Media scoundrels violate core principles of what journalism is supposed to be—displaying shocking contempt for truth-telling.
Serving as press agents for wealth, power and privilege, their mission is deceiving news consumers, not informing them, suppressing what’s most important to report, substituting disinformation, Big Lies and fake news.
Major media press freedom in America and other Western nations is pure fantasy. Journalist AJ Liebling once said it’s “only for those who own one.”
Michael Parenti’s book, “Inventing Reality,” was the first comprehensive critique of the news media, explaining how it “manipulate[s] the public’s perception of reality,” serving wealth and powerful interests exclusively.
In their book, “Guardians of Power,” David Cromwell and David Edwards said major media today are in crisis.
Free and open Western societies don’t exist. Fiction substitutes for facts. News is carefully filtered, dissent marginalized, silenced in the mainstream. Supporting powerful interests substitutes for full and accurate reporting.
Wars of aggression are called liberation ones, humanitarian intervention, responsibility to protect, and democracy building.
Civil liberties are suppressed for our own good. Patriotism means going along with policies demanding condemnation—harming and exploiting most people so privileged ones can benefit at their expense.
In their book on the media, “Manufacturing Consent,” Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky explained the propaganda model, saying news and information pass through a set of “filters.”
Unacceptable “raw material” parts are suppressed. “[O]nly the cleansed residue fit to print (and broadcast on-air)” reaches the public.
What the New York Times calls “All The News That’s Fit to Print” isn’t fit to read—sanitized rubbish, what’s most important left out.
The Times and other major media provide gatekeeper services for institutions of power, manipulating the public mind, defending the indefensible, justifying the unjustifiable, treating readers and viewers like mushrooms—well-watered and in the dark.
The Times and CIA house organ, Foreign Policy magazine, openly called for toppling Venezuela’s legitimate government by coup d’état.
Regimes in Washington since the Clinton co-presidency have waged undeclared political and economic war on the country, causing enormous hardships for its people in recent years, falsely blaming its democratically elected government for what’s inflicted on the nation from abroad—wanting fascist tyranny replacing the hemisphere’s model social democracy.
Venezuela’s open, free and fair electoral process is the world’s best, shaming America’s sham system, a money-controlled one-party state with two right wings, taking turns governing—deploring democracy, opposing governance serving everyone equitably, waging imperial wars and color revolutions for unchallenged global dominance, supporting corporate empowerment, along with police state harshness on nonbelievers.
In May, Nicolas Maduro won another six-year term overwhelmingly with two-thirds majority support—a process scores of international monitors from 30 countries called open, free and fair.
The Trump regime shamefully rejected the results. So did media scoundrels. New York Times editors called the election a “sham”—a bald-faced lie.
Disgracefully they roared, “The question is how to get rid of Mr. Maduro before he completes the destruction of his country”—falsely blaming him for suffocating misery inflicted on its people by US political and economic war.
Instead of denouncing it, Times editors support efforts to topple Venezuela’s democratically elected government. “It’s clear that Mr. Maduro must go,” they roared—added proof that the self-styled newspaper of record is a national disgrace.
Neocon Jose Cardenas was the Bush/Cheney regime’s USAID assistant administrator for Latin America.
In a Foreign Policy op-ed, he openly called for a “coup in Venezuela,” saying “[o]nly nationalists in the military can restore a legitimate constitutional democracy”—code language for wanting money-controlled fascist tyranny replacing Bolivarian social democracy.
Venezuela’s problem is it has too much of what Washington, supportive media scoundrels and hardliners like Cardenas want eliminated, including its sovereign independence US neocons tolerate nowhere.
Falsely claiming Maduro “engineered his re-election,” saying “reasonable observers” called the outcome “a sham vote,” Cardinas urged the Trump regime and its allies to forcibly oust him—wanting Venezuela’s military to do its dirty work.
Bipartisan neocons run America, waging endless wars on humanity at home and abroad, opposing democratic governance, seeking global hegemony, destroying fundamental freedoms, deploring governance serving everyone equitably.
Venezuela and other sovereign independent nations stand in the way of Washington achieving its aims—why they’re targeted for regime change.
In Venezuela, the grand prize is all its oil, the world’s largest reserves, exceeding Saudi Arabia’s, what Washington wants control over to exploit.
Media scoundrels like the NYT and WaPo-owned Foreign Policy support its hegemonic agenda—no matter the human cost, pretending the replacement of Bolivarian fairness serving all Venezuelans equitably with fascist tyranny is democracy building.
US bipartisan rage for global dominance, seeking control over world resources and populations, resembles Nazi Germany’s agenda—wrapped in the American flag, pretending its mission is noble, ignoring enormous harm inflicted on countless millions at home and abroad.
Dark forces run America. Media scoundrels serve their interests—supporting what demands condemnation, a diabolical agenda no just societies tolerate.
Humanity’s greatest threat exists in Washington and capitals of its rogue allies—not in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Damascus, Pyongyang, Caracas, or seats of power in other sovereign independent nations.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.
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