Chinese ‘disinformation’ and US propaganda

By Joshua Cho

In Western media’s latest anti-China crusade, unsubstantiated allegations of a Chinese disinformation campaign – which the reports themselves admit have had little engagement on social media, and nonexistent impact offline – supposedly represent a very serious threat to the US.

Invented journalism: When a journalist covers herself in mud to ‘make it true’

Reality often goes beyond fiction with this German summer story.

Associated Press, imperialist media and CBC fakes photos from Cuba

Government supporters gathering at the Máximo Gómez monument in Havana on Sunday. Photograph: Eliana Aponte/Associated Press

By TONY SEED*

(July 13, updated July 16, 23, 27) – On July 12, 2021 the London Guardian newspaper published a sensational decontextualized article on riots in Cuba. Along with other “serious” newspapers on every continent throughout the world, it claimed that “thousands took to the streets in cities throughout the island, demonstrating against food shortages, high prices and communist rule.”

Coronavirus alarm blends Yellow Peril and Red Scare

Gothamist photo (1/31/20) of Asian Americans wearing surgical masks, illustrating a story about the absence of coronavirus (at that point) in New York City.

By JOSHUA CHO

As an Asian-American, I’m not surprised that there are numerous reports surfacing of racist and xenophobic responses arising in the US (and elsewhere) as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, where “coughing while Asian” is being compared to “driving while black.” In case there are any doubts that media coverage is being racialized, reports about new coronavirus updates in the US, particularly in areas like New York City, are using unrelated header images of East Asian people wearing face masks to drive the impression that Chinese people are unique carriers of disease, even when they aren’t Chinese.

US media ‘experts’ on Iran with undisclosed ties to the defence industry

Since US president Donald Trump ordered the drone attack that assassinated Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani and Abud Mahdi al-Muhandis, a leading member of the Iraqi armed forces and eight other officials, US and Canadian television news has been filled with commentary on the strike and its implications. An investigation by the Popular Information website reveals that numerous “experts” appearing on cable TV to opine on Iran have undisclosed financial ties to the biggest arms monopolies. They are deliberately paraded as neutral, independent, non-partisan and “third party experts” to confuse the people and put them out of action. Some are also featured by CBC. | JUDD LEGUM

This is significant because arms monopolies and other entities that do business with the Pentagon profit from war, the most profitable business of all. They sell the products that make war possible. If there is more fighting, they will sell more weapons. That’s why weapons manufacturers saw their stock prices spike after Gen. Soleimani was killed.

‘Media used my son for their purposes’: CNN’s Amanpour challenged to go talk to ‘Aleppo boy’

Omran Daqneesh’s photo became a symbol of the tragic state of children in Aleppo. The boy’s father reveals how the Syrian militants used his young son as a scripted tool in their propaganda fight against the Syrian government. I do not recall Amanpour making political hay out of or expressing any concern about civilians killed and/or injured by armed US involvement in Iraq and elsewhere.

CNN says Al-Qaeda are ‘heroes’

The Syrian rebels are terrorists and terrorists become ‘heroes’ when they serve U.S. interests | Gearóid Ó Colmáin*

We dot the I’s: Obama, CNN and political prisoners

By TONY SEED (Published March 21, slightly revised by the author on March 26) 

According to CNN, Cuban president Raul Castro “refused to answer the question,” when US president Barack Obama called on Jim Acosta, the Senior White House Correspondent for CNN, a Cuban-American, to ask the first question in a joint press conference with President Raúl Castro at the Palace of the Revolution in Havana on March 21. (After the presentations by the two heads of state in the joint press conference, the floor was opened to questions from the large number of international and Cuban journalists.) Acosta cynically asked if Cuba would release political prisoners.

President Castro immediately replied:

“Give me the list of political prisoners and I will release them immediately. Just mention a list. What political prisoners? Give me a name or names. After this meeting is over, you can give me a list of political prisoners. And if we have those political prisoners, they will be released before tonight ends.”

US electoral fraud: Trump cancels another rally in Florida

Anti-Trump rally drew over 10,000 protesters at the University of Illinois on March 11 | CodePink

News and Comment (Revised late March 15)

Donald Trump “postponed” a political campaign rally in Doral, Florida on Monday evening after nearly 3,000 people had registered to attend several Facebook events protesting the Republican front-runner.

Boston Globe: The media is misleading the public on Syria

The role of the monopoly media to disinform

Finally, an American journalist blasts the US media coverage of Syria. “Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press. Reporting about carnage in the ancient city of Aleppo is the latest reason why.” STEPHEN KINZER* details features of how the monopoly media falsifies and negates the reality of the forces in combat in Syria, prettifies terrorists as “moderates” and “freedom fighters,” and portrays a war on Syria as a religious, sectarian or “civil war.”

CNN punished journalist for fulfilling a core duty of journalism

By GLENN GRUNWALD

CNN yesterday suspended its global affairs correspondent, Elise Labott, for two weeks for the crime of posting a tweet critical of the House vote to ban Syrian refugees. Whether by compulsion or choice, she then groveled in apology. This is the original tweet along with her subsequent expression of repentance:

This all happened after The Washington Post‘s Erik Wemple complained that her original tweet showed “bias.” The claim that CNN journalists must be “objective” and are not permitted to express opinions is an absolute joke. CNN journalists constantly express opinions without being sanctioned.

CNN suspends reporter for sympathetic tweet about Syrian refugees

CNN journalist Elise Labott has been suspended by the network for two weeks for tweeting a message of disappointment on Thursday after US lawmakers passed a bill that would restrict the influx of Syrian refugees.

CNN International, Gulf Co-operation Council and the business of war

For four years, the US, Canada and NATO together with the monopoly media such as CNN have portrayed the foreign intervention in the Syrian Arab Republic as a “civil war” and championed foreign terrorists as “moderate rebels” – proxy forces that are harboured, trained, armed, and extensively funded by a coalition of NATO and members of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC)  within the borders of Turkey (NATO territory) and Jordan.

Whodunit: Argentina’s reconnaissance work against US and Israeli spy networks

By NIL NIKANDROV*

(Feb. 17) – Two recent high-profile suicides – one in France and another in Argentina – are very similar. A successful and well-liked French police chief by the name of Helric Fredou was found dead after launching an investigation into the terrorist attack on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo weekly. Official reports claim the officer shot himself in his office using his service weapon before he had completed his report on the high-profile terrorist attack in Paris. 

Why does CNN call Ukrainian troops ‘pro-American’?

Beijing, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) – On Monday, U.S. broadcaster CNN called Ukrainian troops “pro-American,” saying that the U.S. president is considering the possibility of supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine. The largest U.S. television news network called the troops of Ukraine “pro-American” because from the very beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, the United States has played a role in this process.

CNN journalist’s resignation and hasbara

Freedom of speech of the reactionary ruling classes. Veteran journalist leaves or is forced to leave CNN after nearly 34 years. The hidden role of Israeli agitprop | ALLISON DEGER*

Jim Clancy

(Jan. 20) – Veteran CNN journalist Jim Clancy’s resignation this week is one of the odder media fallouts from the Charlie Hebdo Paris attack. On January 7, Clancy got into a late night Twitter spat regarding the French satirical magazine with online adversaries. When he told them they were ganging up on him and practicing “hasbara,” the Hebrew word for “explaining” that describes pro-Israel advocacy often at the behest of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they lashed back as if the term were libelous. As it turns out, Clancy was not off base.

Graphic details. CNN’s imperialist geography (2)

According to CNN, Israel has also added Kobani to its occupation collection. Kobani (Arabic name is Ain-al-Arab) is the Kurdish community in northern Syria under siege of ISIS, ally of the Zionists in the war against the Syrian Arab Republic.

Information war: CNN’s Amanpour show edits out criticism by visiting RT host

Multi-millionaire diva gets comeuppance, resorts to insults when guest refuses to follow the script

RT (Nov. 26) – Last week, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour invited RT’s Anissa Naouai to discuss what the US channel called ‘a heated propaganda war’ by the Russian government. But it never showed viewers Naouai’s criticism of Amanpour’s own propaganda exercises.

Naouai, host of RT’s In The Now, was invited to speak along with Mikhail Kasyanov, a former Russian prime minister and a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin’s policies.

No signs of ‘Russian Invasion’ in Ukraine’s Novoazovsk, situation peaceful – CNN

RIA Novosti (Sept. 1) – The situation in Ukraine’s southeast border town of Novoazovsk is calm and there are no signs of Russian military forces, according to CNN.

For a town at the epicentre of what NATO and Kiev calls a direct military invasion on the part of Russia, “Novoazovsk could not feel more peaceful,” the CNN reported Saturday August 30.

Graphic details. CNN’s imperialist geography (1)

The highly educated and famous CNN keeps on astonishing viewers about Ukraine. On May 12, one day after the refendums in eastern Ukraine, CNN placed the city of Luhansk, capital of the new Luhansk republic, approximately in the place of Kiev, capital of Ukraine. CNN’s new political geography reflects the imperialist disinformation as to the cause of the anti-Kiev, anti-fascist resistance sweeping the region: CNN places the city of Donetsk, capital of Donetsk republic, a few hundred kilometres to the northeast from the real locale of the historic working class city. Other monopoly media are as ignorant in their arrogance, or worse. This must be really insulting to the people of Ukraine, when those who can’t even find you on a map think to teach you how you must live or lie about the situation in your country.

The mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Obama’s Asia Pivot

By TONY SEED

THE 227 passengers and 12 crew members aboard are still missing. The search continues for the aircraft, which took off from Kuala Lumpur on March 8. It is now in its fifth week, and the only credible information that may give clues to the whereabouts of the missing jumbo aircraft come from satellite images and pings from the floor of the Indian Ocean.

The images publicly cited have all come from Chinese, French and Thai satellites. At the time of writing, not one single image revealed to the public has emanated from a U.S. satellite. Yet all the data analysis has been conducted by one Pentagon-linked company. Why is this?

CNN: Zakaria’s fantastic, expert economic advice

To a startling degree, when you see discussions about the economic policies of other countries in the US press, you’re reading fantasy stories about imaginary lands where peoples are rewarded or punishment according to their adherence to the free market faith, writes Jim Naureckas*, FAIR. Whether it is Venezuela, Cuba or Iran you can read articles about how the economy is in shambles. Every year. In fact, the economy of any country that stands up to the US happens to be in shambles. 

(Jan. 14) – FAREED ZAKARIA presented what he called “another installment of ‘How to Ruin Your Economy in Five Easy Steps’” on his GPS show on CNN(1/12/14): “Last time, Venezuela ticked off all the boxes, but we found another country that is following the same sad path.”

That country was Argentina, which Zakaria criticized for following Venezuela’s lead in “attacking big business,” allowing “restrictions on global trade” and so forth – the basic neoliberal critique of developing economies. Zakaria ends with the moral:

CNN, CBC: Fake image of a young child – again

We dot the i’s and cross the t’s: No, four-year-old Marwan fleeing Syria was not “alone” in the desert. The modus operandi behind the pervasive hoaxes being disseminated by the monopoly media augmented by anti-social media to facilitate intervention and subversion of sovereign countries

AN IMAGE claimed by CNN journalists and rebroadcast on the state-owned CBC as well as CTV on February 17 to be of a 4-year-old Syrian child discovered alone near the Jordanian borders while his leg was cut and bandaged with plastic bags, is apparently part of a different image, where the family of the child are seen walking ahead of him and his leg is fine, euronews (and here), the London Guardian and the website Friends of Syria report. A CBC blog by John Bowman of cbcnews.ca also admitted later on Feb. 18 that “the fact that his family was just metres away was left behind.”

USA: The accelerating assault on journalism

Some prominent media figures applaud the criminalization of investigative reporting, something not confined to the USA. On November 30, 2010 the former chief of staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Thomas Flanagan, publicly called for the assassination of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on CBC TV’s Power and Politics. Most media in Canada passed over his call without comment. Yet, according to the US media watchdog group FAIR, “While whistleblowers have been the chief targets of the harsh crackdown on media challenges to official secrecy, journalists themselves are increasingly in the government’s sights.”

FAIR (Aug. 27) – U.S. soldier Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning’s 35-year sentence represents the harshest punishment issued to date for providing media with evidence of government wrongdoing (Forbes, 8/21/13). She is the first whistleblower to be convicted under the Espionage Act, ratifying the new reality that those who give the press information that the government wants to keep secret will henceforth be treated as spies.

US state-sponsored ‘news’: ‘I received orders to manipulate news to demonize Syria and Iran’

Ex-CNN reporter: I received orders to manipulate news to demonize Syria and Iran

• CNN and the business of state-sponsored TV news
• Why didn’t CNN international air its own ‘iRevolution’ documentary?

Amber Lyon on CNN, commenting on the March 2011 repression in Bahrain

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported from Prague on March 30 that ex-CNN on-air correspondent reporter Amber Lyon had revealed that “during her work for the channel she received orders to send false news and exclude some others which the US administration did not favour with the aim to create a public opinion in favour of launching an aggression on Iran and Syria.”

Subversion: U.S. government aims to form team of ‘journalists’ inside Cuba

FOLLOWING explosive revelations that the U.S. government bribed Miami “journalists” in 1999 to guarantee the unjust convictions of the five Cuban patriots who are completing 14 years of arbitrary and illegal punishment, it has launched a new operation. It is to be headed by an ex-CIA agent and is to employ a considerable number of “journalists” – in reality, undercover agents – in “major cities in Cuba, including Havana and Santiago de Cuba.” The dirty operation aims to publish articles and commentaries and produce a new storm of disinformation against the sovereign Caribbean island republic, writes Florida-based journalist and author TRACEY EATON in this exposé.

CNN and the business of state-sponsored TV news

The network seriously compromises journalism on the feudal Gulf states, footmen of Washington, by blurring the line between advertising and editorial. GLENN GREENWALD in the London Guardian

• Report: why didn’t CNNi air its own ‘iRevolution’ documentary?
• US state-sponsored ‘news’: ‘I received orders to manipulate news to demonize Syria and Iran’

CNN’s state-sponsored program on Kazakhstan. Photograph: via CNN

TODAY I reported on the refusal of CNN International (CNNi) to broadcast an award-winning documentary, “iRevolution”, that was produced in early 2011 as the Arab Spring engulfed the region and which was highly critical of the regime in Bahrain. The documentary, featuring CNN‘s on-air correspondent Amber Lyon, viscerally documented the brutality and violence the regime was using against its own citizens who were peacefully protesting for democracy. Commenting on why the documentary did not air on CNNi, CNN’s spokesman cited “purely editorial reasons”.

Why didn’t CNN international air its own ‘iRevolution’ documentary?

A former CNN correspondent defies threats from her former employer to speak out about self-censorship at the network

• CNN and the business of state-sponsored TV news
• US state-sponsored ‘news’: ‘I received orders to manipulate news to demonize Syria and Iran’

A Bahraini protester in Manama | Mohammed Al-Shaikh/AFP/Getty Images

IN LATE MARCH 2011, as the Arab Spring was spreading, CNN sent a four-person crew to Bahrain to produce a one-hour documentary on the use of internet technologies and social media by democracy activists in the region. Featuring on-air investigative correspondent Amber Lyon, the CNN team had a very eventful eight-day stay in that small, US-backed kingdom.

New revelations of CNN complicity with armed groups in Syria

DAMASCUS (March 23 (Prensa Latina) – THE national television of Cuba released on Friday, March 23rd, new evidence about the fabrication of alleged incidents as part of the media campaign against Syria orchestrated by Arab and Western satellite channels, mainly the US CNN service.

Cooked-up Syrian drama

SOME monopoly news channels have been recently caught carrying dubious footage from Syria. This has fuelled the debate over the role of this media to disinform and in legitimizing possible military intervention in the country. The continued calls in the Canadian media for an international intervention in Syria has been built on sensational reports such as these. Yet even some key Al Jazeera journalists have resigned over news manufactured and manipulated by the Qatari-owned network, the petro monarchy and Canadian “ally.”