Opinion Editorials, June 2011

US Corporate Media Falsifiers

By Paul Balles

Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, June 13, 2011

 
I am not blaming those who are resolved to rule, only those who show an even greater readiness to submit.  -- Thucydides
 
Day after day, US corporate TV anchor after anchor has been boasting "News from all angles, from all points of view."
 
There's never been such an open campaign to convince television viewers they aren't being brainwashed by the media's restricted point of view.
 
In what appears to be an attempt to outfox the Fox News Network, which has never admitted the truth about their own political bias, the more liberal networks of NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and CNN now propagandize their viewers with outright lies.
 
Dozens of liberal commentators, from MSNBC's Chris Matthews to CNN's Christiane Amanpour, have been making a mantra out of "News from all angles, from all points of view."
 
When a media spokesperson makes a claim like that, he or she should make sure of its truth or refuse to repeat the falsehood.
 
Those who have been misinforming their audiences are intelligent enough to know that they are deceiving their viewers.  Is it possible, for example, that any news reporter would not know of the media’s anti-Islamic brainwashing?
 
How can they continue to report on events like the Quran burning or the objections to the planned Islamic centre in New York without exposing the Islamaphobia? Where has the Muslim angle or point of view in the news been?
 
The internet is full of examples of under-reported news.  One source of such stories is Project Censored who lists the Top Censored Stories of 2011:
 
1. Global Plans to Replace the Dollar
2. US Department of Defense is the Worst Polluter on the Planet
3. Internet Privacy and Personal Access at Risk
4. ICE Operates Secret Detention and Courts
5. Blackwater (Xe): The Secret US War in Pakistan
6. Health Care Restrictions Cost Thousands of Lives in US
7. External Capitalist Forces Wreak Havoc in Africa
8. Massacre in Peruvian Amazon over US Free Trade Agreement
9. Human Rights Abuses Continue in Palestine
10. US Funds and Supports the Taliban
 
Harvard Professor Stephen Walt reports that as early as 2005, 78 percent of the news media, 72 percent of military leaders and 69 percent of foreign affairs specialists believed that backing Israel seriously damages America's image around the world.
 
That factual revelation isn’t something you hear on TV. If 78 percent of the news media hold that belief, they are not reporting it.
 
Ex-Israeli author and jazz musician Gilad Atzmon writes regular internet columns on the Middle East.  He has zero respect for the mainstream media, commenting:
 
Our independent websites and blogs are far more informative than the mainstream media. Collectively, we provide a source of information that people can trust, and we are rapidly becoming the main source of information.
 
Facebook, Twitter, online blogs and websites with alternative news and commentary are slowly making mainstream media obsolete.
 
Major stories have been censored by the mainstream media. Often the censorship raises questions about why an important story has been censored.
 
The media has kept the fact that Obama has cut domestic spending while increasing military spending under wraps.  Much military spending is unjustifiable and wasted.
 
Apart from any conspiracy theories about 9/11, serious questions about discrepancies in the official reports have been totally ignored by leading commentators.
 
Also censored by the networks are health risks in personal products like cosmetics and suntan lotion with nanotech particles.
 
Not satisfied with manufacturing cover-ups, the networks have now resorted to brainwashing viewers with lies about reporting the news from all angles and all points of view.

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