Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Edward S. Herman — Fake News on Russia in the New York Times, 1917-2017

It has been amusing watching the New York Times (Times) and its fellow mainstream media (MSM) cohort express their dismay over the rise and spread of “fake news.” They take it as an obvious truth that what they provide is straightforward and unbiased fact-based news. They do offer such news, but they also provide a steady flow of their own varied forms of genuinely fake news, often in disseminating false or misleading information supplied them by the CIA, other branches of government, and sites of corporate power. An important form of MSM fake news is that which is presented while suppressing information that calls the preferred news into question.
Controlling the narrative. It used to be called "spin." Now we are calling a spade a spade, and a lie a lie. 
ht Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism

6 comments:

Noah Way said...

I wouldn't call this amusing. The media is a powerful tool of manipulation that has been repeatedly used to war, among many other things.

lastgreek said...

All these fake Russia-gate stories and yet still no pissing video.

Btw, even if this alleged video exists, unless its Rosie O'Donnell herself peeing on the Donald I don't think many will care :)

Joe said...

"caused the paper to report atrocities that didn’t happen and the imminent fall of the Bolshevik regime on a regular basis (at least 91 times)."

Good god, wow and no one started laughing at them? And we thought Friedman units were funny, but Jesus, he only did that 14 times and became a laughing stock.. but 91 times? Even someone like establishment butt-boys Fareed sex-with-a-cruise-missile-strike Zakaria or Brian Williams I think would start to feel embarrassed. Shit, even Craig Kilmeade or Don Lemon I doubt could continue that charade, and they're both dumb as fuck.

Noah Way said...

George Seldes starting writing about fake news in the mid-1930's, starting with his first stint in journalism as a reporter for a Pittsburgh newspaper. Nothing new here expect consolidation of the media and amplification of their propaganda.

Thus the desperate necessity of controlling the internet.

Tom Hickey said...

Thus the desperate necessity of controlling the internet.

Right. They can't get rid of the Internet now since it is part of the commercial backbone. They would have a tough time censoring it outright owing to legal challenges. So the current plan of attack is to discredit all but "approved" sources and to demonize those most threatening to the standard narrative (like RT).

Kaivey said...

Paul Craig Roberts had an interesting article the other day and I copied some of it and put it on the Guardian's CiF. I felt that if I put PCR's name on it the Guardian would remove it. Imagine if I was putting out PCR articles on MSM. So I took his name off but it didn't look like my writing and the article was very hard hitting so I decided not to post it in the end. Also, I thought someone might know it's a PCR and I might get moderated. I've had two posts removed so far and one warning. All I said was that Jonathon Freedland's article was nonsense.