Brad DeLong — Genius no-longer-quite-so-young whippersnapper Ezra is, I think, massively overly polite here

Smackdown of the New York Times culture. I don't even link it to it anymore. Why drive traffic in the direction of propaganda (think "anonymous" sources) and journalistic standards that should be considered substandard?

Grasping Reality
Genius no-longer-quite-so-young whippersnapper Ezra is, I think, massively overly polite here: As Ezra Klein say, Jill ...
Brad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley

Caitlin Johnstone — Tulsi Gabbard Is Driving The MSM Bat Shit Crazy

If you haven't seen the Morning Joe interview with Tulsi Gabbard, you should. It's even worse than Caitlin Johnstone makes it out to be. Pictures are more powerful than words. This is supposed to be professional journalism and expert opinion?

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
Tulsi Gabbard Is Driving The MSM Bat Shit Crazy
Caitlin Johnstone

Moon of Alabama — The Media War On Truthful Reporting And Legitimate Opinions - A Documentary

Bringing down the curtain of censorship in US media.

Moon of Alabama
The Media War On Truthful Reporting And Legitimate Opinions - A Documentary

b

Related

Tony Blair redux? It worked the first time around.

Consortium News
Another Dodgy British Dossier: the Skripal Case
Gareth Porter

Adam Johnson — Out of 26 Major Editorials on Trump’s Syria Strikes, Zero Opposed

A survey by FAIR of the top 100 papers in the US by circulation found not a single editorial board opposed to Trump’s April 13 airstrikes on Syria. Twenty supported the strikes, while six were ambiguous as to whether or not the bombing was advisable. The remaining 74 issued no opinion about Trump’s latest escalation of the Syrian war.

This is fairly consistent with editorial support for Trump’s April 2017 airstrikes against the Syrian government, which saw only one editorial out of 47 oppose the bombing (FAIR.org, 4/11/17). The single paper of dissent from last year, the Houston Chronicle, didn’t publish an editorial on last week’s bombing….

FAIR
Out of 26 Major Editorials on Trump’s Syria Strikes, Zero Opposed

Adam Johnson

Andrew Brennan — US media is more neo-McCarthyism than journalism

What we are watching in the US is a hysteria being orchestrated by parties and members of the US corporate and political establishment to rally “America” against the “commie Soviets” again, except there are no “commie Soviets.” The push for Russophobia is like nothing Western audiences – yes, audiences because this is theater – have seen before, even during the Cold War.

Night and day, the press wheels churn any and all content warning that the Russians are coming, linking Russia to everything dubious and malevolent. The US corporate media has desensitized and drained the public’s tolerance in being able to take any more indoctrinating daily shows on Russia. The media pundits have actually polarized American society regarding President Donald Trump and Russia....

Asia Times

US media is more neo-McCarthyism than journalism
Andrew Brennan

Steven Chovanec — In Venezuela, It's "Democracy" if US-Backed Candidates Are Empowered, "Tyranny" if They Are Not

Control of the narrative runs from the US deep state through the "lamestream" media where propaganda poses as journalism.

In this article, Maduro can be replaced with Putin, and Venezuela with Putin. It's the same script.

Truthout
In Venezuela, It's "Democracy" if US-Backed Candidates Are Empowered, "Tyranny" if They Are Not
Steven Chovanec, Truthout | News Analysis

Adam Johnson — Coverage of Iran Protests Illustrated With Protests Not in Iran––Organized by Fringe Cultists

When it comes to covering protests in other countries, it seems any vague picture of brown people protesting can stand in for those actually on the streets expressing their grievances. Since the outbreak of protests across Iran three weeks ago, several major outlets have used pictures of demonstrations in the United States, France, or United Kingdom—organized by a fringe, cult-like group, Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK)—in place of images of the entirely unaffiliated protesters, 6,000 miles away, who are the topic of discussion.

Fox News, Scientific American, Vox, Salon, National Interest and Axios were among the outlets that used unidentified photos of protests not in Iran to illustrate stories about protests in Iran.

These are all images of rallies by the MEK (sometimes known as the People’s Mujahedin, or its benign-sounding front-group name, National Council of Resistance) being presented as protesters in Iran. Several other outlets used their images, but noted they were simply “solidarity” marches in the US or Europe. While this is technically accurate, it’s still wildly misleading, given that it’s safe to assume most people won’t know that the organizers of these rallies are part of a US- and Israeli-aligned fringe group, and not allies of the workers and young people taking to the streets in Iran.

In other words, this was fake news.

Characterizing MEK as a "fringe group" is overly generous. MEK had been designated a terrorist organization until the US reversed its position in 2012 under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Some now consider MEK a representative and spokesperson for "the Iranian government in exile," similar to the US treatment of Ahmed Chabali and his pretensions in the lead up to the Iraq War.  To be fair, FAIR does mention this later in the post.

No intellectually honest person takes MEK seriously as a viable alternative to the current government in Iran. The idea that it is an actual “Iranian opposition” is a Western media fiction. But the group’s rallies outside Iranian embassies provide great visual fodder for indifferent or dishonest editors in need of high-quality “Iran protest” images—without the mess of actually paying Iranian photographers, or dissecting the on-the-ground political reality in Iran.

FAIR

Coverage of Iran Protests Illustrated With Protests Not in Iran––Organized by Fringe Cultists
Adam Johnson

Stephen F. Cohen — The US ‘Betrayed’ Russia, but It Is Not ‘News That’s Fit to Print’

New evidence that Washington broke its promise not to expand NATO “one inch eastward”—a fateful decision with ongoing ramifications—has not been reported by The New York Times or other agenda-setting media outlets.

The American excuse is that the promise was not given in writing. So much for one's word and the nation's honor.

Do that repeatedly, as the US has even to the point of breaking treaties unilaterally, and the nation gets the reputation of not being able to keep its agreements.

Watch the soft power melt away.

Is the New York Times the new Pravda, and the Washington Post the new Izvestia?

Now, however, the invaluable National Security Archive at George Washington University has established the historical truth by publishing, on December 12 of last year, not only a detailed account of what Gorbachev was promised in 1990–91 but the relevant documents themselves. The truth, and the promises broken, are much more expansive than previously known: All of the Western powers involved—the US, the UK, France, Germany itself—made the same promise to Gorbachev on multiple occasions and in various emphatic ways. If we ask when the West, particularly Washington, lost Moscow as a potential strategic partner after the end of the Soviet Union, this is where an explanation begins.

And yet, nearly a month after the publication of the National Security Archive documents, neither the Times nor The Washington Post, which profess to be the nation’s most important, reliable, and indispensable political newspapers, has published one word about this revelation. (Certainly the two papers are pervasively important to other media, not only due to their daily national syndicates but because today’s broadcast media, especially CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and PBS, take most of their own Russia-related “reporting” cues from the Times and the Post.)

How to explain the failure of the Times and Post to report or otherwise comment on the National Security Archive’s publication?...

Cohen gives some terrible advice, however.

If Americans cannot rely on the Times and Post, at least in regard to US-Russian relations, where can they seek the information and analysis they need?...

Cohen recommends that they turn to two websites that almost daily aggregate reporting, analysis, and opinion not to be found in the Times, Post, or most other mainstream publications. One is Johnson’s Russia List. The other is the website of the American Committee for East-West Accord, of which Cohen is a board member.

I monitor both. The later is a good source and I often post links. However,  about 90% of what is linked to at Johnson’s Russia List is Russophobic and anti-Putin propaganda. Punditry aside, much "factual evidence" is also either selective reporting and some is fake news. Reader beware. Cohen's recommending Johnson's List without adding a warning is a blunder, in my view. Some relying on his advice will not be able to distinguish the "professional" Russophobes and Putin-bashers from the useful sources. I say "professional" here in the sense they get paid for what they do rather than implying that they are competent journalists.

The Nation
The US ‘Betrayed’ Russia, but It Is Not ‘News That’s Fit to Print’
Stephen F. Cohen | Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies, History, and Politics at New York University and Princeton University

Regarding the corporate media and propaganda and fake news in general, don't accept at face value anything you read or hear in the corporate media.

Propaganda and manufactured narrative based on selective reporting and even made-up "facts" are rampant. It is necessary to crosscheck everything. If that is not possible, either discount it or reject it.

Putting Trumpgate and Russiagate to bed - links

Deep state plot outed.

Consortium News

The Scary Void Inside Russia-gate

Stephen F. Cohen

The Foundering Russia-gate ‘Scandal’

Robert Parry

Protecting the Shaky Russia-gate Narrative

Robert Parry

Russia-gate’s Litany of Corrections

Robert Parry

Sucking Liberals into a New Cold War

William Blum

Russia-gate’s Reach into Journalism

Dennis J. Bernstein

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Fake News, Sedition and Public Apathy

Your Trump Dossier Cheat Sheet
Publius Tacitus

Irrussianality
The latest ‘existential threat’

Crackpot theory no. 9: Assume the worstPaul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

AntiWar
The Enemy Within: It’s called the “intelligence community”

Justin Raimondo

Zero Hedge

WSJ Exposes The Real Election Meddling... At The FBI

Grassley Fires Off Scorching Letter To DOJ After Anti-Trump Texts Reveal Burner Phone, "Insurance Policy"

Ex-FBI Assistant Director: Strzok Fabricated Information And "Belongs In Leavenworth"

FBI Edits To Clinton Exoneration Go Far Beyond What Was Previously Known; Comey, McCabe, Strzok Implicated

Putin Blasts American Establishment's "Russian Spy Hysteria"

New Russian Hacker Claims Putin Ordered Theft Of Clinton's Email, After First One Refused FBI Bribe To Lie

Tyler Durden

Russia Feed
Vladimir Putin: Russiagate “invented by those aiming to de-legitimize Trump”

Vlad

Putin: Russian collusion witch hunt undermines US president and weakens American nation

Russia makes a convenient enemy to blame for the West’s failures

veniamin Popov

The Duran

EXPOSED: FBI agents plotting an “insurance policy” should Trump win election

WSJ drops truth bomb! FBI collusion as agency “interfered in an American presidential election”

EPIC: Trey Gowdy destroys corrupt DOJ, FBI Trump-Russia collusion investigation (Video)

The man who gave fake “Trump dossier” to John McCain speaks out

Alex Christoforou

Strategic Culture Foundation

Deconstructing the Almighty Russian Hackers Myth

Patrick Armstrong

Why America’s Law Enforcement Empire Resembles Secret Police in a Dictatorship

Phillip Giraldi

The Daily Caller
Democrats Mobilize Against Rod Rosenstein As Inspector General Investigation Zeroes In On FBI

Peter Hasson

Russia Insider
CNN & MSNBC Attempt Coverup of Their Bogus Russia-Gate Story
Mike (Mish) Shedlock

The Intercept

The U.S. Media Suffered Its Most Humiliating Debacle in Ages and Now Refuses All Transparency Over What Happened

Glenn Greenwald

Related

Fort Russ
VICE comes out swinging at Fort Russ News, here's what we think

Joachim Flores

Lobe Log
Donald Trump’s First Year Sets Record for U.S. Special Ops

Nick Turse

Sputnik International

Moscow Faces Information Confrontation Aimed to 'Strangle' Russia - Kremlin

Anusha Venkat — Twitter users mock ‘clueless American’ after Modi interview

According to reports, NBC posted a teaser on Twitter on Friday in which Modi praised a picture of Kelly posing with an umbrella. Clearly surprised by his use of the microblogging site, she asked the prime minister, “Are you on Twitter?” Modi laughed off her question.

With over 30.3 million followers, Modi is the third most followed politician on Twitter.

Asia Times
Twitter users mock ‘clueless American’ after Modi interview
Anusha Venkat

Robert Parry — How the Washington Press Turned Bad

There was a time when the Washington press corps prided itself on holding the powerful accountable – Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Vietnam War – but those days are long gone, replaced by a malleable media that puts its cozy relations with insiders ahead of the public interest, writes Robert Parry.… 

Many of the fond recollections surely are selective, but there was some truth to Bradlee’s “front page” approach to inspiring a staff to push the envelope in pursuit of difficult stories – at least during the Watergate scandal when he backed Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the face of White House hostility. How different that was from Bradlee’s later years and the work of his successors at the Washington Post!…

What Happened to the Press?
How this transformation of Washington journalism occurred – from the more aggressive press corps of the 1970s into the patsy press corps of the 1980s and beyond – is an important lost chapter of modern American history. 

Much of this change emerged from the political wreckage that followed the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers, the Watergate scandal and the exposure of CIA abuses in the 1970s. The American power structure, particularly the Right, struck back, labeling the U.S. news media as “liberal” and questioning the patriotism of individual journalists and editors. 

But it didn’t require much arm-twisting to get the mainstream news media to bend into line and fall on its knees. Many of the news executives that I worked under shared the view of the power structure that the Vietnam protests were disloyal, that the U.S. government needed to hit back against humiliations like the Iran-hostage crisis, and that the rebellious public needed to be brought back into line behind more traditional values… 

Fitting a Pattern

In other words, the vicious destruction of Gary Webb following his revival of the Contra-cocaine scandal in 1996 – when he examined the impact of one Contra-cocaine pipeline into the crack trade in Los Angeles – was not out of the ordinary. It was part of the pattern of subservience to the national security apparatus, especially under Republicans and right-wingers but extending to Democratic hardliners, too.…

So, perhaps it should come as no surprise that this thoroughly corrupted Washington press corps would lash out again at Gary Webb as his reputation has the belated chance for a posthumous rehabilitation. 

But how far the vaunted Washington press corps has sunk is illustrated by the fact that it has been left to a Hollywood movie – of all things – to set the record straight.

Neocons.

Consortium News
How the Washington Press Turned Bad
Robert Parry