Tag: mainstream media

Reporting of the RAF Fairford Arrests Blows the Idea of a ‘Free Press’ Out of the Water

It’s easy to forget that the western media – the so-called “free press” – likes to distinguish itself from media in authoritarian regimes on the basis that, unlike them, it asks critical questions of the powerful, reports facts objectively, and formulates its analyses dispassionately.

They do propaganda, we do news – or so the western media argues.

The feverish coverage since five men were arrested in the early hours of Sunday morning close to RAF Fairford in the UK is blowing that claim all too obviously out of the water.

Here are the known facts so far.

Three white vans, bearing the logo of a genuine fuel transit company, were spotted by a local farmer on the road outside her property as she returned from a party. Police arrived promptly and arrested the men, who were all British nationals in their twenties.

On Tuesday, it emerged that one of the arrested men actually called the police earlier – seemingly the reason officers were on the scene so quickly.

Although the men were initially arrested on explosives charges, no “viable” explosives were found. Although they were arrested on terrorism charges, which allow for 14 days of detention, they were released on bail under normal criminal laws in less than two days.

It has also emerged that the men had several empty “barrels” in their vans, plus one that contained what police described disturbingly as an “accelerant”.

Actually, that was simply a reference to petrol. The stuff that goes into vehicles to make them accelerate.

Keep reading

BBC removes article claiming bare nails trend perpetuates ‘White supremacist’ beauty standards

The BBC removed an article that suggested the trend of leaving fingernails unpainted could perpetuate “White supremacist” beauty standards after it drew backlash Saturday.

The original article, “How the bare nails trend became a class issue,” explored the beauty trend of women preferring clear and polished “naked” nails over the more stylish nail designs over the past few years. 

The BBC reported that while some consider this trend part of the ever-shifting standards in fashion, critics suggested the image said “something about class” and could potentially stigmatize Black, Latino and Asian communities that popularized heavily designed nails.

“That trend really promotes blankness and this kind of sameness and erasure of culture and identity that is so important to [B]lack and [B]rown communities,” beauty journalist Kristina Rodulfo told the BBC.

Keep reading

UNBELIEVABLE: Fox News Hires Disgraced Cuomo Aide Who Covered Up COVID Nursing Home Deaths to Co-Host New Podcast

Fox News just handed a contributor contract and a co-host chair on a brand-new podcast to the woman who sat at Andrew Cuomo’s right hand while New York shoved COVID-positive patients into nursing homes and then hid the body count.

According to a Fox News Media press release, Melissa DeRosa is now a “newly named FOX News contributor.” She will appear on the premiere of the network’s new all-female roundtable podcast, the Girls, which debuts October 1.

The first episode features Rachel Campos-Duffy, Harris Faulkner, Kat Timpf, former ESPN host Samantha Ponder, and DeRosa.

Fox’s own announcement describes her as a “veteran democratic strategist” who “previously held several senior roles in former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration, becoming the first woman to serve as secretary to the governor.” That is a very polite way of saying she was Cuomo’s gatekeeper during the deadliest nursing-home policy in America.

In February 2021, The Gateway Pundit reported the leak that blew the cover off the operation. In a piece titled “BOMBSHELL: Top NY Official Admits Cuomo Hid Nursing Home Data So Feds Wouldn’t Find Out,” we detailed DeRosa’s remarks on a private conference call with New York Democratic lawmakers.

According to the New York Post, which first published the audio, DeRosa apologized to those Democrats for withholding the state’s nursing-home death tally. She said the administration “froze” after then-President Donald Trump “turns this into a giant political football.”

Her words, as reported by the Post:

“He starts tweeting that we killed everyone in nursing homes. He starts going after [New Jersey Gov. Phil] Murphy, starts going after [California Gov. Gavin] Newsom, starts going after [Michigan Gov.] Gretchen Whitmer.”

Then came the part that should have ended her media career:

“And basically, we froze. Because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation.”

That is not a “reporting lag.” That is a senior state official admitting, on tape, that the Cuomo shop sat on the death numbers because they were afraid the Trump Justice Department would use the truth against them.

Keep reading

Delaware Judge Orders Fox Corp. to Dump Hundreds of Files on Murdoch, Deleted Texts, Phone Hacking, and the Dominion Settlement In Massive Shareholder Lawsuit

A Delaware judge has just ordered Fox Corporation to hand over a mountain of internal records in a long-running shareholder lawsuit aimed at Rupert Murdoch, his son Lachlan, and other Fox directors. The files cover phone hacking, board minutes, emails, and the deletion of Rupert Murdoch’s text messages.

The order landed last week from Vice Chancellor Bonnie David. Fox fought to keep the material sealed. The judge sided with the plaintiffs across the board.

According to NPR, the haul includes roughly 700 documents that mention “phone hacking,” years of Fox board meeting minutes, emails from former Ford CEO and longtime Fox director Jacques Nasser’s Ford accounts, and a list of every email address ever used by Nasser or Rupert Murdoch.

Shareholders’ lawyers will also get sealed records from the still-pending Smartmatic case that deal with what the court calls Murdoch’s “spoliation” of records, legal speak for wiping texts.

The case was filed about three years ago by five New York City public-employee pension funds and Oregon’s public employee retirement system.

Those are Democrat-run, taxpayer-backed institutions using Delaware corporate law to try to pin Fox’s legal bills on the Murdochs personally.

The Associated Press reported earlier that the same funds accuse Murdoch and other Fox leaders of ignoring “red flags” after 2020.

Keep reading

LAUGHABLE: Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki Lectures About the Importance of Media ‘Holding Power to Account’ 

Joe Biden’s White House press secretary Jen Psaki is tootin’ mad about Trump’s treatment of the press. She recently lectured from the perch of her laptop, insisting that the media is there to ‘hold power to account.’

Let’s ignore, for the moment, that Psaki was negotiating a job in media while she was still press secretary and taking questions from that same media. Let’s overlook the fact that she works for the most partisan, far left network in the country.

When has she ever applied this philosophy of holding power to account with a Democrat? It’s ridiculous.

In the video below, she says:

“It’s about Trump and the White House wanting to shape who the media are, who get to cover them, and make it fully sycophants.

They want outlets to write complementary pieces about them. That’s not what the media or the press corps does.

The press is there to question, they’re there to test, they’re there to hold power to account.”

Keep reading

Sunny Hostin Lied About Being Holdout Juror Who Kept Cannibal Out of Prison

Sunny Hostin bragged on Tuesday’s episode of The View that she was the lone holdout who kept Daniel Rakowitz, the Butcher of Tompkins Square Park, out of prison, but it appears that she lied.

People who sat in that room and the papers that quoted them in 1991 describe an unemployed man who liked the $15 a day and the free meals as the lone holdout in the case.

The Post reports:

But 35 years ago, jurors told The Post, Newsday, the Daily News and the Associated Press that the actual holdout was an unemployed man who wanted to keep the trial going so he could continue getting paid by the court for his civic duty.

A law enforcement source from the time also told The Post this week that the holdout was a man.

“He was unemployed and liked the $15 a day and the three free meals,” juror Valerie Holmes told Newsday in the aftermath of the verdict.

“He liked that we were arguing on and on.”

Holmes reiterated the claim to The Post and The Daily News, describing the holdout as being “very determined” and “manipulative” man determined to get his way.

“From day one, this particular person was determined that the jury was going to find Rakowitz not guilty by reason of mental disease,” jury forewoman Lois Markle told the AP at the time.

Meanwhile, Hostin was quoted as a juror on the case in multiple news clips at the time — but she did not identify herself as the holdout, nor did any of the fellow jurors who talked to the press after the trial.

In a statement to Newsday at the time, under her legal name Asunción Cummings, Hostin also contradicted her current claim.

“We had to compromise. But it is obvious to me he butchered the body and he literally got away with murder. He attempted to commit the perfect crime,” Hostin told the paper.

Hostin claimed she was the holdout during a discussion on The View about the Lindsay Clancy mistrial in Massachusetts, where one juror refused an insanity verdict in the case of the mother who brutally strangled her three children to death.

Hostin said she wanted Clancy to be found not guilty by reason of insanity.

“The reason I felt so strongly about this holdout juror is because I was a holdout juror in the Daniel Rakowitz case. I don’t know if people remember it, the Butcher of Tompkins Square Park,” Hostin said.

Joy Behar asked, “The guy who ate the victims?”

Alyssa Farah Griffin said, “You got this guy off?!”

“That’s how much I believe in the insanity defense. He fed her body parts to the unhoused,” Hostin explained.

“All that being said, it was so clear to me in the jury room. We were sequestered for nine days. One juror threw a chair at me, they were so angry with me. But, one by one, I picked them off. I said, ‘What about this? What about that?’ We ended up, all 12, unanimously voting that he was not criminally responsible on reason of insanity. He is still in a mental institution being treated. That’s a different type of prison, and he’s being treated because he’s sick.”

Keep reading

Trump Responds to “Ford’s Theater Hoax” After MS Now Claims Trump Planning to Attach Name to Ford’s Theater

President Trump on Wednesday responded to reports that he seeks to affix his own name to Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC, the site of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. 

Trump called the story, first published by MS Now, “a ridiculous lie.”

Notably, MS Now is one of the three outlets that Trump banned from the White House last week, citing the “FICTION and LIES” they report.

MS Now reported on Tuesday,

As President Donald Trump fights to rename the Kennedy Center after himself, administration officials are circulating a list of government sites that could have his name affixed to them in some way, according to people familiar with the effort.

One landmark that has emerged in the discussions among administration officials has raised eyebrows: Ford’s Theatre, the playhouse where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.

It is unclear how seriously the theater is being considered or how the administration would attach Trump’s name to it. One administration official said the idea had been discussed, but they didn’t know where it stood. The prospect sparked a flurry of discussion over the past week among people responsible for the historic site.

The discussions underscore how much of a priority honoring the president has become inside parts of the Trump administration — even as the Iran war nears its eighth month, diesel prices hit an all-time high, the midterm elections approach in six weeks and most Americans disapprove of the president’s job performance.

Trump responded to the report on Wednesday, calling it “FAKE NEWS” and blasting the Democrats and leftist journalists as “Degenerates and Losers who make up lie after lie.”

“Who would possibly want a name on such a tragic place? The Dumocrats suffer from serious Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Trump said.

Keep reading

Same Trump-Appointed DC Judge Who Saved Jim Acosta Just ORDERED the White House to Hand Hard Passes Back to Fake News CNN, MS NOW, and Politico

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has ordered the Trump administration to restore White House access for journalists from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, ruling that President Donald Trump’s ban on the outlets was likely unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee from 2017 and the same judge who forced the White House to give CNN’s Jim Acosta his pass back in 2018, signed a Temporary Restraining Order in the early hours of Thursday morning.

The outlets only had to post a laughable $1 bond.

The order directs administration officials, excluding President Trump personally, and those acting with them to return and reinstate the affected passes. The order covers credentials revoked on or about September 18.

The Gateway Pundit reported on Wednesday that Judge Kelly appeared skeptical during a hearing on Trump’s media ban.

A lawyer for the outlets accused the Trump Administration of banning the news organizations “completely out of the blue” and urged the judge to immediately restore their access.

“I think it is fair to say that process … wasn’t followed here, talking about predeprivation process,” Judge Kelly said, according to CNBC.

Keep reading

This is Why CNN is Fake News – Appalling

CNN is absolutely no longer news, it is a propaganda organization for war. Not a single word has been fact-checked—not even by simply Googling the facts. This nonsense that Russia is trying to take all of Ukraine and that the Ukrainian people are fighting for their freedom is so outrageous that it amounts to plain propaganda, which only leads to war. There is no rational discussion here. There is no solution but war, because no matter what, Europe will simply NEVER accept peace with Russia, and people are too stupid to realize that this Finnish politician cannot possibly be this stupid and uninformed.

Since the AfD won two elections and the CDU was below 5%, so they did not even get a seat, Brussels and NATO are in a state of panic. They are pushing for all-out war because they fear that if the AfD takes Germany, they are anti-war and anti-Brussels. The only way to retain power is to start a war as soon as possible.

The Ukrainian people want an election. Zelensky lied and promised peace, and has been doing nothing but carrying out his personal hatred of Russians. Reliable sources from Ukraine report that (1) the factories are being run by women since men are sent to the front line, and (2) they are actually handcuffing men in transport to the front line to prevent them from fleeing. My discussions with members of Congress know that Zelensky is the problem and that Putin has agreed to peace.

Keep reading

Five Years Later, Media Blame Afghans for US-Engineered Disaster 

Last month marked five years since the US withdrew its military forces from Afghanistan and the Taliban returned to power. The US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, and the resultant war, directly killed more than 176,000 Afghan people, including more than 46,000 civilians. Yet major US media outlets have covered the anniversary by muddying the US’s role in the country’s hardships—writing as though Afghanistan’s history began in August 2021.

A CNN article (8/15/26) by Kara Fox offered an egregious bit of historical revisionism:

In the five years since the chaotic US withdrawal from Kabul and the Taliban’s return to power, Afghanistan has become home to one of the world’s worst human rights and humanitarian emergencies.

Afghanistan hasn’t “become” a human rights and humanitarian emergency “since” the US troop withdrawal. It was a disaster during—and in no small part because of—the US war and occupation.

For instance, in November 2019, towards the end of the US occupation, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) estimated that approximately 2.44 million Afghan were in an “emergency situation” in terms of food insecurity. The next year, Amnesty International noted that four million Afghans were internally displaced and facing widespread problems of “inadequate housing, food insecurity [and] insufficient access to sanitation.”

Both years, the International Rescue Committee put Afghanistan in its top 10 “crises the world should be watching.” Evidently such conditions don’t meet CNN’s threshold for a “humanitarian emergency.”

In terms of rights, a 2019 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report documented Afghan strike forces that were “recruited, trained, equipped and overseen by the CIA” committing

serious abuses between late 2017 and mid-2019. They are illustrative of a larger pattern of serious laws-of-war violations—some amounting to war crimes—that extends to all provinces in Afghanistan where these paramilitary forces operate with impunity.

In 2020, HRW would go on to criticize the US-installed Afghan government for “fail[ing] to prosecute senior officials responsible for sexual assault, torture and killing civilians.” One can debate what constitutes a human rights “emergency,” but it’s clear that rights violations were a defining feature of the US occupation.

Keep reading