Addison dePitt — Presstitutes raise the temperature on social media giants to join the campaign to stamp out free speech and all political dissent

Zuckerberg’s auto-da-fé before the Congressional inquisition is designed to send a message to his tech industry colleagues, as well as provide official cover for the future enforcement of draconian rules against deviants from the official script. “Misuse of social media!” cry the new Inquisitors. But who decides what constitutes “misuse”? Isn’t that what the First Amendment is all about?….

The suppression of free speech in the US and the rest of the “capitalist democracies” (a glorious oxymoron) is a systemic bipartisan plot that long precedes Trump, the result of the establishment’s realisation —brought to a boil with the upset election of Trump—that they are losing control of the main narrative—the truth is getting through, so to speak— and the holes must be plugged. The gargantuan echo chamber dedicated to lies 24/7 that is the mainstream media and supporting institutions must be kept safe from further erosion and eventual dismantlement by that pesky little thing some people still quaintly call, “just the facts.”...

The Greanville Post

Presstitutes raise the temperature on social media giants to join the campaign to stamp out free speech and all political dissent

Addison dePitt

The Saker — Media Brainwashing Operation In Progress

39 second clip.

Where did this talking point originate and propagate? Not by chance.

The Vineyard of the Saker
Media Brainwashing Operation In Progress
The Saker

also

As BI notes, these are all owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which over the last few days has seemingly required dozens of new anchors on its roughly 200 local TV stations in the US to read the dark message about "members of the media [who] use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control 'exactly what people think'," concluding that "This is extremely dangerous to a democracy."

Zero Hedge
"This Is Extremely Dangerous To Our Democracy"

Tyler Durden

also

Business Insider
'Sinclair is far superior to CNN': Trump is defending the broadcaster that told stations across the US to read a script criticizing the media
Michal Kranz

David F. Ruccio — Liberal Superman theory

Epistemology rather than economics.

Epistemological absolutism holds that there are absolute criteria and methods available for applying them to gain certain knowledge. Epistemological relativism holds that there are neither.

Without getting into the weeds about this, suffice it to say that this epistemological distinction is not particularly relevant to the point that Professor Ruccio makes in the post, which revolves around mistaking ideology for fact. Here he is spot on and can be shown regardless of whether one is an epistemological relativist or absolutist.

This also accounts for the obsession with controlling the narrative in order to shape consensus reality and the role of "experts" in doing it. This is just plain old sophistry, know colloquially as "duping the rubes."

Occasional Links & Commentary
Liberal Superman theory
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame

David P. Hamilton — Understanding the ‘Fake News’ Hysteria

It's about controlling the narrative.

For the most part, “fake news” is a fake concept designed by the corporate news media to discredit those who challenge the official U.S. hegemonic narrative. The typical MSM fake news accusation starts with some egregious fictionalization and then morphs over to the real targets: the subversives, those who would dispute foundational elements of the official history or its recent approved updates.

The New York Times building in Manhattan. (Photo credit: Robert Parry)

These subversive elements are likely to question important myths, such as the necessity of the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima or – before the Iraq War – Saddam Hussein possessing WMD, and hence must be silenced.

There are people in this world who write what they know to be fiction and try to pass it off as fact. Many of them work for the CIA and related institutions. Then, there are satirists like The Onion who write fictionalized truth. These professional prevaricators are not what draws the ire of the corporate “news.”...

Are the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, et al, lying knowingly? Not exactly. The news media doesn’t have to invent the lies, only repeat them. They are mainly the stenographers of governmental agencies that provide the raw material to be quoted, invariably substantiating the validity of the official position. The owners of those news outlets likely believe that narrative, but mainly they want you to believe it.

The pundits and talking heads of those news media, the on-camera personalities, must think within the parameters the official narrative or they wouldn’t have been hired to the position of highly paid spokesperson for it....

How objective can you be about issues of income inequality when you’ve been the top .0001% for six or seven generations? And if one dare to go off the reservation, the next thing you know you’ll be working for RT for a lot less money like Ed Schultz.

Consortium News
Understanding the ‘Fake News’ Hysteria

David P. Hamilton

Robert Parry — The Dawn of an Orwellian Future

In early May 2017, the Times chimed in with a laudatory article about how sophisticated algorithms could purge the Internet of alleged “fake news” or what the mainstream media deems to be “misinformation.”

As I wrote at the time, “you don’t need a huge amount of imagination to see how this combination of mainstream groupthink and artificial intelligence could create an Orwellian future in which only one side of a story gets told and the other side simply disappears from view.”…

That has been a core principle since the days of the Enlightenment, that truth best emerges from withstanding challenges in the marketplace of ideas. Overturning that age-old truth – by today unleashing algorithms to enforce the Official Narrative – is a much greater threat to an informed electorate and to the health of democracy than the relatively few times when some kid makes up a bogus story to increase his Web traffic.

Employing the manufactured fake news meme to suppress dissent and manufacture consent in creating a consensual reality based on the official narrative.

Those that have eye to see are witnessing is a soft coup being conducted in a soft fascist state.

Consortium News

The Dawn of an Orwellian Future

Robert Parry

Moon of Alabama — NYT, WaPo Send Top Reporters To Stenograph Five O'Clock Follies

Who are the "top reporters"?

David Ignatius, who has been leading the charge with respect to Russiagate and Trumpgate by reporting anonymous sources at the Washington Post.

Michael Gordon, who partnered with Judith Miller, in selling the Iraq invasion based on fake news.

Setting up for more R2P and nation building to spread freedom and democracy by destroying countries in order to save them?

Top reporters indeed. Tops in what exactly?

Since Vietnam the US elite has realized it must control the news.

Moon of Alabama
NYT, WaPo Send Top Reporters To Stenograph Five O'Clock Follies
b

SST — Fake News and the Russian Interference Lie by Publius Tacitus

As a former intelligence officer who participated in covert actions overseas (i.e., actions designed to shape foreign public opinion to fall in line with U.S. policy) I have watched with a mixture of amusement and horror the circus spun up around the ridiculous claim that Russia interfered with the U.S. Presidential election. I do not doubt that Russia, if it put its mind to it, could do a number on our national election. The Russians have an outstanding, capable intelligence service and a much more pragmatic view about the outside world. I can't say the same for the good old USA.

But where's the beef? Where's the actual evidence that Russia interfered in our elections in 2016?...

All inference and no evidence.

Cui bono?

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Fake News and the Russian Interference Lie
Publius Tacitus

 See also

What he and his White House need to understand is that this is not going to end, that this is a fight to the finish, that his enemies will not relent until they see him impeached or resigning in disgrace.

VDARE
Pat Buchanan: Will Disloyalists In Federal Government Bring Us To Civil War?
Patrick J. Buchanan Official Site
The Impeach-Trump Conspiracy
Pat Buchanan

Tyler Durden — Zero Hedge Clinton Escalates Attacks Against Russia's "Direct Assault On Our Democracy"

While not as detailed as ours, here is The Hill's rendition of how the Clinton campaign recently handled what was described as a"blistering conference call with reporters" in which Hillary and her team scolded the media for failing to launch effective counter attacks to protect her from her own email scandal.

The Clinton campaign gathered its top national security advisers for a blistering conference call with reporters on Friday, framing the email dump as a provocative cyber-attack by foreign adversaries with ties to terror groups.

The advisers described the hacks as unprecedented interference in the U.S. election that threatens the nation’s sovereignty, and warned there would be “consequences” for the hackers and potentially the “Russian state actors” supporting them.

The campaign lashed out at Trump, arguing he is encouraging the behavior. They questioned whether he and his advisers, driven by their own foreign business interests, have conspired to aid the Russians.

And Clinton’s allies fumed at the media’s coverage of the leaked emails, saying the focus has been on trivial political minutia rather than the national security implications.

The Clinton campaign arguing they're being treated unfairly by the mainstream media...that's rich.

Distract, distract, distract.

However, there is also a subtext here. Like Donald trump, HRC is well-known for getting even. Anyone who crosses her is on the list. For news people, this means denial of access, which is a career killer. 

There is no mystery behind US media control by an elite that can grant or deny access without accountability. That is the end of a free press, an institution necessary for representative democracy. This is a "direct assault on our democracy."

Zero Hedge
Clinton Escalates Attacks Against Russia's "Direct Assault On Our Democracy"
Tyler Durden

More:

Another day, another data dump. In what has become a daily routine, one which forces the Clinton campaign to bring up ever starker (most sexual) scandals involving Trump to provide a media distraction, moments ago Wikileaks released yet another roughly 1,150 emails in Part 8 of its ongoing Podesta Email dump, which brings the total number of released emails to 10,169.

With another 39,000 or so emails left until election day, we expect the emergence of another Trump "sexual assault" accuser to emerge momentarily, just as we predicted yesterday and were proven right not once but twice. After all the public must be distracted from what truly matters.

Wikileaks Releases Another 850 Podesta Emails In Part 8 Of Data Dump; Total Is Now 11,019

Nikolai Starikov — Global Politics – a war of meanings

Even those people the very furthest from politics are feeling the need for understanding and explaining to themselves the reasons for the things they encounter even just moving through their own lives. Why have prices in stores started to go up? What’s the reason for the fact that, quietly and nearly unnoticed, belief in a brighter tomorrow is slipping? When and why did talk about a possible war stop being speculative and distant? These and dozens of other questions have driven millions of yesterday-apolitical citizens to seek answers. They feel the need to find those answers and to construct a new worldview in which what-comes-tomorrow is not simply a lottery ticket, but a predictable and logical continuation of today. Predictable and, hopefully, not frightening.

This atmosphere, unfortunately, is a breeding grounds for attempts to brainwash our citizens and to stuff their heads with ideas which will be devastating to them personally. But this devastation will come hidden within banal attempts stubbornly do good. So let’s try to dissect the methods and means of manipulating the people’s conscience which we have already started to encounter. And, which will grow in direct proportion to the problems being encountered by our geopolitical opponents.…

The Vineyard of the Saker
Global Politics – a war of meanings
Nikolai Starikov
Translated by DzhMM, Mikhael, Gideon

"Feeling the need for understanding and explaining to themselves the reasons for the things they encounter even just moving through their own lives" is the foundation of both explanation and the construction of a worldview in terms of which explanation can be pursued and developed. This is a reason that controlling the narrative is so important with respect to power relationships. Human require some structure in terms of which to interpret experience, and because those structure are created historical and socially, they are subject to being controlled rather than arising naturally and spontaneously from free enquiry. Thus, "engineering" or "manufacturing consent."

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

Robert Reich — The Disease of American Democracy

But did the average citizen ever have much power? The eminent journalist and commentator Walter Lippman argued in his 1922 book “Public Opinion” that the broad public didn’t know or care about public policy. Its consent was “manufactured” by an elite that manipulated it. “It is no longer possible … to believe in the original dogma of democracy,” Lippman concluded.

Robert Reich

The Disease of American Democracy