Journalists and corporate watchdogs reacted with alarm when it was reported last month that the right-wing media giant Sinclair Broadcast Group was planning to force local news anchors to read from a script denouncing "fake" and "false" news stories in a distinctly Trumpian fashion.
Common Dreams, Consortium News, Truthdig, Black Agenda Report, Loud and Clear (yes, on Sputnik Radio), are extremely dangerous to our Plutocracy. I wonder how long theyâll be allowed to exist. Then we will be forced to listen to warmongers like Rachel Maddow.
Peace
Po
Mono-cultures end up feeding on themselves to stay alive. Are you food?
Is this what they mean when they say money is free $peech?
As the old aphorism goes, truth is the first casualty of war. We are and have been at war with reality for quite sometime nowâprobably from the dawn of âcivilizationâ, whatever that is. By âweâ I mean humanity. Many cherish reality and do all that they can to identify and understand it. Of course, most of us CD readers/bloggers will self identify with this impulse, as will those for whom alternate realities are taken as axioms. The term âfair and balancedâ probably makes a lot of us bristle with unease as it has been appropriated to validate any version of reality (that makes money for those advocating said version). Free speech and free market ideals have bred malevolent progeny that not only walk among us but echo whatever nonsense they hear with cult-like fealty to their side. Money knows how to push the buttons of the reactionary public like no other force that has ever existed on this planet. As the educational infrastructure of the country continues to be assaulted, expect no change for the better anytime soon. George Carlin had it right. In my words his message always seemed to be that thinking is the best resistance available to us. It wonât achieve victory on âtheirâ terms but can define victory on ours.
Just about every single establishment Democrat voter, and most Rethuglicans, although they limit themselves to Fox and right-wing hate radio.
Sinclairâs biggest crime is making over-the-top obvious what most other corporate outlets already do in a more sophisticated manner.
My only concern with this critique of Sinclair is it implies that, in the absence of Sinclairâs directive, that weâd otherwise be getting credible reporting from local outlets, which is not truthful either.
Itâs not only âpro-Trump propagandaâ.
All the main stream media are parroting elite, establishment propaganda. Both sides are full steam ahead with Russia hysteria. The Clinton campaign can arguably be blamed for starting it with the hacking BS, the establishment is still pushing it. Trump wanted better relations with Russia and the fascists making policy do not. With the latest bit of Western agitprop, the Skripal poisoning has gone global with zero evidence. Both sides of the corporate mainstream âfakeâ news are anti Russia.
Anyone who has travelled and turned on the nightly news at the end of the day in a different city on consecutive nights should already know this
Letâs see, what should we say?
What are we supposed to say?
Sieg Heil?
This is the kind of propaganda machine that would have been Goebbelsâ wet dreamâŚ
âHomogenize milk, not the news.â
Stop all mergers and acquisitions in the journalism field. And limit/break up the ones like Sinclair which have aggregated local news outlets across the country.
So this time they got caught.
I expect future messaging will be less crudely identical and synchronized.
If you have not done so already, say your goodbyes now to independent local news.
Without an absolutely free and independent Fourth Estate - press and journalism - we are no better than any other de facto dictatorship - facism is not only thigs killing people, it is corporate dominance over the nation! Without a totally free and dedicated press that informs with the truth and nothing but, we are not a democracy at all, but a vast crooked casino for the greedy-rich to con the rubes!
Democracy, such as it is, is very (obviously) easily manipulated and the public lied-to by corrupt self-interested politicians, subversive corporate influence and big-money, any such manipulation of that critical fourth leg of our republic - truth - must not be tolerated! The airwaves were supposed to be the peoples, used to be, but they were sold-off by politicians for campaign-contribution bribes and should be taken back! Now we are witnessing the wide criminal attempt to sell-off more of the publicâs resources, wealth held in common, and critical infrastructure by trump & co to for-profit parasites!
Bugger the BS âfree enterpriseâ vulture capitalist theft of The Commons and âprivatizationâ (euphemism for theft!) of public services and those things that make a nation truly âgreatâ rather than being a playground for greed and usury by the rich and powerful!
Privatize the airwaves, media and press, health-care, education, transportation and warâŚgifts by political crooks and co-conspirators to corrupt greedy scum that will, and do, stop at nothing to increase their wealth by abusing notions of the Common Good by robbing the 99%!
Most fake news comes out of the mainstream right, while the centrist-mainstream is dominated distortion and memory-holing of important facts.
But there is also plenty of fake news coming out of the left-allied with fascist, red-brown, dictator-loving network represented by several of the sites on your list. As a libertarian socialist, I find this Putin-government-facilitated conspiratorial left-fascist nexus is one of the great global threats today.
Also, Counterpoint is a great source of articles.
I looked at the list of stations that are currently broadcasting this right-wing crap and one of them was KOMO in Seattle. They had a cool way to respond to these fascist Sinclair trash demanding that they broadcast these right-wing âop-edsâ on their station every day. They broadcast them at 4 in the morning. Of course, these assholes at Sinclair will undoubtedly find out and demand that this propaganda be aired during a time when there are lots of viewers.
Sinclair is the latest bit of devolution of the U.S. media and they will be enabled by that loathsome, always grinning FCC commissioner, Ajit Pai. I wonder how long it will take (especially if Amurkins are stupid enough to allow the Mango Mussolini to be reinstalled as president in 2020) for our corporate media to degenerate into some version of Orwellâs âMinistry of Truthâ and have a daily occurrence of âTwo Minutes of Hateâ directed towards liberals?
Sound far-fetched? Perhaps, but I doubt we are anywhere near the bottom with these scum consolidating their power. I am profoundly ashamed of this country.
Most of the rural areas of America have been controlled for years. How many Michael Moore or progessive documentaries have been shown in theatres in these areas? Donât think so. This is a total manipulation. If people woke up in the morning and went outside and there was a dark cloud covering all of the sky and it never went away for days, weeks, months and years people would be frightened. That is essentially what is happening in a psychic sense to the nation. I think most people on CD see these clouds but how can we get others to see these clouds which foretell major calamity.
yes, time for anti-trust enforcement in the media and break up on these monopolies which demean democracy and freedom. Donât think the Sessions DOJ will take up that task and Trump is no Theodore Roosevelt.
True - how can anyone with any insight watch these absurd shows where the anchor is a multi-millionaire âcelebrityâ and the reporters just clones.
