Tag: media

Media Concern Trolling About Afghanistan Withdrawal Again

“Concerns mount that US withdrawal from Afghanistan could risk progress on women’s rights,” blares a new headline from CNN.

“Concerns are mounting from bipartisan US lawmakers and Afghan women’s rights activists that the hard-won gains for women and civil society in Afghanistan could be lost if the United States makes a precipitous withdrawal from the country,” CNN tells us.

What follows is yet another concern-trolling empire blog about why US troops need to stay in Afghanistan, joining recent others geared toward the same end like this CNN report about how the US military will open itself up to “costly litigation” if it withdraws now because it signed defense industry contracts into 2023, and this one by The New York Times about a US intelligence report urgently warning that a withdrawal from Afghanistan could lead to the nation being controlled by the people who live there.

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How Bellingcat Launders National Security State Talking Points into the Press

Investigative site Bellingcat is the toast of the popular press. In the past month alone, it has been described as “an intelligence agency for the people” (ABC Australia), a “transparent” and “innovative” (New Yorker) “independent news collective,” “transforming investigative journalism” (Big Think), and an unequivocal “force for good” (South China Morning Post). Indeed, outside of a few alternative news sites, it is very hard to hear a negative word against Bellingcat, such is the gushing praise for the outlet founded in 2014.

This is troubling, because the evidence compiled in this investigation suggests Bellingcat is far from independent and neutral, as it is funded by Western governments, staffed with former military and state intelligence officers, repeats official narratives against enemy states, and serves as a key part in what could be called a “spook to Bellingcat to corporate media propaganda pipeline,” presenting Western government narratives as independent research.

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DISINFO: USA Today Quotes A Consultant To The Chinese Communist Party To ‘Debunk’ Wuhan Lab Theory.

An expert promoted by U.S. corporate media to discredit Dr. Robert Redfield’s assertion that COVID-19 “escaped” from a Chinese lab has extensive ties to the Chinese Communist Party, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.

Dr. Ian Lipkin was quoted by outlets including CBS and USA Today as a means by which to “debunk” Dr. Redfield’s explosive claim linking the virus to a Chinese lab.

“We should be moving away from finger-pointing,” Lipkin told CBS after adding there is “no evidence to suggest that it was created in a lab.”

While the corporate media is keen to promote Lipkin’s claims – indistinguishable from the Chinese Communist Party’s COVID-19 narrative – they failed to report his decades of ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

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Propaganda: The Covid-19 vaccine script that TV shows are using to fight fear and misinformation

As doctors and health professionals race against Covid-19 vaccination skepticism, some Hollywood producers, writers and showrunners are betting that inputting vaccines into television storylines can help curb widespread misinformation. 

Shows across TV networks began integrating Covid-19 into scripts, including questions about social distancing and masking, as the pandemic spread across the U.S. last March. Now, as vaccination efforts ramp up nationwide, shows like “This Is Us” — which featured a recurring character receive two doses of a vaccine in an episode last month — are integrating vaccines into episodes and audiences can expect to see more vaccination plot points, says Kate Folb, director of the Hollywood, Health and Society program at the University of Southern California.

Folb is a member of a growing network of entertainment industry experts working closely with writers and showrunners to accurately depict health and medical information, and use entertainment to fight the misinformation campaigns and nationwide skepticism fueled by social media.

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The Two Faces of Joe Biden

On April Fool’s Day, CNN ran an “analysis” of Joe Biden’s presidency:

Will JRB take his place alongside FDR and LBJ?

CNN explained “JRB” had just unveiled a $2 trillion infrastructure plan “to boost ordinary working Americans rather than the wealthy,” a program that together with his $1.9 trillion Covid rescue doubles “as a bid to lift millions of Americans out of poverty.”

The news is like high school. One day, one kid comes in wearing Dior sneakers and Nike X Ambush pants, and two days later, that’s all you see in the halls. The “Biden-as-FDR” stories raced around News High, with headlines like “With nods to FDR, JFK and LBJ, Biden goes big on infrastructure plan” (Yahoo!) and “Can Biden achieve an FDR-style presidency? A historian sees surprising parallels” (Washington Post). Even the New Yorker’s naysayingtake, “Is Biden Really the Second Coming of F.D.R. and L.B.J.?” read at first glance like an affirmation.

That this high-flown language came on the heels of Biden’s people whispering F.D.R. comparisons in the ears of reporters for weeks, and Biden himself calling his plan “a once-in-a-generation investment in America,” seemed not to bother anyone. We live in a time when a president can be said to have “sharply cut poverty” the moment he signs a relief bill, so why not say, as CNN editorialists Stephen Collison and Caitlin Hu did, that this new bill’s passage would immediately allow Biden to “lay claim to a spot in the Democratic pantheon alongside Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson?”

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CNN raises eyebrows after warning of ‘racist’ fonts that ‘communicate Asianness’

CNN has developed a reputation for finding offense around every corner, but the liberal network was mocked on Wednesday for taking it a step further and declaring certain text fonts “communicating Asianness” can be racist.

“CNN has reached the epitome of ‘we’re out of stuff to pretend to be outraged by this week for clicks’ if they’re surmising which fonts are racist,” political satirist Tim Young told Fox News.

A font, defined as a set of type or characters all of one style, can “perpetuate problematic stereotypes,” according to CNN. The network’s verified Twitter account wrote, “For years, the West has relied on so-called ‘chop suey’ fonts to communicate ‘Asianness’ in food packaging, posters and ad campaigns. But such fonts perpetuate problematic stereotypes,” to accompany a report examining the theory.

“This piece leaves me with more questions than virtue signals,” Young said. “Which fonts belong to which demographics? Does this mean Times New Roman is a Caucasian font? Is the old typewriter font for elderly people? Are there straight and gay fonts or fonts based on the 54 genders? I need to know. I’m so confused at this point.”

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New York Times Staff Admit Previously Working For Chinese Communist Party – “It Has It’s Benefits.”

Several New York Times staff have previously worked for the Chinese Communist Party’s state-run media outlet China Daily, including the publication’s current Director of Cinematography who admitted “working for the Communist Party of China.”

The news comes as the New York Times breathlessly backs big corporates opposed to Georgia’s new voting laws. The New York Times, however, seems less concerned with employing genocidal Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks.

Jonah Kessel – the current Director of Cinematography at The New York Times – served as the Creative Director of China Daily from July 2009 to November 2010 before departing work as a China-based photographer and cinematographer whose clients included People’s Republic of China Ministry of Information.

Kessel describes himself as “redesigning” China Daily – a gig he was “psyched” for and boasted about how publications such as The Economist hyped his redesign.

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