[DesuMaiden]

Mainstream media is pretty much a huge joke these days. I don't take it seriously anymore. I get my news from alternative media sources.

[PrestonSturges]

Cable news is driven by the need to fill a 24/7 news cycle despite the fact that much of the time nothing much is happening. It used to be they reported stories about babies that fell down wells, but now they just pick hoaxes off right wing blogs.

[DesuMaiden]

Mainstream media is a terrible joke. It just a bunch of bullshit.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t is, of course, very difficult to choose the single most extreme episode of misleading American media propaganda, but if forced to do so, coverage of the February, 2011 Tahrir Square demonstrations in Egypt would be an excellent candidate. For weeks, U.S. media outlets openly positioned themselves on the side of the demonstrators, depicting the upheaval as a Manichean battle between the evil despot Hosni Mubarak’s “three decades of iron rule” and the hordes of ordinary, oppressed Egyptians inspirationally yearning for American-style freedom and democracy.

Almost completely missing from this feel-good morality play was the terribly unpleasant fact that Mubarak was one of the U.S. Government’s longest and closest allies and that his “three decades of iron rule” — featuring murder, torture and indefinite detention for dissidents — were enabled in multiple ways by American support.

Throughout Mubarak’s rule, the U.S. fed his regime an average of $2 billion each year, most of which was military aid. The tear gas cannisters shot at protesters by Mubarak’s police bore “Made in U.S.A.” labels.
...
During the gushing coverage of the Tahrir protests, Americans were told almost none of this (just as most Arab Spring coverage generally omitted long-standing U.S. support for most of the targeted tyrants in the region). Instead, they were led to believe that the U.S. political class was squarely on the side of democracy and freedom in Egypt, heralding Obama’s statement that Egyptians have made clear that “nothing less than genuine democracy will carry the day.”

That pro-democracy script is long forgotten, as though it never existed. The U.S. political and media class are right back to openly supporting military autocracy in Egypt as enthusiastically as they supported the Mubarak regime.
...
In June, Human Rights Watch noted the post-coup era has included the “worst incident of mass unlawful killings in Egypt’s recent history” and that “judicial authorities have handed down unprecedented large-scale death sentences and security forces have carried out mass arrests and torture that harken back to the darkest days of former President Hosni Mubarak’s rule.”
...
That’s what made the U.S. media coverage of the Arab Spring generally and Tarhir specifically such an astounding feat of propaganda: it successfully let Americans feel good about cheering for democracy in the region while ignoring their government’s central role in suppressing it for decades. The way the U.S. political class so seamlessly and shamelessly shifted from pretending to support democracy in Egypt to reverting back to its decades-long pro-tyranny posture is equally impressive.

[kuidaskassikaeb]

Okay article Keith

I always kind of give the benefit of the doubt to the USA, figuring that we are just very good at adapting to bad situations, rather than causing them, but you have to wonder how much the government likes it that way.

Certainly the people in Egypt blame the US.

[Keith_McClary]

NBC’S CONDUCT IN ENGEL KIDNAPPING STORY IS MORE TROUBLING THAN THE BRIAN WILLIAMS SCANDAL
BY GLENN GREENWALD April 16, 2015
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '.').. In December 2012 — as the pro-intervention cause was strengthening — a group of five journalists working for NBC News, including its star international reporter Richard Engel, was kidnapped inside Syria. They were held for five days, threatened with death, treated inhumanely, and forced to record a video in which Engel was made to call for an end to U.S. involvement in Syria. Scrawled on the walls of the room where the video was recorded was graffiti of pro-Assad messages along with well-known Shiite references.
...
In a very well-reported article this morning, The NYT states that “Mr. Engel’s team was almost certainly taken by a Sunni criminal element affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the loose alliance of rebels opposed to Mr. Assad.” That rebel group is “known as the North Idlib Falcons Brigade” and is “led by two men, Azzo Qassab and Shukri Ajouj.” Amazingly, NBC executives knew that this was at least very possible even during Engel’s kidnapping, and yet:

NBC executives were informed of Mr. Ajouj and Mr. Qassab’s possible involvement during and after Mr. Engels’s captivity, according to current and former NBC employees and others who helped search for Mr. Engel, including political activists and security professionals. Still, the network moved quickly to put Mr. Engel on the air with an account blaming Shiite captors and did not present the other possible version of events.

In other words, NBC executives at least had ample reason to suspect that it was anti-Assad rebels who staged the kidnapping, not pro-Assad forces. Yet they allowed Engel and numerous other NBC and MSNBC personalities repeatedly and unequivocally to blame the Assad regime and glorify the anti-Assad rebels, and worse, to link the hideous kidnapping to Iran and Hezbollah, all with no indication that there were other quite likely alternatives. NBC refused to respond to The NYT‘s questions about that (The Intercept’s inquiries to NBC News were also not responded to at the time of publication, though any responses will be added (update: an NBC executive has refused to comment)).

The Brian Williams scandal is basically about an insecure, ego-driven TV star who puffed up his own war credentials by fabricating war stories: it’s about personal foibles. But this Engel story is about what appears to be a reckless eagerness, if not deliberate deception, on the part of NBC officials to disseminate a dubious storyline which, at the time, was very much in line with the story that official Washington was selling (by then, Obama was secretly aiding anti-Assad rebels, and had just announced – literally a week before the Engel kidnapping — “that the United States would formally recognize a coalition of Syrian opposition groups as that country’s legitimate representative”). Much worse, the NBC story was quite likely to fuel the simmering war cries in the West to attack (or at least aggressively intervene against) Assad.

[vtsnowedin]

It gives me a tingle up my leg.

[Keith_McClary]

Europeans Beginning to Wake Up to Mainstream Media Bias on Ukraine Conflict

ICM Research

[Keith_McClary]

Rumours about al-Baghdadi in some media, but ignored by others.
https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&gl=c ... l-Baghdadi

[davep]

Editor of Major German Newspaper Says He Planted Stories for the CIA

http://www.globalresearch.ca/editor-of-major-german-newspaper-says-he-planted-stories-for-the-cia/5429324

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')aying he believes a medical condition gives him only a few years to live, and that he is filled with remorse, Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, the editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of Germany’s largest newspapers, said in an interview that he accepted news stories written and given to him by the CIA and published them under his own name. Ulfkotte said the aim of much of the deception was to drive nations toward war.

Dr. Ulfkotte says the corruption of journalists and major news outlets by the CIA is routine, accepted, and widespread in the western media, and that journalists who do not comply either cannot get jobs at any news organization, or find their careers cut short.

[onlooker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DesuMaiden', 'M')ainstream media is a terrible joke. It just a bunch of bullshit.

[vox_mundi]

Press freedom is declining in the US
Once a global beacon, the American press has suffered from scandal, unpopularity and government crackdowns

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hile American journalists have long been hailed as flag bearers of the profession — able to report, write and broadcast in mostly ideal circumstances — in the past two decades or more, we have seen a number of cases of fabrication by journalists who have shamed the profession at large and undermined public trust. The more journalism loses popular support, the greater the leverage the public and government officials have to restrict press freedom.

No longer can U.S.media ignore the issue of press freedom and point fingers at other nations for their poor records. Today journalists in the United States are under fire more than ever.

In 2015 the United States’ ranking in the Reporters Without Borders index of press freedom dropped from 20 in 2010 to 49 — four steps above Haiti. Placing higher than the United States: Namibia, Latvia, Suriname, El Salvador, Samoa and Burkina Faso.

The reason for the drop? Frequent attacks on journalists by the public and law enforcement during demonstrations and other high-profile events, threats against journalists who refuse to reveal their sources and the government’s failure to pass a federal shield law protecting journalists.

During the recent protests in Baltimore after 25-year-old Freddie Gray died after being injured while in police custody, more than five journalists were injured, and even more had their equipment destroyed or stolen, the Poynter Institute reported. In other countries there would be an outcry. Journalists and their advocates would be very vocal about finding the perpetrators of these crimes and prosecuting them. There is rarely such a cry in the United States.

[PrestonSturges]

One reason we hear more about Republican scandals is that under Nixon, Reagan, and Dubya, is that many Republicans went to prison, often including the people closest to the president.

Or how about the ones you never heard about, like when the CIA under Bush appointees Porter Goss and Dusty Foggo basically collapsed in a bribery scandal. Our response to Bin Laden was hamstrung by all the bribes the loyal Bushies were raking in.

As far as the Obama administration so far nobody from the White House has been convicted or indicted that I know of. Heck there haven't even been any high profile resignations. This is likely to be the cleanest administration in many years.

[Keith_McClary]

Speed Bump by Dave Coverly

[SeaGypsy]

Kieth, the twit who wrote your pasted article above seems to have forgotten the last round of Tahir Square protests & the fact Morsi was popularly deposed, did murder many people, & that Sisi engineered one of the quickest post coup elections ever & won it in a landslide. Morsi was in the process of handing Sinai to Hezbollah & the region has been in low level war since Sisi was given a mandate to push Salafist invaders back. The fact is if Sisi was not killing people in Sinai there would already be a branch of the New Caliphate operating in north east Egypt with eyes to control the Suez & associated pipelines. This is what would be going on there right now had Morsi remained in power. Fortunately secular authority has prevailed & Sisi is kicking Salafist ass.

[Newfie]

In my professional work I am fairly close to the train control technologies much reported upon due to the Amtrak derailment. I can say this; in this case the MSM gets a very low percentage of the facts correct. Under 25%, if that. The quotes I saw from the FRA were either seriously misrepresented or reflect a willful manipulation or outright stupidity and ignorance.

This was a fairly straight forward story, the facts should be a matter of public record. There was no reason to distort them for the benefit of some international cartel or political goal.

My conclusion is that the reporters simply are incapable of doing their job.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'K')ieth, the twit who wrote your pasted article above seems to have forgotten the last round of Tahir Square protests & the fact Morsi was popularly deposed, did murder many people, & that Sisi engineered one of the quickest post coup elections ever & won it in a landslide.

[KaiserJeep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'I')n my professional work I am fairly close to the train control technologies much reported upon due to the Amtrak derailment. I can say this; in this case the MSM gets a very low percentage of the facts correct. Under 25%, if that. The quotes I saw from the FRA were either seriously misrepresented or reflect a willful manipulation or outright stupidity and ignorance.

This was a fairly straight forward story, the facts should be a matter of public record. There was no reason to distort them for the benefit of some international cartel or political goal.

My conclusion is that the reporters simply are incapable of doing their job.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'I') have ridden the AMTRAK fro DC to NYC and back many times, all in 1980-1986. Even then, it was an aging track with rotting wood ties and uneven rails that shook the train. No way it was safe at 106 mph, unless it changed a heck of a lot in the last 29 years.

So speculate on what happened if you will. The first impression was operator error. This was reinforced by the way the train operator lawyered up at lightning speed.