journalism

One characteristic of modern-day television “news reporting” is that the political news is not truly reported. Rather, if the interviewer disagrees with the one being interviewed, the session turns into interviewer grandstanding. Regrettably, this tactic is used by liberal and conservative journalists alike. However, it is usually not admitted, as the interviewer usually chooses to say things like “I want the truth” when he or she really wants to force the other person to admit the correctness of the interviewer.

Growing up Irish-Catholic in the Bronx in the 1960s, I was an avid reader of the powerful columns of Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill in the New York newspapers.  These guys were extraordinary wordsmiths. They would grab you by the collar and drag you into the places and faces of those they wrote about. Passion infused their reports.  They were never boring. They made you laugh and cry as they transported you into the lives of real people.  You knew they had actually gone out into the streets of the city and talked to people.

Controversial news rating app NewsGuard has been found to not only have ties to politicians and figures spawned by the Homeland Security state, but is also tied to a Washington, D.C.-based PR firm that shielded Saudi Arabia from charges associated with the September 11th attacks and took generous payments from Riyadh to help spin its murderous war on the people of Yemen, according to a new report.

What will it take for governments to take real action on climate? When will they declare an emergency and do what needs to be done? How much concerted, peaceful public action will be required to disrupt the current economic and political system that is driving humanity to the brink of extinction?

Over the weekend, members and owners of multiple independent media outlets gathered in Houston, Texas to discuss the heavy hand of corporate and government censorship and how to stop it. The meeting was a success with the common theme of peaceful voices refusing to be silenced.

WASHINGTON — Marzieh Hashemi, an American citizen and journalist who has been living and working in Iran, has been detained without charge or justification by U.S. government authorities since Sunday, when she arrived at Lambert International Airport in St. Louis to visit her sick brother. However, her family was not notified until 48 hours after her detention.

MINNEAPOLIS — Soon after the social media “purge” of independent media sites and pages this past October, a top neoconservative insider — Jamie Fly — was caught stating that the mass deletion of anti-establishment and anti-war pages on Facebook and Twitter was “just the beginning” of a concerted effort by the U.S. government and powerful corporations to silence online dissent within the United States and beyond.

Members of the ‘White Helmets’ at a Roman ruin site in Daraa, Syria, December 23, 2017 © Reuters / Alaa al-Faqir
Utter silence. That is the sound of Western corporate media days after a more than one-hour-long panel on the White Helmets at the United Nations on December 20.

Another episode of fabricated journalism exposed. When will media en masse address this growing problem within their own ranks?

The Guardian report claiming WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange met with Paul Manafort is fake news, says the former consul in Ecuador’s London embassy, Fidel Narváez. But it is true that Trump’s ex-campaign chairman met with new Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno to discuss handing Assange over to the US.