Paul Jay and Sharmini Peries Ousted from The Real News Network in June; Current Fundraiser Hides that Fact; Falling Viewership and Liberal Turn Result — Yves Smith

That's the end of TRNN. Another site I won't be linking to. De facto censorship.

Naked Capitalism
Paul Jay and Sharmini Peries Ousted from The Real News Network in June; Current Fundraiser Hides that Fact; Falling Viewership and Liberal Turn Result
Yves Smith

That study about the health risks of red meat: An excellent news report — Andrew Gelman

Most interesting for the analysis of the process relative to statistical reasoning and news reporting, which happens to be the bedrock of economics and the narratives based on conventional economics. Short and not wonkish.

Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
That study about the health risks of red meat: An excellent news report
Andrew Gelman | Professor of Statistics and Political Science and Director of the Applied Statistics Center, Columbia University

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

HOME TRUTHS AND PRESS FREEDOM – WHAT THE CASES OF JULIAN ASSANGE AND IVAN GOLUNOV MEAN FOR THE AUSTRALIAN PRESS, AND VICE VERSA — John Helmer

For those [journalists] who want to keep their jobs, police raids and prosecutions are reminders when self-censorship isn’t enough to prevent their investigating abuses of the law, war crimes, fraud and corruption. The first home truth is that truth is loss-making for an enterprise; pauperizing for its reporter. The second home truth is that in wartime – that’s now – truth-telling may be a criminal offence which will get the reporter time in jail.

Dances with Bears
HOME TRUTHS AND PRESS FREEDOM – WHAT THE CASES OF JULIAN ASSANGE AND IVAN GOLUNOV MEAN FOR THE AUSTRALIAN PRESS, AND VICE VERSA
John Helmer

Paul Robinson — Book Review – John Helmer

If you are aware of John Helmer's blog Dancing with Bears, frequently linked to here, you may be interest in this. Otherwise, not so much.

Irrussianality
Book Review – John Helmer
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

Swiss Propaganda Research — The Propaganda Multiplier: How Global News Agencies and Western Media Report on Geopolitics

It is one of the most important aspects of our media system, and yet hardly known to the public: most of the international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three global news agencies based in New York [AP], London [Reuters] and Paris [AFP]....

Why you can't always (ever?) believe what you see and hear on "the news," which is actually an echo chamber.The obvious question is, echoing whose voices? The article attempts to answer this but the subject is purposefully oblique and amorphous.

At the same time, actual news is dismissed as fake and investigative reporting is dismissed as conspiracy theory, while whistleblowers are persecuted and if possible prosecuted, while "anonymous sources" are treated as authoritative.

This would all remain unknown if it were not for the Internet, and the powers that be are now seeking to regain control of the narrative by introduction censorship, either directly or indirectly by "de-platforming."

This is incompatible with a functioning democracy, whether direct or representative.

True Publica
The Propaganda Multiplier: How Global News Agencies and Western Media Report on Geopolitics
Swiss Propaganda Research

See also

Russia Insider
The Oligarch Takeover of US media

John Hellevig

Caitlin Johnstone — How Plutocratic Media Keeps Staff Aligned With Establishment Agendas

The way I see it there are only two possible explanations for the unanimous consensus in mass media on these issues:

Explanation 1: The consensus exists because the mass media reporters are all telling the truth all the time.

OR

Explanation 2: The consensus exists because there is some kind of system in place which keeps all mass media reporters lying to us and painting a false picture about what’s going on in the world.

Those are the only two possibilities, and only one can be true, since any mixture of the two would result in the loss of consensus.

Most mainstream westerners harbor an unquestioned assumption that Explanation 1 is the only possibility.

I don't think that this binary is necessarily follows. There is at least one other alternative.

Based on my training in logic and philosophy, systems thinking, cognitive studies, and related subjects,  I think highly likely  that many if not most reporters do believe that they are telling the truth. I don't mean to imply that this covers all of them, for example, those on the payroll of intelligence services, who may believe in the cause but not the content. That this happens is no longer conspiracy theory. And a journalist doesn't have to be a bot for intel either to be so devoted to the cause of "patriotism" to find it "virtuous" to shape the narrative.

This has an explanation that can only be surfaced in the scope of this comment. It's a huge subject and one that is absolutely essential in approaching the historical dialectic.

This "paradox of truth" is the result of alternative world views. German has a term for this—Weltanschauung It is an import into English. Google Translate renders Weltanschauung as "world view," but "world view" is relatively rare in  English while Weltanschauung is common in German.

World views —Wittgenstein called them "world pictures" (Weltbilder) — are ways of "seeing as" through the lens of language, where meaning is determined largely by use in context. This can be expressed as ideology, but world views are the ground of ideologies and as such are not articulated themselves since they are the lenses through which all of us "see" the world as a system.

It's not just reporters here. Journalists are embedded in a social system. Everyone acquires a world view shaped through "nurture"—family background, education, enculturation, tradition, institutional influences, class, etc. Everyone is also influenced by nature in the sense of inherited disposition. While every individual is unique as an individual, we are "the same" as human persons in sharing "human nature."

The notion that the mind is a mirror-like reflection of "reality" is called naive realism. That is not the way it works. "Reality" is perspectival. Whoever controls the narrative controls the mass perception of reality based on the norms of the world view. "Truth" is a social phenomenon that is socially constructed.

Of course, this doesn't mean there is no truth. It only means that reaching is it limited by bounded rationality.  There is a price to pay for do so and most are unwilling to pay the price. So they go along (with group-think) to get along.

At the same time as being unique individuals and human persons (presumably sharing equal rights), humans are highly social animals and shaped by their social milieu and its influences. An individual's world view grows out of this soil, and people tend to gravitate toward others like them and affiliate with those who share similar views based on a common world view.

One of the logical functions of a world view is to provide criteria for judging. These criteria become ideological norms. They are privileged assumptions whose function is similar to definitions, axioms, postulated and stipulated rules in a formal system, forming the logical structure of the system.

In addition, there is also professional investment involved. Hiring and promotion is based on holding the "correct" positions with respect to the norm.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"— Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked (1935), ISBN 0-520-08198-6; repr. University of California Press, 1994, p. 109. (Wikiquote)

This is just the way highly organized social systems operate logically. Those people that don't fit into a system or are unwilling to conform to it are forced out of it, like parasites attacked by an immune system before they can kill the host.

So it is not surprising that most of journalists, professors, and other influencers are bots of the system.  Academic training is largely about acquiring the "normal" paradigm and being able to function seamlessly in it. That is just the way the system works. It is also a reason for system rigidity, dysfunction, recurrent breakdowns, and eventual transformation or collapse.

I think that Caitlin Johnstone would largely agree with this based on other things she has written. It is also contained to some degree in this post. I am just trying to clarify an important point that is not understood widely enough even though it is "old knowledge."

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
How Plutocratic Media Keeps Staff Aligned With Establishment Agendas
Caitlin Johnstone

Caitlin Johnstone — MSM Is Frantically Attacking Dissenting Syria Narratives, And It Looks Really Bad

Many of these recent hit pieces are coming out of the UK, which is interesting given the way a BBC reporter recently admonished her interviewee for questioning the official story about the alleged Douma chemical attacks because his words could hurt the “information war” effort against Russia. If this view is widespread among British journalists (and recent headlines by the Times, the Independent and the Telegraphsuggest that it may be), this means we’re looking at an environment wherein reporters aren’t even pretending it’s their job to be truthful, tell all sides of a story and hold power to account, but rather to manufacture support for escalations against Russia and undermine anyone who resists....

Overreach.

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
MSM Is Frantically Attacking Dissenting Syria Narratives, And It Looks Really Bad

Caitlin Johnston

See also

Ed Schulz, Cenk Uygur, Mika Brzezinski, Phil Donahue, Ashleigh Banfield.

People scoff at state-funded channels like RT, while singing the praises of channels like MSNBC and CNN. Those networks benefit hugely from the myth that because they are not state-funded, they are somehow independent.

These are networks owned by giant parent corporations with plenty of skin in the political game — yet, it is rarely acknowledged that these corporations have a detrimental influence on the quality of journalism produced by their employees. The truth is rarely uttered, that network stars like Rachel Maddow are completely beholden to those corporate and political interests — and that this basic fact massively influences their reporting....

And this is just MSNBC, hardly the worst of the lot of US media.

RT
Former MSNBC journalists expose the channel’s ‘pro-establishment bias’

Danielle Ryan, Irish freelance journalist

ht Naked Capitalism for both links.

Scott Adams — What if the News Reported Only Facts?

The business model of the news media has moved away from hard reporting and toward punditry and opinion. Viewers enjoy opinion-driven content and it costs a lot less to produce than hard news. And that means the news industry has moved from factual reporting to — for all practical purposes — some form of imaginary mind reading to fill the hours.

I’ll need some examples to make my point. Below I will imagine how several headline stories about President Trump could have been reported factually without the mind reading. I include the mind reading interpretations for contrast.

Scott Adams Blog
What if the News Reported Only Facts?
Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert

Leo Standish — Head of RT: American Media is Completely Fake - Even Your President Agrees (Video)

Simonyan nails it, again.Simonyan nails it, again.

Russia Insider
Head of RT: American Media is Completely Fake - Even Your President Agrees (Video)
Leo Standish

Mainstream Media and Imperial Power — Dennis Bernstein and Randy Credico interview John Pilger

Noted journalist and filmmaker John Pilger’s collection of work has been archived by the British Library, but deep-rooted problems of Western media create an increasingly difficult landscape for ethical journalism, as Pilger explained in an interview with Dennis Bernstein and Randy Credico....

Consortium News
Mainstream Media and Imperial Power

Dennis Bernstein and Randy Credico interview John Pilger

Dennis J Bernstein — Russia-gate’s Reach into Journalism

The investigation to somehow blame Russia for Donald Trump’s election has now merged with another establishment goal of isolating and intimidating whistleblowers and other dissidents, as Dennis J Bernstein describes.

Narrative control is essential to elite control in a representative democracy.

Consortium News
Russia-gate’s Reach into Journalism

Dennis J Bernstein, a host of “Flashpoints” on Pacifica

Also

A smear campaign targeting Seder accused him of joking about rape in a satirical tweet from 2009.

Vox
MSNBC won’t cut ties to Sam Seder after all: succumbing to alt-right outrage was a “mistake”
Aja Romano

Also

Business Insider
Wikileaks faces U.S. probes into its 2016 election role and CIA leaks: sources

Reuters

Joaquin Flores — China to fight ISIS in Syria? No, and here's why FRN didn't run that story

Fort Russ News has no problem printing a retraction, but we'd rather avoid that when we know beforehand that we'd later have to. There's a cynical saying inside the news world, that news only has to be true for a day. We aren't interested in that. Maintaining readership and building trust as a credible paper, emerging as a paper of record, is a long-term and principle-based project, and this means not covering a sensational story that gives a short term boost to ratings.

Fort Russ
China to fight ISIS in Syria? No, and here's why FRN didn't run that story

Joaquin Flores | Editor-in-Chief of Fort Russ News, as well as the Director of the Belgrade based think-tank, the Center for Syncretic Studies. Educated at California State University, Los Angeles, in the field of International Relations. he previously served as Chief Negotiator and Internal Organizer in several jurisdictions for the SEIU labor union in California.

Eric Schliesser — On Starting a (Philosophy) Blog

Eric Schliesser is a philosophy professor that writes not only on "philosophy" but also political theory, which brings economics into the picture, too. (He has written a couple of books on Adam Smith.) His observations and advice on blogging as well as starting a blog is applicable most "serious" blogs, especially by academics and professionals.

Digressions&Impressions
On Starting a (Philosophy) Blog

Eric Schliesser | Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

Reporter and Press Freedom Advocate James Risen to Join The Intercept and First Look Media

James Risen, who, as a best-selling author and New York Times reporter, has broken some of the biggest stories of the post-9/11 period, is joining The Intercept as our senior national security correspondent, based in Washington, D.C. Risen will write a reported column on national security and other national issues, as well as help to lead The Intercept’s investigative reporting efforts.

Risen will have a unique dual leadership position at First Look Media, because in addition to his editorial role at The Intercept, he will also serve as director of the Press Freedom Defense Fund, which is dedicated to supporting news organizations, journalists, and whistleblowers in legal fights where a substantial public interest, freedom of the press, or related human or civil right is at stake. Recently, the Press Freedom Defense Fund announced its support for the legal defense of Reality Winner, who is accused of leaking a top-secret NSA document on Russian election hacking to The Intercept.

Risen was himself a target of the U.S. government’s crackdown on journalists and whistleblowers. He waged a seven-year battle, risking jail after the Bush administration and later the Obama administration sought to force him to testify and reveal his confidential sources in a leak investigation. Risen never gave in, and the government finally backed down.... 

The Intercept
Reporter and Press Freedom Advocate James Risen to Join The Intercept and First Look Media
Betsy Reed

Jeff Desjardins — The Least and Most Trusted News Sources in America

This is a survey compiled by the Trusting News Project of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, Missouri School of Journalism, University of Missouri.

Visual Capitalist
The Least and Most Trusted News Sources in America
Jeff Desjardins

Lois Beckett — Forget Breitbart: The White House Has a New Favorite Right Wing Media Outlet

The new kid on the block. Circa. Check it out.

AlterNet
Forget Breitbart: The White House Has a New Favorite Right Wing Media Outlet
Lois Beckett, Economic Policy Institute

Zero Hedge — Photos Of Aleppo Rising: Swimsuits, Concerts And Rebuilding In First Jihadi-Free Summer

Life under the Assad government now that it's safe for journos to visit Aleppo again.

Now, during the first summer of relative calm Aleppo residents have seen in over four years of grinding conflict, the city commonly referred as "the jewel of Syria" is once again rising from the ashes. Foreign journalists are also accessing places like East Aleppo and the heart of the walled 'old city' for the first time. Some few honest correspondents, unable to deny the local population's spirit of hopefulness and zeal with which they undertake rebuilding projects, acknowledge that stability and normalcy have returned only after the last jihadists were expelled by the Syrian government and its allies.

Oh, the horror.

Zero Hedge
Photos Of Aleppo Rising: Swimsuits, Concerts And Rebuilding In First Jihadi-Free Summer

Tyler Durden

Moon of Alabama — Syria - The Alternet Grayzone Of Smug Turncoats

Moon of Alabama takes Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton (and others) to task for unprofessional behavior that some might view as unethical.

Blumenthal knows this well. His piece about the "White Helmets" for Alternet Grayzone was obviously sourced (if not plagiarized) from earlier work by Vanessa Beeley and other authors at the above sites. To then market Alternet Grayzone, which only exists a year or so, as "the only progressive outlet that's consistently" "provide[s] a critical perspective" is worse than marketing talk. It is an outrageous lie.

Any writer, me included, can err in the evaluation of the available facts. One can learn of new facts and one's opinion can turn out to be wrong and change. But one obligation to readers is to stay honest, to admit when one went wrong and to explain why ones opinion has changed. A certain humbleness is an essential ingredient of good writing.

Yet none of that can been seen in the output of Blumenthal and his fellow writers. No apology has been issued by him to the colleagues at Al Akhbar who he publicly smeared and accused. Neither Norton nor Khalek have explained their change of position.

Blumenthal now publishes pieces based on the archive material of those progressive outlets which have long had a critical view on the Syria issue. Yet he claims that no such outlets exit.

If they are helpful for the cause Max Blumenthal, Ben Norton and Rania Khalek are welcome to join those writers who all along published against the imperial designs for Syria. It would feel much better through if their newly discovered "progressiveness" on Syria would not have the distinct smell of mere opportunism.

Moon of Alabama
Syria - The Alternet Grayzone Of Smug Turncoats

b

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