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THE SPIRIT OF TOM PAINE | Stephen Lendman | Paine was an unlikely man to have had such influence. He was humbly born and raised in England, was largely self-educated and decided to come to the colonies in 1774 after meeting Benjamin Franklin in London, who encouraged and sponsored him to do it. It was a decision that changed the world, but who could have imagined it at the time?
WALL STREET JOURNAL AND NEW YORK TIMES ATTACK JOURNALISM |
By Stephen Lendman | Rarely is the mendacity of the ruling plutocracy as clear as when its ideological attack dogs go on the offensive to perpetrate character assassination on a "dangerous political foe"...thereby paving the way for eventual physical elimination. And it's all mainly done for the benefit of American public opinion.
WILL THE "REAL" IRAQI FORCES PLEASE STAND UP? [ November 19, 2004] By Norman Solomon. When misleading buzzwords become part of the media landscape, they slant news coverage and skew public perceptions. That's the story with the phrase "Iraqi forces" – now in routine use by U.S. media outlets, including the country's most influential newspapers.
THE BIAS IN "OBJECTIVE" JOURNALISM & other media questions | By Sharon Beder, Media Lens | Its always easier to see the bias of others than to recognise one's own. A story that supports the status quo is generally considered to be neutral and is not questioned in terms of its objectivity while one that challenges the status quo tends to be perceived as having a "point of view" and therefore biased.
LOU DOBBS's underhanded political agenda | By Carol White | Lou Dobbs' unrelenting attacks on Hispanics is a giveaway about his true racist sentiments...It's not their illegality he objects to, it's the fact that they're not Central Casting "Aryan Americans"...
THE OCCASIONAL MEDIA RITUAL OF LAMENTING THE HABITUAL [SEPTEMBER 23, 2005] By Norman Solomon. Dan Rather caused some ripples the other day when he lamented the state of U.S. news media. The former CBS anchor said "there is a climate of fear running through newsrooms stronger than he has ever seen in his more than four-decade career," according to the Hollywood Reporter.
FIRST (ABRIDGED) CATALOG OF MEDIA BIASES By Patrice Greanville. Essentially, the American media face a critical choice. The deterioration of American society due to longstanding structural contradictions is pushing them—and the public—to accept the realization that an impartial information system can't serve two different --and in this case, deeply antagonistic--masters. In all class-divided societies such as the United States, the interests of the rich and the interests of the common citizen, let alone the poor, are in direct and irreconcilable opposition...
PROPAGANDA SYSTEM NUMBER ONE By. Edward S. Herman. The way in which the mainstream media have handled the turning of Milosevic over to the Hague Tribunal once again reinforces my belief that the United States is not only number one in military power but also in the effectiveness of its propaganda system, which is vastly superior to any past or present state-managed system.
MONOPOLY MEDIA MANIPULATION By Michael Parenti. IN A CAPITALIST "DEMOCRACY" LIKE THE UNITED STATES, the corporate news media faithfully reflect the dominant class ideology both in their reportage and commentary. At the same time, these media leave the impression that they are free and independent, capable of balanced coverage and objective commentary.
THE PACKAGED CONSCIOUSNESS By Herbert Schiller. WITH WHAT IS PROBABLY the lowest political consciousness in the industrialized world, Americans live the paradox of being media-rich and information poor. Major clues to this bizarre situation can be found in the national mythologies and techniques of miscommunication favored by the U.S. media.
BIAS: A CBS INSIDER EXPOSES HOW THE MEDIA DISTORT THE NEWS. By Danny Schechter. Bias is a hot-button word. In veteran TV reporter Bernard Goldberg's hands, it is a cudgel, a weapon to strike out at the people at CBS News who rejected him after a lifetime of service, and more broadly, to advance an ideological agenda dressed up in the appealing clothing of media criticism.
PROGRESSIVE ACTIVISTS AND LEGISLATORS CHALLENGE CORPORATE MEDIA'S FAILURE TO COVER DOWNING STREET MEMO By Scott Harris/ An Interview with Dany Schechter. The Downing Street memo, first published by the Times of London on May 1st, is a document that records the minutes of a July 2002 meeting of British government officials that indicates that the Bush administration had already made a decision to invade Iraq, justified by intelligence and facts that were being fixed around the policy.
GREG PALAST, an investigative reporter for BBC television, UNCOVERS THE WAYS IN WHICH THE AMERICAN MEDIA WORK HARD TO ASSASSINATE THE CHARACTER OF PRES. HUGO CHAVEZ. We've all seen this before. Kill their images first, then the person. Straight from the CIA manual. It's easier then to sell this kind of highhanded banditry to the perennially benighted American public.
LOOK OUT, IT'S A PAPER TIGER ! | By Paul A. Donovan
It is widely agreed—and I when I say widely I mean globally—that U.S. presence in the region is only fueling and spreading the insurgency across the Middle East faster than a Californian brush fire in the midst of a summer drought. Furthermore, while the American and Iraqi death tolls are on the rise, fundamentalist terrorist networks are gaining more popular support by the hour, sectarian violence is polarizing and creating an atmosphere of terror all over Iraq, hatred and resentment against Americans is growing throughtout the region, and Iran and Saudi Arabia seem eager to fill the power vacuum created by the war, one which the U.S. cannot successfully fill on its own terms. [READ MORE]
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THOUGHT CONTROL AND "PROFESSIONAL" JOURNALISM |A Media Lens exposé
"Professional" news reporting is a fraud. It is a system of institutionalised bias favouring the powerful interests of which the media are a part and on which they depend.
RECOMMENDED (In 2 parts)
PATRIOTISM AS PROPAGANDA | A Media Lens exposé |
Is it right to implicitly celebrate the stoic, military commitment to doing what one is told? In truth, we are discussing participation in one of the most shockingly cynical and violent criminal acts of modern times.
BURNING THE PLANET FOR PROFIT | Corporate Lobbying, A Lapsed 'Ecowarrior' and Compromised Media. After 4.6 billion years of planetary history, we may become the first species to monitor our own extinction. In impressive detail, humankind is amassing evidence of devastating changes in the atmosphere, oceans, ice cover, land and biodiversity.
OBAMA'S AUDACIOUS DEFERENCE TO POWER | By Paul Street | Recommended by Black Agenda Report |
Barack Obama's latest book reveals the presidential aspirant to be a rank racial accommodationist and political opportunist. The Illinois Senator urges empathy for those in power, labels critics on the Left cranks and zealots, and whitewashes America's past and present crimes. [READ MORE]
THE MYTHICAL DIVIDE BETWEEN JOURNALISM AND ADVERTISING. Most people are aware that news media rely on corporate advertising dollars - though the fact is rarely discussed, and when it is, editors and producers will generally insist that there's no connection between the companies that buy ads and the content of the news. A Media Lens analysis.
THE SYSTEM WORKS: THE INDEPENDENT ON LATIN AMERICA AND HUGO CHAVEZ The Independent, together with its sister Sunday paper, has consistently maligned Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected leader of Venezuela. Chavez has been labelled a “firebrand leader” who is “virulently anti-American” and whose “attachment to democracy [has] a temporary and improvised feel” A Media Lens analysis.
RIDICULING CHAVEZ—THE MEDIA HIT THEIR STRIDE/ PART ONE By Media Lens | Controlling what we think is not solely about controlling what we know - it is also about controlling who we respect and who we find ridiculous. A Media Lens analysis.
RIDICULING CHAVEZ—THE MEDIA HIT THEIR STRIDE/ PART TWO
By Media Lens | A Media Lens analysis.
LIKELIHOOD OF US INTERVENTION IN VENEZUELA AND LATIN AMERICA By Noam Chomsky | The US has had two major weapons for controlling Latin America for a long time. One of them is economic controls, the other is military force. They have both been used continually. Both of them are weakening and it’s a very serious problem for U.S. planners.
CORRECTING THE FACTS IN US/VENEZUELA RELATIONS |
By Mark Weisbrot | "One of the things that happens when there is a systematic distortion of this type in the media (as opposed to day-to-day errors) is that it becomes increasingly difficult over time to reverse it, as journalists feel they have to write what everyone else is writing...."
THE LATE, NOT SO GREAT PETER JENNINGS AND THE FIRST SPACE SHUTTLE LAUNCH | By Stephanie Donald | When glamour collides with substance, media execs will always choose the former. This inside story about Jennings is eloquent about the decadent values that modulate American television.
AMERICAN MORNING WITH PAULA ZAHN Featuring Noam Chomsky & Bill Bennett | Interviews like these—which occur far too infrequently due to the reluctance of mainstream media to feature honest leftwing perspectives, and of left activists and dissenters, to play by the rigged rules of soundbite television— highlight the difficulties inherent in the medium, as currently structured, for anyone wishing to inject some truth and plain common sense into the national debate.
CHAVEZ-The repeteadly reelected autocrat By Steve Rendall (FAIR) |
Hugo Chávez never had a chance with the U.S. press. Shortly after his first electoral victory in 1998, New York Times Latin America reporter Larry Rohter (12/20/98) summed up his victory thusly: "All across Latin America, presidents and party leaders are looking over their shoulders. With his landslide victory in Venezuela’s presidential election on December 6, Hugo Chávez has revived an all-too-familiar specter that the region’s ruling elite thought they had safely interred: that of the populist demagogue, the authoritarian man on horseback known as the caudillo."
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