Suppression/Propaganda in Media

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Suppression/Propaganda in Media

Postby Belligerent Savant » Thu Jun 27, 2019 10:53 am

.

A topic redundant with many threads here, surely. Couldn't find a one-stop thread for clear indicatations/after-the-fact admissions of suppression of news stories (or outright blatant propaganda in establishment news), so putting this here for now -- mods [Elvis] are welcome to merge with another thread as deemed fit.


[cue the visual of clutching pearls upon reading this]:

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/06/24/new- ... -approval/

NY Times admits it sends stories to US government for approval before publication

The New York Times casually acknowledged that it sends major scoops to the US government before publication, to make sure “national security officials” have “no concerns.”

The New York Times has publicly acknowledged that it sends some of its stories to the US government for approval from “national security officials” before publication.

This confirms what veteran New York Times correspondents like James Risen have said: The American newspaper of record regularly collaborates with the US government, suppressing reporting that top officials don’t want made public.

On June 15, the Times reported that the US government is escalating its cyber attacks on Russia’s power grid. According to the article, “the Trump administration is using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively,” as part of a larger “digital Cold War between Washington and Moscow.”

In response to the report, Donald Trump attacked the Times on Twitter, calling the article “a virtual act of Treason.”

The New York Times PR office replied to Trump from its official Twitter account, defending the story and noting that it had, in fact, been cleared with the US government before being printed.

“Accusing the press of treason is dangerous,” the Times communications team said. “We described the article to the government before publication.”

...



https://www.democracynow.org/2018/1/5/h ... government


How the NY Times & U.S. Government Worked Together to Suppress James Risen’s Post-9/11 Reporting

We continue our interview with former New York Times reporter James Risen, who left the paper in August to join The Intercept as senior national security correspondent. This week, he published a 15,000-word story headlined The Biggest Secret: My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror.

...


Of course, limited hangouts abound in these stories.

I chuckle to myself whenever I see the word "treason" being bandied about, as if these machinations are outside standard operating procedure -- from day 1 of the American Enterprise.
User avatar
Belligerent Savant
 
Posts: 5214
Joined: Mon Oct 05, 2009 11:58 pm
Location: North Atlantic.
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Suppression/Propaganda in Media

Postby Harvey » Thu Jun 27, 2019 6:39 pm

I hope it's not hubris for me to claim that we in the UK excel even the US in this regard. We so desperately want to do something better than America.

It's called the 'D Notice.' It makes bullshit like the Skripal saga possible and it's entirely voluntary. As the twitter meme says, MOFA. "Make Orwell Fiction Again."

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/06/the-broader-view-reveals-the-ugliest-of-prospects/

The Broader View Reveals the Ugliest of Prospects

Standing back a little and surveying the events of the last couple of weeks, gives a bleak view of the current state of western democracy.

We have seen what appears to be the most unconvincing of false flags in the Gulf. I pointed out why it was improbable Iran would attack these particular ships. Since then we have had American military sources pointing to video evidence of a packed small Iranian boat allegedly removing a limpet mine from the ship the Iranians helped to rescue, which was somehow supposed to prove it was the Iranians who planted the alleged device. We also have had the Japanese owner specifically contradict the American account and say that the ship was hit by flying objects.

The Iranians certainly have a strange method of bomb disposal if they carry it out using unarmoured personnel, with as many as possible crammed into a small boat in immediate contact with the “mine”. It is also hard to understand why the alleged “limpet mines” would be four feet above the waterline.



Limpet mines are placed below the waterline. There are numerous reasons for this. Firstly, holes above the waterline will not sink a ship. Secondly, the weight of the water helps contain the blast against the ship. Thirdly, it is obviously harder to detect both the diver placing the mine and the mine once placed if it is below the water. In fact it would be very difficult for a diver to place a limpet mine four feet above the waterline, even if they wanted to.

There seems to be a remarkable disconnect between the widespread popular disdain at yet another fake western power casus belli in the Middle East, and the near universal complicity of the UK political and media class in promoting this transparent lie. It is as though even pretending to have any respect for truth and fact has simply been discarded within the UK’s governmental system. Which ought to worry us a lot.

The second development ought to have been the biggest media story of the decade in the UK, if we had anything like a free and honest media. Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, made plain the Trump administration’s intent to prevent the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister. Pompeo told a meeting of Jewish leaders:

It could be that Mr. Corbyn manages to run the gantlet and get elected. It’s possible. You should know, we won’t wait for him to do those things to begin to push back.


This blatant interference by a foreign power in the UK’s democracy is an absolute scandal. Compare the lack of media outrage at Pompeo’s intervention with the ludicrous claims made about much less high profile Russian attempts at influence. This incident provides incontrovertible proof that the world does indeed operate in the way that I have been explaining here for a decade. It is not a “conspiracy theory” that democracy is manipulated by hidden powers, it is fact. Pompeo’s description of Corbyn’s route to election as “running the gauntlet” is particularly revealing. Even more so is the cursory coverage this story was given, and I have seen no evidence to date of any MSM “journalist” attempting any follow-up investigation on the methods the US are planning to employ – or more likely already employing – against Corbyn.

Everybody should be incandescent at this, no matter who they vote for.

Something else which revealed the truth of the way the political world now operates, and which again did not get nearly the media attention it deserves, was Matt Kennard’s stunning revelation of the way the Guardian has been taken over by the security services. I have been explaining for years that the Guardian has become the security services’ news outlet of choice, and it is very helpful to have documentation to prove it.

Screenshot-835.png


It is worth noting that the Guardian obeyed completely the DSMA committee ban on mentioning Pablo Miller in reporting the security service fantasy version of the Skripal story. As Kennard points out, it is also very interesting indeed that the Guardian published Luke Harding’s front page fabrication of Manafort/Assange meetings two weeks after MOD Director Dominic Wilson congratulated Guardian deputy editor Paul Johnson on “re-establishing links” with the security services. The Guardian is, like other British newspapers, as controlled by the military and security services just like in any other decent autocracy.

Incidentally, I cannot find Matt Kennard’s excellent work set out anywhere, except in that twitter stream. Surely there is an article on a website somewhere? I cannot find anything on Google, but as it is exactly the kind of information Google routinely suppresses, that does not mean it is not out there. Anyone seen it?

Finally, we have of course seen Sajid Javid sign the extradition warrant for Julian Assange to be sent to the United States for the “crime” of publishing truthful information about US government illegalities. Julian’s extradition hearing was, contrary to normal practice, held despite the fact he was too sick to attend in person. And it was presided over by Judge Arbuthnot, despite the fact that her husband is a former Tory defence minister who started a “security consultancy” in partnership with a former head of MI6, the war criminal John Scarlett who oversaw the fabrication of the dossier of lies about Iraqi WMD, in order to launch an illegal war of aggression that killed and maimed millions. The Assange team had asked her to recuse herself on that pretty obvious basis, but she had refused. At an earlier hearing she taunted Assange with the observation that he could get adequate exercise in the Embassy on a 1.5 meter Juliet balcony.

Just as the Guardian has never apologised for, nor withdrawn, the utter lie of the Assange/Manafort story, so the identity politics promoting, false “left” has never apologised for its pursuit of Assange over sexual allegations in Sweden, which were obvious on the slightest scrutiny to be only a fit-up designed to get him into custody. Those figures like David Allen Green, Joan Smith and David Aaronovitch, among scores of other pustulous hacks, who mocked and scorned those of us who always said that Assange faced not extradition to Sweden but to the United States for publishing, have been shown up as, at the very best, stupid naive and unwitting tools of the state, and more likely, insincere and vicious propagandists.

This brief review of current issues reveal that not only do western governments lie and fake, they have really given up on trying to pretend that they do not. The abuse of power is naked and the propaganda is revealed by the lightest effort to brush away the veneer of democracy.

I find it hard to believe that I live in times where Assange suffers as he does for telling the truth, where a dedicated anti-racist like Corbyn is subjected to daily false accusations of racism and to US and security service backed efforts to thwart his democratic prospects, where the most laughable false flag is paraded to move us towards war with Iran, and where there is no semblance of a genuinely independent media. But, starkly, that is where we are. This is not unrelated to the massive and fast growing inequality of wealth; the erosion of freedom is the necessary precondition that allows the ultra-wealthy to loot the rest of us. It remains my hope there will eventually come a public reaction against the political classes as strong as the situation demands.


Weirdly (I just checked, on a whim) I am utterly astonished to find Matt Kennard's entire Twitter history before June 10 has disappeared. Completely. Vanished. He joined in 2012. Eat your hearts out America!
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"


Eden Ahbez
User avatar
Harvey
 
Posts: 4165
Joined: Mon May 09, 2011 4:49 am
Blog: View Blog (20)

Re: Suppression/Propaganda in Media

Postby Elvis » Thu Jun 27, 2019 7:47 pm

My best friend adores the Guardian and gets quite upset if you criticize it or Luke Harding. Now I have some documents to persuade him, thanks. I should be following Craig Murray more closely.

I was curious how many D-Notices are issued...this from 2015:

1.5k ‘D-Notices’ issued to UK media outlets in just 5 years


https://www.londonderrysentinel.co.uk/n ... -1-6500385


Average 300 a year? That's a fuck of a lot.


Found the article above on Kennard's Twitter page: https://twitter.com/DCKennard/status/11 ... 4728304640
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
User avatar
Elvis
 
Posts: 7411
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:24 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Suppression/Propaganda in Media

Postby cptmarginal » Wed Jul 10, 2019 12:31 pm

https://www.counterpunch.org/2003/01/29 ... r-machine/

The Blair government has responded by imposing a comprehensive blackout on the story, effectively removing it from the domain of public discussion. Attempts on the part of this journalist to establish why the British media has not followed up on the revelations have met with a wall of silence. Editors and journalists of The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, The Sunday Times, The Observer, The Sunday Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Daily Express, The Mirror, The Sun, the BBC, Independent Television News and even The Sunday Herald have refused to discuss the matter.

Speaking from London, freelance journalist Bob Kearley told me:

“Whether or not a D-Notice has been issued is not clear. But based on some of the feedback I’ve been getting it’s apparent that editors and media owners have voluntarily agreed not to cover the story at this time. Operation Ore is still being reported, but not in regard to government ministers, and it’s taking up very few column inches on the third or fourth page. Don’t forget that the intelligence services are involved here, and Blair is anxious to ensure that the scandal does not rock the boat at a time when the country is about to go to war.”

“You can imagine the effect this would have on the morale of troops who are about to commit in Iraq. In fact morale is reportedly quite low anyway, with service personnel throwing their vaccines into the sea en route to the battlefront and knowing how unpopular the war is with the British people. And a lot of squaddies I’ve met think there’s something weird going on between Bush and Blair. If you’re then told that the executive responsible for the conduct of the war is staffed by child-molesters … well, then Saddam suddenly looks like the sort of bloke with whom you can share a few tins [beer].”


https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ ... _up_of_the

Police say that the list of rich and famous Operation Ore suspects would fill newspaper front pages for an entire year.

Please provide the following information:
1. What D-Notices were served on the main stream media by the Blair administration in realtion to Operation Ore and the cover up? Were any other legal restrictions imposed on the main stream media in relation to reporting Operation Ore and the cover-up?

2. A copy of all minutes of meetings and communications between the Home Office and the main stream media in relation to Operation Ore and the cover-up.

3. Was a D-Notice (not legally binding and strictly advisory) served on the BBC in relation to Operation Ore? Were any other legal restrictions imposed on the BBC in relation to reporting Operation Ore and it's cover-up?

4. Was Margaret Hodge's daughter Lizzie Watson ( at the time a BBC employee) involved in the decision making relating to reporting on Operation Ore? Was Lizzie Watson operating under instructions from the Home Office or any other part of the Blair administration?

5. Is any part of the main stream media still subject to a D-Notice on Operation Ore or any other restrictions preventing it's reporting? If so please name each main stream media outlet affected.

6. How many BBC employees were under investigation in relation to Operation Ore? Please list them all by name and job title at the time.

7. Apart from Lizzie Watson what other family members of Blair's administration were employed by the BBC at the time of the Operation Ore cover-up and were operating under instructions from any part of the Blair administration?

8. How many members of the Blair administration were under investigation in relation to Operation Ore? Please list them all by name and job title at the time.

Yours faithfully,

Sean Moran


Date: 19 March 2014

Dear Mr Moran,

Thank you for your e-mail to the Home Office of 26 February 2014 (sent at 13:13), in which you ask the Home Office eight points relating to Operation ORE. Your request has been handled as a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

We have carried out a thorough search and we have established that the Home Office does not hold the information which you have requested.

The cases generated by Operation ORE were initiated as a consequence of nationally coordinated disseminations to local UK police forces where the decision to proceed to investigation was a matter for the relevant Chief Constable. Prosecutions arising out of Operation ORE were dealt with by a number of UK police forces and Crown Prosecution Service areas and information on Operational ORE was not collated centrally on a routine basis.

You have also asked about a D Notice that the former Prime Minister Tony Blair apparently issued. Let me assure you that no such ‘D Notice’ exists or would ever have been issued.

The only person ever authorised to give a ‘D Notice’ - or more properly Defence Advisory (DA) Notice - advice has been the Secretary of the Defence Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee (DPBAC). He is accountable solely to that Committee, which is the independent joint Government/ media body that oversees the DA Notice System. The DPBAC has members drawn from every part of the UK media. The system it oversees is a purely voluntary compact between Government and the national media. It offers advice only, and that advice can be accepted or rejected, in whole or in part by the media, and is not supported by any form of sanction, legal or otherwise.

The DA Notice System is designed solely to avoid the inadvertent public disclosure of core national security information. The boundaries of the system are defined in the five standing DA Notices, which can be found in full on http://www.dnotice.org.uk. Details on Committee membership can also be found. As can be seen from these Notices and the associated explanations, the system explicitly excludes advice on any issues which fall outside those guidelines, including criminal activities, scandal, corruption or embarrassment. If any advice was ever offered on those subjects, it would immediately be challenged and rejected by the DPBAC Media members and indeed by the media as a whole. Please be assured that no ‘D Notice’ advice aimed at shielding senior figures involved in criminal activities was, would or could ever have been issued, let alone complied with.


Image

I think they are playing a game of semantics. Somebody needs to submit another FOIA that specifically asks for the content of any DA Notices that were issued. Whether or not they are "voluntary requests" or could never be misused is immaterial to the question.
cptmarginal
 
Posts: 2741
Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2007 8:32 pm
Location: Gordita Beach
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Suppression/Propaganda in Media

Postby Elvis » Thu Aug 01, 2019 3:55 am

And speaking of Craig Murray...


https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives ... ter-troll/
How To Spot A Twitter Troll
2 Jul, 2019 in Uncategorized by craig

UPDATE: GCHQ are currently advertising to recruit more trolls to carry out precisely the activity I outline here. As their advertisement puts it:

We are looking to recruit individuals who can contribute to a step change in the UK’s ability to project cyber power against our adversaries, in order to keep the UK safe. You will be at the forefront of the nation’s covert online capability. We want people who can help support and run operations that disrupt and degrade our adversaries’ ability to do us harm, and contest malign activity in cyber space.


I do hope this helps cut through the cognitive dissonance for those of you who found it difficult to come to terms with the truth of the below.


ORIGINAL POST

It is a matter of simple fact that the British government employs a very large number of people whose full time job is to influence the political narrative on social media. The 77th Brigade of the British Army, the Integrity Initiative, MI5 and MI6 and GCHQ all run major programmes of covert online propaganda. These information warriors operate on twitter, facebook, and in comments sections across the internet.

I have long been fascinated by the disconnect by which people, who do know and understand that the security services employ tens of thousands of people and have budgets of billions, nevertheless find it hard to accept that they may come personally into contact with their operations. Therefore when I state that the security services infiltrate groups including environmentalists and the SNP, and were involved in the Skripal story in ways not public, there is a peculiar desire among people to reject it as it is uncomfortable. Equally while people do know the security services are committing huge sums to social media influencing, to point out any of its instances brings derisive shouts of “conspiracy theory”.

It was when I was pointing out the many omissions and inconsistencies in the official version of events surrounding the Skripals, that I first came under sustained attack from accounts on twitter, often making short and very sarcastic comments. I confess for a while this did actually get me down. I have no difficulty with people disagreeing with me, but I find it depressing to encounter unreasonably closed minds.

But in quite short order I started to note a few defining characteristics of the scores of accounts from which I was being attacked. These are false accounts, but they are trolls not bots. There are people from the 77th Brigade, GCHQ or other agencies sitting behind a desk and running scores of fake accounts each. As there is a real human being behind them, unlike bots, these trolls can reply if challenged and attempt to promote a real identity. But there are a number of key giveaways:

1) Many times more “follows” than “followers”.

In establishing a fake identity, the first step they take is to follow other twitter accounts. This is because a percentage of twitter users will automatically follow you back, so if you quickly follow 500 people you will likely get 100 “followers” back immediately. That appears to establish a real identity with followers. There are some interesting consequences of this technique. These troll accounts remarkably often follow sports betting twitter accounts, for example – because those accounts automatically follow back.

2) A tweet record consisting almost entirely of retweets.

This is the most important single giveaway. If you select “tweets” under the account, these accounts have zero original content. Their timeline consists of retweets of pro-Establishment content, leavened with retweets of the single characteristic that was chosen to establish a “character” – eg “Everton supporter”, “gym fanatic”. They never initiate a topic or posit an original thought, but work entirely in “retweet” or “reply” mode.

3) Follow and troll

Accounts which had nothing in common with me in terms of interests or political views, would suddenly decide to post a brief highly disparaging or ridiculing comment, and always simultaneously would start following me. The motivation of somebody who opens with rudeness yet simultaneously starts following is plainly aggressive – and not usual behaviour.

4) No convincing tweet history

A great many of these accounts are very newly minted at the time of first propaganda use. Generally, even those routine retweets are few and far between. Occasionally the troll twitter account claims to be longstanding – dating from 2009 or 2010 – but there is no evidence of actual (re)tweets going back more than a couple of years. This either suggests wholesale sleeper accounts were established, or twitter is actively involved in helping produce fake ones.

5) Lack of a normal “cluster” of followers

On most real people you can look through their followers and spot a little cluster of family, friends or workmates. The trolls don’t have normal roots.

————-

How normal is this five point profile? Well, I looked through 200 entirely random twitter accounts and found 9 that would fit this profile – 4.5%. Yet surveying the threads from my own tweets, over 75% of the replies which I would characterise as hostile come from accounts that fit this profile. By which I mean meeting all five points. This analysis meets the scientific criterion of being replicable. You can test those figures for yourselves by looking through twitter. That is plain evidence these unusual profiles are being deliberately deployed – and highly probably deliberately created – for hostile intent.

I had spotted the giveaway profile of those attacking me a year ago, and had been mulling over posting on it. What determined me to do so was clicking on the “Mark Field” twitter trend following his physical attack on the female climate change activist. I was astonished by the sheer volume of tweets defending Mark Field. Clicking on them, I started to realise that what I was seeing was a massive deployment of twitter troll accounts all precisely following the profile I have outlined. They were putting out a unified message that the lady may have been an armed terrorist and that Field should be praised for his resolute, even heroic, action.

So here is the fun bit, some examples you can look at. I don’t claim these are all trolls. Some of these may be real identities who just happen to match the twitter troll profile. They may follow many times more people than they have followers simply because they have deeply repulsive personalities or nothing interesting to say. But remember we are talking about trolls not bots, so there is a human multiple account operative to all of the actual security service troll accounts, whose job it is to respond and attempt to portray a real existence. Unlike bots, if challenged, troll accounts will answer.

Look out yourself for troll accounts with these characteristics on twitter in future. Exposure is the simple way to nullify the vast state propaganda programmes on social media.

continued with EXAMPLES AT LINK
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
User avatar
Elvis
 
Posts: 7411
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:24 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Suppression/Propaganda in Media

Postby cptmarginal » Wed Sep 11, 2019 10:50 am

Harvey wrote:Weirdly (I just checked, on a whim) I am utterly astonished to find Matt Kennard's entire Twitter history before June 10 has disappeared. Completely. Vanished. He joined in 2012. Eat your hearts out America!


His new article, co-authored with Mark Curtis, is huge and filled with useful links to references:

How the UK Security Services neutralised the country’s leading liberal newspaper - 11 September 2019

The UK security services targeted The Guardian after the newspaper started publishing the contents of secret US government documents leaked by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden in June 2013.

Snowden’s bombshell revelations continued for months and were the largest-ever leak of classified material covering the NSA and its UK equivalent, the Government Communications Headquarters. They revealed programmes of mass surveillance operated by both agencies.

According to minutes of meetings of the UK’s Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee, the revelations caused alarm in the British security services and Ministry of Defence.

“This event was very concerning because at the outset The Guardian avoided engaging with the [committee] before publishing the first tranche of information,” state minutes of a 7 November 2013 meeting at the MOD.

The DSMA Committee, more commonly known as the D-Notice Committee, is run by the MOD, where it meets every six months. A small number of journalists are also invited to sit on the committee. Its stated purpose is to “prevent inadvertent public disclosure of information that would compromise UK military and intelligence operations”. It can issue “notices” to the media to encourage them not to publish certain information.

The committee is currently chaired by the MOD’s director-general of security policy Dominic Wilson, who was previously director of security and intelligence in the British Cabinet Office. Its secretary is Brigadier Geoffrey Dodds OBE, who describes himself as an “accomplished, senior ex-military commander with extensive experience of operational level leadership”.

The D-Notice system describes itself as voluntary, placing no obligations on the media to comply with any notice issued. This means there should have been no need for the Guardian to consult the MOD before publishing the Snowden documents.

Yet committee minutes note the secretary saying: “The Guardian was obliged to seek … advice under the terms of the DA notice code.” The minutes add: “This failure to seek advice was a key source of concern and considerable efforts had been made to address it.”

‘Considerable efforts’

These “considerable efforts” included a D-Notice sent out by the committee on 7 June 2013 – the day after The Guardian published the first documents – to all major UK media editors, saying they should refrain from publishing information that would “jeopardise both national security and possibly UK personnel”. It was marked “private and confidential: not for publication, broadcast or use on social media”.

Clearly the committee did not want its issuing of the notice to be publicised, and it was nearly successful. Only the right-wing blog Guido Fawkes made it public.

At the time, according to the committee minutes, the “intelligence agencies in particular had continued to ask for more advisories [i.e. D-Notices] to be sent out”. Such D-Notices were clearly seen by the intelligence services not so much as a tool to advise the media but rather a way to threaten it not to publish further Snowden revelations.

One night, amidst the first Snowden stories being published, the D-Notice Committee’s then-secretary Air Vice-Marshal Andrew Vallance personally called Alan Rusbridger, then editor of The Guardian. Vallance “made clear his concern that The Guardian had failed to consult him in advance before telling the world”, according to a Guardian journalist who interviewed Rusbridger.

Later in the year, Prime Minister David Cameron again used the D-Notice system as a threat to the media.

“I don’t want to have to use injunctions or D-Notices or the other tougher measures,” he said in a statement to MPs. “I think it’s much better to appeal to newspapers’ sense of social responsibility. But if they don’t demonstrate some social responsibility it would be very difficult for government to stand back and not to act.”

The threats worked. The Press Gazette reported at the time that “The FT [Financial Times] and The Times did not mention it [the initial Snowden revelations] … and the Telegraph published only a short”. It continued by noting that only The Independent “followed up the substantive allegations”. It added, “The BBC has also chosen to largely ignore the story.”

...
The new way of thinking is precisely delineated by what it is not.
cptmarginal
 
Posts: 2741
Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2007 8:32 pm
Location: Gordita Beach
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Suppression/Propaganda in Media

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 11, 2019 11:32 am

propaganda in the media linked here but of course always allowed since RI's inception as all media links are except for hate sites

Fox News
World Net Daily
Little GreenFootballs
Daily Caller
Daily Wire
True Pundit
Washington Examiner
.PJ Media
The Gateway Pundit
Washington Times
Sputnik
RT


it is the core of RI .....no censorship

every individual link/article should be assessed on it's own merits no matter where it is published, sweeping generalizations are not helpful

History Commons 9/11, Paul Thompson Timeline are full of MSM links
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: Suppression/Propaganda in Media

Postby Belligerent Savant » Wed Sep 11, 2019 4:31 pm

.

The objections raised with respect to MSM links in RI aren't with the links themselves, of course, but in the posting of such material at face value, without a hint of scrutiny or suggestion that said material tends to be suspect/littered with mis/disinfo, etc.

On the other hand, mainstream/intel agency-tainted sources can often provide hints of useful information, or minimally, a means for gleaning insight into intent, if parsed with this understanding in mind. It can be valuable to a thread when framed accordingly.

But when presented at face value, it merely acts as the propaganda that it is, which is why it would get frowned upon here in RI. As a group, we know better, or should know better. Unless, of course, the perpetrator is attempting to troll, or is blinded by their bias.

That list you put together can always be expanded, needless to say.

MSNBC (or every network news channnel, for that matter)
Buzzfeed
Emptywheel
Any site backed by Intel operatives, etc.
Many, many others.
User avatar
Belligerent Savant
 
Posts: 5214
Joined: Mon Oct 05, 2009 11:58 pm
Location: North Atlantic.
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Suppression/Propaganda in Media

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 11, 2019 4:51 pm

I guess you would agree the title of this OP should be Suppression/Propaganda in ALL Media


you seem to only have a problem with certain (content) links (certain poster) and have no issue with those many many others.......like I see you mentioned Marci but failed to list Mate, Caitlin Johnstone – Rogue Journalist, RT, Sputnik and such, I have not seen you have an issue/quarrel frown upon with those, as examples...it seems to me you have taken those links at face value

you are surely free to question some aspect in a link I post but not dismissing the whole article because of where it was published...I am looking forward to your fair observations of all links or you can pick and choose honestly it really doesn't matter to me....critique away


we are given instructions/rules by Jeff when we sign up....I follow them
Last edited by seemslikeadream on Wed Sep 11, 2019 5:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: Suppression/Propaganda in Media

Postby Belligerent Savant » Wed Sep 11, 2019 5:39 pm

.

This thread will not succumb to petty squabble, ok?

I never taken any link at face value, so please refrain from misrepresentation. You're welcome to add all those links to 'the list'.
Some are simply more on point, and less filled with subjective content, than others (and then of course there's the content riddled with outright mis/disinfo).
User avatar
Belligerent Savant
 
Posts: 5214
Joined: Mon Oct 05, 2009 11:58 pm
Location: North Atlantic.
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Suppression/Propaganda in Media

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 11, 2019 5:42 pm

I do not think I am succumbing to a petty squabble at all that would be no bueno ....I am just expressing my honest observations on how all media is treated here, I would not call that a petty squabble. I've said my peace I won't be back, no worries unless you address me again and I feel the need to reply

you are surely welcome as in the past to question any specific information in any link I post

to be fair the list should include every link posted at RI which in fact is the way it has always been here and everyone has their own personal list that they object to.


yes I agree there is suppression/propaganda in all media, please pardon the interruption
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: Suppression/Propaganda in Media

Postby Grizzly » Thu Sep 12, 2019 12:40 am

Let's not forget madcow and the rest of the Russki, haters, er, I mean accomplices......boys&girls...
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
User avatar
Grizzly
 
Posts: 4722
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 4:15 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Suppression/Propaganda in Media

Postby Belligerent Savant » Sat Sep 14, 2019 11:02 pm

.

I actually laughed out loud reading this one; it reads like satire.

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/latest-ru ... looks-like




Latest Russian spy story looks like another elaborate media deception

The tale of Oleg Smolenkov is just the latest load of high-level BS dumped on us by intelligence agencies


When I was 20, I studied at the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute, in the waning days of the Soviet empire. Most of the Russians I met were amusingly free of stress caused by following news. Why would they bother? Bull-factories like Rossiskaya Gazeta and Leningradsaya Pravda were basically collections of dreary government news releases rewritten to sound like news reports.

I saw newspapers in Leningrad shredded into slivers of toilet paper, used in place of curtains in dorm rooms, even stuffed into overcoat linings as insulation. But I can’t recall a Russian person actually reading a Soviet newspaper for the content. That’s how useless its “news” was.

We’re headed to a similar place. The cable networks, along with the New York Times and Washington Post increasingly act like house organs of the government, and in particular the intelligence agencies.

An episode this week involving a tale of a would-be American spy “exfiltrated” from Russia solidifies this impression. Seldom has a news story been more transparently fraudulent.

The story was broken by CNN Monday, September 9th, under the headline, “Exclusive: US extracted top spy from inside Russia in 2017”:

In a previously undisclosed secret mission in 2017, the United States successfully extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government, multiple Trump administration officials with direct knowledge told CNN.


CNN’s lede relayed multiple key pieces of information, not one of which was really emphasized in the main of its unconfirmable story:

- America not only had a spy inside Russia’s government, it had multiple spies, with the subject of this particular piece being merely one of America’s “highest level” sources

- The “extraction” was completed “successfully”

- The sources are “multiple Trump administration officials”


The story told us our spy agencies successfully penetrated Russian government at the highest levels (although apparently not well enough to foresee or forestall the election interference campaign the same agencies spent the last three years howling about).

We were also told the agencies saved an invaluable human source back in 2017, and that the story came from inside the Trump administration. But the big sell came in the second and third paragraphs (emphasis mine):

The decision to carry out the extraction occurred soon after a May 2017 meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump discussed highly classified intelligence with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. The intelligence, concerning ISIS in Syria, had been provided by Israel.

The disclosure to the Russians by the President, though not about the Russian spy specifically, prompted intelligence officials to renew earlier discussions about the potential risk of exposure…


So great was this spy of ours, we were told, that he had “access to Putin” and “could even provide images of documents on the Russian leader’s desk.” This was “according to CNN’s sources,” an interesting attribution given passages like this:

The source was considered the highest-level source for the US inside the Kremlin, high up in the national security infrastructure, according to the source familiar with the matter and a former senior intelligence official.


It’s a characteristic of third world countries to have the intelligence world and the media be intertwined enough that it’s not always clear whether the reporters and the reported-about are the same people. When you turn on the TV in Banana Republics, you’re never sure which group is talking to you.

We’re now in that same paradigm in America. CNN has hired nearly a dozen former intelligence or counterintelligence officials as analysts in the last few years. Their big get was former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, but they also now have former deputy FBI chief Andrew McCabe, former FBI counsel James Baker, and multiple former CIA, NSA, and NSC officials.

Meanwhile, former CIA director John Brennan has an MSNBC/NBC gig, as does former CIA and DOD chief of staff Jeremy Bash, and several other ex-spooks. The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, who doubles as the CEO of one of America’s largest intelligence contractors.

This odious situation is similar to 2003-2004, when cable networks were tossing contributor deals to every ex-general and ex-spook they could find while they were reporting on the Iraq invasion. At one point, FAIR.org found that 52 percent of the sources in network newscasts were current or former government officials.

The numbers now aren’t quite that skewed, but CNN and MSNBC both employ former senior intelligence officials who comment upon stories in which they had direct involvement, especially the Russia investigation.

The CNN piece about the exfiltrated spy quotes a “former senior intelligence official,” a ubiquitous character that has become modern America’s version of the Guy Fawkes mask. I asked the network what their position was on whether or not they felt obligated to make a disclosure when (or if) a source was one of their own employees. They haven’t responded.

Within hours after the CNN report broke, the New York Times had a triple-bylined piece out entitled, “C.I.A. Informant Extracted From Russia Had Sent Secrets to U.S. for Decades.” Written by three of their top national security writers, Adam Goldman, Julian Barnes and David Sanger, the story repeated the CNN information, but with a crucial difference:

C.I.A. officials worried about safety made the arduous decision in late 2016 to offer to extract the source from Russia. The situation grew more tense when the informant at first refused, citing family concerns…


CNN reported (and continues to report) that the “decision” to remove the spy came “soon after a May 2017 meeting.” The Times, based on interviews with its own batch of “current and former officials,” insisted the “arduous decision” came in “late 2016.” The Times noted the source “at first refused” to be extracted, explaining the delay in his removal.

How to understand all of this? A Washington Post story by Shane Harris and Ellen Nakashima released at 6:06 the next morning, “U.S. got key asset out of Russia following election hacking,” came up with the final formula. To see the complex, absurd rhetorical construction in full, one unfortunately has to quote at length:

In 2017, the United States extracted from Russia an important CIA source…

The exfiltration took place sometime after an Oval Office meeting in May 2017, when President Trump revealed highly classified counterterrorism information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador...

That disclosure alarmed U.S. national security officials, but it was not the reason for the decision to remove the CIA asset, who had provided information to the United States for more than a decade, according to the current and former officials.


The old Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercials used the tagline, “You got your chocolate in my peanut butter.” This Post story is, “You got your 2016 decision in my 2017 exfiltration!”

The paper brazenly fuses two unconnected narratives, telling us that a spy who had provided valuable information in 2016 was extracted in early 2017, after the Trump-Lavrov meeting. While that sequence may be chronologically correct, the story’s own authors say the Trump-Lavrov meeting was “not the reason” for the exfiltration. So why mention it? Moreover, who was this person, and what was the real reason his removal from Russia was necessary?

On Tuesday, September 10th, the Russian newspaper Kommersant* disclosed the name of the spy. They identified him as a mid-level Foreign Ministry official named Oleg Smolenkov.

Was Smolenkov a “very valuable agent”? Maybe, but Kommersant – amusingly, playing the same role as transparent mouthpiece for security organs – said no. They quoted a Russian foreign ministry official saying, “Let the CIA prove this.” As to Trump disclosing secrets to Lavrov in that meeting, the official told the Russian paper, “CNN never before thought up such nonsense,” adding that it was “pure paranoia.”

Kommersant further related that Russians instituted a murder case over the disappearance of Smolenkov and his family in 2017.

Disappear, however, Smolenkov did not. He went from Russia to Montenegro in 2017, then ended up in Virginia, where he and his family bought a house in Stafford, Virginia in January of 2019, in his own name! This is the same person about whom the Times this past Monday wrote:

The person’s life remains in danger, current and former officials said, pointing to Moscow’s attempts last year to assassinate Sergei V. Skripal, a former Russian intelligence official who moved to Britain as part of a high-profile spy exchange in 2010…


Smolenkov was so afraid for his safety, he put his family in a house the FSB could see by clicking on Realtor.com! That’s “tradecraft” for you.

To recap: U.S. officials decided to exfiltrate a spy capable of transmitting pictures from Vladimir Putin’s desk (why are we telling audiences this, by the way?) because… why? Although all three of the initial major American news stories about this referenced Trump’s May 2017 meeting with Sergei Lavrov, the actual reason was buried in the text of all three pieces:

In the Times:

But former intelligence officials said there was no public evidence that Mr. Trump directly endangered the source, and other current American officials insisted that media scrutiny of the agency’s sources alone was the impetus for the extraction.


The Post:

In January 2017, the Obama administration published a detailed assessment that unambiguously laid the blame on the Kremlin…

“It’s quite likely,” the official continued, “that the U.S. intelligence community would already be taking a hard look at extracting any U.S. assets who would have been subject to increased levels of scrutiny” after the assessment’s publication.


CNN:

A US official said before the secret operation there was media speculation about the existence of such a covert source, and such coverage or public speculation poses risks to the safety of anyone a foreign government suspects may be involved. This official did not identify any public reporting to that effect at the time of this decision and CNN could not find any related reference in media reports.


That last passage by CNN, in which the network claimed it could not find “any related reference” to a secret source in media reports, is laughable.

Unnamed “senior intelligence officials” spent much of the early months of the Trump administration bragging their faces off about their supposed penetration of the Kremlin. Many of their leaks were designed to throw shade on the new pompadour-in-chief, casting him as a Putin puppet. A January 5, 2017 piece in the Washington Post is a classic example:


Senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow, according to U.S. officials who said that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on the outcome.


We’re constantly told the intelligence agencies can’t reveal classified details out of fear of disclosing “sources and methods,” but this story revealed a very specific capability. If that “Russians celebrating Trump’s win” tale came from a person, it wouldn’t be long before the source’s head would be found in Park Sokolniki.

A more revealing Washington Post piece came in June, 2017. It was called “Obama’s Secret Struggle to Punish Russia for Putin’s Election Assault.” In that article, we’re told at length about how Brennan secured a “feat of espionage,” obtaining sourcing “deep within the Russian government” that provided him, Brennan, with insights into Russian’s electoral interference campaign.

Brennan, the Post said, considered the source’s intel so valuable that he reportedly hand-delivered its “eyes only” bombshell contents directly to Barack Obama in summer of 2016. This was before the story was told to the whole world less than a year later.

In that Post article, it was revealed that the October 2016 assessment of Russia’s role in an electoral interference campaign initially was directly tied to Putin, but Putin’s name was removed because it might “endanger intelligence sources and methods.”

Taken in sum, all of these facts suggest it wasn’t at all Donald Trump’s meeting with Sergei Lavrov that necessitated the “exfiltration.

(Side note: many of these spy stories are larded with Tom Clancy-style verbiage to make the reader feel sexier and more in the know. The CNN story, for instance, ludicrously told us that a covert source was also “known as an asset.” Derp – thanks!).

What is this all really about? We have an idea only because Brennan and Clapper aren’t the only ex-spooks pipelining info to friendlies in the media.

As noted by former CIA analyst Ray McGovern and others, Attorney General William Barr earlier this year directed the Justice Department and former Connecticut Attorney General John Durham to investigate the intelligence agencies. In June, the New York Times wrote:

Mr. Barr has been interested in how the C.I.A. drew its conclusions about Russia’s election sabotage, particularly the judgment that Mr. Putin ordered that operatives help Mr. Trump by discrediting his opponent, Hillary Clinton, according to current and former American officials.


The Times quoted former CIA officials who expressed “anxiety” about this inquiry:

While the Justice Department review is not a criminal inquiry, it has provoked anxiety in the ranks of the C.I.A., according to former officials. Senior agency officials have questioned why the C.I.A.’s analytical work should be subjected to a federal prosecutor’s scrutiny.


We know, because it was bragged about at length in hagiographic portrayals in papers like the Washington Post, that John Brennan was the source of the conclusion that Putin directed the interference. We were even told that the determination of Putin’s involvement was too dangerous to publish in late 2016, because it would compromise Brennan’s magical Kremlin mole.

Now, suddenly, we’re treated to a series of stories that try to assert that the mole was removed either completely or in part because of Trump.

Maybe there’s an element of truth there. But it’s astonishing that none of the major news outlets bothered, even as an insincere gesture to convention, to address this story’s obvious counter-narrative.

If the mole was even that important, which I’m not convinced of – as McGovern told me this week, “They make stuff up all the time” – it seems more than possible we lost this “asset” because our intelligence chiefs felt it necessary to spend late 2016 and early 2017 spilling details about our capabilities in the news media.

This story wasn’t leaked to tell the public an important story about a lost source in the Kremlin, but more likely as damage control, to work the refs as investigators examine the origins of the election interference tale.


In 2017-2018, the likes of Brennan and Clapper were regularly feeding bombshell news stories to major papers and TV stations, usually as unnamed sources. The ostensible subject of these tales was usually Russian interference or collusion, but the subtext was a squalid power struggle between the enforcement bureaucracy and its loathed new executive, Trump.

After this “exfiltration story” broke, Esquire columnist Charlie Pierce, a colleague with whom I’ve sadly disagreed about this Russia business, wrote a poignant piece called “The Spies Are Acting as a Check on Our Elected Leaders. This Is Neither Healthy Nor Sustainable.”

In it, Charlie said something out loud that few have been willing to say out loud:

My guess is that the leak of this remarkable story came from somewhere in the bowels of the intelligence community…

The intelligence community is engaged in a cold war of information against the elected political leadership of the country, and a lot of us are finding ourselves on its side. This is neither healthy nor sustainable.


I personally don’t see myself as being on either side of this Cold War, but his point is true. He’s thinking about the country, but there’s the more immediate question of our business. A situation where the newspapers and airwaves are not for relaying facts but for firing sorties in an internecine power struggle really is unsustainable.

It won’t be long before audiences realize they’re not reading true news stories but what the Russians call versii, or “versions.” Whether it’s the pro-Trump wasteland of Fox or the Brennan-Clapper government-in-exile we see on MSNBC and CNN and in the Washington Post, the news has become two different nations, both intensely self-interested, neither honest. If this continues, it won’t be long before we’re filling overcoats and bird cages with things we used to read.


* Full disclosure: I wrote for Kommersant a few times in 2003-2004, in an unsuccessful effort to try to write humorously about American politics for Russians.

User avatar
Belligerent Savant
 
Posts: 5214
Joined: Mon Oct 05, 2009 11:58 pm
Location: North Atlantic.
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Suppression/Propaganda in Media

Postby alloneword » Sun Sep 15, 2019 11:01 am

coffin_dodger » Fri Aug 23, 2019 5:25 pm wrote:Thank you so much for the above video Griz, a truly compelling watch

Seconded... The segment on sigil use reminded me of this (from Chris Morris/Armando Iannucci):



...which back in 1994 looked outrageously over-blown, but today just looks a little muted and understated. :shrug:

-

moonofalabama highlighted a bit of (now) fairly standard BBC 'fairytale creation' (regarding Syria) the other day.

The two Sommerville videos show how the BBC works. First a politically wanted narrative is created. Scenes are then taken and cut into sequences that fit that narrative. The same or similar scenes can be used to create a different version of the same narrative or even a completely different one. Neither of those narratives needs to be anywhere near the realities on the ground.

Unfortunately many people fall for such cheap propaganda junk.
User avatar
alloneword
 
Posts: 902
Joined: Mon Jan 22, 2007 9:19 am
Location: UK
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Suppression/Propaganda in Media

Postby Elvis » Sun Sep 15, 2019 12:40 pm

The video posted by Grizzly on the first page, referred to above, has been deleted. Here's why:

YT OddReality antisemitism.jpg


Grizzly, did you watch the entire video before posting it? The video is full of good chuckles until the the last minute.

Consider YouTube user "OddReality" banned from the pages of RI.

Also banned will be anyone who persists in posting content claiming that we're all just being taken for a ride by the Jews.



You all can figure it out, vet your sources, it's not rocket surgery folks.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
User avatar
Elvis
 
Posts: 7411
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:24 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Next

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 43 guests