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MSM, Still Living in Propaganda-ville
Consortium News ^ | 06 July 2017 | Robert Parry

Posted on 07/09/2017 8:10:45 AM PDT by Lorianne

As much as the U.S. mainstream media wants people to believe that it is the Guardian of Truth, it is actually lost in a wilderness of propaganda and falsehoods, a dangerous land of delusion that is putting the future of humankind at risk as tension escalate with nuclear-armed Russia.

This media problem has grown over recent decades as lucrative careerism has replaced responsible professionalism. Pack journalism has always been a threat to quality reporting but now it has evolved into a self-sustaining media lifestyle in which the old motto, “there’s safety in numbers,” is borne out by the fact that being horrendously wrong, such as on Iraq’s WMD, leads to almost no accountability because so many important colleagues were wrong as well.

Similarly, there has been no accountability after many mainstream journalists and commentators falsely stated as flat-fact that “all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies” concurred that Russia did “meddle” in last November’s U.S. election.

For months, this claim has been the go-to put-down whenever anyone questions the groupthink of Russian venality perverting American democracy. Even the esteemed “Politifact” deemed the assertion “true.” But it was never true.

It was at best a needled distortion of a claim by President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper when he issued a statement last Oct. 7 alleging Russian meddling. Because Clapper was the chief of the U.S. Intelligence Community, his opinion morphed into a claim that it represented the consensus of all 17 intelligence agencies, a dishonest twist that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton began touting.

However, for people who understand how the U.S. Intelligence Community works, the claim of a 17-agencies consensus has a specific meaning, some form of a National Intelligence Estimate (or NIE) that seeks out judgments and dissents from the various agencies.

But there was no NIE regarding alleged Russian meddling and there apparently wasn’t even a formal assessment from a subset of the agencies at the time of Clapper’s statement. President Obama did not order a publishable assessment until December – after the election – and it was not completed until Jan. 6, when a report from Clapper’s office presented the opinions of analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency – three agencies (or four if you count the DNI’s office), not 17.

Lacking Hard Evidence

The report also contained no hard evidence of a Russian “hack” and amounted to a one-sided circumstantial case at best. However, by then, the U.S. mainstream media had embraced the “all-17-intelligence-agencies” refrain and anyone who disagreed, including President Trump, was treated as delusional. The argument went: “How can anyone question what all 17 intelligence agencies have confirmed as true?”

SNIP (there is more with embedded links, photos)


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government
KEYWORDS: media

1 posted on 07/09/2017 8:10:45 AM PDT by Lorianne
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To: Lorianne

This is still a center-right country, but 95%+ of the media are far left socialists. They paint for us a picture of perception, which is generally not reality. They are propagandists.


2 posted on 07/09/2017 8:25:50 AM PDT by umgud
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To: Lorianne

The global socialist MSM (because this BS isn’t limited to just the US) is getting old, fast. With every leftist propaganda puff piece and coordinated attack on anyone who questions the global leftist socialist narrative, the gl9bal MSM becomes just that much more irrelevant.

When DNC/CNN hacks attack Poland solely because they’re not toeing the EU/Austrian/Brussels/fourth reich solution, you know for certain that the MSM is just a tool and weapon created to crush all dissent.

Goebbels himself couldn’t imagined pulling off a propaganda coup of this magnitude.


3 posted on 07/09/2017 8:28:59 AM PDT by factoryrat (We are the producers, the creators. Grow it, mine it, build it. MAGA!)
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To: Lorianne

Group-think is well-known phenomenon.

The herd mentality among liberal journalists is fascinating to watch.


4 posted on 07/09/2017 8:41:49 AM PDT by goldstategop ((In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever))
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To: Lorianne

If you pay for cable tv, you are funding the crap sandwich the Left Media Cartel feeds us every day.

Even if you do not watch them, they get paid if you send the cable company a check.

CNN’s cable subscriber fees (paid by you through the cable company) are as much or more than their advertising revenue.

They get paid even if you do not turn on your tv.


5 posted on 07/09/2017 9:24:57 AM PDT by joshua c (To disrupt the system, we must disrupt our lives)
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To: joshua c

True.
I haven’t had cable tv in over 10 years.
I find I don’t miss it much.

I do wish I could have things like the history channel, HGTV and cooking shows. But I do alright with streaming channels and youtube.

If you’re a sports fan you’re really hooked.


6 posted on 07/09/2017 9:56:39 AM PDT by Lorianne
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