The corporate news organizations masquerading as reliable and non-partisan are, in fact, as hyper-partisan as any sites on the internet, and spread as much misinformation.
What I really appreciate is how the left/liberal axis is always telling me about what new thing I need to be afraid of today, especially when they come up with the "solution" for me tomorrow.
Given all the things that were going to kill all of us during the last 20 years it is quite amazing that any of us are alive at all. Neo-nazis, far right extremists, plagues of frogs, bible belters, gun-clingers and various others in the basket of deplorables. And who could have guessed that the answer to all these problems would be to hand absolute silencing power to a group of unelected corporates themselves dominated by left/liberal sentiments? Wow, what a truly astounding coincidence!
But what I find supremely ironic is that the return of actual nazi legislation in Germany is completely elided. For example on November 18 of this year the German parliament voted in favour of changes to the Infection Protection Act (Infektionsschutzgesetz) which gives the government the power to issue any edicts it wants under the guise of protecting public health. This is a distinct echo of the similarly approved Enabling Act of 1933, which granted the government the authority to issue any edicts it wanted to remove the distress of the people.
I looked in the Washington Post, but ... crickets.
(Well, OK, there WAS one article at the War Post that referenced the act but it was about a protest against it and how the police soaked people with cold water in November in Berlin because they were afraid they would catch a flu otherwise. The tone of the article suggested approval of the government's enforcement rather than their authoritarian legislation and behaviour. So it didn't really meet my standard of "speaking truth to power", IYKWIM.)
I was a registered democrat in 2016, but didn't vote for Clinton, didn't vote for Trump. Didn't vote. People who supported Trump were indifferent to my decision, which was not true of those who supported Clinton. I live In New York and it is a very pro-democratic state, but the rage that was directed at me, by a brother, a friend, a cousin, all Clinton supporters, caused a significant rift in our relationships. Never spoke to my cousin again after his abusive tantrum, and he died in 2018. I have a marginal relationship with my brother and the friend is someone to whom I no longer speak even though we knew each other from Junior High. She was incredibly abusive, and what do they all have in common is they watch CNN, MSNBC and read the NYT. I don't because I know all three are highly biased and at the time basically depended on news sites on the net, many of which during the Trump years lost their independence and shifted to the dems side and view of things. My only take on my experience is that not only do the news sites mentioned take sides, but engender divisiveness and hate, a powerful weapon they use to control people. Now with a democratic win they'll be more dependent on lies.
Glenn: the above link is to a letter written by four Democrat Senators--Robert Menendez, Mazie K. Hirono, Gary C. Peters and Amy Klobuchar--asking YouTube to eliminate "misinformation" from its website. And using rationale that would make Orwell blush, they're asking YouTube to do so because some videos posted on the site "seek to undermine our democracy and cast doubt on the legitimacy of President-elect Biden’s incoming administration.”
In short, anything that doesn't accrue to the progressive agenda is “misinformation” and must be removed. If you’re OK with that, you’re either brain dead, a totalitarian--or one of four United States Democrat Party Senators.
People are learning as more of the Biden team is announced that they voted for corporate lobbyists and tech donors running agencies that will have an negative impact on their life. The NY Times, PBS, CNN, and MSNBC will hype these people as serious, experienced, and almost benevolent replacements to the prior regime. The WH Press Corps will return to cheerleading the Biden team even more than they did Obama, after all they had much more to do with the victory. They need real journalists to be shut down to keep the power they believe they deserve. The opposite will happen, alternative sites and new media will scrap away the audiences they do have. Legacy media will be a shell of itself by the next election.
In the "good old days" of Operation Mockingbird one needed to keep track of the journalists and fake journalists who were shills for the CIA. The secret held at the absolute highest levels of organizations, most especially the NYT. On the bright side, at least we simply know what news organizations to dismiss in their entirety.
Mr. Greenwald, thank you for being a beacon of truth.
Much of this acceptance of suppressing thought appears to be due to the view that certain differences of opinion are illogical, divisive, and potentially dangerous. I thought it interesting that Obama spent his time during the Colbert interview this week to weigh in on that subject.
“You couldn’t make up some of the stuff that you’re seeing,” Obama said. “And it is to the detriment of the country, but it also runs contrary to what would have been smart politics if the Republicans wanted to maintain the White House.”
“And that in some ways is more troubling because now it’s no longer even strategic,” he continued. “You’re drinking your own Kool-Aid in a way that I think is troublesome. And one of the big challenges that Joe Biden is going to have is to figure out how to puncture that information bubble that, not just Republican officials, but a sizable portion of voters are in right now.”
At a certain point (and this seems true of both Team Red and Team Blue) the belief that your opponent is no longer loyal opposition but dangerous opposition becomes a justification for the suppression of ideas. The real danger is that suppression of ideas historically leads to other forms of suppression. The talk of prosecuting Trump or blacklisting supporters being an example.
The "calmer and nicer" narrative is also flooding social media right now, where public figures are keen to add a return to "decency" with the Biden administration. Besides what you so excellently bring to light in this article, I think it's necessary to dig deeper into why - beyond the top-down control and ownership of the news organizations - we have seen and are seeing such massive bias among media operatives (the term "journalists" seems completely inappropriate). For example, what ties and loyalties do they have to other private and public entities? If it didn't seem so utterly hopeless in the current environment, one would have wished for the establishment of professional standards and ethical vetting of those who, through their positions in the media, have the power to influence public opinion. But I doubt that actual journalism can make a comeback in the mainstream as long as the influence of postmodern theories and relativism are so pervasive. If everything is relative and everyone is entitled to their own version of the truth, this invalidates the very foundation and basic premise of journalism - the relentless and unconditional pursuit of the truth.
One of the mortal dangers to DNC and security state is any exposing of the Russia-gate hoax -- the "gate-keepers" of corporate media and surveillance state must at all cost prevent that.
Clapper, Brennan & Hayden trio were among former 50 intelligence officials stating that Hunter-laptop is classical “Russian disinformation”.
- They were also key promoters of the three-year Russia-gate hoax.
- They were also key intelligence executives in Obama/Biden/Hillary government – the government which hunted Snowden (forcing Bolivian plane with Bolivia’s president to land to search it) and armed Al Qaeda (including “white helmets” hoax) and staged all chemical attacks in Syria to remove its government.
Trump’s utter incompetence in handling Covid-19 created the human and economic catastrophe that will be called - Trump-virus; he brought into government religious extremism and racism.
It is 1000% certain that the Russia-gate hoax and Ukraine-impeachment “entertainment” was concocted by Obama/Hillary/Biden and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their Wall Street and military industry donors, i.e., the imperial War party
Free speech is only guaranteed to those who own an internet platform. The tech overlords may currently appear to be favoring the Democrats, but people should have faith (especially as artificial intelligence tools for controlling speech become more sophisticated) that they will place their finger on the other side of the scale when necessary to restore balance. High-tech feudalism should be given a proper chance to demonstrate its effectiveness in producing productive and compliant citizens.
I completely agree that there is a significant push to suppress some of the misinformation that is being spread by small media outlets, there are a few I have come across in which I (sadly) agree should be removed from circulation. I am conservative, but I also see some of the things that my family shares on FB and I am shocked by the obvious spin. That being said, I subscribe to the NYTs and WaPo and their bias is equally obvious.
To me, it seems like we are a nation full of people that lack critical thinking skills. We need to have lessons taught on how to detect bias in word choices, in political leanings, and in the lack of alternative perspectives in articles. We do not get to tell tech that they do not get to control us, but then turn around and try to control media. So to me, educating the population on critical thinking and the ability to find bias in reporting is our only reasonable solution.
Google has for some time, been complicit in suppressing the free speech rights of Chinese citizens, as a price for massive profit from operating in that market. How can this not lead to this practice being seen by Google management as "normal"? The developments highlighted by Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald (open calls for censorship by NYT, Google, etc), are (shockingly), not seen by these companies as anything out of the ordinary.
A compliant citizenship, with no free speech rights, and massive surveillance - the Chinese model - is exactly what the oligarchy would like to bring about in the US.
The sales pitch given before allowing decades of massive trade deficits, was that free trade with China would lead to more free speech within China.
It doesn't take too much cynicism to suspect that the goal of oligarchs all along, was to make the US more like China. And if that is not possible in the short term, then that might be made much easier, if one were to weaken the US economically, ship critical industries overseas, make citizens less prosperous, less financially secure - and thus easier to turn against one another.
The resulting demonization of each other, has the power to make citizens more willing - even eager - to suppress the free speech of the "other".
Here is one example of the partisanship of the New York Times: In 2016, when Mike Pence was named as the Vice Presidential choice by Donald Trump, the NY Times put a 3-inch single-column article about it at the bottom right side of the front page, with no picture on the front page. In 2020, when Kamala Harris was named as the Vice Presidential choice by Joe Biden, the NY Times covered the entire top half of the front page with the announcement, including a large picture.
That's about 3 square inches for the Republican, and at least 100 square inches for the Democrat.
The irony here is that it has been left-leaning and anti-war sites which have long been the canary in the censorship coal mine. Matt Taibbi talks with the editor of the World Wide Socialist Website about how Google and other platforms have censored them, CommonDreams, Alternet, and other leftist/anti-war publications recently here: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-andre-damon
But the fact of the matter is, the mainstream media is owned by, controlled by and pushes the interest of the corporate America, Pentagon and private finance establishment "center" - which skews ever so slightly right - especially on financial and foreign/military policy; definitely not "far left" as it is often portrayed in rightwing media/cyberspace.
Let that sink in - Yes, Alex Jones and some of the farther fringe righties have been de-platformed recently - and - the big tech firms have started de-prioritizing or hiding right-leaning content online recently, but this was the inevitable result of centrists (not to mention the right) not joining the left in decrying the censorship and de-platforming that was happening to leftist and anti-war publications (like Yellow Times https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0020831/) and personalities (Phil Donahue - first man I can think of to be de-platformed for political reasons) in the early 2000s while right and far right publications were mostly left alone, in part to expose some of them to sunlight.
That's my recollection of the "recent" past, anyway. Here's another's recollection of the previous long and sordid history of the censorship of American leftist/labor/anti-war movements and publications, which is in fact a major reason that the right can get away with calling politicians like Obama and Joe Biden "radical leftists". https://thetexasorator.com/2019/10/18/censorship-of-the-left-a-history/
I suspect San Francisco and Seattle will soon be vying for the contract to place "wrongthink fine" kiosks on their sidewalks, where neighbors or passersby can report others for their abusive actions. It will be called the KK, the Karen Kiosk, and will generate huge sums for the socialist governments of the cities that install them.
What's most frightening to me is that these guys really believe they are objective journalists.
What I really appreciate is how the left/liberal axis is always telling me about what new thing I need to be afraid of today, especially when they come up with the "solution" for me tomorrow.
Given all the things that were going to kill all of us during the last 20 years it is quite amazing that any of us are alive at all. Neo-nazis, far right extremists, plagues of frogs, bible belters, gun-clingers and various others in the basket of deplorables. And who could have guessed that the answer to all these problems would be to hand absolute silencing power to a group of unelected corporates themselves dominated by left/liberal sentiments? Wow, what a truly astounding coincidence!
But what I find supremely ironic is that the return of actual nazi legislation in Germany is completely elided. For example on November 18 of this year the German parliament voted in favour of changes to the Infection Protection Act (Infektionsschutzgesetz) which gives the government the power to issue any edicts it wants under the guise of protecting public health. This is a distinct echo of the similarly approved Enabling Act of 1933, which granted the government the authority to issue any edicts it wanted to remove the distress of the people.
I looked in the Washington Post, but ... crickets.
(Well, OK, there WAS one article at the War Post that referenced the act but it was about a protest against it and how the police soaked people with cold water in November in Berlin because they were afraid they would catch a flu otherwise. The tone of the article suggested approval of the government's enforcement rather than their authoritarian legislation and behaviour. So it didn't really meet my standard of "speaking truth to power", IYKWIM.)
I was a registered democrat in 2016, but didn't vote for Clinton, didn't vote for Trump. Didn't vote. People who supported Trump were indifferent to my decision, which was not true of those who supported Clinton. I live In New York and it is a very pro-democratic state, but the rage that was directed at me, by a brother, a friend, a cousin, all Clinton supporters, caused a significant rift in our relationships. Never spoke to my cousin again after his abusive tantrum, and he died in 2018. I have a marginal relationship with my brother and the friend is someone to whom I no longer speak even though we knew each other from Junior High. She was incredibly abusive, and what do they all have in common is they watch CNN, MSNBC and read the NYT. I don't because I know all three are highly biased and at the time basically depended on news sites on the net, many of which during the Trump years lost their independence and shifted to the dems side and view of things. My only take on my experience is that not only do the news sites mentioned take sides, but engender divisiveness and hate, a powerful weapon they use to control people. Now with a democratic win they'll be more dependent on lies.
https://www.menendez.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/YouTube%20Letter%20on%20Misinformation%2011242020%20APM%20DA.pdf
Glenn: the above link is to a letter written by four Democrat Senators--Robert Menendez, Mazie K. Hirono, Gary C. Peters and Amy Klobuchar--asking YouTube to eliminate "misinformation" from its website. And using rationale that would make Orwell blush, they're asking YouTube to do so because some videos posted on the site "seek to undermine our democracy and cast doubt on the legitimacy of President-elect Biden’s incoming administration.”
In short, anything that doesn't accrue to the progressive agenda is “misinformation” and must be removed. If you’re OK with that, you’re either brain dead, a totalitarian--or one of four United States Democrat Party Senators.
People are learning as more of the Biden team is announced that they voted for corporate lobbyists and tech donors running agencies that will have an negative impact on their life. The NY Times, PBS, CNN, and MSNBC will hype these people as serious, experienced, and almost benevolent replacements to the prior regime. The WH Press Corps will return to cheerleading the Biden team even more than they did Obama, after all they had much more to do with the victory. They need real journalists to be shut down to keep the power they believe they deserve. The opposite will happen, alternative sites and new media will scrap away the audiences they do have. Legacy media will be a shell of itself by the next election.
In the "good old days" of Operation Mockingbird one needed to keep track of the journalists and fake journalists who were shills for the CIA. The secret held at the absolute highest levels of organizations, most especially the NYT. On the bright side, at least we simply know what news organizations to dismiss in their entirety.
Mr. Greenwald, thank you for being a beacon of truth.
Much of this acceptance of suppressing thought appears to be due to the view that certain differences of opinion are illogical, divisive, and potentially dangerous. I thought it interesting that Obama spent his time during the Colbert interview this week to weigh in on that subject.
“You couldn’t make up some of the stuff that you’re seeing,” Obama said. “And it is to the detriment of the country, but it also runs contrary to what would have been smart politics if the Republicans wanted to maintain the White House.”
“And that in some ways is more troubling because now it’s no longer even strategic,” he continued. “You’re drinking your own Kool-Aid in a way that I think is troublesome. And one of the big challenges that Joe Biden is going to have is to figure out how to puncture that information bubble that, not just Republican officials, but a sizable portion of voters are in right now.”
At a certain point (and this seems true of both Team Red and Team Blue) the belief that your opponent is no longer loyal opposition but dangerous opposition becomes a justification for the suppression of ideas. The real danger is that suppression of ideas historically leads to other forms of suppression. The talk of prosecuting Trump or blacklisting supporters being an example.
The "calmer and nicer" narrative is also flooding social media right now, where public figures are keen to add a return to "decency" with the Biden administration. Besides what you so excellently bring to light in this article, I think it's necessary to dig deeper into why - beyond the top-down control and ownership of the news organizations - we have seen and are seeing such massive bias among media operatives (the term "journalists" seems completely inappropriate). For example, what ties and loyalties do they have to other private and public entities? If it didn't seem so utterly hopeless in the current environment, one would have wished for the establishment of professional standards and ethical vetting of those who, through their positions in the media, have the power to influence public opinion. But I doubt that actual journalism can make a comeback in the mainstream as long as the influence of postmodern theories and relativism are so pervasive. If everything is relative and everyone is entitled to their own version of the truth, this invalidates the very foundation and basic premise of journalism - the relentless and unconditional pursuit of the truth.
One of the mortal dangers to DNC and security state is any exposing of the Russia-gate hoax -- the "gate-keepers" of corporate media and surveillance state must at all cost prevent that.
Clapper, Brennan & Hayden trio were among former 50 intelligence officials stating that Hunter-laptop is classical “Russian disinformation”.
- They were also key promoters of the three-year Russia-gate hoax.
- They were also key intelligence executives in Obama/Biden/Hillary government – the government which hunted Snowden (forcing Bolivian plane with Bolivia’s president to land to search it) and armed Al Qaeda (including “white helmets” hoax) and staged all chemical attacks in Syria to remove its government.
Trump’s utter incompetence in handling Covid-19 created the human and economic catastrophe that will be called - Trump-virus; he brought into government religious extremism and racism.
It is 1000% certain that the Russia-gate hoax and Ukraine-impeachment “entertainment” was concocted by Obama/Hillary/Biden and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their Wall Street and military industry donors, i.e., the imperial War party
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/were-in-a-permanent-coup
Free speech is only guaranteed to those who own an internet platform. The tech overlords may currently appear to be favoring the Democrats, but people should have faith (especially as artificial intelligence tools for controlling speech become more sophisticated) that they will place their finger on the other side of the scale when necessary to restore balance. High-tech feudalism should be given a proper chance to demonstrate its effectiveness in producing productive and compliant citizens.
I completely agree that there is a significant push to suppress some of the misinformation that is being spread by small media outlets, there are a few I have come across in which I (sadly) agree should be removed from circulation. I am conservative, but I also see some of the things that my family shares on FB and I am shocked by the obvious spin. That being said, I subscribe to the NYTs and WaPo and their bias is equally obvious.
To me, it seems like we are a nation full of people that lack critical thinking skills. We need to have lessons taught on how to detect bias in word choices, in political leanings, and in the lack of alternative perspectives in articles. We do not get to tell tech that they do not get to control us, but then turn around and try to control media. So to me, educating the population on critical thinking and the ability to find bias in reporting is our only reasonable solution.
Google has for some time, been complicit in suppressing the free speech rights of Chinese citizens, as a price for massive profit from operating in that market. How can this not lead to this practice being seen by Google management as "normal"? The developments highlighted by Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald (open calls for censorship by NYT, Google, etc), are (shockingly), not seen by these companies as anything out of the ordinary.
A compliant citizenship, with no free speech rights, and massive surveillance - the Chinese model - is exactly what the oligarchy would like to bring about in the US.
The sales pitch given before allowing decades of massive trade deficits, was that free trade with China would lead to more free speech within China.
It doesn't take too much cynicism to suspect that the goal of oligarchs all along, was to make the US more like China. And if that is not possible in the short term, then that might be made much easier, if one were to weaken the US economically, ship critical industries overseas, make citizens less prosperous, less financially secure - and thus easier to turn against one another.
The resulting demonization of each other, has the power to make citizens more willing - even eager - to suppress the free speech of the "other".
Here is one example of the partisanship of the New York Times: In 2016, when Mike Pence was named as the Vice Presidential choice by Donald Trump, the NY Times put a 3-inch single-column article about it at the bottom right side of the front page, with no picture on the front page. In 2020, when Kamala Harris was named as the Vice Presidential choice by Joe Biden, the NY Times covered the entire top half of the front page with the announcement, including a large picture.
That's about 3 square inches for the Republican, and at least 100 square inches for the Democrat.
The irony here is that it has been left-leaning and anti-war sites which have long been the canary in the censorship coal mine. Matt Taibbi talks with the editor of the World Wide Socialist Website about how Google and other platforms have censored them, CommonDreams, Alternet, and other leftist/anti-war publications recently here: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-andre-damon
But the fact of the matter is, the mainstream media is owned by, controlled by and pushes the interest of the corporate America, Pentagon and private finance establishment "center" - which skews ever so slightly right - especially on financial and foreign/military policy; definitely not "far left" as it is often portrayed in rightwing media/cyberspace.
Let that sink in - Yes, Alex Jones and some of the farther fringe righties have been de-platformed recently - and - the big tech firms have started de-prioritizing or hiding right-leaning content online recently, but this was the inevitable result of centrists (not to mention the right) not joining the left in decrying the censorship and de-platforming that was happening to leftist and anti-war publications (like Yellow Times https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0020831/) and personalities (Phil Donahue - first man I can think of to be de-platformed for political reasons) in the early 2000s while right and far right publications were mostly left alone, in part to expose some of them to sunlight.
That's my recollection of the "recent" past, anyway. Here's another's recollection of the previous long and sordid history of the censorship of American leftist/labor/anti-war movements and publications, which is in fact a major reason that the right can get away with calling politicians like Obama and Joe Biden "radical leftists". https://thetexasorator.com/2019/10/18/censorship-of-the-left-a-history/
I suspect San Francisco and Seattle will soon be vying for the contract to place "wrongthink fine" kiosks on their sidewalks, where neighbors or passersby can report others for their abusive actions. It will be called the KK, the Karen Kiosk, and will generate huge sums for the socialist governments of the cities that install them.
Pardon Ed Snowden!