Tag: mainstream media

NYT’s Morning Newsletter Blames Everyone but Israel for Israeli Crimes

With over 17 million subscribers, the Morning, the New York Times’ flagship newsletter, is by far the most popular newsletter in the English-speaking world. (It has almost three times as many subscribers as the next most popular newsletter.)

Since October 7, as Israel has waged an unprecedented war on Palestinian children, journalists, hospitals and schools, the New York Times’ highly influential newsletter has bent over backwards to blame everyone but Israel for the carnage.

Waging a legitimate war

According to the Morning—led by head writer David Leonhardt—Israel’s war on Gaza is a targeted operation designed to eliminate Hamas. The Morning propagates this narrative despite well-documented declarations of collective punishment and even genocidal intent by high-ranking Israeli officials—a tendency that South Africa has forcefully documented in their case before the ICJ (UN, 12/29/23). Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s comments on October 12, 2023, are typical: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved.”

This sentiment has been echoed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, multiple cabinet-level ministers and senior military officials. Speaking from a devastated northern Gaza, one top Israeli army official said (UN, 12/29/23): “Whoever returns here, if they return here after, will find scorched earth. No houses, no agriculture, no nothing. They have no future.”

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Fact Check: George Stephanopoulos Lies About Trump and ‘Rape’

CLAIM: ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos claimed that former President Donald was “found liable for rape by a jury.”

VERDICT: FALSE. A jury in New York found that Trump was not liable for rape in a lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll.

Stephanopoulos repeatedly claimed, as he interviewed Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), that Trump had been found “liable” for “rape.” In fact, he was found not to be liable; he was found liable for “sexual abuse” and, later for defamation. There are problems with both of those verdicts, but even if Trump were liable (in a civil sense, not a criminal one, as Mace noted), the fact is that he was never found liable for rape. And it borders on defamation for Stephanopoulos to claim otherwise.

As Breitbart News reported last May:

A jury in New York found former President Donald Trump liable Tuesday for sexual abuse and battery of writer E. Jean Carroll three decades ago, though not liable for rape, and awarded $5 million in civil damages against him.

The jury also found Trump defamed Ms. Carroll in his reactions to her lawsuit, which was encouraged by anti-Trump lawyer George Conway and backed by Democrat mega-donor Reid Hoffman, an associate of the late convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.

It is true that Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in the case said that Trump was found to have “raped” Carroll in the colloquial sense. But the judge’s claim was the subject of widespread criticism, and the jury specifically found Trump not liable.

It was Stephanopoulos who used the word “jury,” which makes his statement 100% false, not even defensible as a colloquial use of the term “rape” (as an apparent substitute for “sexual abuse”).

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Blatant propaganda: Green billionaires are paying scriptwriters to promote CLIMATE ALARMISM in TV shows and movies

Green billionaires appear to be bankrolling Hollywood writers to push climate alarmism in film and television scripts.

According to Watts Up With That, these green billionaires are using the Los Angeles-based Good Energy for this climate brainwashing. The group has reportedly told writers that showing anger, depression, grief or other emotion in relation to the climate crisis, “can only make characters more relatable.” To further push this climate alarmism to the media-consuming masses, it has published a so-called playbook to incorporate these narratives into movies and TV shows.

Good Energy’s efforts to push climate alarmism in Hollywood wouldn’t be possible without billionaire backing. The article aptly named these backers – Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Sierra Club, and the Climate Emergency Fund (CEF). The CEF incidentally bankrolls activists from Just Stop Oil, who have gained notoriety for defacing artworks with orange paint and blocking roads.

While Good Energy was founded in 2019, its influence seems to be growing within the West Coast’s film industry – with Rolling Stone magazine publishing a feature on the group. According to the magazine, the group is “dedicated” to ensuring that 50 percent of contemporary TV shows and films acknowledges “climate change” within three years.

One of its “standout” projects was the “Extrapolations” series on Apple TV+, which was directed by Scott Z. Burns and starred Meryl Streep. The show, which was said to be the first mainstream show centered entirely around climate, explored how the planet’s “changing climate” will affect family, work, faith and survival.

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US Media and Factcheckers Fail to Note Israel’s Refutation of ‘Beheaded Babies’ Stories

In late November, the Washington Post (11/22/23) factchecked President Joe Biden’s repeated claims that babies had been beheaded during Hamas’s October 7 attack in Israel.

Biden’s remarks during a November 15 news conference triggered the factcheck:

Hamas has already said publicly that they plan on attacking Israel again, like they did before, to where they were cutting babies’ heads off to burning women and children alive.

Despite acknowledging a lack of confirmation of such atrocities, the Post stopped short of branding Biden’s statements false, and declined to dole out any of its iconic Pinocchios.

“It’s too soon in the Israel/Gaza war to make a definitive assessment,” Post Factchecker Glenn Kessler wrote, noting that even the most basic facts weren’t yet known.

“The Israeli prime minister’s office has said about 1,200 people were killed on October 7, down from an initial estimate of 1,400,” he said, “but it’s unclear how many were civilians or soldiers.”

That statement isn’t true. While the exact number killed amid the extreme violence and chaos of October 7 may never be finalized, an authoritative count of civilian deaths—as well as data that definitively refutes claims babies were beheaded—was available to anyone with access to the internet little more than a month after the attack.

That’s when Bituah Leumi, or National Insurance Institute, Israel’s social security agency, posted a Hebrew-language website (11/9/23) with the name, gender and age of every identified civilian victim and where each had been attacked.

Two days later Bituah Leumi (also transliterated as Bituach Leumi) posted an English-language news release (11/11/23) publicizing the website as a memorial to the civilian victims of the “Iron Swords” war—Israel’s name for Hamas’s attack and Israel Defense Forces’ response. (The news release refers to “695 identified war casualties,” but there are no wounded; all the victims are listed as “killed.”)

The journalistic importance of the memorial website was shown less than a month later, when Haaretz (12/4/23), Israel’s oldest newspaper, used the social security agency’s data to debunk some of the most sensational atrocities blamed on Hamas.

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Western media concocts ‘evidence’ UN report on Oct 7 sex crimes failed to deliver

Western media promoted a UN report as proof Hamas sexually assaulted Israelis. Yet the report’s authors admitted they couldn’t locate a single victim, suggested Israeli officials staged a rape scene, and denounced “inaccurate forensic interpretations.”

On March 4, the United Nations released a report into sexual violence which has supposedly taken place amid the Israeli war on Gaza. The report was immediately celebrated in mainstream media outlets as proof of what scores of Israel lobbyists and journalists under their sway have insisted for months (despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary): that Hamas forces engaged in a systematic campaign of rape during their attack on Israel on October 7.

There was just one problem. The report’s authors flatly contradicted the idea that any evidence existed to prove a campaign of rape by Hamas.

Many legacy media outlets papered over this inconvenient fact with a few clever tweaks of language. The Associated Press, for example, repackaged claims of rape at Kibbutz Be’eri — which the UN report dismissed as “unfounded” — as “allegations of rape that could not yet be verified.” 

The AP wasn’t the only outlet to indulge in such creative writing. A March 5 New York Times headline insisted the UN report had uncovered the sought-after “Evidence of Sexual Assault in Hamas-Led Attack on Israel.”

But following a social media post by The Grayzone’s editor-in-chief, Max Blumenthal, the Times quietly amended its headline to read: “UN Team Finds Grounds to Support Reports of Sexual Violence in Hamas Attack.”

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Media Claims “Right Wing Activists” Got Doritos’ Trans Brand Ambassador Fired

Oily GMO tortilla chip brand Doritos has fired a non-binary transgender ‘brand ambassador’ who previously posted horrible tweets, some of which seemed to express a desire to carry out sexual abuse on children, prompting some legacy media outlets to claim that “right wing activists” were behind the backlash.

As we highlighted last week, the ‘transgender artist’ Samantha Hudson, formally known as Iván González Ranedo, was given the role for Doritos in Spain and featured in sponsored programming.

It quickly emerged that Hudson holds some vile views in general, including apparent hatred for female victims of sexual abuse, and also previously posted crazy statements to social media wishing to anally rape a 12-year-old girl.

Following obvious backlash, Doritos terminated the agreement with the person, noting in a statement to NBC News “We [Doritos Spain] recently created a content series with Samantha Hudson, a local influencer. After the campaign started, we were made aware of Samantha’s deleted Tweets from around 2015.”

“We have ended the relationship and stopped all related campaign activity due to the comments,” the statement continues.

While the pedophilic tweets were not specifically mentioned, the statement also said “We strongly condemn words or actions that promote violence or sexism of any kind.”

Hudson claimed Wednesday that the tweets were all jokes and that they were taken out of context.

The posts had previously surfaced in 2021, and Hudson claimed “I didn’t even remember having written such atrocities. At that time At that time I dedicated myself to saying stupid things, the heavier the better, because I believed that ‘dark humor’ was fun. Logically, I don’t think that way anymore.”

‘Joke’ or not, this person saying they wish to sexually abuse children is certainly not a good look for Doritos or its parent company PepsiCo.

Reporting on the development, however, some news outlets including NBC News and the BBC have claimed that the backlash against Hudson and Doritos was “led by right wing activists.”

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BBC Tries To Frame AI Parody Images as a “Disinformation” Scoop

The BBC used to produce some of the best comedy series – but now many of the “comedians” seem to have moved to the news division.

To make things more perplexing, they appear not to – or not want to – understand humor. Now they (pretend?) not to understand content produced by obviously parody accounts, and (pretend?) to be taking them seriously.

So now, critically minded observers are not laughing with the BBC, but at them, especially when the BBC comes out with a deceptive podcast episode (based on parody content, falsely framed as “serious news).

The target: the highly likely US presidential candidate Donald Trump.

It’s one thing to not like Trump – but is it worth, so to speak, “burning your own house down?” In this case, what remains of BBC’s once commanding credibility?

And yet the situation is actually no laughing matter, in terms of free speech and free press. Unsatisfied with turning out questionable, in terms of bias, and just clickbaity content these last years, the BBC News would clearly like to establish itself as an arbiter of truth for other media to follow. Absurd, or what?

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MSNBC Cuts Off Trump Victory Speech; Claims It’s “Irresponsible” To Broadcast

MSNBC’s salty anchor Rachel Maddow once again cut away from Donald Trump giving a victory speech after winning 15 of the Super Tuesday states, reasoning that it is “irresponsible to allow” Trump to “knowingly lie.”

As Trump was speaking, Maddow interjected “Yeeeaaaah okay,” while one of the other clowns laughed in the background.

The anchor then stated, “I will say it is a decision that we revisit constantly in terms of the balance between allowing somebody to knowingly lie on your air about things they have lied about before and you can predict they are going to lie about, so therefore, it is irresponsible to allow them to do that.”

Maddow continued, “It is a balance between knowing that that is irresponsible to broadcast and also knowing that as the de facto soon to be de facto nominee of the Republican party, this is not only the man who is likely to be the Republican candidate for president, but this is the way he is running.”

MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle chimed in “Well here is how to balance it. We fact check the hell out of him.”

“Yes, and we do that after the fact,” Maddow responded, adding “That is the best remedy that we’ve got. It does not fix the fact we broadcast it.”

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WORTHY VS. UNWORTHY VICTIMS: STUDY REVEALS MEDIA’S SELECTIVE COVERAGE OF NAVALNY AND LIRA

Anew MintPress News study of media coverage of the deaths of American journalist and commentator Gonzalo Lira and Russian political leader Alexey Navalny has found that the establishment U.S. press overwhelmingly ignored the former and focussed on the latter. The New York Times, Washington Post, ABC News, Fox News and CNN collectively ran 731 segments on Navalny between February 16 and February 22, compared to just one on Lira since his death on January 12, perhaps because one was a Western-backed figure who died at the hands of an official enemy state, while the other was a pro-Russian voice who met their end at the hands of the Ukrainian government.

ROUND-THE-CLOCK COVERAGE VS RADIO SILENCE

MintPress conducted a quantitative analysis of the media coverage of two political figures who recently died in prison: Alexey Navalny and Gonzalo Lira. Both were controversial characters and critics of the governments that imprisoned them. Both died under suspicious circumstances (their families both maintain they were effectively murdered). And both died in the past six weeks, Navalny in February and Lira in January. A crucial difference in their stories, however, is that Navalny perished in an Arctic penal colony after being arrested in Russia (an enemy state), while Lira’s life ended in a Ukrainian prison, abandoned by the pro-Kiev government in Washington, D.C.

The study compared the coverage of Navalny and Lira’s death in five leading outlets: the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC News, Fox News, and CNN. These outlets were chosen for their reach and influence and, together, could be said to reasonably represent the corporate media spectrum as a whole. The data was compiled using the Dow Jones Factiva news database and searches on the websites of the news organizations. This study takes no position on the matter of Navalny, Lira, or the Russia-Ukraine war.

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MSNBC Hosts Blast ‘White Rural Voters’ As Conspiracy-Driven ‘Threats To Democracy’

Apair of MSNBC panelists derided “white rural voters” as ignorant, conspiracy-driven rubes who present a “threat to democracy.”

Journalist Paul Waldman and University of Maryland professor Thomas Schaller went on MSNBC Monday to promote their new book, “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy” with “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski.

“We lay out the four-fold interconnected threat that white rural voters pose to the country,” said Schaller. “They’re the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay geodemographic group in the country.”

“Second, they’re the most conspiracist group,” Schaller continued. “QAnon support and subscribers, election denialism, Covid denialism and scientific skepticism, Obama birtherism.”

“Third, anti-democratic sentiments,” Schaller added. “They don’t believe in an independent press, free speech. They’re most likely to say the president should be able to act unilaterally without any checks from Congress or the courts or the bureaucracy. They’re also the most strongly white nationalist and white Christian nationalist.”

Schaller kept going. “Fourth,” he said, “they are most likely to excuse or justify violence as an acceptable alternative to peaceful public discourse.”

“You mentioned a lot of negative factors about this demographic,” Brzezinski responded.

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