Tag: media

BBC boosts Ukraine’s falling morale by slandering Russia’s war dead

MI6’s BBC outlet is at it again. This time, in a disgusting effort to boost Ukraine’s flagging morale, they featured a story by their crack Russian unit explaining how Russian graveyards are full to the brim of soldiers who fell in Ukraine. As always with the MI6’s B team, it is the sort of misinformed guff that belongs in a badly edited student newspaper rather than in such a globally prominent propaganda outlet.

Or indeed in the website of Ukraine’s Ministry of Misinformation. If we first go to Ukraine’s site, we see that the Russkies are getting a right mauling, with some 442,880 soldiers dead up to April Fool’s Day, 2024. Although Wikipedia parrots those numbers by using the same tainted NATO sources, to put them in context, Wikipedia claim that the United States lost a relatively modest 58,281 dead during its genocide campaign in Vietnam, and the Watson Intstitute claims that the United States lost 7,057 troops in the Afghan and Iraqi campaigns, with a much higher number, 30,177, committing suicide.

Other things being equal then, the Russkies should be up in arms against their government over these deaths in Ukraine. But other things are not, of course, equal. First off, as a quick Google search shows us these numbers of Russian dead are part of a vociferous NATO echo chamber, we can see no need as to why this should be a major NATO news story today unless Russia is experiencing the turbulence the United States did during its Vietnamese cull or if the BBC has brought additional information to light, thus making it a story worthy of coverage today. Or, of course, as we suspect, that the BBC has once again been leaned on to put its shoulder to the NATO wheel.

That is certainly the impression we get from this Politico article, which claims that the morale of Ukraine’s Armed Forces is crumbling as their casualties exponentially mount. The pleas of Clown Prince Zelensky and the rest of Kiev’s circus for more arms, more sanctions and more Swiss bank accounts certainly seems to help counter BBC’s flagging line that Russia is on its knees. As do all the tiktok and Twitter videos of Ukrainian grandfathers and pregnant women being frog marched off to the front.

This is not to negate the BBC argument but to say that the Ukrainian war has got less hands on media coverage than perhaps any other since the Korean war. And, though much of that lack of direct coverage has been due to the use of long range drones and artillery rather than the preponderance of close hand to hand fighting, much more of it has been due to the way both High Commands are conducting their affairs.

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Bird Flu: Real Threat Or Profit-motivated Fearmongering?

Growing concerns about the potential for a devastating bird flu pandemic are driving increased media coverage, including claims that bird flu could be “100 times worse than Covid.”

But a closer examination suggests the level of alarm may be premature, and some argue that fearmongering is motivated by profit.

In recent weeks, cases of the H5N1 avian influenza virus — also known as “highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) A” — have been detected in wild birds, poultry, a variety of mammals including cats and dolphins, and a small number of humans.

The reporting has sparked fears that the virus could mutate to enable efficient transmission between people, according to news outlets like The New York Times and Daily Mail.

Top U.S. health officials like Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), say they are taking the situation “very seriously” and monitoring for signs of the virus mutating as it spreads to new animal reservoirs like cattle.

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Cruelty of Language: Leaked NY Times Memo Reveals Anti-Palestinian Bias of US Media

The New York Times coverage of the Israeli carnage in Gaza, like that of other mainstream US media, is a disgrace to journalism.

This assertion should not surprise anyone. US media is driven neither by facts nor morality, but by agendas, calculating and power-hungry. The humanity of 120 thousand dead and wounded Palestinians because of the Israeli genocide in Gaza is simply not part of that agenda.

In a report – based on a leaked memo from the New York Times – the Intercept found out that the so-called US newspaper of record has been feeding its journalists with frequently updated ‘guidelines’ on what words to use, or not use, when describing the horrific Israeli mass slaughter in the Gaza Strip, starting on October 7.

In fact, most of the words used in the paragraph above would not be fit to print in the NYT, according to its ‘guidelines’.

Shockingly, internationally recognized terms and phrases such as ‘genocide’, ‘occupied territory’, ‘ethnic cleansing’ and even ‘refugee camps’, were on the newspaper’s rejection list.

It gets even more cruel. “Words like ‘slaughter’, ‘massacre’ and ‘carnage’ often convey more emotion than information. Think hard before using them in our own voice,” according to the memo, leaked and verified by the Intercept and other independent media.

Though such language control is, according to the NYT, aimed at fairness for ‘all sides’, their application was almost entirely one-sided. For example, a previous Intercept report showed that the American newspaper had, between October 7 and November 14, mentioned the word ‘massacre’ 53 times when it referred to Israelis being killed by Palestinians and only once in reference to Palestinians being killed by Israel.

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NPR CEO calls First Amendment the ‘number one challenge’ in American journalism which makes it hard to crack down on ‘bad information’ and ‘influence peddlers

NPR’s new chief executive Katherine Maher called the First Amendment the ‘number one challenge’ in American journalism during a panel discussion.

Maher, 40, noted the First Amendment provides a ‘fairly robust protection of rights,’ making it ‘a little tricky to address some of the real challenges of where bad information comes from.’

These comments were made during an online panel discussion at the 360/Open Summit held by the Atlantic Council in 2021. 

The clip went viral after whistleblower editor Uri Berliner was suspended for speaking out about the outlet’s progressive bias the last week.

Berliner announced his resignation on Wednesday, stating, ‘I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems I cite in my Free Press essay.’

‘The number one challenge that we see here is, of course, the First Amendment in the United States,’ Maher said at the panel hosted by the Atlantic Council’s research lab, where she served as a nonresident senior fellow. 

According to the organization’s release, she discussed fighting censorship, addressing diversity and building trust based on her experience as the former CEO of Wikimedia, which owns Wikipedia. 

The clip has now gone viral on X, with Elon Musk reposting and saying, ‘This keeps getting crazier! The head of NPR hates the Constitution of the USA.’

Maher recently made national headlines after former NPR editor Berliner penned an open essay for The Free Press, where he slammed the outlet for being made up almost entirely of Democrats which he argued ‘lost America’s trust.’ 

Berliner claimed the publicly funded broadcaster became an activist organization obsessed with pushing progressive ideals.   

In response to the 25-year NPR veteran’s article, the network suspended him for five days for violating its policy of working or reporting for another outlet without permission, starting Friday. 

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New NPR CEO Gave Ted Talk Asserting “Truth” is a “Distraction”

New NPR CEO Katherine Maher gave a Ted Talk during which she asserted that “truth” is a “distraction” which is “getting in the way of getting things done.”

Calls are growing for NPR to have its government funding withdrawn after a series of tweets by Maher were uncovered in which she supported far-left causes, including endorsing racial reparations and making claims that the planet is “burning.”

But the content of the Ted Talk she gave is raising even more eyebrows.

Maher ludicrously suggested during the speech that far-left Wikipedia had a model “which actually works really well” in determining “what the truth really is.”

Acknowledging that Wikipedia writers are “not focused on the truth, they’re focused on something else, which is the best of what we can know right now,” Maher suggested the “truth” was not a priority.

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LEAKED NYT GAZA MEMO TELLS JOURNALISTS TO AVOID WORDS “GENOCIDE,” “ETHNIC CLEANSING,” AND “OCCUPIED TERRITORY”

THE NEW YORK TIMES instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept.

The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians expelled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.

The memo — written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies — “offers guidance about some terms and other issues we have grappled with since the start of the conflict in October.”

While the document is presented as an outline for maintaining objective journalistic principles in reporting on the Gaza war, several Times staffers told The Intercept that some of its contents show evidence of the paper’s deference to Israeli narratives.

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“This Person Is A Crazy Racist”: New NPR CEO Exposed As Woke Activist

Last week, veteran NPR reporter Uri Berliner – a longtime ‘Subaru driving’ lefty who was raised by a ‘lesbian peace activist mother’ – wrote a scathing report accusing the network of overwhelming bias.

Introspection was the last thing on NPR’s mind, however, as new CEO Katherine Maher chastised Berliner as “profoundly disrespectful, hateful, and demeaning” to his colleagues for calling out political bias.

As Jonathan Turley notes:

In a memo Friday, Maher told the staff that Berliner attacked not only “the quality of our editorial process and the integrity of our journalists” but “our people on the basis of who we are.”

…

Maher’s response was hardly surprising. She was a controversial hire at NPR. Many had hoped that NPR would seek a CEO who could steer the company away from its partisan and activistic trend. The prospect could have brought moderates and conservatives back into NPR’s listening audience. Maher, however, was part of that trend.

This should come as no surprise given Maher’s history as a complete lunatic who spews woke diatribes on X – calling herself “someone with cis white mobility privilege” and other nonsense.

In response to journalist Chris Rufo pointing this out, Elon Musk replied that she’s a “crazy racist!”

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US Helps Pro-Ukraine Media Run A Fog Machine Of War

Ukraine’s American-backed fight against Russia is being waged not only in the blood-soaked trenches of the Donbas region but also on what military planners call the cognitive battlefield – to win hearts and minds.

A sprawling constellation of media outlets organized with substantial funding and direction from the U.S. government has not just worked to counter Russian propaganda but has supported strong censorship laws and shutdowns of dissident outlets, disseminated disinformation of its own, and sought to silence critics of the war, including many American citizens.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs, commentator Tucker Carlson, journalist Glenn Greenwald, and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer are among the critics on both the left and the right who have been cast as part of a “network of Russian propaganda.”

But the figures targeted by the Ukrainian watchdog groups are hardly Kremlin agents. They simply have forcefully criticized dominant narratives about the war.

Sachs is a highly respected international development expert who has angered Ukrainian officials over his repeated calls for a diplomatic solution to the current military conflict. Last November, he gave a speech at the United Nations calling for a negotiated peace.

Mearsheimer has written extensively on international relations and is a skeptic of NATO expansion. He predicted that Western efforts to militarize Ukraine would lead to a Russian invasion.

Greenwald is a Pulitzer Prize-winning independent journalist who has criticized not just war coverage but media dynamics that suppress voices that run counter to U.S. narratives.

“What they mean when they demand censorship of ‘pro-Russia propaganda’ is anything that questions the US/EU role in the Ukraine war or who dissents from their narratives,” Greenwald has observed.

There’s no evidence of Kremlin influence over their viewpoints, but their comments alone are enough for a network of U.S.-backed Ukrainian media groups to tarnish these experts as Russian propagandists.  

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Google Begins Blocking News From California Outlets Over State Bill

Google has temporarily blocked access to California-based news outlets for some state residents, as the search giant escalates its battle with the state over a landmark bill which would force tech giants to pay online publishers for their content.

In doing so, the company has revived a political tactic used repeatedly by the tech industry to try and derail similar legislation in places like Canada and Australia which require online platforms to pay outlets for articles featured on their websites, Politico reports.

“We have long said that this is the wrong approach to supporting journalism,” said Google’s VP for global news partnership, Jaffer Zaidi, in a Friday blog post. According to Zaidi, the bill could “result in significant changes to the services we can offer Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers.”

Sacramento is hosting the latest round of a global fight over the journalism industry’s future in the digital age, and California’s battle has taken on additional resonance because the state is home to tech titans. Advocates for such legislation argue companies like Google and Meta have helped decimate already flagging newsroom revenues through their control over digital advertising, and outlets deserve compensation for content that users may see on their platforms for free.

The companies counter that these laws could stifle vital sources of information — and they’ve fought back by attempting to preview what they say that would look like. -Politico

In Canada, Google similarly threatened to block content before reaching a deal with the government last November, three weeks before the ‘Online News Act’ came into effect. The company agreed to make annual payments to news outlets in the range of $100 million.

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Former CBS Reporter Says Network Seized Her Confidential Files

Former CBS reporter Catherine Herridge said on April 11 that her former employer seized some of her files, including files containing confidential information.

Ms. Herridge told a U.S. House of Representatives panel in Washington that she was informed in a Zoom call that she was being terminated.

“I was locked out of my emails, and I was locked out of the office,” she said. “CBS News seized hundreds of pages of my reporting files, including confidential source information.”

Ms. Herridge said that was not normal, describing it as “an attack on investigative journalism.” She said that the move “crossed a red line” that “should never be crossed by any media organization.” Mary Cavallaro, an official with the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists union, said she could not recall another instance in which a reporter’s files were seized.

A CBS spokesperson previously told The Epoch Times that the network had her files but had not gone through them. “We have respected her request to not go through the files, and out of our concern for confidential sources, the office she occupied has remained secure since her departure,” the spokesperson said.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, which was holding the hearing, said that CBS “took unprecedented actions” regarding her belongings.

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