Tag: MainStream Media

Ukraine Messaging

Trump has had his day in court…..so can we get back to stuff that is really important?

As I watch the daily news dump I see a lot about the war in Ukraine.

I would say that the messaging management of the conflict in Ukraine has been spot on.

The comments here tells me that few look beyond their favorite news media.

But the truth of the matter is that the messaging public and private are not the same thing.

“I want Russia to be defeated in Ukraine,” French President Emmanuel Macron publicly told the media. But it’s not what he privately told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He also said that now is not the right time for dialogue with Moscow and that France is ready to sustain “a longer conflict.” That’s not what he told Zelensky either.

“America…will stand with you as long as it takes,” President Biden publicly promised Ukraine in his State of the Union Address. But it’s not what his administration privately told Zelensky.

“The war I know about is not the war you are reading about,” investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said recently.

Managing public perception about the war to control the narrative and maintain support seems to have required a divorce between what NATO officials are telling Ukraine privately and what they are telling the public they are telling Ukraine.

Biden’s public mantra has been “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” and “will stand with you as long as it takes.” Privately, neither seems to be true.

Contrary to the public message of as long as it takes, as long as it takes has a private expiration date. “We will continue to try to impress upon them that we can’t do anything and everything forever,” a senior administration official said. CIA Director William Burns secretly communicated to Zelensky that “at some point assistance would be harder to come by.”

Contrary to the public message that the U.S. supports Ukraine’s aspirations to reclaim all of its territory, the private message to Ukraine is that that is not going to happen. After the war, Ukraine will be a divided nation.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/public-vs-private-managing-perceptions-of-the-war-in-ukraine/

The key to this disconnect is what the article called “managing the perception of war to control the narrative”…..I have been telling readers about this disconnect and few have seen the problem….basically because Putin is an ass (simplistic dribble).

Even a US general does not see this ending well at all….

Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine is unlikely to end on the battlefield and will instead come to a conclusion at a negotiating table, the top US general predicts.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said he believes that neither Russia, nor Ukraine, will likely be able to achieve their objectives through military power. The highest-ranking US military officer recently told the Eurasia Group Foundation in a podcast that he believes diplomats from various countries will be the ones to eventually put an end to the fighting.

“At some point people will figure out that the cost of continuing to execute this war through military means is extraordinarily challenging. It doesn’t mean it can’t be done. And I applaud the Ukrainian will and their courage and their resilience,” Milley said on the podcast, which was released on Tuesday, according to a transcript of his remarks. 

https://www.businessinsider.com/costs-ukraine-blood-treasure-kick-russia-invaders-out-us-general-2023-3

Zelensky has hired a bevy of PR firms and lobbyists to help sell the war to Congress and the public…..and it is working if the comments here are any indication.

This is probably basically a fart in a hurricane….the comments will tell.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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Is The MSM Trustworthy?

Do you trust the corporate news?

My friend over at linesbyliming.com who got me thinking about a question he asked on his site.

Yep, the news most people consume is fed to people by corporations that own the news these days.

It appears that most Americans do not trust the news they are given in there evening news and corresponding web sites.

Polling released Wednesday by Gallup and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation reveals half of American adults “feel most national news organizations intend to mislead, misinform, or persuade the public,” which could impact the future of both the industry and U.S. democracy.

The report is the second in a series that began with a publication in October and builds on a body of research that Gallup and the Knight Foundation have conducted about Americans’ trust in the news media since 2017.

“This data offers further evidence that sustainable journalism begins and ends with trust,” said Knight Foundation president Alberto Ibargüen in a statement. “We believe a citizenry that trusts the news is more informed, more engaged, and better prepared to participate meaningfully in our democracy.”

Key findings from the latest survey include that 53% of about 5,600 Americans across political affiliations have an unfavorable view of the U.S. news media overall, compared with just 26% who hold a favorable view. In line with previous polling, younger adults have less favorable views.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/american-news-media-mislead-public

The war in Ukraine is a great example and how the MSM handles its reporting.

It is a truism that the first casualty of war is the truth. But spinning and lying has real-world impacts in a war in which hundreds of thousands of real people are fighting and dying, while their homes, on both sides of the front lines, are reduced to rubble by hundreds of thousands of howitzer shells.

Yves Smith, the editor of Naked Capitalism, explored this insidious linkage between the information war and the real one in an article titled, “What if Russia won the Ukraine War, but the Western press didn’t notice?” He observed that Ukraine’s total dependence on the supply of weapons and money from its Western allies has given a life of its own to a triumphalist narrative that Ukraine is defeating Russia, and will keep scoring victories as long as the West keeps sending it more money and increasingly powerful and deadly weapons.

But the need to keep recreating the illusion that Ukraine is winning by hyping limited gains on the battlefield has forced Ukraine to keep sacrificing its forces in extremely bloody battles, like its counteroffensive around Kherson and the Russian sieges of Bakhmut and Soledar. Lt. Col. Alexander Vershinin, a retired US tank commander, wrote on Harvard’s Russia Matters website, “In some ways, Ukraine has no choice but to launch attacks no matter the human and material cost.”

How Spin and Lies Fuel a Bloody War of Attrition in Ukraine

This is just one example on the spin and lies that the media presents to us peasants….and believe me the corporations that own the news thinks of us as peasants.

It is said that the American people do not trust the MSM….yet they slurp up the lies and misinformation given to them on certain stories and situations.

For instance they believe every word of stories about Ukraine or immigrants or elections and no amount of logical contrary stories will get them to look past their set in stone spurious ideas.

Stop slurping up the crap that the MSM presents you on a silver platter….most of it is pure manure…..but few seem to care.

So to answer the original question….NO it is not trustworthy….no matter the event or story.

They treat the American news consumer like a mushroom….they keep us in the dark and feeds us manure.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“Lego ergo scribo”

Ukraine: Answers Not Given

This is a post that few will care about or will give a lot of unrelated answers….but what the Hell.

Questions?

When I was in school a teacher gave me some good advice.

“The wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions. “

It is the answers, not the questions, that are embarrassing…..and I ask embarrassing questions and get few substantive answers….but I will continue to ask.
 
It is what I do.
 
Since the war began a year ago I have been asking questions….some hard questions….and so far the answer I get are boiler plate responses….by boiler plate I mean the rubbish the media throws out with little facts behind the garbage they spread.
 
Recently I posted on the debate around this conflict….
 
 
The media has not always been so gung-ho in Ukraine’s corner….

The other day I stumbled across a 2014 opinion piece in The Guardian titled “It’s not Russia that’s pushed Ukraine to the brink of war” by Seumas Milne, who the following year would go on to become the Labour Party’s Executive Director of Strategy and Communications under Jeremy Corbyn.

I bring this up because the perspectives you’ll find in that article are jarring in how severely they deviate from anything you’ll see published in the mainstream press about Ukraine in 2023. It places the brunt of the blame for the violence and tensions in that nation at that time squarely at Washington’s feet, opening with a warning that the “threat of war in Ukraine is growing” and saying there’s an “unelected government in Kiev,” and it only gets naughtier from there.

I strongly recommend reading the article in full if you want some perspective in just how dramatically the mass media has clamped down on dissenting ideas about Ukraine and Russia, beginning with the frenzied stoking of Russia hysteria in 2016 and exploding exponentially with the Russian invasion last year. I doubt there’s a single paragraph which could get published in any mainstream outlet in the media environment of today.

Milne writes about how “the Ukrainian president was replaced by a US-selected administration, in an entirely unconstitutional takeover,” and about “the role of the fascistic right on the streets and in the new Ukrainian regime.” He says that “Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia,” and that “you don’t hear much about the Ukrainian government’s veneration of wartime Nazi collaborators and pogromists, or the arson attacks on the homes and offices of elected communist leaders, or the integration of the extreme Right Sector into the national guard, while the anti-semitism and white supremacism of the government’s ultra-nationalists is assiduously played down.” He says that “after two decades of eastward Nato expansion, this crisis was triggered by the west’s attempt to pull Ukraine decisively into its orbit and defence structure.”

 
It is fascinating but that would be for those that are interested and from what I have read few are that interested in what has been written and only embrace the manure spread by the MSM.
 
Then I read about a ignored settlement of this situation….and from an Israeli….
 

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in an interview posted to his YouTube channel on Saturday that the US and its Western allies “blocked” his efforts of mediating between Russia and Ukraine to bring an end to the war in its early days.

On March 4, 2022, Bennett traveled to Russia to meet with President Vladimir Putin. In the interview, he detailed his mediation at the time between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which he said he coordinated with the US, France, Germany, and the UK.

Bennett said that both sides agreed to major concessions during his mediation effort. For the Russian side, he said they dropped “denazification” as a requirement for a ceasefire. Bennett defined “denazification” as the removal of Zelensky. During his meeting in Moscow with Putin, Bennett said the Russian leader guaranteed that he wouldn’t try to kill Zelensky.

The other concession Russia made, according to Bennett, is that it wouldn’t seek the disarmament of Ukraine. For the Ukrainian side, Zelensky “renounced” that he would seek NATO membership, which Bennett said was the “reason” for Russia’s invasion.

(antiwar.com)

Appears no one wants this conflict to end…..maybe there is too much cash to effectively find a solution.
 
Like I said….hard questions.
 
I Read, I Write, You Know
 
“lego ergo scribo”

Chasing Shiny New Keys

The American people need something to put the sparkle in their eyes….kinda like a baby and the rattling of shiny keys.

All this began with that looming ‘Chinese’ balloon trans versing the US and the US shot it down for our protection.

Then the food gates were opened….

The Pentagon shot down an unknown “high-altitude” object flying in US airspace off the coast of Alaska on Friday, White House officials said. The object was flying at about 40,000 feet and posed a “reasonable threat” to the safety of civilian flights, said John Kirby, White House National Security Council spokesman. Kirby said President Biden ordered the military to down the object, which he described as roughly the size of a small car—much smaller than the infamous Chinese balloon, per the Washington Post. No other details about what it was were immediately provided.

The object fell onto frozen US waters. The development comes after the US shot down a suspected spy balloon from China on Saturday. Officials are still recovering debris from that object, shot down off the coast of South Carolina. A fighter jet assigned to the US Northern Command conducted Friday’s mission, per Axios. It was not immediately clear who owned the object, which did not appear to be able to maneuver as well as the balloon, said Kirby. The US expected to be able to retrieve the debris.

The New York Times reports the object was flying over the Arctic Ocean, near the northeast border of Alaska and Canada, when it was shot down. Pilots confirmed it was unmanned before firing, said Kirby. The object previously had been flying over land. A US official describes the development as “fast-moving” to the Times. The official added that it’s possible the object had no military purpose and was a wayward commercial or scientific object.

Then the game continued…..

A US F-22 shot down an unidentified object flying at a high altitude over the Yukon territory on Saturday at Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s request. Trudeau tweeted that he’d discussed the matter with President Biden and that Canadian and US aircraft were scrambled after the object was spotted, the Washington Post reports. No one provided any details about the object, though NORAD released a statement earlier in the day saying it had been positively identified. The command guards skies over North America and includes US and Canadian officials.

Trudeau said Canadian personnel will lead the effort to recover and analyze the wreckage debris, per the CBC. Defense Minister Anita Anand tweeted that she had discussed the matter with her US counterpart, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and that they “reaffirmed that we’ll always defend our sovereignty together,” per CNN.

Apparently Canada does not have the capabilities of handling this situation for themselves.

And the hits just keep coming…..

For the fourth time in less than two weeks, the US has shot down an unidentified object flying over North American airspace. A Michigan congresswoman tweeted that it happened over Lake Huron on Sunday. “The object has been downed by pilots from the US Air Force and National Guard,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin posted, per the AP. Rep. Jack Bergman’s office reported that the craft was over US airspace at the time, per the Detroit News. American officials said that the craft went down in the lake and that it will be recovered. There was no sign that the shootdown caused any damage, they said, per NBC News. Airspace over the lake had been restricted earlier in the day by US and Canadian officials while planes were sent to identify the object.

Earlier Sunday, Sen. Chuck Schumer said that the objects shot down over Canada on Saturday and Alaska on Friday were—like the one the Air Force brought down earlier over the Atlantic near South Carolina—balloons. The majority leader told ABC’s This Week that he was briefed by White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan after the US shot down an object flying over Canada. A Pentagon spokesperson didn’t quite confirm that the targets were all balloons, per Politico, saying they “were objects and did not closely resemble” the balloon China sent over the US. More will be known when the debris is recovered, Sabrina Singh said.

Either way, Schumer said, “the bottom line is, until a few months ago, we didn’t know of these balloons.” per ABC News. Schumer praised the military and intelligence work against the balloons but asked, “why as far back as the Trump administration did no one know about this?” Officials said they believe the object shot down Sunday is the same one that was being tracked over Montana beginning on Saturday night.

I have called all this as ‘chasing shiny keys’…..but to summarize this……

Comparisons: The US is pretty sure the Chinese balloon was used for spying, though Beijing denies it, but much less is known about the objects shot down over Alaska and Canada. US officials are using a vehicle comparison: The latter two objects are about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, reports the Washington Post, while the Chinese balloon was the size of three buses, per NPR.

  • Few answers: The US says the objects shot down over Alaska and Canada were flying at about 40,000 feet and thus posed a risk to commercial air traffic, reports CNN. By contrast, the Chinese balloon flew well above such traffic. The hunt for debris continues on all three shootdowns, and those recovery missions could answer a lot of questions about what the devices were doing and where they came from.
  • False alarm? Hours after the US shot down the object over Canada (after coordinating with that government), the FAA temporarily closed some airspace over Montana after a “radar anomaly” was detected by NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command. A jet fighter investigated but found nothing, reports the AP. Amid the newly heightened concern, such “false positives” may become more common.
  • Pressure: The incidents already are having an effect on national policy. The Hill reports that Senate Republicans are now pushing to take any defense cuts off the table in negotiations over the debt ceiling. And GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski, speaking after the shootdown in the skies above her state, told NBC News that “the first line of defense, again, is Alaska. … We need to send the message and we need to be clear and unequivocable that we don’t tolerate this, period.”
  • It’s classified: The New York Times reports that congressional lawmakers will receive an update on Monday of a classified report looking at more than 140 incidents of “aerial phenomena” between 2004 and 2021. Almost all remain officially unexplained, but they’re largely thought to be either foreign surveillance objects or weather balloons. Shootdowns are rare, but Pentagon spokesman Big. Gen. Patrick Ryder on Friday rejected the idea the administration was growing more aggressive because of political pressure.

Is there something happening or about to happen that the American people need to be fixated on something so it is not important for them?

I think I found the reason for all the faux interest…..

A growing number of Senate Republicans are saying that President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) should take defense spending cuts off the table in their negotiation over the debt ceiling.

The Republicans are digging in their heels after receiving a classified briefing on a Chinese spy balloon that floated over sensitive military installations.

“The entire civilized world should recognize that communist China is probably the greatest threat we’ve ever faced, more severe than Soviet Russia was because of its economic integration into the West,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) after receiving a briefing from senior administration officials on the spy balloon. “We should take every step we can to try to reduce our dependency on China [and] try to build stronger military deterrence against them. 

“I do not think that we should be talking about cutting the defense budget at all right now. If anything, substantial defense increases,” he said.  

Chinese spy balloon has GOP saying no cuts to defense

As usual the American media and public are chasing ‘shiny keys’….and more American cash will be thrown at non-existent problems….well done…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Would A Break Help?

Has anyone else noticed just how stupid and boring the news has become?

I have decided a year and a half ago to back away from the news….it has become pedantic and boring….

Looks I I made a good decision…..

A constant influx of bad news — pandemic, shootings, inflation, natural disasters, political turmoil — can feel, at best, soul-crushing. Now, a new study from Spain confirms the negative toll constantly being plugged into the news cycle can take.

The researchers looked at how people were best able to manage feelings of anxiety and depression at the height of the pandemic, finding that one of the most effective methods was to take breaks from the barrage of bad news.

“The best predictor for having lower anxiety and depressive symptoms,” said lead study author Dr. Joaquim Radua, a psychiatrist in Barcelona, was to “avoid watching too much news.” Radua is also affiliated with King’s College London and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.

The research will be presented this weekend at a meeting of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology in Vienna. It has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Radua cautioned that because the research was conducted in 2020 and 2021, it was unclear how the results would apply as coronavirus cases continue to decline.

Others note that there’s only so much negative news coverage a person can take before it affects their mental health.

“There’s an endless availability of information,” said Lindsey McKernan, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville who was not involved with the new study. “Without putting the brakes on it yourself, you can just keep going and keep reading and become more stressed.”

Radua’s research looked at 942 adults in Spain who filled out an online questionnaire every two weeks for a year during the pandemic. The participants reported whether they were feeling despondent, and if so, how they were coping with such feelings. The analysis factored in whether participants had been previously diagnosed with anxiety or depression.

The study found that those who avoided “too much stressful news” had fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression.

(nbcnews.com)

For peace of mind is important to you then avoid too muck of what tries to pass for news.

Have a great Sunday and be safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Is The News Really Just Propaganda?

I have made no bones about what I think of the MSM…..I have been watching the news out of Ukraine and I have seen very little that was actual news but rather propaganda to make all the waste by government acceptable…..but I am not alone….

Perhaps another potential title for this article might that be of Journalism “as” Propaganda, since a large section of what we perceive to be journalism – such as, the gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting of news and information – have become mere propaganda. Worse, in recent years, reporting the truth has been slowly converted into the production of mass deception and mass ignorance.

What we see as “the news” can boil down to the so-called Pseudo Events manufactured by a sophisticated global PR industry. It is called Public Relations (PR) to avoid the ugly word “propaganda”. PR/propaganda present global news stories – some of which have proven to be rather fictional like the infamous but non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction. Many of them are generated as new machineries of international propaganda.

A good example is the UK paper, The Daily Telegraph when it published an event “before” it had happened. Six hours before it actually happened, The Daily Telegraph reporter Toby Harnden described the hanging of Saddam Hussein. While The Guardiancalled such journalists as Media Monkeys, there is a system behind things like these – they are by no means individual mishaps.

Rather, falsehoods, distortions, and outright propaganda – as the Ukraine war shows almost every day –  seem to run through global media outlets – an industry which is supposed to be dedicated to the very opposite: truth telling.

War Propaganda, Pseudo-Events and the Global Village Idiot

Just a few of my thoughts on how the media helps spread misinformation….

Ukraine And The Media

There is more……

The Pro-War Media

And even more…..

Is The Media Failing Us?

Allowing corporations to own the distribution of news was the worse idea of the Clinton presidency….and this is the outcome…..

Far too often, the elite U.S. press has been a reliable mouthpiece for Washington’s dubious foreign policies. That was true during the Cold War, except for a brief period of disillusionment and dissent once the Vietnam War became such an obvious debacle. That period of more vigorous scrutiny and skepticism did not last long, however. When George H. W. Bush launched his drive for U.S. military intervention in the Persian Gulf to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other elite outlets were fully on board with that agenda, as their shamelessly biased treatment of the relevant issues confirmed. That pro-interventionist bias became even more flagrant during the Balkan crises of the 1990s, the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and Washington’s subsequent campaigns for forcible regime change in Libya and Syria. There was very little daylight between the official U.S. government positions on those issues and the dominant media narratives.

A similar pattern has emerged with press coverage of the war in Ukraine. Once again, pro-interventionist accounts dominate the airwaves and the leading editorial and op-ed pages. That was especially true of the first weeks of the war, when the media overwhelmingly supported the argument that America must “stand with Ukraine.” The imbalance has eased slightly as concerns about the costs and risks of the Biden administration’s policy of lavishing military and financial aid on Kiev mount. Nevertheless, hawks still provide the vast majority of commentaries on the war in top-tier establishment forums.

The Elite Press Remains the Handmaid of War

And since most people do not have the ability to look for confirmation of the crap the MSM spread…..propaganda is the best tool for societal control.

So the truth has become fluid…subjective if you will….disinformation is the rule for the news these days…..

Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) has an article out titled “‘Disinformation’ Label Serves to Marginalize Crucial Ukraine Facts” about the way the mass media have been spinning that label to mean not merely the knowing distribution of false information but also of information that is true but inconvenient to imperial narrative-weaving.

“In defense of the US narrative, corporate media have increasingly taken to branding realities inconvenient to US information goals as ‘disinformation’ spread by Russia or its proxies,” writes FAIR’s Luca Goldmansour.

Online platforms have been ramping up their censorship protocols under the banner of fighting disinformation and misinformation, and those escalations always align with narrative control agendas of the US-centralized empire. Just the other day we learned that Twitter has a new policy which expands its censorship practices to fight “misinformation” about wars and other crises, and the Ukraine war (surprise surprise) will be the first such situation about which it will be enforcing these new censorship policies.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/05/23/theyre-worried-about-the-spread-of-information-not-disinformation/

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

All That ‘Breaking News’

This draft was written before the mass shooting in Uvalde and now the SCOTUS ruling…it had to wait for the news to play out.  I apologize for the delay.

I have avoided the MSM since the invasion of Ukraine…..they are pro-war and anti-gun and they are trying to influence the country as best as they can….and their corporate masters continue to set the news….but many of us are disillusioned by the way the MSM handles the news.

A growing number of people are selectively avoiding important news stories such as the coronavirus pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the cost-of-living crisis, according to a report released on Tuesday.

While the majority of people surveyed consume news regularly, 38% said they often or sometimes avoid the news – up from 29% in 2017 – the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism said in its annual Digital News Report. Around 36% – particularly those under 35 – say that the news lowers their mood.

Trust in news is also declining, and is lowest in the United States. On average, 42% of people said they trust most news most of the time; that figure has fallen in almost half the countries in the report and risen in seven.

“Large numbers of people see the media as subject to undue political influence, and only a small minority believe most news organisations put what’s best for society ahead of their own commercial interest,” wrote Reuters Institute Director Rasmus Kleis Nielsen in the report, which is based on an online survey of 93,432 people, conducted in 46 markets.

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2022-06-14/more-people-are-avoiding-the-news-and-trusting-it-less-report-says

Then there is the manure of ‘breaking news’….

Since the conflict in Ukraine began I have been bitching about the use of the news tag of ‘breaking news’……CNN was the worse offender….it was breaking news for 12 hours, the same report time after time…..of course I have written about this….

Ukraine And The Media

The Reporting On Ukraine

Please read those and see what I am on about….

With the recent mass shooting this story got lost in the headlines….

If you’re a regular CNN viewer, you’re also intimately familiar with one of its most well-known chyrons: the bright-red “Breaking News” banner that seems to accompany a good number of its newscasts. No more, says new network chief Chris Licht, who’s now issued an edict on cutting down on the banner’s use. Axios reports that on Thursday, Licht, 50, informed staff there are now stricter parameters on when to use the “Breaking News” label; updated guidelines have been written by Sam Feist, the network’s DC bureau chief. “Breaking News” has to “mean something BIG is happening,” Licht wrote in a memo to employees. “We are truth-tellers, focused on informing, not alarming our viewers. … The tenor of our voice holistically has to reflect that.”

The reasoning behind the shift, which CNBC calls “the first significant programming alteration” Licht has made, ties to his desire to pull CNN back from a more progressive-leaning, sometimes sensationalist approach to one more focused on hard news. That return to traditional journalism is also said to be a top priority for David Zaslav, the CEO of CNN parent Warner Bros. Discovery. The move is also intended to keep the “Breaking News” banner from become diluted by overuse. “It has become such a fixture on every channel and network that its impact has become lost on the audience,” Licht noted in his memo.

Licht, who took the helm of CNN in early May, was said to have held meetings with staff to try to suss out when and how the banner is employed, at which point he directed Feist to come up with an update on its usage for CNN’s stylebook. Licht noted he’s open to feedback and “tweaks” to the guidelines, but that “this is a great starting point.” He added in the memo: “We must be vital, relevant, and respected—and how we show up for our audiences, in every story, in every part of the country, and around the world, matters.” Deadline has his memo in its entirety.

Maybe someone was reading after all…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

“Time To Negotiate”

After months of chest thumping on the war in Ukraine the press has seen the conflict winding down and now they change their tune to call for negotiations to begin…..

NY Times has issued their thoughts…..

A week ago we noted that a May 11 New York Times news article, documented that all was not going well for the US in Ukraine and that a companion opinion piece hinted that a shift in direction might be in order.

Now on May 19, “THE EDITORIAL BOARD,” the full Magisterium of the Times, has moved from hints to a clarion call for a change in direction in an editorial uninformatively titled, “The War Is Getting Complicated, and America Isn’t Ready.” From atop the Opinion page the Editorial board has declared that “total victory” over Russia is not possible and that Ukraine will have to negotiate a peace in a way that reflects a “realistic assessment” and the “limits” of US commitment. The Times serves as one the main shapers of public opinion for the Elite and so its pronouncements are not to be overlooked lightly.

Ukrainians will have to adjust to US “limits” and make sacrifices for newfound US realism

The Times May editorial dictum contain the following key passages:

“In March, this board argued that the message from the United States and its allies to Ukrainians and Russians alike must be: No matter how long it takes, Ukraine will be free. …”

“That goal cannot shift, but in the end, it is still not in America’s best interest to plunge into an all-out war with Russia, even if a negotiated peace may require Ukraine to make some hard decisions (emphasis, jw).”

To ensure that there is no ambiguity, the editorial declares that:

“A decisive military victory for Ukraine over Russia, in which Ukraine regains all the territory Russia has seized since 2014, is not a realistic goal. … Russia remains too strong…”

To make cerain that President Biden and the Ukrainians understand what they should do, the EDITORIAL BOARD goes on to say:

New York Times Repudiates Drive for ‘Decisive Military Victory’ in Ukraine, Calls for Peace Negotiations

Writers like myself have been calling for this for months now and we were ignored….maybe now with ahe early war cheer leaders will fall into line. major news source tiring of the reports on the war will find more receptive audience.

But I ask ‘why now’?  I mean why after half of country has been destroyed is it important now?

I am waiting to see how many of the early war mongers will fall into line with the prospect of talks.

But MSM should not worry…they always have Taiwan.

Watch This Blog!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is The Media Failing Us?

I know I rant about the disservice I think the MSM is doing to the public by not reporting to passing on propaganda….few are listening instead they drink the disinformation kool-aid all to justify the waste of taxpayer money.

For now

In my considerable opinion it is failing badly…..the press that is…..

But then I am a cynic and do not think that the MSM is doing a service to the people of this country…..instead they are PR for the defense industry and as so they give only one side of any story….Ukraine is a perfect example of this disservice.

They have done their duty well…..their reporting have people so confused and indoctrinated that they will deflect when they are presented with alternative facts and information.

All that opinionated stuff aside….the question remains….is the media failing the citizens of this country?

As U.S. leaders speak more openly about their geopolitical goals, and Russian leaders warn of the risk of nuclear war, there are essential questions that journalists should be raising in their coverage of the war in Ukraine that they are not. Chief among them:

Is escalating what has clearly emerged as a proxy war between the United States and Russia hastening or prolonging the carnage in Ukraine?

And: What’s the best way to minimize the risk of a nuclear conflict?

Thus far, most American news coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has reflected an unquestioned conviction that the more weapons the United States and the West send the Ukrainians the better.

It may well be that continuing and accelerating the arming of the Ukrainian military is, in fact, the best of bad options, the quickest way to peace, and doesn’t increase the likelihood of a nuclear strike. But that’s a hypothesis, which should be questioned and discussed, not blindly embraced as fact.

And in the meantime, Ukraine is being destroyed. Civilians are dying, refugees are fleeing for their lives, untold damage is being done to Ukraine’s infrastructure, and young men in arms are killing each other.

It’s time now for journalists to talk and write about at what point the goal of punishing Russia could diverge from the goal of bringing peace to the Ukrainian people as expediently as possible — and what the West should do if and when that happens.

The American media is failing us on Ukraine

I have been suspicious of the reports that were coming out of Ukraine….most are ‘unverified’ yet were reported as fact.

I am not alone….even real conservs see the crap the MSM is spreading…..

The coverage once again provided very little context regarding the underlying issues. Matters such as NATO expansion or the difficult, contentious Russia-Ukraine relationship were either ignored or treated in a way that confirmed Western and Ukrainian virtue and maximum Russian villainy. Journalists portrayed a complex situation as a stark melodrama, with all blame put on one side. Indeed, experts and pundits who even suggested that NATO’s policies had contributed to the current tensions were quickly smeared as siding with Putin, willingly circulating Russian propaganda or disinformation, or even as being outright Russian agents. Some of the architects of the new wave of smears were the same individuals who used similar tactics in the lead up to the Iraq War. Max Boot, Jennifer Rubin, and David Frum, for example, were all prominent alumni of that earlier campaign to silence dissenters, and here again they were hard at work branding critics of Washington’s Russia policy as disloyal.

The Press Fumbles Again on Ukraine

Americans need to care more about what is going on in Ukraine because there are American law makers that are calling for American troops to take a more active part in the conflict in Ukraine.

Even Pay Pal is trying to silent independent journalism by trying to close the accounts of two independent investigative journalism sites, Consortium News and Mint Press.

What are they afraid of?

Do you truly want another prolonged war?

NO?

Then pay attention and get all the facts before blindly side with war.

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Will The Real Zelensky Please Stand Up

***Once again I need to state that I am by NO means in support of Vlad the Invader and his actions against Ukraine***

Most Americans are in awe of the bravery that the president of Ukraine has shown in the face of the Russian invasion….most because to the image that the MSM has presented to its daily consumer.

I am not one of those people for I think there is more that is not given to the public….what we see is only ‘spin’…….I recently tried to show the other side of the coin (so to speak)….

https://lobotero.com/2022/04/08/our-man-zelensky/
 
https://lobotero.com/2022/04/12/zelensky-part-2/
 
Believe what you are programmed to believe….but at least read this interview with a Ukrainian that knows the person…..the interview is posted on the Grey Zone site…..
A comedic actor who rose to the country’s highest office in 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was virtually unknown to the average American, except perhaps as a bit player in the Trump impeachment theater. But when Russia attacked Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Zelensky was suddenly transformed to an A-list celebrity in US media. American news consumers were bombarded with images of a man who appeared overcome by the tragic events, possibly in over his head, but ultimately sympathetic.  It didn’t take long for that image to evolve into the khaki-clad, tireless hero governing over a scrappy little democracy and single-handedly staving off the barbarians of autocracy from the east.
 
But beyond that carefully crafted Western media image is something much more complicated and less flattering. Zelensky was elected by 73 percent of the vote on a promise to pursue peace while the rest of his platform was vague. On the eve of the invasion, however, his approval rating had sunk to 31 percent due to the pursuit of deeply unpopular policies.
 
Ukrainian academic, Olga Baysha, has studied Zelensky’s rise to power and how he has wielded that power since becoming president. In the interview below, Baysha discusses Zelensky’s embrace of neoliberalism and increasing authoritarianism, how his actions contributed to the current war; his counterproductive and self-absorbed leadership throughout the war, the complex cultural and political views and identities of Ukrainians, the partnership between neoliberals and the radical right during and after Maidan, and whether a Russian takeover of the entire Donbass region might be less popular among the local population than it would have been in 2014.
 
There is always more to the story than the PR that corporate media gives the public and so it is with Zelensky……he may not be the savior of democracy that he is portrayed.
 
I have noticed that many do not want to hear any of this for it challenges their mindset and that would mean they would have to reassess their undying loyalty.
 
Yes I think the US is wasting needed funds on Ukraine….the same way we have done since the 1980s.
 
This country is slipping into a manure pit and our elected cowards are worried about some country half a world a way…..and the peasants cheer.
 
Turn The Page!
 
I Read, I Write, You Know
 
“lego ergo scribo”