Russian Tv Editorials Today on Summit 71718 Supporting Trump and Not Setting Him Up Again

It has been agreeable watching the New York Times (Times) and its boyfriend mainstream media (MSM) cohort limited their dismay over the rise and spread of "faux news." They take it equally an obvious truth that what they provide is straightforward and unbiased fact-based news. They do offering such news, but they also provide a steady period of their ain varied forms of genuinely fake news, often in disseminating false or misleading information supplied them by the CIA, other branches of regime, and sites of corporate power. An important form of MSM fake news is that which is presented while suppressing data that calls the preferred news into question. This was the case with "The Lie That Wasn't Shot Down," the title of a January 18, 1988 Times editorial referring to a propaganda claim of v years earlier that the editors had swallowed and never looked into any farther. The lie–that the Soviets knew that Korean airliner 007, which they shot downwardly on August 31, 1983, was a civilian plane–was eventually uncovered past congressman Lee Hamilton, not past the Times.

MSM fake news is especially likely where a party line is quickly formed on a topic, with deviationism therefore immediately looking naïve, unpatriotic or simply wrong. In a dramatic analogy, in a volume affiliate entitled "Worthy and Unworthy Victims," Noam Chomsky and I showed that coverage by Time, Newsweek, CBS News and the New York Times of the 1984 murder of the priest Jerzy Popieluzko in communist Poland, a dramatic and politically useful event for the politicized western MSM, exceeded their coverage of the murders of 100 religious figures killed in Latin America by U.S. client states in the post-World War II years taken together.¹ It was cheap and free of any negative feedback to focus heavily on the "worthy" victim, whereas looking closely at the deaths of the 100 would have required an expensive and sometimes unsafe research effort and would have upset the State Section. But it was a form of false news to discriminate then heavily with news (and indignation) on a politically useful victim while ignoring large numbers whose murder the political establishments wanted downplayed or completely suppressed.

The Imitation News Tradition on Russian federation in the New York Times

Fake news on Russia is a Times tradition that tin can be traced back at to the lowest degree as far as the 1917 revolution. In a classic study of the paper'due south coverage of the Russian revolution from February 1917 to March 1920, Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz institute that "From the point of view of professional person journalism the reporting of the Russian Revolution is zippo short of a disaster. On the essential questions the net effect was almost e'er misleading, and misleading news is worse than none at all….They can fairly be charged with boundless credulity, and an untiring readiness to exist gulled, and on many occasions with a downright lack of common sense."^two Lippmann and Merz found that strong editorial bias conspicuously fed into news reporting. The editors very much wanted the communists to lose, and serving this end acquired the paper to report atrocities that didn't happen and the imminent fall of the Bolshevik government on a regular basis (at least 91 times). There was a heavy and uncritical credence of official handouts and reliance on statements from unidentified "loftier authority." This was standard Times practice.

This imitation news functioning of 1917-1920 was repeated often in the years that followed. The Soviet Marriage was an enemy target upwardly to World State of war Two, and Times coverage was consistently hostile. With the stop of World War II and the Soviet Union at that indicate a major military power, and soon a rival nuclear power, the Cold War was on. Anti-communism became a major U.S. faith, and the Soviet Union was quickly found to be trying to conquer the world and needing containment. With this credo in place and U.S. plans for its own existent global expansion of power well established,^three the communist threat would now help sustain the steady growth of the military-industrial complex and repeated interventions to deal with purported Soviet aggressions.

An Early Great Crime: Guatemala

I of the most flagrant cases in which the Russian threat was used to justify U.South.-organized violence was the overthrow of the social democratic government of Guatemala in 1954 by a small-scale proxy ground forces invading from U.S. marry Somoza's Nicaragua. This action was provoked by government reforms that upset U.S. officials, including a 1947 police permitting the germination of labor unions, and government plans to buy back (at tax rate valuations) and distribute to landless peasants some of the unused land owned by United Fruit Visitor and other big landowners. The U.S., which had been perfectly content with the before 14-year- long dictatorship of Jose Ubico, could not tolerate this democratic challenge and the elected government, led by Jacobo Arbenz, was soon charged with assorted villainies, with the master fake news base of an alleged Cherry-red capture of the Guatemalan authorities.^iv

In the pre-invasion propaganda campaign the unified MSM leveled a stream of false charges of extreme repression, threats to its neighbors, and the communist takeover. The Times featured these alleged abuses and threats repeatedly from 1950 onward (my favorite, Sidney Gruson'due south "How Communists Won Control of Guatemala," March 1, 1953). Arbenz and his predecessor, Juan Jose Arevalo, had carefully avoided establishing any embassies with Soviet bloc countries, fearing U.S. reactions. But it was to no avail. Following the removal of Arbenz and installation of a correct-wing dictatorship, court historian Ronald Schneider, subsequently studying 50,000 documents seized from communist sources in Guatemala, institute that not only did the communists never command the country, simply that the Soviet Union "fabricated no significant or even material investment in the Arbenz government" and was also preoccupied with internal issues to concern itself with Central America.^v

The coup government apace attacked and decimated the organized groups that had formed in the autonomous era, like peasant, worker and teacher organizations. Arbenz had won 65 percent of the votes in a costless ballot, but the "liberator" Castillo Armas quickly won a "plebiscite" with 99.6 pct of the vote. Although this is a result familiar in totalitarian regimes, the MSM had lost involvement in Guatemala and barely mentioned this balloter upshot. The Times had claimed back in 1950 that U.South. Guatemala policy "is not trying to block social and economic progress but is interested in seeing that Guatemala becomes a liberal republic."⁶ Only in the aftermath the editors failed to note that the upshot of U.S. policy was precisely to "block social and economic progress," and via the installation of a authorities of terror.

In 2011, more than half a century after 1954, Elizabeh Malkin reported in the Times that Guatemalan president Alvaro Colom had apologized for that "corking crime [the violent overthrow of the Arbenz government in 1954] …an act of aggression to a government starting its democratic spring." ("An apology for a Guatemalan Coup, 57 Years Afterwards," October twenty, 2011). Malkin mentions that, co-ordinate to president Colom, the Arbenz family is "seeking an apology from the United States for its function" in the "great Offense." At that place has never been any apology or even acknowledgement of its function in the Cracking Crime by the editors of the New York Times.

Another Great Crime: Vietnam

At that place were many fake news reports in the Times and other mainstream publications during the Vietnam war. The claim that the Times was anti-Vietnam-war is misleading and substantially false. In Without Fear or Favor, old Times reporter Harrison Salisbury best-selling that in 1962, when U.South. intervention escalated, the Times was "deeply and consistently" supportive of the war policy.⁷ He contends that the paper became steadily more than oppositional from 1965, culminating in the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Simply Salisbury fails to recognize that from 1954 to the present the paper never abandoned the Cold War framework and language of apologetics, co-ordinate to which the U.Southward. was resisting somebody else'due south aggression and protecting "Southward Vietnam." The newspaper never applied the word aggression to this country, but used information technology freely in referring to North Vietnamese deportment and those of the National Liberation Front in the southern one-half of Vietnam.

The various halts in the U.S. bombing state of war in 1965 and later in the alleged involvement of "giving peace a chance" were also fake news, as the Johnson administration used the halts to serenity antiwar protests, while making it articulate to the Vietnamese that U.Due south. officials demanded full surrender. The Times and its colleagues swallowed this bait without a murmur of dissent.⁸

Furthermore, although from 1965 onward the Times was willing to publish more than data that put the state of war in a less favorable calorie-free, it never broke from its heavy dependence on official sources or its reluctance to cheque out official lies or explore the damage beingness wrought on Vietnam and its civilian population by the U.S. military machine. In contrast with its eager pursuit of Cambodian refugees from the Central khmer Rouge afterwards April 1975, the paper rarely sought out testimony from the millions of Vietnamese refugees fleeing U.South. bombing and chemical warfare. In its opinion columns too, the new openness was express to commentators who accepted the premises of the war and would confine their criticisms to its tactical issues and costs–;to us. From beginning to end those who criticized the war every bit aggression and immoral at its root were excluded from the debate by the Times.^ix

The 1981 Papal Assassination Attempt. The "Missile Gap," and "Humanitarian Intervention" in Yugoslavia

Papal Assassination Attempt. A major contribution to Cold State of war propaganda was provided by fake news on the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul Ii in Rome in May 1981. This was a time when the Reagan administration was trying difficult to demonize the Soviet Marriage equally an "evil empire." The shooting of the Pope by the Turkish fascist Ali Agca was quickly tied to Moscow, helped by Agca's confession, after 17 months imprisonment, interrogations, threats, inducements, and admission to the media, that the Bulgarians and Soviet KGB were behind it. There was never any credible evidence of this connectedness, the claims were implausible, and the corruption in the procedure was remarkable. (Run across Manufacturing Consent, chapter iv and Appendix ii). And Agca also periodically claimed to be Jesus Christ. The case against the Bulgarians (and implicitly the KGB) was lost fifty-fifty in Italia's extremely biased and politicized judicial framework. But the Times bought information technology, and gave information technology long, intensive and completely uncritical attention, as did most of the U.S. media.

In 1991, in Senate hearings on the qualifications of Robert Gates to head the CIA, old CIA officeholder Melvin Goodman testified that the CIA knew [from the beginning that Agca's confessions were faux because they had "very practiced penetration" of the Bulgarian secret services. The Times omitted this argument by Goodman in reporting on his testimony. In the same year. with Bulgaria now a member of the Free World, conservative annotator Allen Weinstein obtained permission to examine Bulgarian hush-hush service files on the papal assassination attempt. His mission was widely reported when he went, including in the Times, but when he returned without having found annihilation implicating Bulgaria or the KGB, a number of papers, including the Times, found this non newsworthy.

Missile Gap. There was a great deal of false news in the "missile gap" and other gap eras, from roughly 1975 to 1986, with Times reporters passing forth official and often false news in a regular stream. An of import case occurred in the mid-1970s, at a time when the U.S. war-political party was trying to escalate the Common cold War and artillery race. A 1975 report of CIA professionals found that the Soviets were aiming only for nuclear parity. This was unsatisfactory, so CIA head George H.W. Bush appointed a new team of hardliners, who soon plant that the Soviets were achieving nuclear superiority and getting ready to fight a nuclear war. This Team B report was taken at confront value in a Times front folio article of December 26, 1976 past David Binder, who failed to mention its political bias or purpose and made no attempt by tapping experts with different views to get at the truth. The CIA admitted in 1983 that the Team B estimates were fabrications. But throughout this period, 1975-1986, the Times supported the instance for militarization by disseminating lots of simulated news. Much of this false information was convincingly refuted by Tom Gervasi in his classic The Myth of Soviet Military Supremacy (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), a book never reviewed in the paper despite the paper's frequent attention to its bailiwick matter.

Yugoslavia and "Humanitarian Intervention." The 1990s wars of dismantlement of Yugoslavia succeeded in removing an independent authorities from power and replacing it with a broken Serbian remnant and poor and unstable failed states in Bosnia and Kosovo. It did provide unwarranted back up for the new concept of "humanitarian intervention," which rested on a mass of simulated news. The demonized Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was non an ultra-nationalist seeking a "Greater Serbia," but rather a non-aligned leader on the Western hit list who tried to aid Serb minorities in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo remain in Yugoslavia every bit the U.S. and Eu supported a legally questionable exodus by several elective Yugoslav Republics. He supported each of the proposed settlements of these conflicts, sabotaged by Bosnian and U.S. officials who wanted better terms or the outright armed services defeat of Serbia, the latter of which they achieved. Milosevic had zip to do with the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre, which involved Bosnian Serbs taking revenge on Bosnian Muslim soldiers who had been ravaging nearby Bosnian Serb villages from their base in Srebrenica under NATO protection. The several yard Serb civilian deaths were essentially unreported in the MSM, while the numbers of Srebrenica executed victims were correspondingly inflated. The Times'south reporting on these events was fake news on a systematic ground.^x

The Putin Era: A Aureate Age of Fake News

The U.S. institution was shocked and thrilled with the 1989-1991 autumn of the Soviet Union, and its members were happy with the policies carried out under President Boris Yeltsin, a virtual U.Due south. customer, under whose dominion ordinary Russians suffered a cataclysm but a small gear up of oligarchs was able to loot the broken state. Yeltsin's election victory in 1996, greatly assisted past U.Southward. consultants, communication and money, and otherwise seriously corrupt, was, for the editors of the Times, "A Victory for Russian Republic" (NYT, ed, July 4, 1996). They were non bothered by either the electoral corruption, the cosmos of a grand-larceny-based economical oligarchy, or, shortly thereafter, the new rules centralizing ability in the office of president.^eleven

Yeltsin's successor, Vladimir Putin, by gradually abandoning the Yeltsin era subservience was thereby perceived every bit a steadily increasing menace. His re-ballot in 2012, although surely less corrupt than Yeltsin'due south in 1996, was treated harshly in the media. The lead Times commodity on May 5, 2012 featured "a slap in the confront" from OSCE observers, claims of no real contest, and "thousands of anti-authorities protesters gathered in Moscow square to dirge 'Russia without Putin'" (Ellen Barry and Michael Schwartz, "After Election, Putin Faces Challenges to Legitimacy"). There had been no "challenges to legitimacy" reported in the Times after Yeltsin's decadent victory in 1996.

The process of Putin demonization escalated with the Ukraine crisis of 2014 and its sequel of Kiev warfare confronting Eastern Ukraine, Russian support of the East Ukraine resistance, and the Crimean referendum and assimilation of Crimea by Russia. This was all declared "assailment" by the U.S. and its allies and clients, sanctions were imposed on Russian federation, and a major U.Southward.-NATO military buildup was initiated on Russia's borders. Tensions mounted farther with the shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over southeastern Ukraine, effectively, but nigh surely falsely, blamed on the "pro-Russian" rebels and Russia itself.¹²

A further cause of demonization and anti-Russian hostility resulted from the escalated Russian intervention in Syria from 2015 in support of Bashar al-Saddad and against ISIS and al-Nusra, an offshoot of al-Qaeda. The U.S. and its NATO and Eye E allies had been committing aggression against Syrian arab republic, in de facto alliance with ISIS and al-Nusra, for several years. Russian intervention turned the tide, the U.Southward. (Saudi, etc.) goal of removing Saddad was upset and the tacit U.S. allies ISIS and al-Nusra were also weakened. Certainly demonic behavior by Putin!

The Times has treated these further developments with unstinting apologetics–for the Feb 2014 coup in Kiev, which it never calls a insurrection, with the U.Southward. role in the overthrow of the elected government of Victor Yanukovych suppressed, and with anger and horror at the Crimea referendum and Russian absorption, which information technology never allows to exist a defensive response to the Kiev coup. Its telephone call for punishment of the casualty-costless Russian "aggression" in Crimea is in marked contrast with its apologetics for the million-plus-prey–rich U.S. aggression "of choice" (not defensive) in Iraq from March 2003 on. The editors and liberal columnist Paul Krugman angrily cite Putin'south lack of respect for international law,¹³ with their internalized double standard exempting their own country from criticism for its repeated violations of that police force.

In the Times's reporting and opinion columns Russia is regularly assailed as expansionist and threatening its neighbors, only near no mention is made of NATO's expansion upwardly to the Russian borders and starting time-strike-threat placement of anti-missile weapons in Eastern Europe, the latter earlier claimed to be in response to a missile threat from Iran! Analyses past political scientist John Mearsheimer and Russia authority Stephen F. Cohen that featured this NATO advance could non brand it into the opinion pages of the Times.^xiv On the other paw, a member of the Russian Pussy Riot band, Maria Alyokhina, was given op-ed space to denounce Putin and Russia,¹⁵ and the punk-stone group was granted a meeting with the Times editorial board. Between January 1 and March 31, 2014 the paper had 23 manufactures featuring the Pussy Riot group and its alleged significance as a symbol of Russian limits on complimentary voice communication. Pussy Riot had disrupted a church service in Moscow and only stopped upon police intervention, which was at the request of the church authorities. A two twelvemonth prison judgement followed. In contrast, in Feb 2014, 84 year quondam Sister Megan Rice was sentenced to four years in prison house in the U.S. for having entered a nuclear weapons site in July 2012 and carried out a symbolic protestation action. The Times gave this news a tiny mention in its National Briefing section under the title "Tennessee Nun is Sentenced for Peace Protest." No op-ed columns or coming together with the Times board for Rice. There are worthy and unworthy protesters besides as victims.

As regards Syria, with Russian help the Assad forces were able to dislodge the rebels from Aleppo, to the dismay of Washington and the MSM. It has been enlightening to run into how much business concern has been expressed over casualties to civilians in Aleppo, with pictures of forsaken children and many stories of civilian distress. The Times focused heavily on those civilians and children, with great indignation at Putin-Assad inhumanity,¹⁶ in sharp dissimilarity with their virtual silence on civilian casualties in Falluja in 2004 and beyond, and recently in rebel-held areas of Syria, and in Mosul (Iraq), under U.S. and allied attack.¹⁷ The differential handling of worthy and unworthy victims has been in total sway in dealing with Syria, displayed again with the chemical weapons casualties and Trump bombing response in April 2017 (discussed below).

A further and of import phase of intensifying Russophobia may exist dated from the Oct 2016 presidential debates, where Hillary Clinton alleged that Mr. Trump would be a Putin "puppet" as president, and her campaign stressed this threat. This emphasis increased after the election, with the help of the media and intelligence services, as the Clinton camp sought to explain the election loss, maintain political party command, and maybe go the election result overturned in the courts or electoral college past blaming the Trump victory on Russia.

The Putin connection was given great impetus by the January 6, 2017 release of a report of the Role of Managing director of National Intelligence (DNI), on Groundwork of Assessing Russian Activities and Intention in Recent US Elections This brusque document spends more than half of its space describing the Russian-sponsored RT-Television network, which it treats as an illegitimate propaganda source given its sponsorship and sometimes critical reports on U.South. policy and institutions! RT is allegedly part of Russian federation'due south "influence campaign," and the DNI says that "We assess the influence campaign aspired to help President-elect Trump's chances of victory when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to the President-elect." There is no semblance of proof that there was a planned "campaign" rather than an ongoing expression of opinion and news judgments. All the logic and proofs of a Russian "influence entrada" could be applied with at least equal forcefulness to U.Southward. media and Radio Free Europe's handling of any Russian election, and of course the U.S. intervention in the 1996 Russian ballot was overt, straight and went far across any "influence campaign."

As regards the DNI's proof of a more direct Russian intervention in the U.Southward. election, the authors concede the absence of "full supporting evidence," but they provide no supporting evidence—only assertions, assessments, assumptions and guesses. It states that "We appraise that …Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2015" designed to defeat Mrs. Clinton, and "to undermine public organized religion in the U.S. democratic process," just information technology provides no show whatsoever for any such gild. It also provides no show that Russia hacked the Democratic National Commission (DNC), the east-mails of Clinton and old Clinton campaign manager Podesta, or that it gave hacked information to WikiLeaks. Julian Assange and old British diplomat Craig Murray take repeatedly claimed that these sources were leaked by local insiders, not hacked by anybody. And the veteran intelligence bureau experts William Binney and Ray McGovern also contend that the WikiLeaks evidence was surely leaked, not hacked.^xviii It is also notable that among the iii intelligence agencies who signed the DNI document, only "moderate conviction" in its findings was expressed by the National Security Bureau (NSA), the agency that would virtually clearly exist in possession of proof of Russian hacking and transmission to WikiLeaks too as any "orders" from Putin.

But the Times has taken the Russian hacking story equally established fact, despite the absence of difficult prove (as with the Reds ruling Guatemala, the "missile gaps," etc.). Times reporter David Sanger refers to the report'south "damning and surprisingly detailed business relationship of Russian federation's efforts to undermine the American electoral system," only he then acknowledges that the published report "contains no data about how the agencies had …come to their conclusions."^xix The study itself includes the amazing argument that "Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact." This is a deprival of the credibility of its own purported evidence (i.e., "assessments"). Furthermore, if the report was based on "intercepts of conversations" as well as hacked computer data, every bit Sanger and the DNI claim, why has the DNI failed to quote a single conversation showing Putin'due south alleged orders and plans to destabilize the West?

The Times never cites or gives editorial space to William Binney, Ray McGovern or Craig Murray, who are dissident authorities on hacking applied science, methodology and the specifics of the DNC hacks. But op-ed infinite was given to Louise Mensch's "What to ask almost Russian hacking" (NYT, March 17, 2017). Mensch is a notorious conspiracy theorist with no technical groundwork in this surface area and who is described by Nathan Robinson and Alex Nichols as all-time-known for "spending nearly of her time on Twitter issuing frenzied denunciations of imagined armies of online 'Putinbots'" and is "one of the least apparent people on the internet."²⁰ But she is published in the Times because, in dissimilarity with the well-informed and credible William Binney and Craig Murray, she follows the political party line, taking Russian hacking of the DNC as a premise.

The CIA'due south brazen intervention in the ballot process in 2016 and 2017 broke new basis in undercover service politicization. Former CIA head Michael Morell had an Baronial 5, 2016 op-ed in the Times entitled "I Ran the C.I.A. Now I'm Endorsing Hillary Clinton"; and former CIA boss Michael Hayden had an op-ed in the Washington Post just days earlier the election, entitled "Former CIA Chief:- Trump is Russian federation's Useful Fool" (Nov 3, 2016). Morell had some other op-ed in the Times on January vi, at present openly assailing the new president ("Trump'due south Dangerous Anti-CIA Crusade"). These attacks were unrelievedly insulting to Trump and laudatory to Clinton, even making Trump a traitor; they also make it clear that Clinton'due south more than pugnacious arroyo to Syria and Russia is much preferred to Trump's leanings toward negotiation and cooperation with Russia.

This was also true of the further scandal with former Trump Defense Intelligence nominee Michael Flynn'southward call from the Russian Ambassador, which possibly included exchanges about future Trump assistants policy deportment. This was quickly grasped by the approachable Obama officials, security personnel and MSM, with the FBI interrogating Flynn and with widespread expressions of horror at Flynn's action, allegedly possibly setting him up for blackmail. But such pre-inauguration meetings with Russian diplomats have been a "common practice" according to Jack Matlock, the U.Due south. administrator to Russia under Reagan and Bush, and Matlock had personally arranged such a coming together for Jimmy Carter.²¹ Obama'south ain Russia adviser, Michael McFaul, admitted visiting Moscow for talks with officials in 2008 even before the ballot. Daniel Lazare makes a proficient case that not merely are the illegality and bribery threat implausible, but that the FBI's interrogation of Flynn likewise reeks of entrapment. And he asks what is wrong with trying to reduce tensions with Russia? "Yet anti-Trump liberals are trying to convince the public that information technology'due south all 'worse than Watergate'."²²

So the political indicate of the Assessment seems to have been, at minimum, to tie the Trump administration'southward hands in its dealings with Russia. Some non-MSM analysts have argued that we may accept been witnessing an incipient spy or palace coup, that savage short but still had the desired event of weakening the new administration.²³ The Times has not offered a word of criticism of this politicization and intervention in the election procedure by the intelligence agencies, and in fact the editors have been working with them and the Democratic Party as a loosely-knit team in a distinctly un- and anti-democratic program designed to reverse the results of the 2016 election, while using an alleged strange electoral intervention as their alibi.

The Times and MSM in full general have also barely mentioned the awkward fact that the allegedly Russian-hacked disclosures of the DNC and Clinton and Podesta e-mails described uncontested facts well-nigh real electoral manipulations on behalf of the Clinton entrada that the public had a right to know and that might well have affected election results. The focus on the evidence-free claims of a Russian hacking intrusion helped divert attention from the real electoral abuses disclosed past the WikiLeaks material. So here again, official and MSM fake news helped coffin existent news!

Another arrow in the campaign quiver labeling Trump a knowing or "useful fool" instrument of Putin was a private intelligence "dossier" written by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence amanuensis working for Orbis Business organisation Intelligence, a private firm hired past the DNC to dig up dirt on Trump. Steele's first report, delivered in June 2016, fabricated numerous serious accusations against Trump, most notably that Trump had been caught in a sexual escapade in Moscow, that his political advance had been supported by the Kremlin for at to the lowest degree 5 years, under the management of Putin, and with the further aims of sowing discord within the U.S. and disrupting the Western alliance. This document was based on alleged conversations by Steele with afar (Russian) officials; that is, strictly hearsay show, whose assertions, where verifiable, are sometimes erroneous.²⁴ Just it said but what the Democrats, MSM and CIA wanted said, so intelligence officials declared the author "credible" and the media lapped this upwards, with the Times covering over its ain cooperation in this ugly denigration endeavour by calling the study "unverified" but nevertheless reporting its claims.²⁵

The Steele dossier besides became a fundamental function of the investigation and hearings on "Russian federation-gate" held past the House Intelligence Committee starting in March 2017, led by Democratic Representative Adam Schiff. While basing his opening statement on the hearsay-laden dossier, Schiff expressed no involvement in establishing who funded the Steele try (he produced 17 individual reports), the identity and exact status of the Russian officials who were the hearsay sources, and how much they were paid. Apparently talking to Russians with a pattern of influencing a U.South. presidential election is perfectly acceptable if the candidate supported by this Russian intrusion is anti-Russian!

The Times has played a major role in this Russophobia-enhancement procedure, reminiscent of its 1917-1920 performance in which, equally noted back in 1920 "boundless credulity, and an untiring readiness to be gulled" characterized the news-making procedure. While quoting the CIA's access that they were showing no difficult evidence, but were relying on "circumstantial evidence" and "capabilities," the Times was happy to spell these capabilities out at great length and imply that they proved something.²⁶ Editorials and news manufactures accept worked uniformly on the supposition that Russian hacking was proved, which it was not, and that the Russians had given these information to WikiLeaks, likewise unproven and strenuously denied by Assange and Murray. And so these reiterated claims are arguably showtime class "faux news" swallowed equally palatable facts.

The Times has run neck-and-neck with the Washington Mail in stirring upwardly fears of the Russian data war and improper interest with Trump. The Times now easily conflates false news with whatsoever criticism of established institutions, every bit in Mark Scott and Melissa Eddy's "Europe Combats a New Foe of Political Stability: Simulated News," February 20, 2017.²⁷ Merely what is more extraordinary is the uniformity with which the paper's regular columnists accept every bit a given the CIA's Assessment of the Russian hacking and manual to WikiLeaks, the possibility or likelihood that Trump is a Putin puppet, and the urgent need of a congressional and "not-partisan" investigation of these claims. This swallowing of a new war-political party line has extended widely in the liberal media (eastward.g., Bill Moyers, Robert Reich, Ryan Lizza, Joan Walsh, Rachel Maddow, Katha Pollitt, Joshua Holland, the AlterNet web site, etc.).

Both the Times and Washington Postal service accept given tacit back up to the idea that this "fake news" threat needs to be curbed, perhaps by some form of voluntary media-organized censorship or government intervention that would at least expose the fakery.

The Times has treated uncritically the Schiff hearings on dealing with Russian propaganda, and its opinion column by Louise Mensch strongly supports government hearings to expose Russian propaganda. Mensch names 26 individuals who should exist interrogated near their contacts with Russians, and she supplies questions they should exist asked.

The well-nigh remarkable media episode in this anti-influence-campaign entrada was the Washington Post's piece by Craig Timberg, "Russian propaganda endeavor helped spread 'imitation news' during election, experts say" (Nov 24, 2016). The article features a report by an anonymous author or authors, PropOrNot, that claims to have constitute 200 web sites that wittingly or unwittingly, were "routine peddlers of Russian propaganda." While smearing these spider web sites, the "experts" refused to identify themselves allegedly out of fright of being "targeted by legions of skilled hackers." Every bit Matt Taibbi says, "Yous want to blacklist hundreds of people, only you won't put your name to your claims? Take a hike."²⁸ But the Post welcomed and featured this McCarthyite endeavour, which might well be a product of Pentagon or CIA information warfare. (And these entities are themselves well funded and heavily into the propaganda business organisation.)

On December 23, 2016 President Obama signed the Portman-Potato "Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act," which will supposedly allow this country to more finer combat foreign (Russian, Chinese) propaganda and disinformation. Information technology will encourage more government counter-propaganda efforts (which will, by patriotic definition, non be U.S. propaganda) and provide funding to non-government entities that will help in this enterprise. Information technology is clearly a follow-on to the claims of Russian hacking and propaganda, and shares the spirit of the list of 200 knowing or "useful fools" of Moscow featured in the Washington Post. Perhaps PropOrNot will qualify for a subsidy and be able to overstate its listing of 200. Liberals have been tranquillity on this new threat to liberty of speech communication, undoubtedly influenced by their fears of Russian-based simulated news and propaganda. But they may wake up, even if belatedly, when Trump or i of his successors puts it to work on their ain notions of fake news and propaganda.

The success of the war party's campaign to contain or overthrow any tendencies of Trump to ease tensions with Russia was dramatically clear in the Trump administration's speedy bombing response to the April 4, 2017 Syrian chemical weapons deaths. The Times and other MSM editors and journalists greeted this ambitious move with nearly uniform enthusiasm,²⁹ and over again did not require bear witness of Assad'due south guilt across their government's say-and so. The action was damaging to Assad and Russian federation, but served the rebels well. But the MSM never ask cui bono? in cases like this. In 2003 a like charge confronting Assad, which brought the U.South. to the brink of a full-scale bombing war in Syria, turned out to be a faux flag operation, and some potent authorities believe the current case is equally problematic.³⁰ But Trump moved quickly (and unlawfully) and whatever further rapproachement between this country and Russia was set back. The CIA, Pentagon, liberal-Democrats and residue of the state of war political party had won an important skirmish in the struggle for and confronting permanent war.

First published in Monthly Review, July-August 2017.

1. Manufacturing Consent (New York: Pantheon, 1988, 2002, 2008), chap. 2. [↩]
2. Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz, A Examination of the News (New York: New Democracy, 1920). [↩]
3. On the Thousand Expanse framework, see Noam Chomsky, "Lecture one, The New Framework of Order," On Ability And Credo: The Managua Lectures (Boston, Southward Stop Press, 1987). [↩]
4. Edward Herman, "Returning Guatemala to the Fold," in Gary Rawnsley, ed., Cold War Propaganda in the 1950s (London, Macmillan, 1999). [↩]
5. Ronald Schneider, Communism in Guatemala, 1944-1954 (New York: Praeger, 1959), 41, 196-7, 294. [↩]
6. "The Republic of guatemala Incident," New York Times (ed., April viii, 1950). [↩]
7. Harrison Salisbury, Without Fear or Favor (New York: Times Books, 1980), 486. [↩]
8. Richard DuBoff and Edward Herman, America's Vietnam Policy: The Strategy of Charade (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1966). [↩]
9. Come across Manufacturing Consent, chap. 6 (Vietnam). [↩]
10. Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, "The Dismantling of Yugoslavia," Monthly Review, October 2007; Herman and Peterson, "Marlise Simons on the Yugoslavia Tribunal: A Report in Total Propaganda Service," ZNet, April xvi, 2005. [↩]
11. Stephen F. Cohen, Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000). [↩]
12. Robert Parry, "Troubling Gaps in the New MH-17 Report," Consortiumnews.com. September 28, 2016. [↩]
13. Paul Krugman says "Mr. Putin is someone who doesn't worry virtually little things like international law," in "The Siberian Candidate," New York Times, July 22, 2016. The fake news implication is that U.S. leaders do worry nigh it. [↩]
14. A version of Mearsheimer's commodity "Why the Ukraine Crunch Is the West'southward Error," published in Foreign Affairs, Sept. 10, 2014, was offered to the Times but not accustomed. Stephen Cohen'due south 2012 commodity "The Demonization of Putin" was also rejected past the paper. [↩]
15. "Sochi Under Siege," New York Times, February 21, 2014. [↩]
16. Michael Kimmelman, "Aleppo'due south F aces Beckon to Us, To Piddling Avail," New York Times,, Dec. 15, 2016. To a higher place this front page article are iv photos of dead or injured children, the most prominent one in Syria. The accompanying editorial: "Aleppo's Destroyers: Assad, Putin, Iran," December. xv, 2016, omits some key actors and killers. [↩]
17. Rick Sterling, "How US Propaganda Plays in Syrian War," Consortiumnews.com, September. 23, 2016. [↩]
18. William Binney and Ray McGovern, "The Dubious Case on Russian 'Hacking'," Consortiumnews.com January 6, 2017. [↩]
19. David Sanger, "Putin Ordered 'Influence Campaign' Aimed at U.South. Election, Study Says," NYT, January 6, 4017. [↩]
20. Nathan Robinson and Alex Nichols, "What Constitutes Reasonable Mainstream Opinion," Electric current Diplomacy, March 22, 2017. [↩]
21. "Contacts With Russian Embassy," JackAMatlock.com, March iv, 2017. [↩]
22. Daniel Lazare, "Democrats, Liberals, Catch McCarthyistic Fever," Consortiumnew.com, February 17, 2917. [↩]
23. Robert Parry, "A Spy Coup in America?," Consortiumnews,com, Dec. 18, 2016; Andre Damon, "Autonomous Party Floats Proposal for a Palace Coup," Information Clearing House, March 23, 2017. [↩]
24. Robert Parry, "The Sleazy Origins of Russian federation-gate," Consortiumnews.com, March 29, 2017. [↩]
25. Scott Shane et al, "How a Sensational, Unverified Dossier Became a Crunch for Donald Trump," New York Times, Jan 11, 2017. [↩]
26. Matt Fegenheimer and Scott Shane," "Bipartisan Voices Back U.S. Agencies On Russia Hacking," NYT, January 6, 2017; Michael Shear and David Sanger, "Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Finds," NYT January 7, 2017; Andrew Kramer, "How the Kremlin Recruited an Army of Specialists to Wage Its Cyberwar," NYT, Dec. 30, 2016. [↩]
27. Robert Parry, "NYT's Faux News most Fake News,"Consortium news.com, February 22, 2017. [↩]
28. Matt Taibbi, "The 'Washington Post' 'Blacklist' Story Is Shameful and Icky," Rolling Stone.com, November 28, 2016. [↩]
29. Adam Johnson, "Out of 47 Media Editorials on Trump's Syrian arab republic Strikes, Only One Opposed," Fair, Apr 11, 2017. [↩]
30. Scott Ritter, "Wag the Canis familiaris—How Al Qaeda Played Donald Trump And The American Media: Responsibleness for the chemic effect in Khan Sheikhoun is still very much in question," Huffingtonpost.com, April 9, 2017; James Carden, "The Chemic Weapons Attack in Syrian arab republic; Is at that place a place for skepticism?," Nation, April 11, 2017. [↩]

Edward S. Herman is an economist and media analyst with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues too every bit political economy and the media. Read other articles by Edward.

This article was posted on Saturday, July 8th, 2017 at 7:11pm and is filed under CIA, Disinformation, Espionage/"Intelligence", Faux News, Guatemala, Media, Propaganda, Russia, Viet Nam.

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Source: https://dissidentvoice.org/2017/07/fake-news-on-russia-in-the-new-york-times-1917-2017/

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