Are we all being gaslighted by the government? — Richard Murphy

This has become the m.o. of corporate media. It's progressed beyond propaganda to gaslighting.

"Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"

Tax Research UK
Are we all being gaslighted by the government?
Richard Murphy | Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London; Director of Tax Research UK; non-executive director of Cambridge Econometrics, and a member of the Progressive Economy Forum

Moon of Alabama — How The News About Italian Far-Right Fighters In Ukraine Got Confused

Informative post on what really went down in the BBC reporting "incident," along with speculation on why it happened. He is willing to cut some space. Worth a read.

Moon of Alabama
How The News About Italian Far-Right Fighters In Ukraine Got Confused

RT — Russian media covered the Yellow Vest protests; now France is investigating Russian ‘interference’

It's becoming clearer that "Russian interference" means RT and Sputnik journalism rather than hacking and "dirty tricks." Russian state-sponsored media are covering news that the Western news media is either blacking out completely, suppressing, or spinning according to the controlling narrative.

RT
Russian media covered the Yellow Vest protests; now France is investigating Russian ‘interference’

See also

RT
WikiLeaks skewers Guardian writer for zany theory that RT is, wait for it... reporting news

See also

SouthFront
Ukraine’s SBU, British Media, US Think Tank: Russia Is Behind “Yellow Vest” Protests In France

22 months after Brexit all the "geniuses" are shocked that the U.K. economy is fine. It's what I said at the time.

Before and immediately following the Brexit vote back in 2016, I said that the U.K. economy would not be harmed and that the pound would recoup all of its losses if selling were to happen.

In contrast, all of the "geniuses" i.e. the economists, market pundits, hedge fund idiots and especially, the entirety of the business and financial media, said the opposite. They were all wrong. I was right.

Here are some videos I made at the time.

"Brexit and the British pound."

"British pound will recoup all post-Brexit losses"

"I told you: Whatever the initial reaction to Brexit was it would be wrong."

"Buy signal. Jim Rogers says Brexit will create worst bear market."

MMT understanding. Market savvy. Mental Game.

Zi Yang — Chinese, Russian media lock arms to challenge Western press

Many forum participants perceive Western mainstream media as an adversary that frequently attempts to smear China and Russia. Chinese and Russian media plan to seize the opportunity provided by the decline of the Western mainstream press and take control of a greater share of the global public forum. With growing public interest in alternative media, state-owned Chinese and Russian outlets are seeking to break Western mainstream media’s hold on global opinion through resource sharing and joint program promotion.

The nerve of them.

Asia Times
Chinese, Russian media lock arms to challenge Western press

Zi Yang

Joel B. Pollak — Bloomberg Falsely Claims Breitbart Did Not Cite Independent Sources

The “without evidence” talking point has been ubiquitous this weekend, repeated by mainstream media outlets and Democratic Party representatives alike, though the evidence has been in plain sight for weeks — and was duly cited.

Breitbart News
Bloomberg Falsely Claims Breitbart Did Not Cite Independent Sources
Joel B. Pollak | Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News

Trump Will Be a 'Severe Disappointment To Millions' — Holger Stark interviews New Yorker Editor David Remnick

SPIEGEL speaks to the editor of the New Yorker about the dangers of fascism under Donald Trump, international leaders' reactions to the election and the role of the press in reporting on the next administration. 

Says more about the perspective of the mainstream media than about affairs.

Spiegel International
Trump Will Be a 'Severe Disappointment To Millions'
Holger Stark interviews David Remnick

Gilbert Doctorow — Press Freedom in Russia? Tune in to the Political Talk Shows to See for Yourself

Don't believe all the Western propaganda about state control of the media in Russia. The Saker put up a similar post recently that is also worth a read if you hadn't seen it. It's broader and more detailed.

Une parole franche
Press Freedom in Russia? Tune in to the Political Talk Shows to See for Yourself
Gilbert Doctorow | European Coordinator of The American Committee for East West Accord Ltd

Glenn Greenwald — Al Jazeera America Terminates All TV and Digital Operations

Executives of Al Jazeera America (AJAM) today are holding a meeting at 2 p.m. Eastern Time to tell their employees that the company is terminating all news and digital operations in the U.S. as of April 2016, resulting in the loss of hundreds of jobs. The announcement marks a stunning and rapid collapse of what, from the start, has been a towering failure.

The Intercept
Al Jazeera America Terminates All TV and Digital Operations

Glenn Greenwald

Graham Phillips — Busting Ukraine Fakes (#1) – How Ukraine’s Media Works (Fakes)

First in a series from an on-the-ground Western journalist reporting on the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

The Truth Speaker
Busting Ukraine Fakes (#1) – How Ukraine’s Media Works (Fakes)
Graham Phillips, British journalist with Russia Today

The Anglo-American Version

The Anglo-American version

Business Insider Russia's former largest foreign investor: Putin is worth $200 billion

Michael B Kelley

Business Insider
Russia's aggression in Ukraine is part of a broader, and more dangerous, confrontation with the West

The Economist

See Zero Hedge for the cartoon at How the News Works.

Robert Parry — The Putin-Did-It Conspiracy Theory

A new truce agreement in Ukraine rekindles hope that the bloodshed can be reduced if not stopped, but Official Washington’s gross misunderstanding of the crisis, blaming everything on Russia’s President Putin, raises doubts and portends a potentially grave catastrophe, writes Robert Parry.

The conspiracy theory embraced by Washington and its poodles is moronic. They have to be incredibly gullible, or else there is some other reason involving interest. One is always tempted to attribute such matters to interest, but stupidity knows no bounds these days.

And given public knowledge of psi ops and hybrid warfare, there is good reason to believe that the clandestine services-deep state are influencing the New York Times as well as other media.

Consortium News
The Putin-Did-It Conspiracy Theory

Robert Parry

Joel Bleifuss — Parameters of Respectability

The function of the corporate media is to establish and patrol the boundaries of acceptable political thought and to marginalize those leaders who call for meaningful alternatives to business as usual.…

In These Times
Parameters of Respectability

Joel Bleifuss | former director of the Peace Studies Program at the University of Missouri-Columbia, now the editor & publisher of In These Times

Also

It Wasn’t About Oil, and It Wasn’t About the Free Market: Why We Invaded Iraq

Neocons.

Robert Parry — Wretched US Journalism on Ukraine

A basic rule of journalism is that there are almost always two sides to a story and that journalists should try to reflect that reality, a principle that is especially important when lives are at stake amid war fevers. Yet, American journalism has failed miserably in this regard during the Ukraine crisis.

And not just Ukraine. I try to fill in that gap somewhat here, since it is not available in the Western media and especially not in US media, which is a mostly cheerleading and propaganda.

However, things are a lot better now than they were before the Interest, when what is now blogging was pretty much I. F. Stone's newsletter.

Consortium News
Wretched US Journalism on Ukraine
Robert Parry

Peter Stone — How Newt Gingrich’s Language Guru Helped Rebrand the Kochs' Message

The dark-money network has been turning to spinmeister Frank Luntz.

Some background on Luntz.

Mother Jones
How Newt Gingrich’s Language Guru Helped Rebrand the Kochs' Message
Peter Stone

John Pilger — Propaganda’s Triumph over Journalism

“When the truth is replaced by silence,” said the Soviet dissident Yevtushenko, “the silence is a lie.”

Consortiums News
Propaganda’s Triumph over Journalism
John Pilger

Eric van de Beek — Our Exclusive Interview with German Editor Turned CIA Whistleblower

 Exclusively for RI, Dutch journalist Eric van de Beek interviews the senior German editor who is causing a sensation with his allegations that the CIA pays German media professionals to spin stories to follow US government goals.

We wrote about this two weeks ago, and the article shot up in views, becoming one of the most read articles on our site. 

Udo Ulfkotte reveals in his bestseller Bought Journalists, how he was "taught to lie, to betray and not to tell the truth to the public. 

The former editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which is one of Germany’s largest newspapers, was secretly on the payroll of the CIA and German secret service, spinning the news in a way that was positive for the United States and bad for its opponents. 

In his latest interview, Ulfkotte alleges that some media are nothing more than propaganda outlets of political parties, secret services, international think tanks and high finance entities. 

Repenting for collaborating with various agencies and organisations to manipulate the news, Ulkotte laments, "I'm ashamed I was part of it. Unfortunately I cannot reverse this."…

Russia Insider
Our Exclusive Interview with German Editor Turned CIA Whistleblower
Eric van de Beek

Robert Parry — Airline Horror Spurs New Rush to Judgment

The propaganda is thick. And the political class is really obsessing over this. Different interests are desperately trying to shape the narrative.

Consortium News
Airline Horror Spurs New Rush to Judgment
Robert Parry

Meanwhile, Merkel, Putin agree on international probe into MH17 crash

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin have agreed for an international investigation into the downing of a Malaysian plane over Ukraine, and for rapid access to the crash site, Berlin said on Saturday.  

A Kremlin statement on the same phone call said that "both sides stressed the importance of a thorough and objective investigation of all circumstances relating to what has happened."

The two leaders, who spoke on the telephone, "agreed that an international, independent commission under the direction of ICAO (UN's International Civil Aviation Organization) should quickly have access to the site of the accident... to shed light on the circumstances of the crash and move the victims," said a German government statement.

Rushing to get out front with no evidence:

Following the shooting down of Malaysian flight MH17, Hillary Clinton has hit out at Russia saying "Putin has gone too far."

This woman is dangerous.

Derek Thompson — What the Death of Homepages Means for the Future of News

Why should the death of homepages give rise to news that's more about us? Because homepages reflect the values of institutions, and Facebook and Twitter reflect the interest of individual readers. These digital grazers have shown again and again that they aren't interested in hard news, but rather entertainment, self-help, awe, and outrage dressed up news. Digitally native publishers are pretty good at pumping this kind of stuff out.... Even serious publishing companies know that self-help and entertainment often outperform outstanding reporting.

Second, we should expect—and have already seen—an expedited clustering effect around news tropes, and this clustering is making news organizations more like each other.

The Atlantic
What the Death of Homepages Means for the Future of News
Derek Thompson

David Siegel — Why wouldn’t people want to reduce inequality?

Formation of collective consciousness through resonance and ripples.

The Washington Post — The Monkey Cage

Why wouldn’t people want to reduce inequality?

David A. Siegel | Associate Professor of Political Science, Duke University

(h/t Mark Thoma at Economist's View)