fake video; open another and you’re hit with bigotry. Open a news article, and you’ll find some victims “killed” but others “dying.” Each account of events in Israel and Palestine seems to rely on different facts. What’s clear is that misinformation, hate speech, and factual distortions are running rampant.
2) Error one: Worst outcome in the developed world
AFR shows real household disposable income per person to June 2023 for only 21 countries. That’s out of 66 very high development nations, according to UNDP classification, or 38 wealthy members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation Oops!!
3)It did not clarify, a) that inflation is a global phenomenon nor b) that the unjust tax system and an economy in poor fiscal condition were both recently inherited from the hapless Coalition.
4)When we check the Senate Hansard for Thursday 9 November, we find the Opposition was not referencing the recent OECD analysis of 38 countries. The craven Coalition was simply quoting that morning’s AFR.
5) Recent history in Australia, Britain and the USA suggests that as the next federal election looms, the mainstream media will increase its output of distortions, exaggerations and fabrications. Such is Australia’s doom.
The mainstream media are ramping up efforts to malign the Albanese Labor Government unfairly, as Alan Austin reports.
In a Veterans Day speech that was both shocking and sickening, Donald Trump used terminology straight from the Nazi playbook, describing his opponents as “vermin” and promising that he would “root out” this internal threat. His speech drew on explicitly antisemitic themes as he promised a return to the worst horrors of the past century.
The Fate of the Referendum shows that in Australia Critical thought remains a foreign language. That failure alone suggests we will face hardship far longer than necessary. Until the echoes of Nope Nope Nope fade into the far distance the voice of reason and the struggle for a Common Good won’t be ahead of us.
In fact, latest polls are indicating fast and significant changes of opinion in the US. Even the corporate controlled social media outlets are failing to manipulate and suppress information. More people are inclined to subscribe to critical thinking. All these are indications of the triumph of Socratic moral values. For many, the Qur’anic verse “Surely with hardship comes ease (94:5),” offers hope. The faster the rest of the world wakes up to take care of the oppressed, the earlier that ease will come.
groups monitoring regional social media activity say censorship of Palestinian users is at a level not seen since May 2021, when violence flared between Israel and Gaza following Israeli police incursions into Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.
Two years ago, Meta blamed the abrupt deletion of Instagram posts about Israeli military violence on a technical glitch. On October 15, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone again attributed claims of wartime censorship on a “bug” affecting Instagram. (Meta could not be immediately reached for comment.)
As the former managing director and editor in chief of The Age newspaper (and founder of the Australian Press Council), this is a hard piece to write. In my view the mainstream media – journalists and commentators – have failed this country during the debate on the Voice.
We once had an ABC that monitored things just like that. Abbott banned his Ministers for being on any ABC program. Immediately he began cutting the public broadcasters’ budget, appointing his choices to the board, and making sure the ABC was biased rather than critical by questioning the government in order that the public was aware of what was happening as opposed to what they were told was happening. No ALP government has ever done that to the degree Abbott did. Abbott has now been appointed to the board of News Corp almost suggesting that the leader of the opposition isn’t really Peter Dutton.
“Misleading political advertising marred the Voice referendum and led to confusion, fear and mistaken beliefs about what the Voice to Parliament represented and what its powers would be. Without truth in political advertising laws, there is a risk the next federal election will be a fake news free-for-all.”
Corporate Consolidation of Media failed Australia’s ability to distinguish facts from fiction, news from propaganda, and justified it as Free Speech and called Opinion all in the interests of Democracy. What a scam it was. We have stricter advertising laws. We put Peter Foster in jail for less than what we saw the LNP do to the Referendum. Corporate Media isn’t even a Citizen it is a system that has no loyalties other than to its shareholders and that part of the market that will guarantee a profitable outcome and that’s the money end of town. That’s neither the public nor the common good. The % of the public is what the media sells, ratings not news, and says anything for attention. It’s a Quid pro Quo arrangement with wealth power and interests. The referendum was about who and who wasn’t deserving of Charity and who best controlled the money. Should money go directly to FN people to close the gap or be filtered through third-party administrators as it was during a decade of LNP government?
Warren Mundine and News Corp we know shared $325,000. Planners, advertisers, and administrators of the Cash Card certainly heard the sound of Kaching. As did all those other contractors doffed with the gifts from the $4.5 B purse. Little of which if any was seen in remote communities so kept that gap widening. Little has changed since the 19th century other than the deck chairs on the ship that First Nation’s peoples have found themselves.
The mainstream media’s performance during the Voice Referendum campaign was an abject failure, writes former CEO and editor-in-chief of The Age, Ranald MacDonald.
“The post-mortem of the Voice referendum should find the shallow nature of mass media did not by itself reject the invitation offered by the Uluru Statement – but it sure as hell did not help.
1 Comment on Source of Dubious ‘Beheaded Babies’ Claim is Israeli Settler Leader Who Incited Riots to ‘Wipe Out’ Palestinian Village After an Israeli reserve soldier named David Ben Zion told a reporter Palestinian militants “cut [off] heads of babies,” Biden, Netanyahu, and the international media amplified the dubious claim. The Grayzone has identified Ben Zion as a fanatical settler leader who incited riots by demanding a Palestinian town be “wiped out.”
The ABC needs the many recommendations to strengthen its independence from political interference implemented.
The Greens and independent candidates are correct: there should be no exemption for “professional news content” in the attempt to crackdown on social media misinformation.
This domestic program ought to be more straightforward than the daunting challenge of dealing with international mis- and disinformation fomented on the internet. That ‘X’ is so much worse for bigotry and disinformation than Twitter illustrates two key points. The settings implemented by management can work to limit disinformation. It also illustrates the damage of leaving massive platforms in private hands.
Robert Reich recently posted this message: “The forces undermining our democracy, polluting our planet, and stoking hatred are counting on you to give up.
“They have money.
“They have megaphones.
“And they have an even more powerful weapon – one that’s harder to spot but incredibly effective: Cynicism.
“Don’t give up.”
The Albanese government has the power to ensure that Australian political speech is as truthful as possible in a world where reliable information is both difficult to determine and utterly crucial.
This week, Victorian Premier Dan Andrews resigned. And the mainstream media suffered a collective conniption.
What will they ever find to write or complain about? (On second thought, give them a few days to circle in on another victim.)
He leaves office with the latest poll indicating a commanding two-party preferred lead for Labor of 56.5-43.5 — an increase on its 55-45 lead at the last election.
The media desperate for news are compelled to create it. If it is Brand their focus is on destroying someone.
There are times when we would all be best advised to keep quiet and wait. But given that almost no one seems willing to hold their tongue on the latest claims being made about Russell Brand, I feel compelled — wisely or unwisely – to make a few tentative observations: not on the allegations, but on all the noise.
olddogthoughts 
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