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Worthless Media
WELCOME TO WORTHLESS MEDIA WHERE THE FAILURE OF REAL JOURNALISM IS
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the white-wing media
feb 26, 2020
“The media serve, and propagandize on behalf of, the powerful societal interests that control and finance them. The representatives of these interests have important agendas and principles that they want to advance, and they are well positioned to shape and constrain media policy.”
–Chomsky
Media lo-lites
(source: politicus usa, raw story, alternet, newshounds)
*Of Course, Fox News Blames Bernie Sanders For Stock Market Crash
Uncertainty over the coronavirus caused the stock market to open sharply lower. Fox News hosted Charles Payne to blame Bernie's Nevada win. Of course.
Tucker Carlson Defends His Coronavirus Racism: 'Wokeness Is A Cult'
On his White Power Hour, bigot Tucker Carlson pretended to be the truthteller as he blamed “diversity” and "wokeness" for any coronavirus in the U.S. but only obliquely referred to Donald Trump’s sabotage of our public health system.
By NewsHound Ellen - crooks & liars
2/26/20 8:00am
Tucker Carlson pretended to be the truthteller last night as he blamed “diversity” and "wokeness" for any coronavirus in the U.S. but only obliquely referred to Donald Trump’s sabotage of our public health system. With the explicit approval of Fox News.
In a previous post, I noted how Fox News has been misleading viewers into thinking that Trump is doing a great job protecting Americans from the coronavirus (COVID-19) when, in reality, he has systematically dismantled the infrastructure for any pandemic response.
Monday night, Carlson took a different route. He weaponized the potential health emergency in order to ratchet up fear and loathing of “diversity” and “wokeness.”
We know that Fox News approved this bigoted deceit because Carlson’s commentary was obviously pre-scripted and thus pre-approved. It was also published on FoxNews.com.
Carlson’s commentary began with a dishonest dog whistle designed to arouse and legitimize a white nationalist response to the coronavirus:
CARLSON: For weeks the media told you it was wrong to worry about the coronavirus, a mysterious, highly communicable, lethal disease spreading rapidly around the world. If that concerns you in any way, if you think maybe we ought to take some steps to protect ourselves from it, then you're a bigot.This “it’s legit to be racist” messaging is despicable enough (albeit predictable from this guy) but Carlson is also dissembling about how his own employer has been messaging that there’s nothing to worry about. Just a few hours before Carlson went on the air, the anchor of Fox’s evening newscast, Special Report, introduced a happy-talk report on COVID-19 with a credulous, “President Trump says the coronavirus is very much under control in the U.S.”
Carlson was there to frighten you into thinking that it’s very much out of control – and that we all might die at any moment – because diversity is trumping public health. Rather than provide facts, Carlson seems to have figured that name calling and race baiting would give him all the credibility needed. Apparently, Fox is fine with that, too:
CARLSON: "Coronavirus panic is racist profiling against Asians" lectured some arrogant moron at Slate.com. A writer for The Seattle Times warned that, quote, "yellow peril racism was the real epidemic fear," and so on.
Countless publications wagged their fingers in the face of readers, and told them it was irrational, probably immoral in fact to worry about the coronavirus than the annual flu.
Identity politics trumped public health and not for the first time. Wokeness is a cult that lets you die before they admitted that diversity is not our strength.
Not surprisingly, what really seems to have caught Carlson’s concern and his dog whistle is the fact that COVID-19 spread from (yellow) Asians to (white) Europeans.
CARLSON: Fast forward to today. What began as a regional outbreak in the city of Wuhan, China, is now spreading across Europe. Parts of Italy are shut down tonight. Catholic services and, in some places, funerals have been suspended indefinitely.Carlson went on to note that South Korea, Japan and Iran have also confirmed cases of the virus. “It’s moving fast,” he warned.
As Carlson talked about the virus spreading in Asia, a helpful producer called it the “Wuhan virus” and described it as "spreading across Europe" in a lower-third banner.
Then, after repeatedly suggesting it's people of color and those who embrace them who are the real culprits, Carlson got around to hinting that the U.S. is not properly equipped to deal with a public health emergency. But, of course, he never said a word about Trump’s cardinal role in the failure.
CARLSON: On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control warned that it is quote, possible, even likely that America will have a general coronavirus outbreak as well. That shouldn’t surprise you. China is the world’s most sophisticated authoritarian government. Its leaders have shut down entire cities, dragged people from their homes in an effort to curb coronavirus. But it hasn’t worked.
Officials in our country have reported about three dozen cases of the virus in the U.S. so far, but that's a misleading number. The truth is, we have no real idea how many Americans are infected.
Why? Here's why: As of yesterday, only three public health labs in the entire country were properly equipped to detect the virus. Fewer than 500 people in America have even been tested for coronavirus out of a population of 327 million -- for real. Keep in mind that five and a half million people ride the New York City subway every day.
Worried yet? This could be serious. How likely is an epidemic in the United States? Are we ready for it if it comes? How many could die?
It's time for real answers to the most basic questions about coronavirus.
Carlson is right that it’s time for real answers to basic questions about coronavirus. But don’t expect them to come from Fox News – unless they can be weaponized against the left and/or the media and on behalf of Dear Leader Trump.
I have long suspected that Carlson is not the biggest Trumper and that his bigotry, while genuine, is played up to appeal to Trump fans without having to actually cheerlead the way others at Fox do. You almost have to be an archaeologist to find Carlson’s implied, indirect barb about the Trump administration underneath all the overt malice toward everyone else. But it’s there and it’s another piece that fits my theory.
You may see what I mean above, from the February 24, 2020 Tucker Carlson Tonight.
In a previous post, I noted how Fox News has been misleading viewers into thinking that Trump is doing a great job protecting Americans from the coronavirus (COVID-19) when, in reality, he has systematically dismantled the infrastructure for any pandemic response.
Monday night, Carlson took a different route. He weaponized the potential health emergency in order to ratchet up fear and loathing of “diversity” and “wokeness.”
We know that Fox News approved this bigoted deceit because Carlson’s commentary was obviously pre-scripted and thus pre-approved. It was also published on FoxNews.com.
Carlson’s commentary began with a dishonest dog whistle designed to arouse and legitimize a white nationalist response to the coronavirus:
CARLSON: For weeks the media told you it was wrong to worry about the coronavirus, a mysterious, highly communicable, lethal disease spreading rapidly around the world. If that concerns you in any way, if you think maybe we ought to take some steps to protect ourselves from it, then you're a bigot.This “it’s legit to be racist” messaging is despicable enough (albeit predictable from this guy) but Carlson is also dissembling about how his own employer has been messaging that there’s nothing to worry about. Just a few hours before Carlson went on the air, the anchor of Fox’s evening newscast, Special Report, introduced a happy-talk report on COVID-19 with a credulous, “President Trump says the coronavirus is very much under control in the U.S.”
Carlson was there to frighten you into thinking that it’s very much out of control – and that we all might die at any moment – because diversity is trumping public health. Rather than provide facts, Carlson seems to have figured that name calling and race baiting would give him all the credibility needed. Apparently, Fox is fine with that, too:
CARLSON: "Coronavirus panic is racist profiling against Asians" lectured some arrogant moron at Slate.com. A writer for The Seattle Times warned that, quote, "yellow peril racism was the real epidemic fear," and so on.
Countless publications wagged their fingers in the face of readers, and told them it was irrational, probably immoral in fact to worry about the coronavirus than the annual flu.
Identity politics trumped public health and not for the first time. Wokeness is a cult that lets you die before they admitted that diversity is not our strength.
Not surprisingly, what really seems to have caught Carlson’s concern and his dog whistle is the fact that COVID-19 spread from (yellow) Asians to (white) Europeans.
CARLSON: Fast forward to today. What began as a regional outbreak in the city of Wuhan, China, is now spreading across Europe. Parts of Italy are shut down tonight. Catholic services and, in some places, funerals have been suspended indefinitely.Carlson went on to note that South Korea, Japan and Iran have also confirmed cases of the virus. “It’s moving fast,” he warned.
As Carlson talked about the virus spreading in Asia, a helpful producer called it the “Wuhan virus” and described it as "spreading across Europe" in a lower-third banner.
Then, after repeatedly suggesting it's people of color and those who embrace them who are the real culprits, Carlson got around to hinting that the U.S. is not properly equipped to deal with a public health emergency. But, of course, he never said a word about Trump’s cardinal role in the failure.
CARLSON: On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control warned that it is quote, possible, even likely that America will have a general coronavirus outbreak as well. That shouldn’t surprise you. China is the world’s most sophisticated authoritarian government. Its leaders have shut down entire cities, dragged people from their homes in an effort to curb coronavirus. But it hasn’t worked.
Officials in our country have reported about three dozen cases of the virus in the U.S. so far, but that's a misleading number. The truth is, we have no real idea how many Americans are infected.
Why? Here's why: As of yesterday, only three public health labs in the entire country were properly equipped to detect the virus. Fewer than 500 people in America have even been tested for coronavirus out of a population of 327 million -- for real. Keep in mind that five and a half million people ride the New York City subway every day.
Worried yet? This could be serious. How likely is an epidemic in the United States? Are we ready for it if it comes? How many could die?
It's time for real answers to the most basic questions about coronavirus.
Carlson is right that it’s time for real answers to basic questions about coronavirus. But don’t expect them to come from Fox News – unless they can be weaponized against the left and/or the media and on behalf of Dear Leader Trump.
I have long suspected that Carlson is not the biggest Trumper and that his bigotry, while genuine, is played up to appeal to Trump fans without having to actually cheerlead the way others at Fox do. You almost have to be an archaeologist to find Carlson’s implied, indirect barb about the Trump administration underneath all the overt malice toward everyone else. But it’s there and it’s another piece that fits my theory.
You may see what I mean above, from the February 24, 2020 Tucker Carlson Tonight.
NPR’s attempted takedown of Bernie Sanders wasn’t just biased — it was driven by startlingly poor research
FAIR
February 23, 2020
The Iowa caucuses officially began the Democratic primary, and even in this ongoing, extended battle for the White House, Iowa remains an important marker for candidates and the media. A close look at a piece by two of NPR’s leading political reporters, which aired just before the caucuses, provides a view of how journalists speak with authority on issues they seem to know very little about. The conversation between Mary Louise Kelly and her partner Mara Liasson, headlined “Where Iowa Falls in the Big Picture of the 2020 Election” (“All Things Considered,” 2/3/20), began with Kelly introducing the importance of Iowa for Democrats, but, she observed, it’s been on the “back burner” after days of constant impeachment coverage.
Liasson agreed, then spent most of her introductory remarks on Trump, presenting him as legitimate as any past president:
Tomorrow night President Trump appears in the well of the House before he speaks to both houses of Congress for the big curtain-raiser for him, the State of the Union address. It’s the biggest audience he’ll have all year. It’s — every president gets to kind of kick off his re-election campaign with the State of the Union address, and we can expect to hear a campaign message from him tomorrow.
No mention was made that Trump had flouted the Constitution by refusing to cooperate with an impeachment hearing, or that Republican senators would fail to uphold the Constitution by voting to dismiss impeachment charges after a sham trial with no witnesses. Liasson’s critical remarks were reserved for the Democratic Party, both voters and candidates.
“I see a very unsettled race,” Liasson told Kelly, and continued, “Democrats are paralyzed by indecision.” One wonders which race she is looking at, as both state and national polls show that Democratic voters are anything but “paralyzed,” and for months have been anticipating the primary with “an incredible degree of excitement” (Vox, 2/3/20). One national Quinnipiac University poll (1/28/20) found a whopping 85% of Democratic voters were either “extremely” or “very” motivated to vote in the primary contests, characterizing their enthusiasm as “sky high.”
Liasson claimed that the main issue for the Democratic Party is “electability” — a fraught term often used to signal ideological orthodoxy rather than empirical chances of winning elections (FAIR.org, 10/25/19). She asserted that Democrats are “confused,” and “for good reason,” because Trump remains an “existential threat,” and not only are none of the candidates “a sure thing,” none even “seem likely to defeat” Trump.
Such handwringing is, again, not founded in facts or data. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll published the day before this broadcast — one day ahead of the Iowa caucuses — found that Trump was trailing all the leading 2020 Democratic candidates, with the top four candidates ahead of Trump in theoretical head-to-head matchups. Looking more broadly at polling, the two candidates then leading the Democratic field, former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, had beaten Trump in 69 of 73 and 63 of 68 matchups, respectively.
The supposed lack of “electability” was solidified as a media obsession in mid-April of last year, when Obama’s former campaign manager, Jim Messina, now a political strategist for corporate Democrats (Common Dreams, 2/13/20), announced on the Powerhouse Politics podcast (ABC, 4/17/19) that “Sanders couldn’t beat Trump.” Messina went on to predict that the Democratic field would be honed down to Sen. Kamala Harris and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, along with Joe Biden, who had not yet entered the race.
Both Harris and O’Rourke, of course, dropped out of the race before the first vote was cast, while Biden’s polling numbers were in free fall after poor showings in both Iowa and New Hampshire. (More recently, he appears to have finished a distant second in the Nevada caucuses.) But despite Messina’s foggy crystal ball, his unelectability trope was adopted by pundits as a platitude. Vox (4/24/19) was one of the few to point out a few days later that Sanders actually had a strong electability record, having “consistently run ahead of Democratic Party presidential campaigns in Vermont” when he ran for re-election as a U.S. representative. But “unelectable” is now an overworked spin pushed by centrist Democrats and their corporate media allies.
Liasson went on to worry about the “huge vulnerabilities” all the Democratic candidates have “for the president to exploit.” No mention is made of Trump’s mammoth negatives that present Democrats with enough ammunition to send him running, if they were so inclined. Indeed, corporate media have been incapable of imagining powerfully pointed, rhetorically effective, authentically truthful critical campaigns against Trump.
Liasson agreed, then spent most of her introductory remarks on Trump, presenting him as legitimate as any past president:
Tomorrow night President Trump appears in the well of the House before he speaks to both houses of Congress for the big curtain-raiser for him, the State of the Union address. It’s the biggest audience he’ll have all year. It’s — every president gets to kind of kick off his re-election campaign with the State of the Union address, and we can expect to hear a campaign message from him tomorrow.
No mention was made that Trump had flouted the Constitution by refusing to cooperate with an impeachment hearing, or that Republican senators would fail to uphold the Constitution by voting to dismiss impeachment charges after a sham trial with no witnesses. Liasson’s critical remarks were reserved for the Democratic Party, both voters and candidates.
“I see a very unsettled race,” Liasson told Kelly, and continued, “Democrats are paralyzed by indecision.” One wonders which race she is looking at, as both state and national polls show that Democratic voters are anything but “paralyzed,” and for months have been anticipating the primary with “an incredible degree of excitement” (Vox, 2/3/20). One national Quinnipiac University poll (1/28/20) found a whopping 85% of Democratic voters were either “extremely” or “very” motivated to vote in the primary contests, characterizing their enthusiasm as “sky high.”
Liasson claimed that the main issue for the Democratic Party is “electability” — a fraught term often used to signal ideological orthodoxy rather than empirical chances of winning elections (FAIR.org, 10/25/19). She asserted that Democrats are “confused,” and “for good reason,” because Trump remains an “existential threat,” and not only are none of the candidates “a sure thing,” none even “seem likely to defeat” Trump.
Such handwringing is, again, not founded in facts or data. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll published the day before this broadcast — one day ahead of the Iowa caucuses — found that Trump was trailing all the leading 2020 Democratic candidates, with the top four candidates ahead of Trump in theoretical head-to-head matchups. Looking more broadly at polling, the two candidates then leading the Democratic field, former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, had beaten Trump in 69 of 73 and 63 of 68 matchups, respectively.
The supposed lack of “electability” was solidified as a media obsession in mid-April of last year, when Obama’s former campaign manager, Jim Messina, now a political strategist for corporate Democrats (Common Dreams, 2/13/20), announced on the Powerhouse Politics podcast (ABC, 4/17/19) that “Sanders couldn’t beat Trump.” Messina went on to predict that the Democratic field would be honed down to Sen. Kamala Harris and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, along with Joe Biden, who had not yet entered the race.
Both Harris and O’Rourke, of course, dropped out of the race before the first vote was cast, while Biden’s polling numbers were in free fall after poor showings in both Iowa and New Hampshire. (More recently, he appears to have finished a distant second in the Nevada caucuses.) But despite Messina’s foggy crystal ball, his unelectability trope was adopted by pundits as a platitude. Vox (4/24/19) was one of the few to point out a few days later that Sanders actually had a strong electability record, having “consistently run ahead of Democratic Party presidential campaigns in Vermont” when he ran for re-election as a U.S. representative. But “unelectable” is now an overworked spin pushed by centrist Democrats and their corporate media allies.
Liasson went on to worry about the “huge vulnerabilities” all the Democratic candidates have “for the president to exploit.” No mention is made of Trump’s mammoth negatives that present Democrats with enough ammunition to send him running, if they were so inclined. Indeed, corporate media have been incapable of imagining powerfully pointed, rhetorically effective, authentically truthful critical campaigns against Trump.
Fox Distorts Objections To Barr Over Roger Stone Sentencing
FoxNews.com would have its readers believe that the objections to William Barr’s interference in the Roger Stone case were merely a matter of disagreement over the length of his sentence.
By NewsHound Ellen - crooks &liars
2/21/20 5:29am
FoxNews.com would have its readers believe that the objections to William Barr’s interference in the Roger Stone case were merely a matter of disagreement over the length of his sentence.
Attorney General William Barr has come under fire because he interfered with what should have been a matter for his federal prosecutors to handle and brought the case in line with what Donald Trump was demanding for his crony, Roger Stone
The New York Times explains what Fox did not (my emphases added):
[Trump] intensified those attacks [on the guilty verdict] after the prosecutors recommended that Mr. Stone be sentenced to up to nine years in prison, in accordance with advisory sentencing guidelines. Their request, Mr. Trump said, was “horrible and very unfair” and constituted a “miscarriage of justice.”
Almost simultaneously, Mr. Barr overruled the prosecutors’ sentencing recommendation and a new one was filed in court. It recommended a more lenient sentence but left the specific length of a prison term up to the judge. The reversal, more aligned with Mr. Trump’s preference, led all four prosecutors to withdraw from the case. One resigned from the Justice Department entirely.
[…]
The case ignited a broader controversy as former and current government lawyers accused Mr. Barr of failing to protect the department from improper political influence from the White House. In an open letter, more than 2,000 former Justice Department employees have called for Mr. Barr to resign, claiming “interference in the fair administration of justice” by both the attorney general and the president.
But to Fox News, the uproar was all about Democrats and deep staters hating Dear Leader. Its article about Stone’s sentence said nothing about Trump’s attempt to interfere in the case on behalf of Stone. From its article:
The judge presiding over Roger Stone’s case agreed with senior Justice Department leadership on Thursday that the original sentence proposal for the GOP operative was excessive -- amid a clash inside the DOJ over his sentencing.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who sentenced Stone to 40 months in federal prison on Thursday, said the original sentence proposed last week by federal prosecutors of 87 to 108 months was steep given the charges.
…
Last week, after prosecutors made their sentence recommendation, senior Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Bill Barr, intervened, overruling and scaling back the proposed prison sentence.
…
The mass withdrawal caused Democrats to accuse President Trump of interfering in the process, with many even calling for Barr’s resignation. The intervention also prompted thousands of former Justice Department officials to sign an online petition calling for Barr’s resignation.
I think we can safely predict that Fox’s prime time Trumpers will declare victory, use the ruling to attack Democrats and blithely ignore Dear Leader’s blatant attempts to undermine law and democracy.
Stay tuned.
Attorney General William Barr has come under fire because he interfered with what should have been a matter for his federal prosecutors to handle and brought the case in line with what Donald Trump was demanding for his crony, Roger Stone
The New York Times explains what Fox did not (my emphases added):
[Trump] intensified those attacks [on the guilty verdict] after the prosecutors recommended that Mr. Stone be sentenced to up to nine years in prison, in accordance with advisory sentencing guidelines. Their request, Mr. Trump said, was “horrible and very unfair” and constituted a “miscarriage of justice.”
Almost simultaneously, Mr. Barr overruled the prosecutors’ sentencing recommendation and a new one was filed in court. It recommended a more lenient sentence but left the specific length of a prison term up to the judge. The reversal, more aligned with Mr. Trump’s preference, led all four prosecutors to withdraw from the case. One resigned from the Justice Department entirely.
[…]
The case ignited a broader controversy as former and current government lawyers accused Mr. Barr of failing to protect the department from improper political influence from the White House. In an open letter, more than 2,000 former Justice Department employees have called for Mr. Barr to resign, claiming “interference in the fair administration of justice” by both the attorney general and the president.
But to Fox News, the uproar was all about Democrats and deep staters hating Dear Leader. Its article about Stone’s sentence said nothing about Trump’s attempt to interfere in the case on behalf of Stone. From its article:
The judge presiding over Roger Stone’s case agreed with senior Justice Department leadership on Thursday that the original sentence proposal for the GOP operative was excessive -- amid a clash inside the DOJ over his sentencing.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who sentenced Stone to 40 months in federal prison on Thursday, said the original sentence proposed last week by federal prosecutors of 87 to 108 months was steep given the charges.
…
Last week, after prosecutors made their sentence recommendation, senior Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Bill Barr, intervened, overruling and scaling back the proposed prison sentence.
…
The mass withdrawal caused Democrats to accuse President Trump of interfering in the process, with many even calling for Barr’s resignation. The intervention also prompted thousands of former Justice Department officials to sign an online petition calling for Barr’s resignation.
I think we can safely predict that Fox’s prime time Trumpers will declare victory, use the ruling to attack Democrats and blithely ignore Dear Leader’s blatant attempts to undermine law and democracy.
Stay tuned.
Fox News reporter and right-wing conspiracy theorists planned to wiretap family of slain DNC staffer Seth Rich: report
Bob Brigham - alternet
February 18, 2020
The Daily Beast on Monday evening broke a bombshell report on a secret 2017 meeting in Texas on a right-wing conspiracy theory where espionage was discussed.
“One of their topics was responding to online critics of wealthy Texas businessman Ed Butowsky, who had recently been outed as a driving force behind a retracted Fox News story about murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich,” The Beast reported. “The group that gathered at Butowsky’s home included a conspiracy theorist, a Fox reporter fighting for her career, a former private intelligence contractor married to star journalist Lara Logan, and a Democratic PR operative who lost his business in the face of sexual assault allegations.”
The group also included Thomas Schoenberger and Manuel “Defango” Chavez, two notorious internet provocateurs who had recently launched a self-proclaimed ‘elite’ company that promised to use bots and sow ‘targeted chaos’ to defend its clients online,” the publication noted.
“According to some attendees, the solutions discussed at the September get-together went to extremes,” The Beast reported. “Three people who attended the gathering said the group even discussed the possibility of wiretapping and surveilling Rich’s grieving parents.”
“One of their topics was responding to online critics of wealthy Texas businessman Ed Butowsky, who had recently been outed as a driving force behind a retracted Fox News story about murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich,” The Beast reported. “The group that gathered at Butowsky’s home included a conspiracy theorist, a Fox reporter fighting for her career, a former private intelligence contractor married to star journalist Lara Logan, and a Democratic PR operative who lost his business in the face of sexual assault allegations.”
The group also included Thomas Schoenberger and Manuel “Defango” Chavez, two notorious internet provocateurs who had recently launched a self-proclaimed ‘elite’ company that promised to use bots and sow ‘targeted chaos’ to defend its clients online,” the publication noted.
“According to some attendees, the solutions discussed at the September get-together went to extremes,” The Beast reported. “Three people who attended the gathering said the group even discussed the possibility of wiretapping and surveilling Rich’s grieving parents.”
broadcasting lies for profit!!!
TV EXECUTIVES CELEBRATE UNPRECEDENTED FLOOD OF BLOOMBERG CAMPAIGN SPENDING
Lee Fang - the intercept
February 15 2020, 2:00 a.m.
FOX NEWS HOSTS regularly bash former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg as a globalist demagogue intent on seizing Americans’ firearms and big gulp sodas. High-level executives at the company, however, are much more enthusiastic about the billionaire politician and Democratic presidential candidate.
Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executive of Fox Corp., the parent company of Fox News, is one of several media executives to welcome Bloomberg’s unprecedented spending spree on television advertisements. In a February 5 briefing for investors, Murdoch noted that he had heard “the Bloomberg campaign has expected to sort of double its advertising spend earlier this week.” The billionaire’s campaign, Murdoch noted, makes purchases on a week-to-week basis, making it difficult to project the ultimate benefit for his company.
“But obviously,” he added, “we expect it to be very strong and particularly, as I mentioned, in the markets of our local TV stations.”
Bloomberg, the ninth wealthiest person in the world, with a fortune estimated at almost $62 billion, has upended the Democratic presidential primary with an infusion of cash that has smashed through historical records in a matter of weeks. Advertising Analytics, which tracks campaign spending, reported Thursday that Bloomberg has already spent $363 million on cable, broadcast, and radio advertisements alone.
The 2020 campaign is shaping up to be an incredible financial opportunity for media companies, with one market research firm recently estimating that nearly $7 billion of paid advertising be spent this year, up over 60 percent since the 2016 presidential race.
Bloomberg alone has enticed media executives to see the race as a golden opportunity.
“The political is going to be huge this year,” boasted Christopher Ripley, president and chief executive of Sinclair Broadcast Group, one of the largest owners of television stations in the country, speaking last month at the Citi 2020 Global TMT West conference in Las Vegas. “The amount of fundraising that’s happened through this year has broken all records. And the good news about politicians is they never return the money, they spend it,” Ripley quipped.
Sinclair, said Ripley, is “already benefiting tremendously from that and the entrance of players like Bloomberg.”
Meredith Corporation — which owns television stations in several states, including Oregon, Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, and Arizona — also reported its quarterly results this month. “Bloomberg is certainly having an impact across most of our footprint,” beamed Patrick McCreery, an executive with Meredith, during the call with investors.
“If the headlines are to be believed,” said McCreery, “he’s going to double the spending, and that will be beneficial certainly.”
Since Bloomberg’s announcement last November, shares of publicly traded media conglomerates, including Nexstar Media Group and Gray Television, have been on the rise.
“When politicians go to war, own the arms dealers,” Steven Cahall, an analyst with Wells Fargo, wrote in a recent report cited by CNBC. Broadcasting corporations, Cahall noted, “are jazzed to have Bloomberg in the fray.” The billionaire mogul has already caused “a meaningful uptick in Q4 political revenue vs. company plans.”
The use of private funds for campaign spending — a practice banned or sharply restricted in most industrialized countries — creates an inherent tension with the private, for-profit U.S. media market. The same media companies voters turn to for help to make thoughtful decisions about the candidates rely heavily on campaign advertisements designed to manipulate viewers with provocative, low-information emotional appeals and other forms of deceptive electioneering.
The National Association of Broadcasters, a trade group that lobbies for broadcasters, has long fought to maintain the status quo, opposing efforts over the years to require television and radio stations to provide free air time to candidates. The group successfully lobbied to block both the Federal Communications Commission and Congress from enacting rules that would have provided even two hours of public air time to candidates.
In recent months, the NAB has pushed back against FCC efforts to increase enforcement of relatively minor disclosure requirements for television broadcasters to publish invoices from groups or candidates spending money on political advertisements.
The frenzy for presidential campaign cycle profits likely shaped the media environment for Donald Trump’s election.
In the early days of Trump’s candidacy, media executives openly celebrated his entry, hoping for a bonanza in ratings and political ad-buying. “The more they spend, the better it is for us and: Go Donald! Keep getting out there,” said Les Moonves, the former chief executive of the CBS Corporation, which is now known as ViacomCBS.
Moonves, who later stepped down over numerous allegations of sexual harassment, summed up his thoughts about Trump at a meeting in San Francisco’s Palace Hotel during the 2016 campaign. Trump’s campaign “circus” he said, “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS, that’s all I got to say.”
Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executive of Fox Corp., the parent company of Fox News, is one of several media executives to welcome Bloomberg’s unprecedented spending spree on television advertisements. In a February 5 briefing for investors, Murdoch noted that he had heard “the Bloomberg campaign has expected to sort of double its advertising spend earlier this week.” The billionaire’s campaign, Murdoch noted, makes purchases on a week-to-week basis, making it difficult to project the ultimate benefit for his company.
“But obviously,” he added, “we expect it to be very strong and particularly, as I mentioned, in the markets of our local TV stations.”
Bloomberg, the ninth wealthiest person in the world, with a fortune estimated at almost $62 billion, has upended the Democratic presidential primary with an infusion of cash that has smashed through historical records in a matter of weeks. Advertising Analytics, which tracks campaign spending, reported Thursday that Bloomberg has already spent $363 million on cable, broadcast, and radio advertisements alone.
The 2020 campaign is shaping up to be an incredible financial opportunity for media companies, with one market research firm recently estimating that nearly $7 billion of paid advertising be spent this year, up over 60 percent since the 2016 presidential race.
Bloomberg alone has enticed media executives to see the race as a golden opportunity.
“The political is going to be huge this year,” boasted Christopher Ripley, president and chief executive of Sinclair Broadcast Group, one of the largest owners of television stations in the country, speaking last month at the Citi 2020 Global TMT West conference in Las Vegas. “The amount of fundraising that’s happened through this year has broken all records. And the good news about politicians is they never return the money, they spend it,” Ripley quipped.
Sinclair, said Ripley, is “already benefiting tremendously from that and the entrance of players like Bloomberg.”
Meredith Corporation — which owns television stations in several states, including Oregon, Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, and Arizona — also reported its quarterly results this month. “Bloomberg is certainly having an impact across most of our footprint,” beamed Patrick McCreery, an executive with Meredith, during the call with investors.
“If the headlines are to be believed,” said McCreery, “he’s going to double the spending, and that will be beneficial certainly.”
Since Bloomberg’s announcement last November, shares of publicly traded media conglomerates, including Nexstar Media Group and Gray Television, have been on the rise.
“When politicians go to war, own the arms dealers,” Steven Cahall, an analyst with Wells Fargo, wrote in a recent report cited by CNBC. Broadcasting corporations, Cahall noted, “are jazzed to have Bloomberg in the fray.” The billionaire mogul has already caused “a meaningful uptick in Q4 political revenue vs. company plans.”
The use of private funds for campaign spending — a practice banned or sharply restricted in most industrialized countries — creates an inherent tension with the private, for-profit U.S. media market. The same media companies voters turn to for help to make thoughtful decisions about the candidates rely heavily on campaign advertisements designed to manipulate viewers with provocative, low-information emotional appeals and other forms of deceptive electioneering.
The National Association of Broadcasters, a trade group that lobbies for broadcasters, has long fought to maintain the status quo, opposing efforts over the years to require television and radio stations to provide free air time to candidates. The group successfully lobbied to block both the Federal Communications Commission and Congress from enacting rules that would have provided even two hours of public air time to candidates.
In recent months, the NAB has pushed back against FCC efforts to increase enforcement of relatively minor disclosure requirements for television broadcasters to publish invoices from groups or candidates spending money on political advertisements.
The frenzy for presidential campaign cycle profits likely shaped the media environment for Donald Trump’s election.
In the early days of Trump’s candidacy, media executives openly celebrated his entry, hoping for a bonanza in ratings and political ad-buying. “The more they spend, the better it is for us and: Go Donald! Keep getting out there,” said Les Moonves, the former chief executive of the CBS Corporation, which is now known as ViacomCBS.
Moonves, who later stepped down over numerous allegations of sexual harassment, summed up his thoughts about Trump at a meeting in San Francisco’s Palace Hotel during the 2016 campaign. Trump’s campaign “circus” he said, “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS, that’s all I got to say.”
Media Attacks Aren’t Slowing Sanders’s Surge — They’re Showing His Independence
BY Michael Corcoran, Truthout
PUBLISHED February 2, 2020
Dominant media outlets continue to produce more desperate and cartoonish attacks on Bernie Sanders as he continues to surge in the polls. The attacks are failing in epic fashion. And the left is having some laughs at the expense of establishment tears.
Losing the argument to Sanders is not the only concern for the dominant media, 90 percent of which are owned by only five corporations. The corporate media may also lose credibility in the process. These outlets are helping raise the class consciousness of the public by providing evidence supporting Sanders’s claim that these media operate as an organ serving the richest institutions in the country.
“Amazon zillionaire Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, and Bernie has been fighting Amazon on behalf of Amazon workers,” said Norman Solomon, a 2016 delegate for Bernie Sanders at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, in an interview with Truthout. Solomon said that Sanders has prompted a more widespread “realization that the most powerful media outlets aren’t umpires, they’re players, and the ‘game’ has tremendous consequences.”
Indeed, increased awareness has helped the public more willingly reject the neoliberal dogma that pervades the corporate media. This dynamic did not change overnight. Some of it can be attributed to an evolving understanding of class that has been growing for years in this country. As a Truthout analysis observed in 2016, the first Sanders campaign and the Occupy movement were both instrumental in helping reshape the American debate through class lenses. These movements grew in the aftermath of the Great Recession and the 2008 economic crisis. This was a wake-up call for young Americans who were (and still are) disproportionately impacted. The 2020 primary is an incredibly high-stakes chapter in this fight, as the class consciousness that manifested itself in 2011 and 2016 has transformed into an even larger national movement with a viable national candidate.
Moreover, the growth of alternative means of communication, including independent media and social media, have provided a chance for more Americans to learn about the world without relying on corporate media outlets.
Establishment Tears
Mainstream media contempt for Sanders has been well documented back to his first presidential run. Still, the sheer volume of anti-Sanders media content in the last few weeks — as his poll numbers have risen — is overwhelming. Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin’s recent commentary is sadly typical. She has been arguing that Sanders is unelectable and is a massive liability to compete with Trump. As she was making this argument on Twitter, she asked: “What poll is there suggesting a Bernie can beat Trump?”
It was clear Rubin thought this was a classic mic-drop moment. However, Sanders has defeated President Donald Trump in numerous credible head-to-head polls, faring better than every other candidate save for Biden. Whether Rubin is being dishonest or ignorant is an open question, but there is no justification either way.
Much to Rubin’s chagrin, Bernie’s “Internet Army,” as The New York Times pejoratively called Sanders supporters in one of its many anti-Sanders articles, quickly dismantled her argument in real time. A flood of comments and memes correcting her missteps flooded her responses, far outpacing likes or retweets. In addition to shredding Rubin’s assertion, many (like Solomon) pointed out that the owner of The Washington Post, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, has a vested interest in stopping the kind of redistributive economic policies Bernie Sanders’s campaign advances.
There was a time when Rubin’s sentiments would have had more influence. Facts that disprove her points, expose her hypocrisies or demonstrate who owns the bulk of the mainstream media would not have been as accessible to your average consumer of political news, say, 20 years ago. But ready access to such information means that these types of assertions simply can’t stand.
“Since we have democratized the national conversation because of [social media], whenever [establishment media figures] have bad takes, they get destroyed,” argues political commentator and co-founder of Justice Democrats, Kyle Kulinski, on his show “Secular Talk.”
Social media played a key role in helping this happen. It played a key role in organizers being able to educate and communicate in the Arab Spring and Occupy. However, there are grave concerns about corporate control of our digital sphere as well, with two Silicon Valley companies controlling 60 percent of digital advertising.
Rubin is hardly the only media figure engaged in such tactics. Spurious and sometimes baseless attacks on Sanders have come from all corners of the establishment press. Progressive talk-show host Kystal Ball recently appeared on a CNN segment hosted by Alisyn Camerota. When she cited data stating that Bernie Sanders is popular, pundit and former Hillary Clinton staffer Karen Finney simply rejected Ball’s claim without evidence.
In January, when Sanders first took the lead in the famous Selzer/Des-Moines Register (DMR) poll, pundits on MSNBC, including Joy Reid and Jimmy Williams, minimized the results. The DMR poll is described as the gold standard by establishment standard-bearers like Nate Silver and Vox Media. Yet Williams still tried to suggest to the audience, absent any evidence, that the poll was not accurate:
Writing in The Atlantic, David Frum (one of the key architects of the Iraq War) made arguments in his article “Bernie Can’t Win” that were so unbelievably specious that they elicited widespread laughter on the left. At one point, Frum sincerely suggests Trump will focus his campaign on parroting Hillary Clinton’s criticism of Sanders — emphasizing rude supporters on Twitter and toxic masculinity. “[You will] almost think Clinton is Trump’s running mate,” he wrote.
In other words, Donald Trump — who has been accused of (and recorded boasting about) sexually assaulting many women — will, according to Frum, try to undermine Sanders by saying he is sexist and appealing to people’s sense of decency. And to do this, supposedly, he will use the arguments of the candidate with woeful favorability numbers, who he just defeated and threatened to throw in jail. One could be excused for thinking Frum’s whole argument was meant as satire.
The Diminishing Efficacy of Corporate Propaganda
In the United States, the most influential centers of power have long been class-conscious. They have shaped media policy and media coverage to emphasize other fault lines in an attempt to break the country up by anything but class. As such, powerful forces have attempted to keep the working class from fighting for class interests or even recognizing that they are members of anything resembling a working class. This is what makes the kind of inequality we have possible in the United States. If this logjam breaks, the dynamics that maintain the status quo face a crisis.
In the 2020 election, a wary public sees Bernie Sanders asked at every debate how he can dare to suggest we pay for Medicare for All, though former Vice President Biden is not compelled to explain how we can afford to maintain the status quo — which is literally the most expensive and wasteful health care system on the planet — or how we can afford to fund an endless war. Why is the burden of proof so rigid toward policies that benefit the many, while there is no burden of proof placed on those who seek the opposite?
These assumptions are so deeply ingrained into establishment journalists that many of them have merely internalized them. No wonder pundits seem so confused when they are challenged with obvious realities that don’t fit in nicely with the dominant ideology.
Now corporate media outlets are trying desperately to shape public opinion and the efficacy of its propaganda is waning. Their “kitchen sink strategy” against Sanders makes their contempt for him and his supporters so obvious, the public is (slowly, but steadily) starting to connect dots about who the media serve. As it stands, only 13 percent of Americans have a great deal of trust in the media, according to a Gallup poll from September 2019. (Twenty-eight percent have a “fair amount of trust,” for a total of 41 percent having some trust in the media.)
If current trends persist, the mainstream press will find itself increasingly toothless in its efforts to shape our national debate. Many feel this development is long overdue.
Losing the argument to Sanders is not the only concern for the dominant media, 90 percent of which are owned by only five corporations. The corporate media may also lose credibility in the process. These outlets are helping raise the class consciousness of the public by providing evidence supporting Sanders’s claim that these media operate as an organ serving the richest institutions in the country.
“Amazon zillionaire Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, and Bernie has been fighting Amazon on behalf of Amazon workers,” said Norman Solomon, a 2016 delegate for Bernie Sanders at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, in an interview with Truthout. Solomon said that Sanders has prompted a more widespread “realization that the most powerful media outlets aren’t umpires, they’re players, and the ‘game’ has tremendous consequences.”
Indeed, increased awareness has helped the public more willingly reject the neoliberal dogma that pervades the corporate media. This dynamic did not change overnight. Some of it can be attributed to an evolving understanding of class that has been growing for years in this country. As a Truthout analysis observed in 2016, the first Sanders campaign and the Occupy movement were both instrumental in helping reshape the American debate through class lenses. These movements grew in the aftermath of the Great Recession and the 2008 economic crisis. This was a wake-up call for young Americans who were (and still are) disproportionately impacted. The 2020 primary is an incredibly high-stakes chapter in this fight, as the class consciousness that manifested itself in 2011 and 2016 has transformed into an even larger national movement with a viable national candidate.
Moreover, the growth of alternative means of communication, including independent media and social media, have provided a chance for more Americans to learn about the world without relying on corporate media outlets.
Establishment Tears
Mainstream media contempt for Sanders has been well documented back to his first presidential run. Still, the sheer volume of anti-Sanders media content in the last few weeks — as his poll numbers have risen — is overwhelming. Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin’s recent commentary is sadly typical. She has been arguing that Sanders is unelectable and is a massive liability to compete with Trump. As she was making this argument on Twitter, she asked: “What poll is there suggesting a Bernie can beat Trump?”
It was clear Rubin thought this was a classic mic-drop moment. However, Sanders has defeated President Donald Trump in numerous credible head-to-head polls, faring better than every other candidate save for Biden. Whether Rubin is being dishonest or ignorant is an open question, but there is no justification either way.
Much to Rubin’s chagrin, Bernie’s “Internet Army,” as The New York Times pejoratively called Sanders supporters in one of its many anti-Sanders articles, quickly dismantled her argument in real time. A flood of comments and memes correcting her missteps flooded her responses, far outpacing likes or retweets. In addition to shredding Rubin’s assertion, many (like Solomon) pointed out that the owner of The Washington Post, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, has a vested interest in stopping the kind of redistributive economic policies Bernie Sanders’s campaign advances.
There was a time when Rubin’s sentiments would have had more influence. Facts that disprove her points, expose her hypocrisies or demonstrate who owns the bulk of the mainstream media would not have been as accessible to your average consumer of political news, say, 20 years ago. But ready access to such information means that these types of assertions simply can’t stand.
“Since we have democratized the national conversation because of [social media], whenever [establishment media figures] have bad takes, they get destroyed,” argues political commentator and co-founder of Justice Democrats, Kyle Kulinski, on his show “Secular Talk.”
Social media played a key role in helping this happen. It played a key role in organizers being able to educate and communicate in the Arab Spring and Occupy. However, there are grave concerns about corporate control of our digital sphere as well, with two Silicon Valley companies controlling 60 percent of digital advertising.
Rubin is hardly the only media figure engaged in such tactics. Spurious and sometimes baseless attacks on Sanders have come from all corners of the establishment press. Progressive talk-show host Kystal Ball recently appeared on a CNN segment hosted by Alisyn Camerota. When she cited data stating that Bernie Sanders is popular, pundit and former Hillary Clinton staffer Karen Finney simply rejected Ball’s claim without evidence.
In January, when Sanders first took the lead in the famous Selzer/Des-Moines Register (DMR) poll, pundits on MSNBC, including Joy Reid and Jimmy Williams, minimized the results. The DMR poll is described as the gold standard by establishment standard-bearers like Nate Silver and Vox Media. Yet Williams still tried to suggest to the audience, absent any evidence, that the poll was not accurate:
Writing in The Atlantic, David Frum (one of the key architects of the Iraq War) made arguments in his article “Bernie Can’t Win” that were so unbelievably specious that they elicited widespread laughter on the left. At one point, Frum sincerely suggests Trump will focus his campaign on parroting Hillary Clinton’s criticism of Sanders — emphasizing rude supporters on Twitter and toxic masculinity. “[You will] almost think Clinton is Trump’s running mate,” he wrote.
In other words, Donald Trump — who has been accused of (and recorded boasting about) sexually assaulting many women — will, according to Frum, try to undermine Sanders by saying he is sexist and appealing to people’s sense of decency. And to do this, supposedly, he will use the arguments of the candidate with woeful favorability numbers, who he just defeated and threatened to throw in jail. One could be excused for thinking Frum’s whole argument was meant as satire.
The Diminishing Efficacy of Corporate Propaganda
In the United States, the most influential centers of power have long been class-conscious. They have shaped media policy and media coverage to emphasize other fault lines in an attempt to break the country up by anything but class. As such, powerful forces have attempted to keep the working class from fighting for class interests or even recognizing that they are members of anything resembling a working class. This is what makes the kind of inequality we have possible in the United States. If this logjam breaks, the dynamics that maintain the status quo face a crisis.
In the 2020 election, a wary public sees Bernie Sanders asked at every debate how he can dare to suggest we pay for Medicare for All, though former Vice President Biden is not compelled to explain how we can afford to maintain the status quo — which is literally the most expensive and wasteful health care system on the planet — or how we can afford to fund an endless war. Why is the burden of proof so rigid toward policies that benefit the many, while there is no burden of proof placed on those who seek the opposite?
These assumptions are so deeply ingrained into establishment journalists that many of them have merely internalized them. No wonder pundits seem so confused when they are challenged with obvious realities that don’t fit in nicely with the dominant ideology.
Now corporate media outlets are trying desperately to shape public opinion and the efficacy of its propaganda is waning. Their “kitchen sink strategy” against Sanders makes their contempt for him and his supporters so obvious, the public is (slowly, but steadily) starting to connect dots about who the media serve. As it stands, only 13 percent of Americans have a great deal of trust in the media, according to a Gallup poll from September 2019. (Twenty-eight percent have a “fair amount of trust,” for a total of 41 percent having some trust in the media.)
If current trends persist, the mainstream press will find itself increasingly toothless in its efforts to shape our national debate. Many feel this development is long overdue.
Fox News tells Iowa voters to show up at polls on the wrong day
January 31, 2020
By Travis Gettys - raw story
Fox News falsely notified voters of the date of next week’s Iowa caucuses.
The rules for the caucuses are complicated, but the start time is set in stone — Monday, Feb. 3, at 7 p.m.
However, a tweet from the official “Fox & Friends” account, which links to video of President Donald Trump’s rally Thursday night in Des Moines, inaccurately claims the caucuses will be held Tuesday.
The televised report linked in the tweet, which remained active for at least an hour after it was posted, did not indicate when the caucuses will be held.
President Trump rails against the liberal policies of his Democratic rivals while rallying voters ahead of Tuesday’s Iowa Caucuses. | @GriffJenkins pic.twitter.com/eJnworyHE2
— Fox & Friends First (@FoxFriendsFirst) January 31, 2020
The rules for the caucuses are complicated, but the start time is set in stone — Monday, Feb. 3, at 7 p.m.
However, a tweet from the official “Fox & Friends” account, which links to video of President Donald Trump’s rally Thursday night in Des Moines, inaccurately claims the caucuses will be held Tuesday.
The televised report linked in the tweet, which remained active for at least an hour after it was posted, did not indicate when the caucuses will be held.
President Trump rails against the liberal policies of his Democratic rivals while rallying voters ahead of Tuesday’s Iowa Caucuses. | @GriffJenkins pic.twitter.com/eJnworyHE2
— Fox & Friends First (@FoxFriendsFirst) January 31, 2020
Fox News and Trump's defense team: Twin arms of the same propaganda outfit
Trump's team isn't focused on a legal defense of their client so much as creating viral content for Fox News
AMANDA MARCOTTE - salon
JANUARY 28, 2020 6:00PM (UTC)
On Sunday, the New York Times released leaked revelations from John Bolton's upcoming book about his stint as national security adviser to Donald Trump, which in a different world would have upended the president's impeachment trial in the Senate. Bolton reportedly affirms in the book that Trump personally told him military aid was being withheld from Ukraine in an effort to force the Ukrainian president to announce investigations meant to bolster Trump's conspiracy theories about Democrats. This revelation was received in the media as a big deal, because Trump's defense team has been trying, laughably, to argue that Trump withheld the aid for some purpose other than cheating in an election. Bolton's eyewitness account would seem to blow a hole through those efforts.
During the impeachment trial on Monday, however, Trump's legal team simply ignored the fact that their supposed defense of Trump on the merits of the case had just been destroyed. Instead of even trying to rebut this new evidence that is in the public sphere, Trump's lawyers instead decided to talk about Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, who is now a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
In her 30-minute presentation Monday, former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi dug into the repeatedly debunked conspiracy theory that Joe Biden got a Ukrainian prosecutor fired in order to stop investigations into Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that employed Hunter Biden as a board member. Another Trump attorney, Eric Herschmann, also went on at length about the Bidens and Burisma.
By legal standards, this was an odd choice. The accusations of corruption against the Bidens have been debunked, over and over and over and over. Moreover, the entire reason Trump is getting impeached is because he tried to blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into backing these false accusations, something Zelensky clearly didn't want to do, likely because he knew they were false.
Instead of defending their client, in other words, Trump's attorneys were perpetuating the very scheme that got their client into legal trouble to begin with.
This bizarre gambit makes more sense, however, if one understands what Trump's team is actually doing. They're not there to mount a legal defense of their client, who everyone knows is guilty anyway. What they're doing is producing content for Fox News.
Much has been made of the fact that many of the lawyers Trump hired to defend him are Fox News regulars. Media Matters put together a report showing that four of Trump's lawyers — Bondi, Alan Dershowitz, Ken Starr and Robert Ray — have collectively appeared on Fox News more than 350 times in the past year alone. These folks are TV personalities more than practicing attorneys at this point.
The assumption has been that Trump understands the world entirely through the lens of watching TV, and hired these people because he wants to surround himself with people who like, him, became famous on television. No doubt that's true.
But it's also true that these hires show that Trump's legal team and Trump's propaganda apparatus are one and the same. Trump has no interest in mounting a legal defense of himself, since he knows that the Republican-controlled Senate will acquit him no matter how guilty he is. His "legal defense" is strictly oriented towards generating propaganda to be disseminated by Fox News — so much so that he literally hired lawyers on the basis of their reputation as Fox News propagandists rather than because of their legal acumen.
The arguments that these lawyers are making in the Senate chamber are often nonsensical, hard to follow and not related to an actual defense of Trump, who is, admittedly, impossible to defend in any meaningful way. But it all makes more sense if one realizes that what they're doing is churning out content that can be clipped and edited for Fox News, whose strategy during impeachment is not to convince viewers Trump is innocent (again, that's not possible), but that everyone, especially Democrats, are just as crooked as he is.
Sure enough, Bondi's arguments were recut for Fox News, where talking head Jesse Watters went on at length about how this "doesn't look good for Joe Biden" and opined, "I don't think could withstand that kind of scrutiny."
Similarly, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, couldn't conceal her glee when telling reporters, "I'm really interested to see how this discussion today informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters" who will decide whether to support Biden's candidacy when they show up to vote on Monday.
Biden, however, is not the one on trial. Nor should he be, because, as has been shown time and again, he did nothing wrong, Far from being corrupt, he was working on behalf of an international alliance that was fighting against corruption in Ukraine. But Fox News, along with their pundits who are playing Trump lawyers on TV, is trying to confuse viewers about who is actually on trial here.
On Monday, Trump's personal lawyer Jay Sekulow, who has no experience in defending clients like Trump but was hired because Trump liked him on Fox News, played a video of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi handing out pens that were used to sign the articles of impeachment. This move puzzled some viewers, as the senators hearing the case won't care that Pelosi did that. They're all aware that keeping pens used to sign historic documents is standard practice.
But that argument wasn't for the Senate. Sekulow was working in his role as a content producer for Fox News. Watching Pelosi do this is about whipping the audience of Fox News and other right-wing outlets into a misogynist rage at the woman who dared to stand up to Trump. He was almost certainly inspired by right-wingers on social media who got angry about Pelosi and the pens weeks ago, apparently unaware that such pens are part of standard Capitol Hill ritual. Sure enough, right-wing media outlets spread the clip far and wide, ignoring the historic context.
To be sure, the Democratic House managers who argued for removing Trump last week also played to the cameras at times. Rep. Adam Schiff of California, who is leading the effort, made a number of moving speeches that were addressed less to the senators in the chamber than to the public at large, calling for a restoration of the rule of law and an end to Trump's abuse of power.
But no matter how flowery the language got, Schiff and other Democrats always stayed on the topic at hand: What Trump did and whether it merits removal from office. The rhetorical flourishes were no different than those typically used by prosecutors when arguing a case.
Trump's team, on the other hand, is more interested in producing propaganda for Fox News that demonizes Democrats than they are in defending their client. This effort is building on what congressional Republicans did during the House impeachment hearings, where their time was spent not on questioning witnesses, but on generating clips full of conspiracy-theory buzzwords to be used on Fox News and disseminated on Facebook.
Fox News and other right-wing media, Republicans in Congress, the Trump administration and Trump's legal team really shouldn't be viewed as separate entities. Rather, it's a singular propaganda apparatus with different parts, all working together to manufacture an alternative plane of existence — one with very little relationship to reality — for Republican voters. So what we're seeing in the Senate this week really isn't as a defense team making legal arguments, but another extension of that propaganda machine, churning out its Opposite World content.
During the impeachment trial on Monday, however, Trump's legal team simply ignored the fact that their supposed defense of Trump on the merits of the case had just been destroyed. Instead of even trying to rebut this new evidence that is in the public sphere, Trump's lawyers instead decided to talk about Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, who is now a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
In her 30-minute presentation Monday, former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi dug into the repeatedly debunked conspiracy theory that Joe Biden got a Ukrainian prosecutor fired in order to stop investigations into Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that employed Hunter Biden as a board member. Another Trump attorney, Eric Herschmann, also went on at length about the Bidens and Burisma.
By legal standards, this was an odd choice. The accusations of corruption against the Bidens have been debunked, over and over and over and over. Moreover, the entire reason Trump is getting impeached is because he tried to blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into backing these false accusations, something Zelensky clearly didn't want to do, likely because he knew they were false.
Instead of defending their client, in other words, Trump's attorneys were perpetuating the very scheme that got their client into legal trouble to begin with.
This bizarre gambit makes more sense, however, if one understands what Trump's team is actually doing. They're not there to mount a legal defense of their client, who everyone knows is guilty anyway. What they're doing is producing content for Fox News.
Much has been made of the fact that many of the lawyers Trump hired to defend him are Fox News regulars. Media Matters put together a report showing that four of Trump's lawyers — Bondi, Alan Dershowitz, Ken Starr and Robert Ray — have collectively appeared on Fox News more than 350 times in the past year alone. These folks are TV personalities more than practicing attorneys at this point.
The assumption has been that Trump understands the world entirely through the lens of watching TV, and hired these people because he wants to surround himself with people who like, him, became famous on television. No doubt that's true.
But it's also true that these hires show that Trump's legal team and Trump's propaganda apparatus are one and the same. Trump has no interest in mounting a legal defense of himself, since he knows that the Republican-controlled Senate will acquit him no matter how guilty he is. His "legal defense" is strictly oriented towards generating propaganda to be disseminated by Fox News — so much so that he literally hired lawyers on the basis of their reputation as Fox News propagandists rather than because of their legal acumen.
The arguments that these lawyers are making in the Senate chamber are often nonsensical, hard to follow and not related to an actual defense of Trump, who is, admittedly, impossible to defend in any meaningful way. But it all makes more sense if one realizes that what they're doing is churning out content that can be clipped and edited for Fox News, whose strategy during impeachment is not to convince viewers Trump is innocent (again, that's not possible), but that everyone, especially Democrats, are just as crooked as he is.
Sure enough, Bondi's arguments were recut for Fox News, where talking head Jesse Watters went on at length about how this "doesn't look good for Joe Biden" and opined, "I don't think could withstand that kind of scrutiny."
Similarly, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, couldn't conceal her glee when telling reporters, "I'm really interested to see how this discussion today informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters" who will decide whether to support Biden's candidacy when they show up to vote on Monday.
Biden, however, is not the one on trial. Nor should he be, because, as has been shown time and again, he did nothing wrong, Far from being corrupt, he was working on behalf of an international alliance that was fighting against corruption in Ukraine. But Fox News, along with their pundits who are playing Trump lawyers on TV, is trying to confuse viewers about who is actually on trial here.
On Monday, Trump's personal lawyer Jay Sekulow, who has no experience in defending clients like Trump but was hired because Trump liked him on Fox News, played a video of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi handing out pens that were used to sign the articles of impeachment. This move puzzled some viewers, as the senators hearing the case won't care that Pelosi did that. They're all aware that keeping pens used to sign historic documents is standard practice.
But that argument wasn't for the Senate. Sekulow was working in his role as a content producer for Fox News. Watching Pelosi do this is about whipping the audience of Fox News and other right-wing outlets into a misogynist rage at the woman who dared to stand up to Trump. He was almost certainly inspired by right-wingers on social media who got angry about Pelosi and the pens weeks ago, apparently unaware that such pens are part of standard Capitol Hill ritual. Sure enough, right-wing media outlets spread the clip far and wide, ignoring the historic context.
To be sure, the Democratic House managers who argued for removing Trump last week also played to the cameras at times. Rep. Adam Schiff of California, who is leading the effort, made a number of moving speeches that were addressed less to the senators in the chamber than to the public at large, calling for a restoration of the rule of law and an end to Trump's abuse of power.
But no matter how flowery the language got, Schiff and other Democrats always stayed on the topic at hand: What Trump did and whether it merits removal from office. The rhetorical flourishes were no different than those typically used by prosecutors when arguing a case.
Trump's team, on the other hand, is more interested in producing propaganda for Fox News that demonizes Democrats than they are in defending their client. This effort is building on what congressional Republicans did during the House impeachment hearings, where their time was spent not on questioning witnesses, but on generating clips full of conspiracy-theory buzzwords to be used on Fox News and disseminated on Facebook.
Fox News and other right-wing media, Republicans in Congress, the Trump administration and Trump's legal team really shouldn't be viewed as separate entities. Rather, it's a singular propaganda apparatus with different parts, all working together to manufacture an alternative plane of existence — one with very little relationship to reality — for Republican voters. So what we're seeing in the Senate this week really isn't as a defense team making legal arguments, but another extension of that propaganda machine, churning out its Opposite World content.
Andrew Napolitano: Impeached Trump Should Be Removed From Office
Andrew Napolitano, who has been noticeably absent from Fox News' on-air coverage of Trump’s impeachment trial, openly contradicted Fox’s “nothing to see here” messaging.
By NewsHound Ellen - crooks & liars
1/25/20 6:30am
Fox News “senior judicial analyst” Andrew Napolitano saved his recommendation for the end but his FoxNews.com column asking, “What does it take to remove a president?” after impeachment, makes it very clear that Trump has “amply” qualified.
Napolitano, who has been noticeably absent from Fox’s on-air coverage of Trump’s impeachment trial, openly contradicted Fox’s “nothing to see here” messaging: “His trial is not a charade or a joke or a hoax. It is deadly serious business based on well-established constitutional norms," Napolitano wrote in his column.
Napolitano went on to note that that Government Accountability office concluded Trump “acted unlawfully” when he asked the president of Ukraine for a favor. “But did he act criminally?” Napolitano asked.
The answer is an unequivocal “yes.”
Federal election laws proscribe as criminal the mere solicitation of help for a political campaign from a foreign national or government. There is no dispute that Trump did this. In fact, the case for this is stronger now than it was when the House impeached him last year. Since then, more evidence, which Trump tried to suppress, has come to light.
That evidence “implicates two other crimes,” Napolitano wrote. Those are bribery and contempt of Congress.
Napolitano concluded that there are “valid, lawful, constitutional arguments for Trump's impeachment” and any Republican senator who may have “whispered” to him that he will be acquitted has “violated the oath of ‘impartial justice’ and fidelity to the Constitution and the law.”
Finally, there is this:
What is required for removal of the president? A demonstration of presidential commission of high crimes and misdemeanors, of which in Trump's case the evidence is ample and uncontradicted.
Apparently, that evidence was too “boring” for most of Fox News to have noticed.
Napolitano, who has been noticeably absent from Fox’s on-air coverage of Trump’s impeachment trial, openly contradicted Fox’s “nothing to see here” messaging: “His trial is not a charade or a joke or a hoax. It is deadly serious business based on well-established constitutional norms," Napolitano wrote in his column.
Napolitano went on to note that that Government Accountability office concluded Trump “acted unlawfully” when he asked the president of Ukraine for a favor. “But did he act criminally?” Napolitano asked.
The answer is an unequivocal “yes.”
Federal election laws proscribe as criminal the mere solicitation of help for a political campaign from a foreign national or government. There is no dispute that Trump did this. In fact, the case for this is stronger now than it was when the House impeached him last year. Since then, more evidence, which Trump tried to suppress, has come to light.
That evidence “implicates two other crimes,” Napolitano wrote. Those are bribery and contempt of Congress.
Napolitano concluded that there are “valid, lawful, constitutional arguments for Trump's impeachment” and any Republican senator who may have “whispered” to him that he will be acquitted has “violated the oath of ‘impartial justice’ and fidelity to the Constitution and the law.”
Finally, there is this:
What is required for removal of the president? A demonstration of presidential commission of high crimes and misdemeanors, of which in Trump's case the evidence is ample and uncontradicted.
Apparently, that evidence was too “boring” for most of Fox News to have noticed.
Pro-Trump network OAN facing lawsuit over white anchor’s alleged racial harassment of producer
January 18, 2020
By Matthew Chapman - raw story
According to The Daily Beast, the San Diego-based pro-Trump cable network One America News went on trial in California Superior Court this week, with a former employee suing the network for racial discrimination, retaliation, and “intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
Jonathan Harris, a former booking producer for the political commentary program The Daily Ledger, alleged that during production meetings, the show’s host Graham Ledger “would regularly berate, demean and verbally abuse Plaintiff on account of Plaintiff’s liberal political views, and Plaintiff’s opinions and perspectives as an African-American male. None of Plaintiff’s three fellow producers on The Daily Ledger were ever subjected to verbal abuse or harassment on the basis of their opinions. Plaintiff was the sole African-American producer on the show.”
Furthermore, the complaint continued, “In addition to constantly berating Plaintiff on the basis of his political opinions and racial identity, on at least 3 separate occasions, Ledger made blatantly racist comments about people of ‘non-Caucasian’ races,” and that OAN’s CEO Robert Herring Sr. also confided in Harris that he “had come to realize that he held racist beliefs and opinions about African-American people and other minority groups,” and that Harris was transferred and shortly fired after he made his complaints.
OAN argues that Harris’ poor treatment during the sets stemmed from his political views rather than his race, with attorney Patrick Nellies saying that he would disrupt meetings by arguing with the others about his liberal politics, despite several warnings to stop — and that while Ledger was a difficult person to work with, no one else had heard him make racist comments.
Furthermore, Herring testified that Harris was fired following an incident in which he had caught him trying to delete files off of a company computer, at which point Herring tried to physically block him from the computer and a shoving match ensued.
One of Harris’ attorneys, Britany Engelman, told the jury that his time working for Ledger was “a nightmare he hasn’t woken up from,” and lead attorney Rodney Diggs told The Daily Beast, “Regardless of whether it’s conservative or not conservative, anyone who’s in the workplace should not be treated differently because of one’s race.”
Jonathan Harris, a former booking producer for the political commentary program The Daily Ledger, alleged that during production meetings, the show’s host Graham Ledger “would regularly berate, demean and verbally abuse Plaintiff on account of Plaintiff’s liberal political views, and Plaintiff’s opinions and perspectives as an African-American male. None of Plaintiff’s three fellow producers on The Daily Ledger were ever subjected to verbal abuse or harassment on the basis of their opinions. Plaintiff was the sole African-American producer on the show.”
Furthermore, the complaint continued, “In addition to constantly berating Plaintiff on the basis of his political opinions and racial identity, on at least 3 separate occasions, Ledger made blatantly racist comments about people of ‘non-Caucasian’ races,” and that OAN’s CEO Robert Herring Sr. also confided in Harris that he “had come to realize that he held racist beliefs and opinions about African-American people and other minority groups,” and that Harris was transferred and shortly fired after he made his complaints.
OAN argues that Harris’ poor treatment during the sets stemmed from his political views rather than his race, with attorney Patrick Nellies saying that he would disrupt meetings by arguing with the others about his liberal politics, despite several warnings to stop — and that while Ledger was a difficult person to work with, no one else had heard him make racist comments.
Furthermore, Herring testified that Harris was fired following an incident in which he had caught him trying to delete files off of a company computer, at which point Herring tried to physically block him from the computer and a shoving match ensued.
One of Harris’ attorneys, Britany Engelman, told the jury that his time working for Ledger was “a nightmare he hasn’t woken up from,” and lead attorney Rodney Diggs told The Daily Beast, “Regardless of whether it’s conservative or not conservative, anyone who’s in the workplace should not be treated differently because of one’s race.”
a station for traitors by a traitor!!!
kansas City radio station agrees to broadcast Russian-owned ‘propaganda’ program
BY STEVE VOCKRODT - kansas city star
JANUARY 17, 2020 05:00 AM
A Kansas City area radio station can broadcast Russian state-owned media programming, the type that U.S. intelligence called a “propaganda machine,” for six hours a day through a lease agreement struck by a local radio operator.
RM Broadcasting LLC, a Florida-based company that has agreements to broadcast the Russian state media program Radio Sputnik, reached a deal on Jan. 1 to lease air time through Alpine Broadcasting Corp. in Liberty. Alpine Broadcasting Corp. broadcasts on three frequencies in the Kansas City area: KCXL 1140 AM, 102.9 FM and 104.7 FM.
The lease agreement lets RM Broadcasting air its programming from 6 to 9 a.m. and 6 to 9 p.m. seven days a week. KCXL’s website, which says that it’s the radio station that will “tell you the things that the liberal media wont (sic) tell you,” lists Radio Sputnik in its morning programming.
A 2017 report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that evaluated Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election described Sputnik as “another government-funded outlet producing pro-Kremlin radio and online content in a variety of languages for international audiences.”
Sputnik, along with Russian television outlet RT — formerly Russia Today — “contributed to the influence campaign by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences,” the DNI intelligence assessment said.
Those descriptions were part of a larger set of findings by the Director of National Intelligence that said Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign during the 2016 elections that sought to undermine public faith in the U.S. election process, denigrate Hillary Clinton and promote Donald Trump.
RM Broadcasting is run in Florida by a man named Arnold Ferolito. He disputed the government’s assessment of Radio Sputnik.
“Ninety percent of the programming is generated right here in the United States,” Ferolito told The Star in an interview.
RM Broadcasting in 2019 was ordered by a federal judge to register as a foreign agent under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires political agents in the U.S. acting on a foreign government’s behalf to disclose their relationships, finances and activities.
Ferolito took exception to the government’s requirement to register as a foreign agent.
“I just sell air time that’s all I do,” Ferolito said. “The government put a gun to my head and forced me to sign.”
Paul Manafort is a prominent example of how FARA applies to foreign agents. Manafort, former chairman of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, pleaded guilty to a charge of failing to register as an agent of the Ukrainian government and its former president Viktor Yanukovych.
The radio station’s order came after the Justice Department in 2018 said RM Broadcasting was acting as a “publicity agent” for Rossiya Segodnya, a Russian government-owned news agency, by broadcasting its radio programs.
At the time, RM Broadcasting was airing Rossiya Segodnya programs on an AM frequency in Washington, D.C. RM Broadcasting had argued that it merely bought and re-sold air time on radio stations, some of which happened to include Russian state media programs. A federal judge found that argument unpersuasive.
When RM Broadcasting first registered as a foreign agent, it disclosed that it had received $1.43 million in payments from Rossiya Segodnya to buy air time for Radio Sputnik from 2017 to 2019.
“They don’t pay me for anything other than the air time,” said Ferolito, describing his work as more of a hobby after selling his other businesses in 2009.
“It’s costing me more money than I’m making, that’s the sad part about it. The American dream is dead in a lot of ways. There’s people hell bent on Russia, Russia, Russia. One of these days it’s going to be China.”
Radio Sputnik, according to a Foreign Registration Act filing, broadcasts in capital cities in China, France, Germany, Egypt and the United Kingdom.
RM Broadcasting buys air time for Radio Sputnik only in Washington D.C. and Kansas City. RM Broadcasting’s filing regarding KCXL indicates RM Broadcasting is being paid a $324,000 service fee from Rossiya Segodnya to transmit shows in Kansas City.
KCXL’s president is Peter Schartel, who could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday. Messages to the radio station were not immediately returned.
Schartel bought the station in 1993, according to a 1997 story in The Star. That story quoted Schartel characterizing himself as “basically a liberal, patriotic American...but our government has done some horrible things.”
KCXL grabbed attention in 2018 for providing air time to Steve West, a Republican candidate in Clay County for the Missouri House of Representatives who used his “Jack Justice” radio show to discuss what The Star then described as “fanatical conspiracies about ‘Jewish cabals’ that are ‘harvesting baby parts’ through Planned Parenthood, that torture and molest children and that run the Republican Party.”
KCXL’s website today describes itself as an outlet that “will bring you the truth.”
“America is a very different country than it used to be,” KCXL’s website says. “We used to be a country of freedom, job, opportunity, and equality. Now, we are a country that looks down upon traditional values. We are a country that puts its citizens second to citizens of other countries.”
RM Broadcasting LLC, a Florida-based company that has agreements to broadcast the Russian state media program Radio Sputnik, reached a deal on Jan. 1 to lease air time through Alpine Broadcasting Corp. in Liberty. Alpine Broadcasting Corp. broadcasts on three frequencies in the Kansas City area: KCXL 1140 AM, 102.9 FM and 104.7 FM.
The lease agreement lets RM Broadcasting air its programming from 6 to 9 a.m. and 6 to 9 p.m. seven days a week. KCXL’s website, which says that it’s the radio station that will “tell you the things that the liberal media wont (sic) tell you,” lists Radio Sputnik in its morning programming.
A 2017 report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that evaluated Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election described Sputnik as “another government-funded outlet producing pro-Kremlin radio and online content in a variety of languages for international audiences.”
Sputnik, along with Russian television outlet RT — formerly Russia Today — “contributed to the influence campaign by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences,” the DNI intelligence assessment said.
Those descriptions were part of a larger set of findings by the Director of National Intelligence that said Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign during the 2016 elections that sought to undermine public faith in the U.S. election process, denigrate Hillary Clinton and promote Donald Trump.
RM Broadcasting is run in Florida by a man named Arnold Ferolito. He disputed the government’s assessment of Radio Sputnik.
“Ninety percent of the programming is generated right here in the United States,” Ferolito told The Star in an interview.
RM Broadcasting in 2019 was ordered by a federal judge to register as a foreign agent under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires political agents in the U.S. acting on a foreign government’s behalf to disclose their relationships, finances and activities.
Ferolito took exception to the government’s requirement to register as a foreign agent.
“I just sell air time that’s all I do,” Ferolito said. “The government put a gun to my head and forced me to sign.”
Paul Manafort is a prominent example of how FARA applies to foreign agents. Manafort, former chairman of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, pleaded guilty to a charge of failing to register as an agent of the Ukrainian government and its former president Viktor Yanukovych.
The radio station’s order came after the Justice Department in 2018 said RM Broadcasting was acting as a “publicity agent” for Rossiya Segodnya, a Russian government-owned news agency, by broadcasting its radio programs.
At the time, RM Broadcasting was airing Rossiya Segodnya programs on an AM frequency in Washington, D.C. RM Broadcasting had argued that it merely bought and re-sold air time on radio stations, some of which happened to include Russian state media programs. A federal judge found that argument unpersuasive.
When RM Broadcasting first registered as a foreign agent, it disclosed that it had received $1.43 million in payments from Rossiya Segodnya to buy air time for Radio Sputnik from 2017 to 2019.
“They don’t pay me for anything other than the air time,” said Ferolito, describing his work as more of a hobby after selling his other businesses in 2009.
“It’s costing me more money than I’m making, that’s the sad part about it. The American dream is dead in a lot of ways. There’s people hell bent on Russia, Russia, Russia. One of these days it’s going to be China.”
Radio Sputnik, according to a Foreign Registration Act filing, broadcasts in capital cities in China, France, Germany, Egypt and the United Kingdom.
RM Broadcasting buys air time for Radio Sputnik only in Washington D.C. and Kansas City. RM Broadcasting’s filing regarding KCXL indicates RM Broadcasting is being paid a $324,000 service fee from Rossiya Segodnya to transmit shows in Kansas City.
KCXL’s president is Peter Schartel, who could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday. Messages to the radio station were not immediately returned.
Schartel bought the station in 1993, according to a 1997 story in The Star. That story quoted Schartel characterizing himself as “basically a liberal, patriotic American...but our government has done some horrible things.”
KCXL grabbed attention in 2018 for providing air time to Steve West, a Republican candidate in Clay County for the Missouri House of Representatives who used his “Jack Justice” radio show to discuss what The Star then described as “fanatical conspiracies about ‘Jewish cabals’ that are ‘harvesting baby parts’ through Planned Parenthood, that torture and molest children and that run the Republican Party.”
KCXL’s website today describes itself as an outlet that “will bring you the truth.”
“America is a very different country than it used to be,” KCXL’s website says. “We used to be a country of freedom, job, opportunity, and equality. Now, we are a country that looks down upon traditional values. We are a country that puts its citizens second to citizens of other countries.”
Former Trump official claims that immigration crackdown has meant fewer rapes
"How many women weren't raped" by undocumented immigrants, former acting ICE chief Tom Homan muses on Fox News
MATTHEW ROZSA - salon
JANUARY 17, 2020 11:00AM (UTC)
Tom Homan, a former Trump administration official who served as acting ICE director for more than a year, claimed Wednesday to "Fox & Friends" co-host Brian Kilmeade that the president's immigration policies have led to less rapes across the country.
"Look, I think you're going to get 400 miles of wall by the end of the year. I think this president means what he says," Homan told Kilmeade. "And look, I talked about the 72 percent decline [in undocumented immigration]."
"What people aren't talking about, Brian, is how many women weren't raped when 72 percent decline in illegal immigration," he continued. "How many children haven't died? How many millions of dollars did the cartels not make? So that's something that no one's talking about."
Earlier in the interview, Homan hypothesized about why immigration did not receive more attention during Tuesday night's Democratic primary debate in Iowa.
"This president on his own has gotten illegal crossings down 72 percent from the high in May. What are they going to say?" Homan asked Kilmeade. "They had failed. The president has taken them to school without their help and despite their resistance."
Homan's false claim that undocumented immigrants were more likely to commit rape strongly echoed the famous language of Donald Trump's campaign launch in 2015. After descending the golden escalator in Trump Tower, the future president falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants were "bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
Homan himself has a long history of making controversial and racist comments about immigrants. These include: incorrectly implying that an undocumented immigrant was responsible for the 2017 California wildfires; inaccurately stating that "nine out of every 10" immigrants picked up by ICE "have criminal records"; and allegedly using a slur while glorifying violence against immigrants.
Since joining Fox News, Homan has also called for the criminalization of overstaying a visa, which is currently a civil violation; has supported detaining asylum seekers in tent cities; ahas ccused Democrats of helping Mexican criminal organizations and cartels; has called for the rounding up and deportation of 100,000 immigrant families; and has denied that migrant children were being kept in cages.
In 2018, Salon spoke with Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who said that Trump administration officials "don't want people to know that they have this system of child prisons, that they're locking up children for far more than 20 days, that they're slow-walking their release even when they have sponsors who have gone through the full background check system because they want to keep them in prison rather than releasing them to homes and schools and parks, where they should be. This is all part of an effort by the administration on their policy from May to say to the world, 'Do not come to our borders if you're fleeing oppression because we will inflict trauma on you and your children.'"
"Look, I think you're going to get 400 miles of wall by the end of the year. I think this president means what he says," Homan told Kilmeade. "And look, I talked about the 72 percent decline [in undocumented immigration]."
"What people aren't talking about, Brian, is how many women weren't raped when 72 percent decline in illegal immigration," he continued. "How many children haven't died? How many millions of dollars did the cartels not make? So that's something that no one's talking about."
Earlier in the interview, Homan hypothesized about why immigration did not receive more attention during Tuesday night's Democratic primary debate in Iowa.
"This president on his own has gotten illegal crossings down 72 percent from the high in May. What are they going to say?" Homan asked Kilmeade. "They had failed. The president has taken them to school without their help and despite their resistance."
Homan's false claim that undocumented immigrants were more likely to commit rape strongly echoed the famous language of Donald Trump's campaign launch in 2015. After descending the golden escalator in Trump Tower, the future president falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants were "bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
Homan himself has a long history of making controversial and racist comments about immigrants. These include: incorrectly implying that an undocumented immigrant was responsible for the 2017 California wildfires; inaccurately stating that "nine out of every 10" immigrants picked up by ICE "have criminal records"; and allegedly using a slur while glorifying violence against immigrants.
Since joining Fox News, Homan has also called for the criminalization of overstaying a visa, which is currently a civil violation; has supported detaining asylum seekers in tent cities; ahas ccused Democrats of helping Mexican criminal organizations and cartels; has called for the rounding up and deportation of 100,000 immigrant families; and has denied that migrant children were being kept in cages.
In 2018, Salon spoke with Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who said that Trump administration officials "don't want people to know that they have this system of child prisons, that they're locking up children for far more than 20 days, that they're slow-walking their release even when they have sponsors who have gone through the full background check system because they want to keep them in prison rather than releasing them to homes and schools and parks, where they should be. This is all part of an effort by the administration on their policy from May to say to the world, 'Do not come to our borders if you're fleeing oppression because we will inflict trauma on you and your children.'"
Facebook - a platform of lies!!!
Facebook refuses to restrict untruthful political ads and micro-targeting
*Twitter banned political ads outright in October
*Rival Google limits ad targeting to broad categories
Associated Press
the guardian
Thu 9 Jan 2020 09.13 EST
Facebook has decided not to limit how political ads can be targeted to specific groups of people, as its main digital-ad rival Google did in November to fight misinformation.
Neither will it ban political ads outright, as Twitter did last October. And it still will not factcheck them, as it’s faced pressure to do.
Instead, it is announcing much more limited “transparency features” that aim to give users slightly more control over how many political ads they see and to make its online library of political ads easier to use.
These steps appear unlikely to assuage critics – including some of the company’s rank-and-file employees – who say Facebook has too much power and not enough limits when it comes to its effects on elections and democracy itself.
Since last fall, Facebook has insisted that it won’t factcheck political ads, a move that critics say gives politicians license to lie in ads that cannot be easily monitored by outsiders. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly argued that “political speech is important” and that Facebook doesn’t want to interfere with it.
Google, the digital ads leader, is limiting political-ad targeting to broad categories such as sex, age and postal code.
Facebook said in a blogpost on Thursday that it considered limiting the targeting of political ads. But the social network said it learned about their importance for “reaching key audiences” after conducting outreach with political campaigns from both US parties, political groups and nonprofits.
The company said it was guided by the principle that “people should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public”.
Facebook does plan to let users choose to see “fewer” political and social-issue ads, although it will not let people exclude them entirely. It will also let people search the ad library for exact phrases and to limit their search results using filters such as ad-audience size, dates and regions reached.
The transparency changes will go into effect over the next three months in the US and other countries where Facebook puts “paid for by” disclaimers on political ads. The political-ad controls won’t roll out in the US until early summer; the company will “eventually” expand them to other regions.
Neither will it ban political ads outright, as Twitter did last October. And it still will not factcheck them, as it’s faced pressure to do.
Instead, it is announcing much more limited “transparency features” that aim to give users slightly more control over how many political ads they see and to make its online library of political ads easier to use.
These steps appear unlikely to assuage critics – including some of the company’s rank-and-file employees – who say Facebook has too much power and not enough limits when it comes to its effects on elections and democracy itself.
Since last fall, Facebook has insisted that it won’t factcheck political ads, a move that critics say gives politicians license to lie in ads that cannot be easily monitored by outsiders. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly argued that “political speech is important” and that Facebook doesn’t want to interfere with it.
Google, the digital ads leader, is limiting political-ad targeting to broad categories such as sex, age and postal code.
Facebook said in a blogpost on Thursday that it considered limiting the targeting of political ads. But the social network said it learned about their importance for “reaching key audiences” after conducting outreach with political campaigns from both US parties, political groups and nonprofits.
The company said it was guided by the principle that “people should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public”.
Facebook does plan to let users choose to see “fewer” political and social-issue ads, although it will not let people exclude them entirely. It will also let people search the ad library for exact phrases and to limit their search results using filters such as ad-audience size, dates and regions reached.
The transparency changes will go into effect over the next three months in the US and other countries where Facebook puts “paid for by” disclaimers on political ads. The political-ad controls won’t roll out in the US until early summer; the company will “eventually” expand them to other regions.
Corporate media’s mantra is ‘anyone but Sanders or Warren’ — and they’re doing the work of the extremely wealthy
Norman Solomon / Common Dreams- alternet
December 2, 2019
Anyone who’s been paying attention should get the picture by now. Overall, in subtle and sledgehammer ways, the mass media of the United States—owned and sponsored by corporate giants—are in the midst of a siege against the two progressive Democratic candidates who have a real chance to be elected president in 2020.
Some of the prevalent media bias has taken the form of protracted swoons for numerous “center lane” opponents of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. The recent entry of Michael Bloomberg has further jammed that lane, adding a plutocrat “worth” upwards of $50 billion to a bevy of corporate politicians.
The mainline media are generally quite warm toward so-called “moderates,” without bothering to question what’s so moderate about such positions as bowing to corporate plunder, backing rampant militarism and refusing to seriously confront the climate emergency.
Critical reporting on debate performances and campaign operations has certainly been common. But the core of the “moderate” agenda routinely gets affirmation from elite journalists who told us in no uncertain terms four years ago that Hillary Clinton was obviously the nominee who could defeat Donald Trump.
This year, Sanders has taken most of the flak from reporters and pundits (often virtually indistinguishable), serving as a kind of “heat shield” for Warren. But as Warren gained ground in polling this fall, the attacks on her escalated—to the point that she now has a corporate media bullseye on her political back.
The disconnect between voters and corporate media is often huge. Meanwhile, with fly-on-the-wall pretenses, media outlets that have powerfully distorted proposals like Medicare for All are now reporting (with thinly veiled satisfaction) that voters are cool to those proposals.
The Washington Post, owned by one of the world’s richest people Jeff Bezos, has routinely spun Medicare for All as some sort of government takeover. In a prominent Nov. 30 news story that largely attributed Warren’s recent dip in polls to her positioning on healthcare, the Post matter-of-factly—and falsely—referred to Medicare for All as “government-run healthcare” and “a government-run health plan.”
Such pervasive mass-media reporting smoothed the way for deceptions that have elevated Pete Buttigieg in polls during recent weeks with his deceptive “Medicare for All Who Want It” slogan. That rhetoric springboards from the false premises that Medicare for All would deprive people of meaningful choice and would somehow reduce coverage.
In late September, with scant media scrutiny, Buttigieg launched an ad campaign against Medicare for All that has continued. Using insurance-industry talking points, he is deliberately confusing the current “choice” of predatory for-profit insurance plans with the genuine full choice of healthcare providers that top-quality Medicare for everyone would offer.
Mainstream media outlets are ill-positioned to refute such distortions since they’re routinely purveying such distortions themselves. Warren’s backtracking step on Medicare for All in mid-November was a tribute to media pressure in tandem with attacks from centrist opponents.
The idea of implementing some form of a substantial “wealth tax” has also been denigrated by many corporate-employed journalists. Countless pundits and political beat reporters have warned that proposals like a wealth tax, from Warren and Sanders, risk dragging Democrats down with voters. The truth is that such proposals are unpopular with the punditocracy and the extremely wealthy—while it’s a very different matter for most voters, who strongly favor a wealth tax.
On the same day this fall, the New York Times and the Washington Post published stories on Democratic elites’ “anxiety” about the presidential election. The Post wrote that Democrats “fret” Warren and Sanders “are too liberal to win a general election.” (With disdain, the article made a matter-of-fact reference to “the push for liberal purity.”) The Times similarly wrote of “persistent questions about Senator Elizabeth Warren’s viability in the general election.” Contrary voices were absent in both news stories.
Assessing those articles, FAIR.org media analyst Julie Hollar pointed out: “The pieces interviewed a number of big donors and centrist party leaders, who fretted about their preferred candidate’s struggles and expressed hope for someone more corporate-friendly than Warren to enter the race and challenge her rise.”
Hollar added: “The thinking of powerful people in the Democratic Party is worth writing about. But it’s crucial not to just take their claims at face value. . . . What establishment Democrats are really worried about, of course, is their own power in the party, which is threatened by a surging left wing. Don’t look to their establishment media counterparts to report on that transparently.”
Part of the problem is the TV network that many Democrats (mistakenly) trust. MSNBC is becoming notorious for its hostility to Bernie Sanders, often expressed through egregious omission or mathematical fib if not direct antipathy.
Ongoing media analysis is crucial, but even more important is activist pushback against the 24/7 onslaught of corporate-minded propaganda, often couched as common sense and incontrovertible reality. Among the needed counterpunches are these:
You shouldn’t have to be an active supporter of Bernie Sanders (as I am) or of Elizabeth Warren to voice outrage about corporate media biases. What’s at stake includes democracy—the informed consent of the governed—and so much more.
History is unfolding in real time. It’s not a product on the media shelf, to be passively bought and consumed. As Bernie 2020 campaign co-chair Nina Turner says, “All that we love is on the line.”
Some of the prevalent media bias has taken the form of protracted swoons for numerous “center lane” opponents of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. The recent entry of Michael Bloomberg has further jammed that lane, adding a plutocrat “worth” upwards of $50 billion to a bevy of corporate politicians.
The mainline media are generally quite warm toward so-called “moderates,” without bothering to question what’s so moderate about such positions as bowing to corporate plunder, backing rampant militarism and refusing to seriously confront the climate emergency.
Critical reporting on debate performances and campaign operations has certainly been common. But the core of the “moderate” agenda routinely gets affirmation from elite journalists who told us in no uncertain terms four years ago that Hillary Clinton was obviously the nominee who could defeat Donald Trump.
This year, Sanders has taken most of the flak from reporters and pundits (often virtually indistinguishable), serving as a kind of “heat shield” for Warren. But as Warren gained ground in polling this fall, the attacks on her escalated—to the point that she now has a corporate media bullseye on her political back.
The disconnect between voters and corporate media is often huge. Meanwhile, with fly-on-the-wall pretenses, media outlets that have powerfully distorted proposals like Medicare for All are now reporting (with thinly veiled satisfaction) that voters are cool to those proposals.
The Washington Post, owned by one of the world’s richest people Jeff Bezos, has routinely spun Medicare for All as some sort of government takeover. In a prominent Nov. 30 news story that largely attributed Warren’s recent dip in polls to her positioning on healthcare, the Post matter-of-factly—and falsely—referred to Medicare for All as “government-run healthcare” and “a government-run health plan.”
Such pervasive mass-media reporting smoothed the way for deceptions that have elevated Pete Buttigieg in polls during recent weeks with his deceptive “Medicare for All Who Want It” slogan. That rhetoric springboards from the false premises that Medicare for All would deprive people of meaningful choice and would somehow reduce coverage.
In late September, with scant media scrutiny, Buttigieg launched an ad campaign against Medicare for All that has continued. Using insurance-industry talking points, he is deliberately confusing the current “choice” of predatory for-profit insurance plans with the genuine full choice of healthcare providers that top-quality Medicare for everyone would offer.
Mainstream media outlets are ill-positioned to refute such distortions since they’re routinely purveying such distortions themselves. Warren’s backtracking step on Medicare for All in mid-November was a tribute to media pressure in tandem with attacks from centrist opponents.
The idea of implementing some form of a substantial “wealth tax” has also been denigrated by many corporate-employed journalists. Countless pundits and political beat reporters have warned that proposals like a wealth tax, from Warren and Sanders, risk dragging Democrats down with voters. The truth is that such proposals are unpopular with the punditocracy and the extremely wealthy—while it’s a very different matter for most voters, who strongly favor a wealth tax.
On the same day this fall, the New York Times and the Washington Post published stories on Democratic elites’ “anxiety” about the presidential election. The Post wrote that Democrats “fret” Warren and Sanders “are too liberal to win a general election.” (With disdain, the article made a matter-of-fact reference to “the push for liberal purity.”) The Times similarly wrote of “persistent questions about Senator Elizabeth Warren’s viability in the general election.” Contrary voices were absent in both news stories.
Assessing those articles, FAIR.org media analyst Julie Hollar pointed out: “The pieces interviewed a number of big donors and centrist party leaders, who fretted about their preferred candidate’s struggles and expressed hope for someone more corporate-friendly than Warren to enter the race and challenge her rise.”
Hollar added: “The thinking of powerful people in the Democratic Party is worth writing about. But it’s crucial not to just take their claims at face value. . . . What establishment Democrats are really worried about, of course, is their own power in the party, which is threatened by a surging left wing. Don’t look to their establishment media counterparts to report on that transparently.”
Part of the problem is the TV network that many Democrats (mistakenly) trust. MSNBC is becoming notorious for its hostility to Bernie Sanders, often expressed through egregious omission or mathematical fib if not direct antipathy.
Ongoing media analysis is crucial, but even more important is activist pushback against the 24/7 onslaught of corporate-minded propaganda, often couched as common sense and incontrovertible reality. Among the needed counterpunches are these:
- Support progressive media outlets as they provide independent coverage of the presidential campaign
- Widely share, via email forwarding and social media, online pieces that you like. (Hopefully including this one.)
- Recognize, challenge, and organize against the corporate-media echo chamber that affects so many voters
You shouldn’t have to be an active supporter of Bernie Sanders (as I am) or of Elizabeth Warren to voice outrage about corporate media biases. What’s at stake includes democracy—the informed consent of the governed—and so much more.
History is unfolding in real time. It’s not a product on the media shelf, to be passively bought and consumed. As Bernie 2020 campaign co-chair Nina Turner says, “All that we love is on the line.”
Facebook
Defiant Mark Zuckerberg defends Facebook policy to allow false ads
Zuckerberg says ‘people should be able to judge for themselves the character of politicians’ and compares alternative to censorship
Oliver Milman in New York
the guardian
Mon 2 Dec 2019 09.19 EST
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has defended the company’s decision to not take down political advertising that contains false information – and compared the alternative to censorship.
Challenged on CBS over the policy, which has raised concerns over misinformation campaigns that could distort elections, Zuckerberg refused to commit to any changes.
“What I believe is that in a democracy, it’s really important that people can see for themselves what politicians are saying, so they can make their own judgments,” he said.
“And, you know, I don’t think that a private company should be censoring politicians or news.”
Gayle King, co-host of CBS This Morning, pointed out that 200 Facebook employees wrote a letter asking Zuckerberg to reconsider as “free speech and paid speech are not the same”.
The Facebook co-founder was unmoved.
“Well, this is a clearly a very complex issue, and a lot of people have a lot of different opinions,” he said. “At the end of the day, I just think that in a democracy, people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying.”
He added: “I think that people should be able to judge for themselves the character of politicians.”
Zuckerberg has come under criticism from lawmakers including New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who have warned that the 2020 presidential election will be influenced by paid-for false claims spread by the social media platform.
Similar fears have played out in the UK ahead of its general election this month. Facebook removed an ad by the Conservatives that showed BBC reporters seemingly decrying a “pointless delay to Brexit” – in fact the reporters were quoting politicians including prime minister Boris Johnson.
The BBC asked the Tories to take the ad down, only to be rebuffed. Facebook acquiesced, however, due to “intellectual property” concerns.
Facebook’s outsized role in funnelling false claims and fake news stories to voters has been highlighted since the election of Donald Trump as US president.
The company has been accused of giving a mainstream platform to extremist groups, with Guardian US recently reporting how two white nationalist organizations continued to operate Facebook pages months after a promised ban.
On CBS, King asked Zuckerberg about a meeting with Trump at the White House in October. Trump has previously said Facebook shouldn’t ban political ads.
Zuckerberg said: “We talked about a number of things that were on his mind. And some of the topics that you’d read about in the news around our work.”
Asked if Trump lobbied him, Zuckerberg said: “No. I mean, I don’t think that that’s … I think some of the stuff that people talk about or think gets discussed [in] these discussions are not really how that works.
“I also want to respect that it was a private dinner and … private discussion.”
Challenged on CBS over the policy, which has raised concerns over misinformation campaigns that could distort elections, Zuckerberg refused to commit to any changes.
“What I believe is that in a democracy, it’s really important that people can see for themselves what politicians are saying, so they can make their own judgments,” he said.
“And, you know, I don’t think that a private company should be censoring politicians or news.”
Gayle King, co-host of CBS This Morning, pointed out that 200 Facebook employees wrote a letter asking Zuckerberg to reconsider as “free speech and paid speech are not the same”.
The Facebook co-founder was unmoved.
“Well, this is a clearly a very complex issue, and a lot of people have a lot of different opinions,” he said. “At the end of the day, I just think that in a democracy, people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying.”
He added: “I think that people should be able to judge for themselves the character of politicians.”
Zuckerberg has come under criticism from lawmakers including New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who have warned that the 2020 presidential election will be influenced by paid-for false claims spread by the social media platform.
Similar fears have played out in the UK ahead of its general election this month. Facebook removed an ad by the Conservatives that showed BBC reporters seemingly decrying a “pointless delay to Brexit” – in fact the reporters were quoting politicians including prime minister Boris Johnson.
The BBC asked the Tories to take the ad down, only to be rebuffed. Facebook acquiesced, however, due to “intellectual property” concerns.
Facebook’s outsized role in funnelling false claims and fake news stories to voters has been highlighted since the election of Donald Trump as US president.
The company has been accused of giving a mainstream platform to extremist groups, with Guardian US recently reporting how two white nationalist organizations continued to operate Facebook pages months after a promised ban.
On CBS, King asked Zuckerberg about a meeting with Trump at the White House in October. Trump has previously said Facebook shouldn’t ban political ads.
Zuckerberg said: “We talked about a number of things that were on his mind. And some of the topics that you’d read about in the news around our work.”
Asked if Trump lobbied him, Zuckerberg said: “No. I mean, I don’t think that that’s … I think some of the stuff that people talk about or think gets discussed [in] these discussions are not really how that works.
“I also want to respect that it was a private dinner and … private discussion.”
The Empty Piety of the American Press
Chris Hedges - truthdig
3/12/18
The press, giddy with its newfound sense of mission and purpose, is carrying out a moral crusade against Donald Trump. The airwaves and print have shed their traditional claims of “impartiality” and “objectivity.” They fulminate against Trump, charging—falsely—that he was elected because of Russian interference and calling him a liar, ignorant and incompetent. They give airtime to his bitterest critics and bizarre associates, such as Omarosa Manigault-Newman, a onetime star of “The Apprentice” and now a fired White House aide, and Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who says she had a sexual relationship with Trump. It is great entertainment. It is great for ratings. It is great for profits. But it is not moral, and it is not journalism.
The empty piety is a mask for self-interest. It is accompanied by the veneration of the establishment politicians, generals, intelligence chiefs, corporate heads and hired apologists who carried out the corporate coup d’état that created our system of “inverted totalitarianism.” The corporate structures that have a stranglehold on the country and have overseen deindustrialization and the evisceration of democratic institutions, plunging over half the country into chronic poverty and misery, are unassailable. They are portrayed as forces of progress. The criminals on Wall Street, including the heads of financial firms such as Goldman Sachs, are treated with reverence. Free trade is equated with freedom. Democratic politicians such as Barack Obama—who assaulted civil liberties, transferred trillions of dollars upward to reigning oligarchs, expanded the drone wars to include targeted assassinations of American citizens, and used the Espionage Act to silence investigative journalism—are hailed as champions of democracy. Deference is paid to democratic processes, liberties, electoral politics and rights enshrined in our Constitution, from due process to privacy, that no longer exist. It is a vast game of deception under the cover of a vacuous morality.
Those cast aside by corporate capitalism—Noam Chomsky calls them “unpeople”—are rendered invisible and reviled at the same time. The “experts” whose opinions are amplified on every issue, from economics to empire and politics, are drawn from corporate-funded think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, or are former military and intelligence officials or politicians who are responsible for the failure of our democracy and usually in the employ of corporations. Cable news also has the incestuous habit of interviewing its own news celebrities. Former CIA Director John Brennan, one of many former officials now on the airwaves, has morphed into a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC and MSNBC. Brennan was the architect of the disastrous attempt to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to arm “moderate” rebels in Syria, oversaw the huge expansion of our drone wars and instigated the canard that Russia stole the last U.S. presidential election. The most astute critics of empire, including Andrew Bacevich, are banished, as are critics of corporate power, including Ralph Nader and Chomsky. Those who decry the waste within the military, such as MIT Professor Emeritus Ted Postol, who has exposed the useless $13 billion anti-ballistic missile program, are unheard. Advocates of universal health care, such as Dr. Margaret Flowers, are locked out of national health care debates. There is a long list of the censored. The acceptable range of opinion is so narrow it is almost nonexistent.
Where is the flood of stories about families being evicted or losing their homes because of foreclosures and bank repossessions? Where are the stories about the banks and lending agencies that prey on recent college graduates burdened with crippling loans and unable to find work? Where are the stories about families going into bankruptcy because they cannot pay medical bills and the soaring premiums of for-profit health care? Where are the stories about the despair that drives middle-aged white men to suicide and millions of Americans into the deadly embrace of opioid addiction? Where are the stories on the cruelty of mass incarceration, the collapse of our court system and the reign of terror by police in marginal communities? Where are the investigative pieces on the fraud and the tax boycott that have been legalized for Wall Street, the poisoning of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel and animal agriculture industries? Why is climate change a forbidden subject, even as extreme weather devastates the nation and much of the rest of the planet? Why are the atrocities we commit or abet in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen ignored? Why are the war crimes carried out by Israel against the Palestinians erased from news coverage?
The relentless pillorying of Trump is news-as-reality-television. Trump fills in for Richard Hatch of the old “Survivor” show. Trump’s imbecility, dishonesty, narcissism and incompetence are at once revolting and riveting. The press, ostensibly seeking a more polished brand to improve the public presentation of empire and corporate capitalism, is in fact further empowering the lunatics who will dominate the political landscape.
“America is ceasing to be a nation,” reporter and author Matt Taibbi writes in his book “Insane Clown President: Dispatches From the 2016 Circus,” “and turning into a giant television show.”
The stunts pulled during the last presidential election—Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul wearing goggles as he chain-sawed the tax code in half, Trump inviting women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault to a presidential debate and Ben Carson having to defend himself against allegations he lied when he wrote that as a child he attempted to stab another boy—will become staples of political campaigning. Voters, stripped of all meaningful power or control over their own destiny, used only as stage props in rallies and at party conventions, are permitted to vote only for a system they hate. And the winners are those who can give the best and most entertaining expression of that hatred. “Trump found the flaw in the American Death Star,” Taibbi writes. “It doesn’t know how to turn the cameras off, even when it’s filming its own demise.”
If the press sided with citizens and exposed the corporate systems of power that hold them captive, its advertising income would dwindle and it would be treated as an enemy of the state. Since corporations own the airwaves and declining city newspapers, this will not happen. Journalism will remain burlesque. The Public Broadcasting System, along with National Public Radio dependent on corporate money, including the Koch brothers, is as loath to take on the corporate establishment as its for-profit competitors. Dissenters and critics exist only on the margins of the internet, and the abolition of net neutrality will see them silenced.
CNN’s Jake Tapper, one of the high priests in the Trump Inquisition, was quite open about the narrowness of the assault. Being interviewed on “The Axe Files” podcast, hosted by former Obama White House aide David Axelrod, Tapper addressed charges that he opposes Trump’s policies by saying, “Whenever anybody says that to me, I say, you can’t find any evidence about what I think about his tax plan or repealing Obamacare or DACA or immigration or trade or any of these issues—terrorism or ISIS or Syria. I’m agnostic on that. I want to have full and interesting and provocative debates and call balls and strikes. But I’m not putting out there an immigration proposal.”
The corporate airwaves have a depressing habit of taking political hacks like Axelrod or the former Clinton strategist George Stephanopoulos and transforming them into journalists. Even Chelsea Clinton got a shot at journalism, being paid $600,000 a year to do fluff pieces for NBC. The fusion of news and celebrity, with figures like Tapper appearing on late night talk shows, fits with the reality-television presidency the corporate press empowers.
The press, like the Democratic Party, is playing a very dangerous game. It is banking, as Hillary Clinton did, on Trump being so repugnant he and those who support him will be replaced with Democrats. It relies on polls to guide its tactics and strategy, forgetting that every national poll offered assurance that Trump would lose in 2016. This gamble may work. But it may not. Policy issues accounted for only 10 percent of the media coverage during the 2016 presidential race. News reports concentrated on the latest polls, scandals, publicity stunts, campaign tactics and strategy as well as Trump’s bombastic remarks, according to a report issued by the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University. In short, there was little substance to the coverage. This will only get worse. The gossip, trivia and invective masquerading as news are not only irrelevant to most of the electorate but reinforce the image of liberal elites being out of touch with the pain and rage rippling across the nation.
Corporations that own the press look at news as a revenue stream. The news division competes against other revenue streams. If news does not produce comparable profits, its managers are replaced and its content is altered and distorted to draw in more viewers. Journalism is irrelevant. The disease of celebrity and greed, which warps and deforms the personality of Trump, warps and deforms celebrities in the media. They share Trump’s most distasteful characteristics. The consequences are ominous. An ignored, impoverished and frustrated underclass will turn to increasingly bizarre politicians and more outlandish con artists and purveyors of hate. Trump is only the beginning. The grotesque mutations to come, ones that will make Trump look reasonable, are being spawned in newsrooms across the country.
The empty piety is a mask for self-interest. It is accompanied by the veneration of the establishment politicians, generals, intelligence chiefs, corporate heads and hired apologists who carried out the corporate coup d’état that created our system of “inverted totalitarianism.” The corporate structures that have a stranglehold on the country and have overseen deindustrialization and the evisceration of democratic institutions, plunging over half the country into chronic poverty and misery, are unassailable. They are portrayed as forces of progress. The criminals on Wall Street, including the heads of financial firms such as Goldman Sachs, are treated with reverence. Free trade is equated with freedom. Democratic politicians such as Barack Obama—who assaulted civil liberties, transferred trillions of dollars upward to reigning oligarchs, expanded the drone wars to include targeted assassinations of American citizens, and used the Espionage Act to silence investigative journalism—are hailed as champions of democracy. Deference is paid to democratic processes, liberties, electoral politics and rights enshrined in our Constitution, from due process to privacy, that no longer exist. It is a vast game of deception under the cover of a vacuous morality.
Those cast aside by corporate capitalism—Noam Chomsky calls them “unpeople”—are rendered invisible and reviled at the same time. The “experts” whose opinions are amplified on every issue, from economics to empire and politics, are drawn from corporate-funded think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, or are former military and intelligence officials or politicians who are responsible for the failure of our democracy and usually in the employ of corporations. Cable news also has the incestuous habit of interviewing its own news celebrities. Former CIA Director John Brennan, one of many former officials now on the airwaves, has morphed into a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC and MSNBC. Brennan was the architect of the disastrous attempt to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to arm “moderate” rebels in Syria, oversaw the huge expansion of our drone wars and instigated the canard that Russia stole the last U.S. presidential election. The most astute critics of empire, including Andrew Bacevich, are banished, as are critics of corporate power, including Ralph Nader and Chomsky. Those who decry the waste within the military, such as MIT Professor Emeritus Ted Postol, who has exposed the useless $13 billion anti-ballistic missile program, are unheard. Advocates of universal health care, such as Dr. Margaret Flowers, are locked out of national health care debates. There is a long list of the censored. The acceptable range of opinion is so narrow it is almost nonexistent.
Where is the flood of stories about families being evicted or losing their homes because of foreclosures and bank repossessions? Where are the stories about the banks and lending agencies that prey on recent college graduates burdened with crippling loans and unable to find work? Where are the stories about families going into bankruptcy because they cannot pay medical bills and the soaring premiums of for-profit health care? Where are the stories about the despair that drives middle-aged white men to suicide and millions of Americans into the deadly embrace of opioid addiction? Where are the stories on the cruelty of mass incarceration, the collapse of our court system and the reign of terror by police in marginal communities? Where are the investigative pieces on the fraud and the tax boycott that have been legalized for Wall Street, the poisoning of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel and animal agriculture industries? Why is climate change a forbidden subject, even as extreme weather devastates the nation and much of the rest of the planet? Why are the atrocities we commit or abet in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen ignored? Why are the war crimes carried out by Israel against the Palestinians erased from news coverage?
The relentless pillorying of Trump is news-as-reality-television. Trump fills in for Richard Hatch of the old “Survivor” show. Trump’s imbecility, dishonesty, narcissism and incompetence are at once revolting and riveting. The press, ostensibly seeking a more polished brand to improve the public presentation of empire and corporate capitalism, is in fact further empowering the lunatics who will dominate the political landscape.
“America is ceasing to be a nation,” reporter and author Matt Taibbi writes in his book “Insane Clown President: Dispatches From the 2016 Circus,” “and turning into a giant television show.”
The stunts pulled during the last presidential election—Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul wearing goggles as he chain-sawed the tax code in half, Trump inviting women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault to a presidential debate and Ben Carson having to defend himself against allegations he lied when he wrote that as a child he attempted to stab another boy—will become staples of political campaigning. Voters, stripped of all meaningful power or control over their own destiny, used only as stage props in rallies and at party conventions, are permitted to vote only for a system they hate. And the winners are those who can give the best and most entertaining expression of that hatred. “Trump found the flaw in the American Death Star,” Taibbi writes. “It doesn’t know how to turn the cameras off, even when it’s filming its own demise.”
If the press sided with citizens and exposed the corporate systems of power that hold them captive, its advertising income would dwindle and it would be treated as an enemy of the state. Since corporations own the airwaves and declining city newspapers, this will not happen. Journalism will remain burlesque. The Public Broadcasting System, along with National Public Radio dependent on corporate money, including the Koch brothers, is as loath to take on the corporate establishment as its for-profit competitors. Dissenters and critics exist only on the margins of the internet, and the abolition of net neutrality will see them silenced.
CNN’s Jake Tapper, one of the high priests in the Trump Inquisition, was quite open about the narrowness of the assault. Being interviewed on “The Axe Files” podcast, hosted by former Obama White House aide David Axelrod, Tapper addressed charges that he opposes Trump’s policies by saying, “Whenever anybody says that to me, I say, you can’t find any evidence about what I think about his tax plan or repealing Obamacare or DACA or immigration or trade or any of these issues—terrorism or ISIS or Syria. I’m agnostic on that. I want to have full and interesting and provocative debates and call balls and strikes. But I’m not putting out there an immigration proposal.”
The corporate airwaves have a depressing habit of taking political hacks like Axelrod or the former Clinton strategist George Stephanopoulos and transforming them into journalists. Even Chelsea Clinton got a shot at journalism, being paid $600,000 a year to do fluff pieces for NBC. The fusion of news and celebrity, with figures like Tapper appearing on late night talk shows, fits with the reality-television presidency the corporate press empowers.
The press, like the Democratic Party, is playing a very dangerous game. It is banking, as Hillary Clinton did, on Trump being so repugnant he and those who support him will be replaced with Democrats. It relies on polls to guide its tactics and strategy, forgetting that every national poll offered assurance that Trump would lose in 2016. This gamble may work. But it may not. Policy issues accounted for only 10 percent of the media coverage during the 2016 presidential race. News reports concentrated on the latest polls, scandals, publicity stunts, campaign tactics and strategy as well as Trump’s bombastic remarks, according to a report issued by the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University. In short, there was little substance to the coverage. This will only get worse. The gossip, trivia and invective masquerading as news are not only irrelevant to most of the electorate but reinforce the image of liberal elites being out of touch with the pain and rage rippling across the nation.
Corporations that own the press look at news as a revenue stream. The news division competes against other revenue streams. If news does not produce comparable profits, its managers are replaced and its content is altered and distorted to draw in more viewers. Journalism is irrelevant. The disease of celebrity and greed, which warps and deforms the personality of Trump, warps and deforms celebrities in the media. They share Trump’s most distasteful characteristics. The consequences are ominous. An ignored, impoverished and frustrated underclass will turn to increasingly bizarre politicians and more outlandish con artists and purveyors of hate. Trump is only the beginning. The grotesque mutations to come, ones that will make Trump look reasonable, are being spawned in newsrooms across the country.
worthless media funnies
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https://teespring.com/fox-news-toilet-2#pid=369&cid=6513&sid=front
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