Tim Hayward

Leaked emails expose the fingerprints of UK intelligence all over a factually challenged BBC special that aimed to deprive antiwar academics of their jobs and destroy their reputations. On May 31, BBC Radio initiated an embarrassing imbroglio when it broadcast a factually challenged, overtly propagandistic documentary special called Ukraine: The Disinformation War. Fronted by a British state information warrior named Chloe Hadjimatheou, the program professed to investigate “where the new red lines are being drawn in an age of disinformation,” […]

Tim Hayward Faced today with so much disinformation as we are today, how can citizens be mutually supportive in developing intelligence – intelligence being understood in all its senses, including as a capacity of individual inquirers, as a quality of publicly available understandings of the world, and as a source of insight into potentially disruptive …

George Monbiot is an influential journalist, and his words on Syria over the past seven years will have carried weight in shaping public opinion. Some critical readers, however, have been concerned.
The post How We Were Misled About Syria: George Monbiot of The Guardian appeared first on BSNEWS.

Moaz Moustafa (on right) facilitates John McCain’s illegal entry into Syria to meet with extremist group leaders and known kidnappers. (Photo: Antiwar)

By Mark Anderson
21s Century Wire

Today, on World Press Freedom Day, Leeds City Museum, a city council owned and operated venue, cancelled the Media on Trial’s booking for the event we had planned for 27 May.
The post Media on Trial Event Banned appeared first on BSNEWS.

This post is based on a letter I wrote in reply to someone who has known me as a teacher. I have responded to her as one concerned citizen to another, but with her student experience in mind. We agreed it would be an idea to make the response available to anyone else who shared similar concerns.

The truth is sometimes revealed through words, but more often through deeds. The Times and several other papers recently carried alarming stories about “Apologists for Assad” to be found in social media, in independent journalism, and even in universities. Passive consumers of corporate media communications may have taken the papers’ word for it and been perturbed. The more alert, however, […]

Long before the current fighting, western governments and Israel expressed a strong interest in overthrowing the government of Bashar Assad. In fact, their desire to be rid of Assad dates to at least the start of the “war on terror” they launched after 9/11, as I documented in my book Israel and the Clash of Civilisations.
The post The authoritarians who silence Syria questions appeared first on BSNEWS.

The Guardian recently published an article claiming that critical discussion of the White Helmets in Syria has been ‘propagated online by a network of anti-imperialist activists, conspiracy theorists and trolls with the support of the Russian government’. Many readers were dismayed at this crude defence of a – presumably – pro-imperialist perspective, and at the unwarranted smearing of reasoned questioning based on evidence from independent journalists.