State-Subsidized Journalist Attacks Activist Heard on Media Subsidized by Wrong State
Reporter Johnny Kauffman at WABE (4/18/18), an NPR affiliate in Atlanta, took guilt by association to absurd lengths when he questioned congressional candidate Richard Winfield about being interviewed by the podcast of an African-American attorney/activist Anoa Changa, who in turn had appeared on the talkshow of Eugene Puryear, which airs on Sputnik, a network funded by Russia.
For being heard on Sputnik, Kauffman accused Changa of being part of “Russia’s state-run propaganda machine” and “furthering Russia’s effort to create chaos in the US.”
No Major Paper Opposed Trump’s Escalation of Syria War
A survey by FAIR (4/18/18) of the top 100 papers in the US by circulation found not a single editorial board opposed to Trump’s April 13 airstrikes on Syria. Twenty supported the strikes, while six were ambiguous as to whether or not the bombing was advisable. The remaining 74 issued no opinion about Trump’s latest escalation of the Syrian war.
When You Care Enough to Direct Your Media Empire to Publicize Your Caring
MSNBC (4/2/18) rightfully tore into pro-Trump Sinclair Broadcast Group (4/2/18) for having its news reporters read off a corporate script condemning “misleading news,” but the Comcast-owned cable channel took part in a similar chorus of conformity, extolling its corporate parent’s generosity.
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe (4/20/18), anchor Nicolle Wallace read from a Comcast press release that described “Comcast Cares Day” as “the nation’s largest single-day corporate volunteer effort”; the same phrase appeared on the NBC’s Today show (4/21/18) and was echoed on local NBC broadcasts across the country.
On MSNBC, Wallace filled up the rest of the eight-minute infomercial with an interview with Comcast vice president David Cohen, who explained that Comcast Cares Day is “really a celebration of the fact that we care every day of the year,” and with MSNBC analyst Al Sharpton’s claim that Comcast was fulfilling the vision of Nelson Mandela, “where corporations don’t become expansive and influential just for personal wealth, but for a purpose, so that we have the ability to do good.”
Rationale for Libyan Overthrow Remembered as Reality
In a New York Times news analysis (4/29/18) that examined how the overthrow of Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi after he agreed to halt his nuclear program might influence North Korean thinking about disarmament, the Times’ Peter Baker wrote that “President Barack Obama and European allies launched military action against Libya in 2011 to prevent a threatened massacre of civilians.”
It’s true that Gadhafi’s broadcast vow to show “no mercy” in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi was offered as justification for the UN Security Council vote that authorized “all necessary measures” to protect Libyan civilians (AP, 3/17/11). But when the New York Times (3/17/11) itself reported on that speech, it described it as a threat against rebel combatants, not against civilians: Gadhafi “promised amnesty for those ‘who throw their weapons away’ but ‘no mercy or compassion’ for those who fight.” Claims that Gadhafi was intending to slaughter tens or hundreds of thousands were, wrote the Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman (4/3/11), “outlandish scenarios that go beyond any reasonable interpretation of Gadhafi’s words.”
Did We Forgot to Mention They’re a Terror Cult?
Politico (5/5/18) referred to Giuliani’s audience as “a group that aims to promote democracy” rather than as a front for a cult responsible for a string of bombings.
When Rudy Giuliani spoke at a conference organized by a subsidiary of the militant Iranian anti-government group Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), Politico (5/5/18) described the organizers as “a group that aims to promote democracy in the Islamic Republic and was supportive of the December protests there.” CBS News (5/5/18) reported that the gathering was “meant to voice support for the Iranian citizens who protested against their leadership in December.”
What these and other news reports didn’t report is that MEK is widely viewed as a totalitarian cult (Washington Post, 3/24/18) and is responsible for a string of terrorist bombings in Iran (Guardian, 9/21/12), where the group has virtually no support, in part because it sided with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in its bloody invasion of Iran.
EU Judges Venezuelan Democracy While European Independistas Are Prosecuted
Reuters (4/18/18) reported that the European Union “could impose further sanctions on Venezuela if it believes democracy is being undermined there,” in part because “the country’s two most popular opposition leaders have been banned from competing” in upcoming presidential elections. The article doesn’t note that the two took part in the abortive 2002 coup against President Hugo Chávez, and in subsequent efforts to overthrow the elected Venezuelan government—or the irony that EU member Spain has charged elected officials of its Catalunya region with sedition for organizing a referendum on independence.
TPP: The Opposite of ‘Free Trade’
In a piece about trade and the 2018 midterm election, the New York Times wrote that approving the Trans-Pacific Partnership “would have reinforced the nation’s embrace of free trade.” Actually, writes economist Dean Baker (FAIR.org, 5/4/18), the TPP had very little to do with “free trade”: “The United States already had trade agreements with six of the other eleven countries in the pact, and trade barriers were already low with most of the other countries.” What TPP would have done, among other things, was strengthen and extend patent and copyright protections: “These protections are forms of protectionism, as in the opposite of free trade,” Baker notes.
