In January 2008 The Sunday Times published the second report of its four-part investigative series concerning the U.S. government’s direct role in international terrorism networks and organized crime involving nuclear espionage: For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets . While the reports received mainstream media coverage internationally-Europe, Asia & Australia, and were...
FBI whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds was described as "the most gagged person in the history of the United States" by the American Civil Liberties Union. Was the Sunday Times pressured to drop its investigation into her revelations? A whistleblower has revealed extraordinary information on the U.S. government’s support for international terrorist networks and organised crime...
It's not surprising that many people are uncertain about the dangers of climate change. Much confusion has been created by groups with vested interests, who have successfully utilised sophisticated PR (public relations) techniques to influence public perceptions and opinion. In this article, I consider the link between tobacco industry PR and that of the fossil fuel sector. The story...
“These three stories—the anthrax evidence, the McCain/POW revelations, and the Sibel Edmonds charges—are the sort of major exposés that would surely be dominating the headlines of any country with a properly-functioning media. But almost no American has ever heard of them.” I encourage you to read this article b
In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing and while a massive police manhunt continued for the suspected perpetrator, 19 year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, NBC journalist David Gregory would say to American television viewers: "This is a new state of terror the country has to get used to." Given the breathlessly hyperbolic coverage provided by NBC, CNN and many other cable news...
Your information diet is an ethical choice of yours, so when you’re on the Huffington Post looking at say the Kardashians and you click on the Kardashians, understand that you are not only reading that article, but you’re also voting for that article. You’re telling an editor to produce more content like that at the expense of the stuff that you didn’t click on...
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear...” ~ H.P. Lovecraft Our interest for self-preservation needs no introduction or explanation. Without mankind’s propensity and efficiency for self-preservation, we would be yet one more fossil set for some future intelligent species to chip their shovels upon. Yet, like so many aspects of life, too much of a good...
For years the US and its intelligence services have championed the Chechen cause – legitimizing terrorism as righteous resistance. But after news that the two alleged Boston bombers were of Chechen origin, the story took on a new political dimension. How Boston has changed the language In the last 48 hours, an astounding change has occurred in the lexicon of the mainstream media...
Yesterday, the US House prepared for the debate on the privacy-invading "cybersecurity" bill called CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. The rules committee hearing was the last stop before the bill is voted on by the full House. In the hearing, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) was questioned about the core problems in the bill, like the broad immunity and new...
Dear Mark, I hope this letter reaches you, and finds you well. First of all, allow me to congratulate you on your well-recognized achievements. Not everyone creates a telecommunications platform that redefines the way in which we all connect. I became a big fan of Facebook after incorporating it to my transmedia project Beware of Images . The project is aimed at generating media literacy...
Reporters who witness the worst of human suffering and return to newsrooms angry see their compassion washed out or severely muted by the layers of editors who stand between the reporter and the reader. The creed of objectivity and balance, formulated at the beginning of the 19th century by newspaper owners to generate greater profits from advertisers, disarms and cripples the press.
His vital April 4, 1967 speech is a direct repudiation of the sophistry now used to defend US violence and aggression. he civil right achievements of Martin Luther King are quite justly the focus of the annual birthday commemoration of his legacy. But it is remarkable, as I've noted before on this holiday , how completely his vehement anti-war advocacy is ignored when commemorating...
The Federal Communications Commission is pushing a plan to gut its 30-year-old newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership ban . This proposal would allow one company to own a local paper, two TV stations and up to eight radio stations in a single market. Advocates of more media consolidation argue that allowing TV stations and newspapers to merge is critical to cutting costs and saving local...
The free flow of news and information, accessible to everyone, is vital to the success of democracy. And today in America, that flow is in doubt. Our newspapers, traditionally the most reliable source of civic information and investigative reporting, are laying off reporters and editors by the hundreds, canceling editions and often shutting down entirely. Broadcasters also are making...
A bold new threat to the economic status quo brings on a press blackout. Social pain, anger at ecological degradation and the inability of traditional politics to address deep economic failings has fueled an extraordinary amount of practical on-the-ground institutional experimentation and innovation by activists, economists and socially minded business leaders in communities around the...
We must remember that in time of war what is said on the enemy’s side of the front is always propaganda, and what is said on our side of the front is truth and righteousness, the cause of humanity and a crusade for peace. — Walter Lippmann Probably every conflict is fought on at least two grounds : the battlefield and the minds of the people via propaganda. The...
Y ou’ve seen the scenario before: some talented, young filmmaker releases his latest short film on Vimeo… and BOOM… practically overnight it goes viral. A few million views and a couple hundred thousand comments later, they garner industry attention, eventually cinching a movie deal with Hollywood. Welcome to the new American dream! Scratch that… the new global...
Tuesday, 20th November 1900 GMT European Parliament votes to protect WikiLeaks. In a landmark decision today the European Parliament initiated the drafting of legislation that would stop the arbitrary banking blockades against WikiLeaks and other organizations facing economic censorship. This is an important signal from the European lawmakers.
Every year Project Censored puts together a list of the top 25 stories censored and ignored by the mainstream media. The recently published Censored 2013 covers the period between 2011-2012. How many of these stories were you aware of? Even regular consumers of alternative, independent media may be surprised to learn about some of these stories, but by and large, turning off the TV and...
This made me do a double take. What about you? It's disconcerting that some of the biggest issues in 2011 and 2012, which happen to be race-related, are being covered primarily by white reporters. I want people to look at this and realize, wait a minute — there IS bias in journalism. The things that we all care and read about are being influenced by the perspectives of people who may...
Editors Note: A few decades ago, there were thousands of independent media outlets in the US. Today in America, six multi-national global media mega corporations run by six individuals control 96% of the content Americans see on TV and watch at the movies; read in books, magazines and newspapers, and hear on the radio. Time Warner VIACOM CBS Walt Disney News Corp General...
In the early morning hours Monday, Occupy Wall Street activists marked the first anniversary of the movement by protesting in the financial district. Hundreds gathered on Water Street and hundreds more in Zuccotti Park, the birth place of the movement, before marching through Lower Manhattan, occasionally pausing to occupy intersections and protest financial institutions like Chase and Bank of...
Global Research Editor’s Note The following text by Arash Norouzi first published by the Mossadegh Project and Global Research in January 2007 confirms that the alleged “Wiped Off the Map” statement by Iran’s president was never made. The rumor was fabricated by the American media with a view to discrediting Iran’s head of state and providing a...
With excellent independent media sites like Adbusters, Truth Out and Common Dreams providing progressive news and perspective in written form, Films For Action has dedicated itself to filling in the progressive video niche. "It's probably the most comprehensive collection of videos dedicated to social change online," says Tim Hjersted, co-founder and director for the project. "With the...
U.S. cable companies have become the subject of a wide-ranging antitrust probe launched in secret by the Department of Justice, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday . Pay TV companies like Comcast , Time Warner Cable and AT&T have been questioned by investigators who are looking into whether they’ve conspired or colluded to artificially limit options for online video...
One of the world's biggest environmental crimes has been more or less forgotten. This is part of our collective guilt as the world's ecosystem continues its accelerated collapse. But the new documentary film The Big Fix takes a detailed, daring look at what happened in the Gulf of Mexico with BP's Macondo offshore oil drilling rig. The story and facts that emerge are more than disturbing...
File-sharers, beware: By July 12, major US Internet service providers (ISPs) will voluntarily begin serving as copyright police for the entertainment industry, according to Cary Sherman, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The so-called “six-strikes” plan is said to be one of the most effective anti-piracy efforts ever established in the US...
from the let's-walk-through-the-reasons dept There's been plenty of talk (and a ton of posts here on Techdirt) discussing both SOPA (originally E-PARASITE) and PROTECT IP (aka PIPA), but it seemed like it would be useful to create a single, "definitive" post to highlight why both of these bills are extremely problematic and won't do much (if anything) to deal with the issues they're...
As I’ve written about before , America’s election season degrades mainstream political discourse even beyond its usual lowly state. The worst attributes of our political culture — obsession with trivialities, the dominance of horserace “reporting,” and mindless partisan loyalties — become more pronounced than ever. Meanwhile, the actually consequential acts...
AT&T Inc. is hanging up on its $39 billion bid to buy smaller wireless provider T-Mobile USA, nearly four months after the U.S. government raised concerns that the deal would raise prices, reduce innovation and give customers fewer choices. The long-expected announcement left AT&T grumbling about a shortage of airwaves to meet growing demand, while scrappy competitor T-Mobile remains...
One of the most entertaining yet unsurprising aspects of Occupy Wall St has been the response from traditional media. Whether intentionally playing dumb or genuinely clueless, the mainstream media has failed to inform the public and substantially address the key issues. But why did tens of thousands of people risk arrest all over the world to set up encampments and protest the status quo?...
Shifting Power from Corporate Interests Requires us to be Expand Our Media Power We have the power to be the media, to spread the word and tell vast networks of people the truth. Media is being democratized and we can speed that process by recognizing we are the media. When you come to Freedom Plaza in October one of your roles will be to be the media. On Tuesday, October 13 th the...
Higher Prices – With market power comes the ability to raise prices and do so in unspoken collusion with the other big players. For an example of that, you need only look at AT&T’s recent elimination of its $10 for 1000 texts per month plan, which left users with the choice of paying 30 cents a text or paying $20 for unlimited texts – a crappy choice given that the...
While the Rupert Murdoch scandal is justifiably front-page news, there is a much wider problem with the mainstream media. Purchasing Reporters Famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein says the CIA has already bought and paid for many successful journalists . A CIA operative allegedly told Washington Post editor Philip Graham ... in a conversation about the willingness of jou
Chris Hedges’ new TruthDig column, Huffington’s Plunder , raises a topic that seems to provoke a lot of uneasiness in the liberal blogosphere. It points a spotlight on the business model pioneered by one of the country’s most prominent progressive voices, Arianna Huffington. Huffington recently released a book entitled “Third World America: How Our Politicians Are...
Virtually every major newspaper account of the killing of Osama bin Laden consists of faithful copying of White House claims. That's not surprising: it's the White House which is in exclusive possession of the facts, but what's also not surprising is that many of the claims that were disseminated yesterday turned out to be utterly false. And no matter how many times this happens -- from...
“Change the Media, Change the World” was the theme at the National Conference for Media Reform in Boston last weekend. But if it didn’t sound like a self-help book from the bargain bin, we could have added “Change Yourself.” Because we all walked away a little changed, didn’t we? So much of the work we do to change the media happens online, or in our own...
The Daily Show - I Give Up - Pay Anything... Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes , Political Humor & Satire Blog ,
In Manufacturing Consent (1988; and updated in Herman,1996). Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky claim that because media is firmly imbedded in the market system, it reflects the class values and concerns of its owners and advertisers. According to Herman and Chomsky, the media maintains a corporate class bias through five systemic filters: concentrated private ownership; a strict bottom-line profit...
I was in New York City on Thursday night at the Brecht Forum to discuss with the photographer Eugene Richards his powerful new book “War Is Personal” when I was approached for an interview by a blogger for The Huffington Post. I had just finished speaking with another blogger who had recently graduated from UC Berkeley. These encounters, which are frequent at public events...
So, I was trying to get my friend to read a recent issue of Adbusters magazine. "You've got to read this!" I said. "There's an article about how the media today is owned by only a handful of corporations, and corporate consolidation is leading to fewer voices getting on the air and stifling the range of debate, which is stifling the health of our democracy. And...
Arianna Huffington has betrayed us, so let's huff and puff her house down. She built a blog-empire on the backs of thousands of citizen journalists. She exploited our idealism and let us labor under the illusion that that the Huffington Post was different, independent and leftist. Now she's cashed in and three thousand indie bloggers find themselves working for a megacorp. But the...
The purchase of the Huffington Post by AOL left many of the progressive writers and readers that made the site into a powerhouse looking for a new home. Adbusters magazine set out to unite those disaffected former supporters of Arianna Huffington's flagship site by suggesting they use social media to promote alternatives. "Socialite Arianna Huffington built a blog-empire on the backs of...
Lawrence, KS -- After 12 months in development, Films For Action has launched its new website - a head-to-toe redesign that lays the foundation for a vibrant community-powered news site dedicated to inspiring positive social change. At the heart of the new site is a constantly growing learning library of over 200 documentaries and 500 short films that can be watched free online, daily...
One of the most frequent criticisms leveled against the sustainable agriculture movement is that its proponents want to send farmers back to 19th-century hard labor, with hand weeding and harvesting. Here's an incredibly cool group of eco-minded "farmer-scientists" who aren't in the least afraid of technology -- and in fact believe in "creating industrial processes that are fully in harmony...
Today, the Federal Communications Commission blessed the merger of Comcast, the nation's largest cable and residential Internet provider, with NBC-Universal. The Justice Department immediately followed suit , removing the last obstacle to the unprecedented consolidation of media and Internet power in the hands of one company. (FCC press release here ) You should be afraid and mad
This is an audio podcast of clips relating to Wikileaks. Act 1: The campaign to ruin Julian Assange – The Progressive Song 1: And So It Goes – The Essential Billy Joel Act 2: Assange released from jail – The Bugle Song 2:
The moment the "net neutrality" debate began was the moment the net neutrality debate was lost. For once the fate of a network - its fairness, its rule set, its capacity for social or economic reformation - is in the hands of policymakers and the corporations funding them - that network loses its power to effect change. The mere fact that lawmakers and lobbyists now control the future of the...
Late Monday, a majority of the FCC's commissioners indicated that they're going to vote with Chairman Julius Genachowski for a toothless Net Neutrality rule. According to all reports, the rule, which will be voted on during tomorrow's FCC meeting, falls drastically short of earlier pledges by President Obama and the FCC Chairman to protect the free and open Internet. The rule is so...
“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” —Frederick Douglass Critics of Project Censored often declare that we are a left-leaning organization. This is an interesting claim...