industryterm:corporate media

EXCLUSIVE : Meet the Reporters Whose Pages Were Shut Down By Facebook - Sputnik International
▻https://sputniknews.com/us/201810121068814924-Reporters-Pages-Shut-Down-By-Facebook

https://cdn5.img.sputniknews.com/images/104783/50/1047835031.jpg

C’est mon beau-frère américain qui m’a transmis l’info : sous couvert de lutte contre les #fake_news, les réseaux sociaux des #GAFA (Facebook et Twitter, notamment) ont fermé des centaines de pages et de comptes appartenant à des journalistes indépendants ou juste plutôt critiques sur la société américaine. À l’approche des #élections de mi-mandat, il s’agit d’une #censure brutale et inquiétante.

Signalons que mon beau-frère est un Républicain plutôt progressiste, mais un Républicain quand même, même s’il n’a jamais pu blairer Trump.

Facebook purged hundreds of pages from its platform on Thursday. But instead of the usual targets - namely Russia and Iran - Thursday’s ban shut down accounts operated by independent American reporters and activists, Sputnik News has learned.

Facebook said the pages were “working to mislead others about who they are, and what they are doing,” but the co-founder of one of the pages, The Free Thought Project, tells Sputnik News Facebook’s claim couldn’t be further from the truth.

Most of the pages that were banned and viewed by Sputnik News were independent media outlets and pages that advocated for marijuana legalization or shined a light on police brutality.
Anti-Trump Facebook event posted by the Resisters page, which has been accused of being set up by the alleged Russian troll farm Internet Research Agency.
Facebook
The Kremlin Line? Facebook’s Latest Ban Nets Resistance Pages, Anti-Trump Events

In total, Facebook removed 559 pages and 251 personal accounts “that have consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior,” the social media giant said. “Given the activity we’ve seen — and its timing ahead of the US midterm elections — we wanted to give some details about the types of behavior that led to this action,” Facebook said, going on to accuse the accounts of manipulating the platform to make their content appear more popular, hawking fake products or functioning as ad farms that tricked “people into thinking that they were forums for legitimate political debate.”

— Jon Ziegler “Reb Z” (@Rebelutionary_Z) October 12, 2018

The founder of one of the pages — The Anti-Media — said he had no knowledge of his page engaging in any such behavior. The Free Thought Project co-founder similarly denied Facebook’s accusations. Rachel Blevins, a reporter for RT America whose personal journalism page was nixed, also denied inauthentic behavior.

Just hours after its ban from Facebook, Twitter suspended Anti-Media from its platform, following a pattern of social media companies successively banning users that has been demonstrated in the past. For example, Facebook, YouTube and Apple all banned the far-right conspiracy theory site InfoWars around the same time. And after the CIA-funded cybersecurity firm FireEye contacted Facebook, Google and Twitter, each company banned a number of accounts allegedly linked to Iran.

— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) September 6, 2018

In the case of InfoWars, Twitter eventually followed suit.

While many warned that the ban of InfoWars from social media would establish a slippery slope, they were often mocked and ridiculed. Thursday’s onslaught on independent media appears to have confirmed their suspicions, however.

— Anya Parampil (@anyaparampil) August 6, 2018

Facebook has been partnering with the Digital Forensics Lab, an arm of the Atlantic Council think tank — a neoconservative group funded by Gulf monarchies and defense giants like Raytheon — to weed out inauthentic users from its platform. Similarly, it has been partnering with the neoconservative Weekly Standard magazine to fact check so-called fake news.
Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.
© AP Photo / Ben Margot
Facebook Bans Russia-Linked Social Media Firm for Alleged ’Scraping’ of Users’ Data

Journalist Abby Martin, who hosts “The Empire Files” on TeleSur English, told Sputnik News after TeleSur’s page was temporarily removed from Facebook, “The shuttering of progressive media amidst the ‘fake news’ and Russiagate hysteria is what activists been warning all along — tech companies, working in concert with think tanks stacked with CIA officials and defense contractors, shouldn’t have the power to curate our reality to make those already rendered invisible even more obsolete.”

Sputnik News contacted a number of journalists caught up in the ban. Below is what they had to say, edited extremely lightly for clarity.

Independent reporter John Vibes, who contributes to The Free Thought Project and other websites:

This signifies a re-consolidation of the media. Cable news media controlled the narrative for most of modern history, but the internet has lowered that barrier to entry and allowed the average person to become the media themselves. This obviously took market share and influence away from the traditional media, and it has allowed for a more diverse public conversation. Now it seems the platforms that have monopolized the industry are favoring mainstream sources and silencing alternative voices. So now, instead of allowing more people to have a voice, these platforms are creating an atmosphere where only powerful media organizations are welcome, just as we had on cable news.

People think that we are just providing an activist spin on the news, but they don’t see the families struggling to have their voice heard. For example, when someone is shot by police, mainstream media sources often just republish the press release from the police department, without presenting the victim’s side of the story. We give the victims and their families a voice, which is essential to keep power in check. This also goes for bigger issues like foreign policy as well; multiple full-scale invasions of Syria have been prevented because of information that the alternative media made viral.

“Information exchange” activist Jason Bassler, who co-founded The Free Thought Project and solely founded Police the Police, both of which were banned:

We were verified by Facebook with a little check mark next to our name, so they know we are a legitimate organization/outlet. They have seen our “Articles of Organization” which was issued by the state of Louisiana, which is where my partner and The Free Thought Project co-founder lives.

We have even paid Facebook to boost our posts and for likes in the past, meaning they gladly took our money for a product that they ended up manipulating and backing out on. It wasn’t much, maybe $1,200 over the past 6 years. Do we get that money back now?

We have already had the lawyers at Rutherford Institute (a nonprofit civil liberties organization) send them a letter late last month about unfair treatment by third-party “fact checkers,” which they ignored and never responded to.

I was motivated [to start The Free Thought Project] by the injustices I saw on social media during Occupy Wall Street in 2011. I knew I had an obligation to get involved somehow and to share information critical for liberty and peace. I never thought I would have built fan pages of 5 million fans, nor did I ever think we would employ and give jobs to nine other activists (at one point), but I was inspired to do what I could to plant seeds and combat the mainstream media’s bullsh*t narratives, to keep police and government accountable, to make sure people knew their rights and how to interact with police.

All that’s gone now with a click of a button. Six years of hard work, literally seven days a week, working our as*es off finding stories, researching them, writing them, making thumbnails and titles for them, making graphics and videos for them, sharing them on various social media outlets.

What’s next? I will fight this until I am utterly exhausted. We will fight back tooth and nail. I don’t care if that means protesting in front of Facebook headquarters (which I’ve already considered doing many times in the past two years), I will make sure people know how corrupt and untrustworthy Facebook is if it’s the last thing I do. You can’t just steal years of hard work from someone and not expect there to be consequences. I will do everything I can to make their lives miserable. That’s a promise.

Rachel Blevins, a correspondent for RT America:

Today I was locked out of my Facebook account for four hours, and my public page was “unpublished.” There appears to be no explanation for this other than the vague claim from Facebook that my page was taken down because it was “administered by a fake account, misleading users or violating the Facebook spam policies.” I am the only person who publishes posts on my page; the only posts I publish are articles I have written or videos of my reports, and I only post one or two times a day — which rules out all of the claims that I have violated Facebook’s policies.

My page had nearly 70,000 followers before it was taken down. I have poured the last four years into building my page as a journalist, and I have noticed recently that the reach seems to have been stifled and that the engagement on my posts was down significantly. I know that I am not the only one who has become a victim of this purge, and there are hundreds of other pages — many of which had millions of followers — that have been taken down with no warning and no explanation.

Ford Fischer, the founder of the media startup News2Share, had a number of his live streams removed during the purge, although they were later restored:

This attack was a long time coming. Facebook has been slowly clamping down on independent media. First, they removed more extreme pages and made it harder for the surviving ones to make a living by hurting their algorithms (unless they paid, of course!). Then they started purging those that didn’t quickly respond to their ID requests. Today, hundreds of pages belonging to the family of independent media, especially those that question state authority, were removed without explanation. This is just one step further toward the total state and corporate takeover of what you’re allowed to think.

Nicholas Bernabe, founder of The Anti-Media:

Our approach generally is to cover stories and angles that corporate media underreport or misreport and to amplify activist and anti-war voices and stories. All of our content is professionally fact-checked and edited.

I got into this line of work because I felt there was a need for media that challenged mainstream assumptions and biases in politics. I wanted to shed light on corruption and wrongdoing against oppressed peoples and cover the harsh truth about American foreign policy.

Over the last 28 days, we reached 7,088,000 people on Facebook.

The timing of this purge is rather dubious in my view, coming shortly before the midterm elections. This could be an attempt by Facebook itself to affect the outcome of the coming elections. The Twitter suspension caught me by surprise. I can only speculate that these suspensions were a coordinated effort to stifle our message ahead of the coming elections.

By Alexander Rubinstein.

#démocratie

Noam Chomsky on Mass Media Obsession with Russia & the Stories Not Being Covered in the Trump Era
▻https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/27/noam_chomsky_on_mass_media_obsession

So, take, say, the huge issue of interference in our pristine elections. Did the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue of overwhelming concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that’s almost a joke. First of all, if you’re interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Israeli intervention in U.S. elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done, I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president’s policies—what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015. Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress trying to—calling on them to reverse U.S. policy, without even informing the president? And that’s just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence. So if you happen to be interested in influence of—foreign influence on elections, there are places to look. But even that is a joke.

I mean, one of the most elementary principles of a functioning democracy is that elected representatives should be responsive to those who elected them. There’s nothing more elementary than that. But we know very well that that is simply not the case in the United States. There’s ample literature in mainstream academic political science simply comparing voters’ attitudes with the policies pursued by their representatives, and it shows that for a large majority of the population, they’re basically disenfranchised. Their own representatives pay no attention to their voices. They listen to the voices of the famous 1 percent—the rich and the powerful, the corporate sector. The elections—Tom Ferguson’s stellar work has demonstrated, very conclusively, that for a long period, way back, U.S. elections have been pretty much bought. You can predict the outcome of a presidential or congressional election with remarkable precision by simply looking at campaign spending. That’s only one part of it. Lobbyists practically write legislation in congressional offices. In massive ways, the concentrated private capital, corporate sector, super wealth, intervene in our elections, massively, overwhelmingly, to the extent that the most elementary principles of democracy are undermined. Now, of course, all that is technically legal, but that tells you something about the way the society functions. So, if you’re concerned with our elections and how they operate and how they relate to what would happen in a democratic society, taking a look at Russian hacking is absolutely the wrong place to look. Well, you see occasionally some attention to these matters in the media, but very minor as compared with the extremely marginal question of Russian hacking.

Ca y est, ils dénoncent:
Former Facebook executive: social media is ripping society apart, le 12 décembre 2017, in The Guardian

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

▻https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/11/facebook-former-executive-ripping-society-apart

Related:
’Our minds can be hijacked’: the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia, Paul Lewis, le 27 octobre 2017, in The Guardian

A handful of people, working at a handful of technology companies, through their choices will steer what a billion people are thinking today

►https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia

A War of Words Puts Facebook at the Center of Myanmar’s Rohingya Crisis, Megan Specia et Paul Mozur, le 27 octobre 2017, in NY Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/world/asia/myanmar-government-facebook-rohingya.html

The people trying to fight fake news in India par Ayeshea Perera, le 24 juillet 2017, in BBC
▻http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-40657074

After Las Vegas Shooting, Fake News Regains Its Megaphone - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/business/las-vegas-shooting-fake-news.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/10/03/business/03ROOSE-01web/03ROOSE-01web-facebookJumbo.jpg

Google and Facebook blamed algorithm errors for these.

A Google spokesman said, “This should not have appeared for any queries, and we’ll continue to make algorithmic improvements to prevent this from happening in the future.”

A Facebook spokesman said, “We are working to fix the issue that allowed this to happen in the first place and deeply regret the confusion this caused.”

But this was no one-off incident. Over the past few years, extremists, conspiracy theorists and government-backed propagandists have made a habit of swarming major news events, using search-optimized “keyword bombs” and algorithm-friendly headlines. These organizations are skilled at reverse-engineering the ways that tech platforms parse information, and they benefit from a vast real-time amplification network that includes 4Chan and Reddit as well as Facebook, Twitter and Google. Even when these campaigns are thwarted, they often last hours or days — long enough to spread misleading information to millions of people.

The automation of editorial judgment, combined with tech companies’ reluctance to appear partisan, has created a lopsided battle between those who want to spread misinformation and those tasked with policing it. Posting a malicious rumor on Facebook, or writing a false news story that is indexed by Google, is a nearly instantaneous process; removing such posts often requires human intervention. This imbalance gives an advantage to rule-breakers, and makes it impossible for even an army of well-trained referees to keep up.

Facebook, Twitter and Google are some of the world’s richest and most ambitious companies, but they still have not shown that they’re willing to bear the costs — or the political risks — of fixing the way misinformation spreads on their platforms. (Some executives appear resolute in avoiding the discussion. In a recent Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg reasserted the platform’s neutrality, saying that being accused of partisan bias by both sides is “what running a platform for all ideas looks like.”)

Une conclusion imparable :

Facebook and Google have spent billions of dollars developing virtual reality systems. They can spare a billion or two to protect actual reality.

#Google #Facebook #Fake_news #Las_Vegas

Corporate Media Analysts’ Indifference to US Journalists Facing 70 Years in Prison | FAIR
▻http://fair.org/home/corporate-media-analysts-indifference-to-us-journalists-facing-70-years-in-pri

http://fair.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Inauguration_Eve_Protests_Washington_32313814202.jpg

For over two years, many in corporate media have been trumpeting the looming threat to a free press posed by Donald Trump. “Would President Trump Kill Freedom of the Press?” Slate (3/14/16) wondered in the midst of the primaries; after the election, the New York Times (1/13/17) warned of “Donald Trump’s Dangerous Attacks on the Press,” and the Atlantic (2/20/17) declared it “ A Dangerous Time for the Press and the Presidency.”

It’s strange, then, that the attack on the press that kicked off the Trump administration—the arrest and subsequent threatening of two journalists with 70 years in prison—has been met with total silence from most of these same outlets. Aaron Cantú, Santa Fe Reporter staff writer and editor at the New Inquiry (and a contributor to FAIR.org), and professional photographer Alexei Wood are both facing decades in prison for the act of covering the January 20 unrest in DC—charged with felony rioting for little more than being in the proximity of window-breaking and brick-throwing. (Prosecutors initially brought and then dropped felony charges against six other reporters, though how their cases differ from Cantú and Wood’s is unclear.)

ACLU lawyer Scott Michelman insists that these arrests “punish journalists for being near the action” and will “inevitably chill freedom of the press and, with it, First Amendment rights not only of the journalists themselves, but of all of us.”

The three most influential media reporters in US media—CNN’s Brian Stelter, New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg and Washington Post’s Erik Wemple—have completely ignored the felony rioting charges leveled against the two #J20 journalists altogether. In their dozens of columns, reports, and on-air segments since the arrests nine months ago, neither Stelter nor Rutenberg nor Wemple has made a single mention of the reporters facing jail time.

#MSM

Communist Party of India (Marxist - Leninist) - On the Methane Exploration Project in Tamil Nadu - P J James
▻http://www.cpiml.in/cms/index.php/articles/item/889-on-the-methane-exploration-project-in-tamil-nadu-p-j-james

http://www.cpiml.in/cms/media/k2/items/cache/a8d0dd35ac3aeaea0c447d40f598ed01_M.jpg

Concrete and on the spot studies on the environmental effects ranging from exploration, drilling, storage and marketing of methane are very important. For instance, in addition to the hazardous impacts already mentioned, it is said that for every barrel of gas extracted, up to nine barrels of contaminated water will be produced from the project. Such water contains toxic benzene, polycyclic aromatics, heavy metals and radioactive material like dissolved uranium, radon and radium. Pipelines used for storing and transporting the produced water even after effluent treatments will be threatening to the people as such pipelines are often subject to corrosion and leakage. Recycling and reusing of such water will be seldom met as it will eat in to the margins of companies. One of the major drawbacks associated with Indian hydrocarbon projects has been the casual approach to waste water disposal. Improper handling of contaminated water alone will spoil all the surrounding ground and surface water and land area in the region.

It is very noteworthy that the toiling farmers and the people of Tamil Nadu in general could rise up against the super-imposed methane and PCPIR projects though they are not aware of the basics and track record of the hydrocarbon extraction projects in India and abroad. The struggling people of Neduvasal like areas in Tamil Nadu which are rich in ground water, fertile soil, and having a multi-crop agriculture can easily identify the ‘running with the rabbit and hunting with the hound’ tactics adopted by all the pro-corporate ruling class parties towards the methane and PCPIR projects. While the protestors are branded as “ignorant”, “anti-national”, “anti-development” and even “foreign-funded” by hydrocarbon lobby and corporate media, it is the solemn duty of all democratic and progressive sections to expose the corporate money-spinning process underlying hydrocarbon extraction today through a massive awareness drive among the people. While GEECL repeatedly claim in its website of having environmental clearance for the methane exploration, the statutory environmental public hearing required to be held under the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification, 2006, has never been held for the Neduvasal exploration project. Together with the building up of people’s resistance against the super-imposition of various hydrocarbon projects in the guise of development in Tamil Nadu, democratic forces should also utilize all legal avenues to expose and defeat the violation of even existing environmental regulations by corporate financiers.

#Inde #fracking #pollution

Hiding US Lies About Libyan Invasion – Consortiumnews
▻https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/07/hiding-us-lies-about-libyan-invasion

One can only conclude that U.S. corporate media’s mission is not to tell all sides of an international story, or report news critical of U.S. foreign policy, but instead to push an agenda supporting U.S. interests abroad. That’s not journalism. That’s instead the job Winston Smith did.

Glenn Greenwald sur Twitter :
▻https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/875176196237127680

It’s actually unbelievable that the NYT & @Yamiche are trying to exploit today’s shootings to push this narrative ▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/us/politics/bernie-sanders-supporters.html …

L’extrait :

But long before the shooting on Wednesday, some of Mr. Sanders’s supporters had earned a belligerent reputation for their criticism of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party and others who they believed disagreed with their ideas. Sanders fans, sometimes referred to derogatorily as “Bernie Bros” or “Bernie Bots,” at times harassed reporters covering Mr. Sanders and flooded social media with angry posts directed at the “corporate media,” a term often used by the senator.

The suspect in the shooting in Virginia put a new spotlight on the rage buried in some corners of the progressive left.

Rencontre internationale @Bastamag “Villes sans peur” - Barcelone - 9-11 juin 2017

On June 9-11, Barcelona will host an international Conference of “Fearless Cities” [▻http://fearlesscities.com - ▻https://www.facebook.com/events/293750187746228/], with participants from all over Europe and beyond. The objective of this event is to “to demonstrate the potential of towns and cities to resist hate and to spur democratic transformation across the world” and, “in the face of hate, walls and borders, build global networks of solidarity and hope among city halls and citizens.”

Independent media have a key role to play in this, alongside local authorities, citizen groups and social movements.

Our Fearless Cities movements are diverse in their outlook and seek to build a different new world, through concrete and positive solutions and alternatives, where spending cuts on the most vulnerable are rejected, where climate change is taken seriously, where authoritarianism and racism are rejected. Much in the same way, we need independent and fearless media outlets as a counterpoint to the toxic and divisive narratives both of far-right media outlets and of corporate media. We need to tell the stories they don’t tell, uphold the values they don’t defend, disseminate the concrete solutions and alternatives they choose to ignore or undermine.
And just as fearless cities and municipalist movements are seeking to become more visible and reinforce each other through an international network or coalition at this Conference, independent media, which are often small and with few resources, have a lot to gain from exchanging between themselves and developing common projects. And we need to do this not only in Spain or Europe but all over the world, because the challenges, threats and opportunities are global.

We - OpenDemocracy (UK/International), Altermédias/Basta! (France), and the “Right to Information” group of Barcelona en Comú - are inviting independent media from Europe and all over the world, as well as the journalists coming to Barcelona to cover the Fearless Cities Conference, to a

“Fearless Media” Side-Event

Saturday 10th of June between 4.30 and 7 pm (to be confirmed)

At UB University building, Universitat Square

Clinton’s Defeat and the ‘Fake News’ Conspiracy
▻http://original.antiwar.com/cook/2016/12/18/clintons-defeat-fake-news-conspiracy

The media have suddenly woken up to the supposed threat to western democracies posed by “#fake_news”.

[...]

“Fake news”, of course, does not concern the systematic deceptions promoted by the corporate #media. It does not include the demonstrable lies – like those Iraqi WMDs – spread by western governments and intelligence agencies through the corporate media. It does not even refer to the press corps’ habitual reports – demonstrating a seemingly gargantuan gullibility – that take at face value the endless state propaganda against Official Enemies, whether Cuba, Venezuela, Libya or Syria. Or Russia and now Trump.

No, “fake news” is produced only by bloggers and independent websites, and is promoted on social media. Those peddling “fake news” are writers, journalists and activists whose pay packets do not depend on continuing employment by western state-run media like the BBC, billionaire proprietors like Rupert Murdoch, or global corporations like Times-Warner.

Media Lens - Fake News About ’Fake News’ - The Media Performance Pyramid
▻http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2016/833-fake-news-about-fake-news-the-media-performance-pyramid.html

Given the four framing conditions described above, it is easy to understand why Parenti’s facts and arguments find no place in the corporate media performance ’pyramid’. This means that everything that appears in the ’pyramid’ about the West’s relations with the Third World is either #fake_news, or half-truth presented in a #fake_context.

#Etats-Unis #MSM

For All Democrats to Ponder: the Real Reasons Hillary Clinton Lost
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/for-all-democrats-to-ponder-the-real-reasons-hillary-clinton-lost

As the aphorism goes, if we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. While the corporate media continues to peddle hysteria, the most important thing right now is to rationally...

L’Inde a vécu la plus grande grève de l’histoire humaine
▻http://www.directmatin.fr/monde/2016-09-03/linde-vecu-la-plus-grande-greve-de-lhistoire-humaine-737701

Selon les syndicats, ce seraient ainsi près de 180 millions de travailleurs, hommes et femmes, qui ont manifesté pour s’opposer à la politique économique du gouvernement. L’Inde comptant environ 1,250 milliards d’individus, ce serait donc un septième de la population qui a arrêté le travail pour une journée. Mais ces chiffres n’ont toutefois pas pu être vérifiés de façon indépendante.

The Biggest Strike in World History ? No Thanks, We’re Focusing on the New iPhone
▻http://fair.org/home/the-biggest-strike-in-world-history-no-thanks-were-focusing-on-the-new-iphone

And yet there was virtually no coverage of the strike in commercial US media, according to searches of the Nexis news database. Not a word on ABC, CBS or NBC. No mention on the main cable news networks—CNN, Fox and MSNBC—either. (The Intercept‘s Zaid Jilani—9/6/16—noted that there was one mention on CNN International, when “the CEO of the human resources consulting firm ManpowerGroup cited the Indian strike as part of global concerns about technology suppressing wages.”) Neither the PBS NewsHour nor NPR touched the story.

Not a single US newspaper found in the Nexis database—which includes most of the major papers, like the New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today—reported an original story on the strike. (Associated Press had a brief, 289-word report, which ran on the New York Times‘ website and was doubtless picked up by other papers.) The Wall Street Journal, whose full text isn’t on Nexis, also skipped the Indian strike story.

That’s an example of the kind of story US corporate media don’t care about. What do they care about? Well, Apple is planning to release a new version of the iPhone next week. That’s already making news: CBS did a segment on its Money Watch program (9/7/16) previewing the phone, as did NPR‘s Morning Edition and All Things Considered (9/7/16); the product was front-page news in USA Today (9/8/16) and the Wall Street Journal (9/8/16), while you had to turn to page A12 in the Washington Post (9/7/16) or the first page of the business section in the New York Times (9/8/16) to get your future cellphone news.

A hundred million or more workers striking for their rights hold no interest for the news managers in US corporate media. But a new gadget from a prominent advertiser? Now, that’s the news that’s fit to print.

La « #réalité » telle que façonnée par les #MSM

Bernie Sanders: I Have Not Suspended My Campaign
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/bernie-sanders-i-have-not-suspended-my-campaign

While the corporate media painted a picture of Bernie Sanders riding off into the sunset after throwing his support behind Hillary Clinton, Bernie was rallying his troops for another fight. This...

Sanders’ Moment of Truth
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/sanders-moment-of-truth

The corporate media mob this week tried to string Bernie Sanders’ leftish presidential campaign from a tree and kick the chair out from under his feet. By the time primary voters cast their...

Occupy Activists Launch ’Battle of New York’ to Counter Media Bias about Sanders and Clinton
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/occupy-activists-launch-battle-of-new-york-to-counter-media-bias-abo

“The corporate media and establishment keep counting us out, but we keep winning by large margins,” the Bernie Sanders campaign tweeted triumphantly, after the Vermont senator won the Wisconsin...

The News Is Center Right
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the-news-is-center-right

The notion of the “liberal media” hides the fact that most corporate media isn’t concerned about presenting a diversity of left-perspectives. That’s because the media doesn’t actually have a...

A Coup is in the Air: The Plot to Unsettle Rousseff, Lula and Brazil | The Wire
▻http://thewire.in/2016/03/25/a-coup-is-in-the-air-the-plot-to-unsettle-rousseff-lula-and-brazil-25893

Neoliberal parties, the corporate media, a conservative judiciary, oil lobbyists, the white elite and right-wing groups, with generous help from outside, have ganged up to derail the country’s government. And it’s all being made to look like a popular uprising against a corrupt regime

Brazil’s revolution starting to reveal its true colors — RT Op-Edge
Pepe Escobar | Published time: 21 Mar, 2016 13:41
▻https://www.rt.com/op-edge/336440-brazils-revolution-color-escobar

As we approach High Noon in the savage Brazilian politico-economic western, here’s what is at stake following my previous piece on RT.

For the past five days, all hell has broken loose. It started with judge Sergio Moro, the tropical Elliott Ness at the head of the two-year-old, 24-phase Car Wash corruption investigation, crudely manipulating an – illegal – phone tapping of a Lula-Dilma Rousseff conversation, which he duly leaked to corporate media and was instantly used as “proof” that Lula may be back in power as Chief of Staff because he’s “afraid” of Elliott Ness.(...)

The US Starves Syria
▻http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/34558-freedom-rider-the-us-starves-syria

Madaya is surrounded by the Syrian army and also by Ahrar Al-Sham, an al-Qaeda linked group and among those so-called “moderates” supported by the United States in its regime change effort. If the corporate media in the United States are truly interested in the plight of Syrians perhaps they ought to do the real work of journalism instead of acting as courtiers for the Obama administration.

While images of hungry children are the story du jour from Syria, the White House continues in its relentless effort to get an elected president out of power no matter what the consequences. A State Department memo leaked to the Associated Press proves that the Obama administration continues pressing for Assad’s ouster and has even come up with a date, March 2017, when they plan for him to be gone. This optimistic scenario assumes that the Syrian army will collapse, a prediction that has been wrong ever since 2011. It also assumes that Russia and Iran will do an about face and leave Assad at America’s mercy. Both predictions are dubious. When the memo became public the State Department was caught red faced and red handed. They called it a “staff level think piece,” an unofficial document and an exercise of no consequence.

Juste pour enfoncer le clou sur #madaya (dont on ne parle plus, on est passé à autre chose...)

About - FreeDocumentaries.Org
▻http://freedocumentaries.org/about
▻http://freedocumentaries.org/uploads/media/default/0001/02/thumb_1210_default_big.jpeg

About

Freedocumentaries.org streams full-length documentary films free of charge, with no registration needed. For several films, we even offer the ability to watch trailers or to download the actual film.

The films are gathered by our researchers as we scour the web for well-produced videos and present them to our viewers. We adhere to all copyright laws and honor the wishes of the producers.

We created Freedocumentaries.org because we wanted to find an easy way to bring thought-provoking, educational, and entertaining documentaries to anyone with a high-speed internet connection. We believe that the mainstream media increasingly practices self-censorship, and that it ignores many opinions and historical events. With the media distorting or ignoring information, it’s often very hard to get an accurate picture of a problem, even while watching the news. Sites like Freedocumentaries.org are a much-needed counterbalance to corporate media: an industry dominated by special interests. Even though every dollar we make via advertising or donations is critical, we do not let any advertisers have any influence over which films we play. We would rather lose that money than lose our independence. And the fact that we won’t shy away from controversial films is one of the things that makes us unique.

While some of the films on our site have widespread distribution, others are created by independent filmmakers who depend on sites like ours to get their information to the public. The amount of work that these producers have put into making a 90-minute film is astounding. Different films create different reactions among different people.

There will be aspects of the films in which you may disagree or agree. After watching you may cry, become inspired, or you may get angry; in any case the films will get you thinking. We are proud that in the last two years, we have helped share these films with countless people that would not have seen the movies otherwise. We believe that we have made the world just a little better by doing so.

We are proud to help these independent filmmakers. We encourage you to visit their website and donate so that they can continue creating great films. If you haven’t done so yet, please watch a film. And if you enjoy the experience, tell your friends!

’Targets Have Very Different Values in the US Media System’
▻http://fair.org/home/targets-have-very-different-values-in-the-us-media-system

Pour le #New_York_Times, Beyrouth, c’est un bastion du Hezbollah et les victimes etaient chiites ; l’avion russe, c’est l’interventionnisme de Poutine alors que les massacres à Paris c’est la barbarie aveugle de Daech ; la plus grande sympathie accordée aux victimes de Paris n’avait également strictement rien à voir avec la plus grande couverture qualitative et quantitative des attaques parisiennes.

JJ: This idea of putting acts into a political context and drawing some connection between what a country does and what is done to it – it’s not that media never do it, they do do it in some situations, don’t they?

JN: Shortly after the bombing of the Russian plane, there was an AP piece sort of speculating about whether terrorism could have been behind it, and the AP article said that if it was terrorism, “many Russians could reconsider the wisdom of the country’s airstrikes in Syria.” It’s interesting that that is a possibility that is offered by corporate media to the citizens of Russia, but is not offered to the citizens of France. And, in a way, if you want coverage of your government that you can use as a citizen, that allows you to consider the actions of your government as something that has consequences in the real world, you may be better off living under a government that the US media considers to be an enemy than to live in a country that they think of as a friend.

JJ: And it would seem even less likely to get that kind of critical treatment of US foreign policy.

JN: No, that is the main thing that you will not get from US media coverage

#MSM #Etats-Unis

Judy Miller’s ghost lingers: Putin, Syria and how the New York Times cheers on a new Cold War - Salon.com
▻http://www.salon.com/2015/11/04/judy_millers_ghost_lingers_putin_syria_and_how_the_new_york_times_cheers_on_a

If you are at all like me you have read an unusual gush of propaganda from our media of late. And if you are truly like me, you know what you are reading but do so anyway, for it is always important to know what one is supposed to think. Then you can begin looking for the truth.

[...]

Nobody is immune to the onslaught I describe. Nobody can swim in a sea of murk and expect to stay clean without vigilance, clear thinking and a lot of effort. Much of the very questionable material I have read lately and cited here is to be found in the corporate media, of course, but also in media that count themselves honest—media right-thinking people rely upon, media customarily called “alternative” (a term I do not like). Otherwise it comes from people whose allegiances and affiliations are not clear.

I respect these writers and editors. And I think they should know better. This is not a defense of anybody or anything other than untainted accuracy. Until we have access to the truth about Syria from authentically reliable sources whose agenda is to tell it, one remains agnostic. A sound history of this tragedy will eventually get written, and we will wait for it.

#propagande #parti_pris #désinformation #manipulation #mensonge #Syrie #New_york_Times #mea_culpa_inutile #larmes_de_crocodile

How Mainstream Is Bernie Sanders ?
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/how-mainstream-is-bernie-sanders

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the presidential candidate for the Democratic nomination, has trouble being taken seriously by the corporate media, what with him being a democratic socialist and all.

If...

The Forms of Violence That Our Corporate Media Never Talks About
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/talking-violence-in-a-corporate-culture

The corporate media loves to talk about violent protestors, while the biggest forms of violence in our society go unchallenged.

An Aug. 19, 2014 Wall Street Journal article headline blared...