A spokesperson for Kansas City’s KCXL defended its former Radio Sputnik programming as “produced in Washington, DC, by American journalists who jumped at the chance to not be told what to report on by big media and big corporations” (Desk, 10/15/24).
Russian state radio network Radio Sputnik is off the air in the two markets on which it aired in the United States, and the cause of the closure is reportedly US government sanctions.
The Desk (10/15/24), quoting “one source familiar with the decision to wind down the network,” said “it was directly influenced by the US State Department’s imposition of new sanctions on Russia-backed broadcast outlets last month.”
“While Sputnik was not specifically named by the State Department,” the Desk reported, the sanctions did hit Sputnik‘s parent company, a Russian government media agency called Rossiya Segodnya. This “made it difficult to continue leasing time on Washington and Kansas City radio stations where its programming was heard.”
The State Department (9/13/24) accused Rossiya Segodnya of carrying out “covert influence activities”; earlier (9/4/24), it had named Sputnik itself as well as Rossiya Segodnya as “foreign missions.” Significantly, the executive order under which Rossiya Segodnya was sanctioned extends penalties to the property of anyone who “acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly…any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.”
‘Years of criticism’
When Moscow does it, it’s “propaganda”; when Washington does it, it’s the Voice of America (10/16/24).
US government broadcaster Voice of America (10/16/24) said Sputnik‘s departure comes “after years of criticism that its local [Washington] radio station, WZHF, carries antisemitic content and false information about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
The VoA did not offer any evidence of its claims of antisemitism, other than saying Jack Bergman, a Republican congressman from Michigan, “cited a steady stream of antisemitic tropes.” (Critical profiles of Sputnik‘s US programming have not previously charged it with antisemitism–Washington Post, 3/7/22; New York Post, 3/28/22.)
Sputnik’s departure from US airwaves is sudden but not unexpected. Communications lawyer Arthur Belendiuk, who has represented the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, has been trying to shut down Sputnik via the Federal Communications Commission since February (Radio and Television Business Report, 2/1/24).
Belendiuk maintains that the network “is in violation of commission rules for broadcasting ‘paid Russian state propaganda’” (Radio and Television Business Report, 10/16/24). He told FAIR that while he understood Sputnik had freedom of speech, he also had a “freedom to petition my government.” Bergman, the Republican congressmember, requested that the FCC take action against Sputnik (Inside Radio, 1/5/24).
The pressure has been building against the radio network for some time. VoA reported that the National Association of Broadcasters had issued a statement in 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine calling on “broadcasters to cease carrying any state-sponsored programming with ties to the Russian government or its agents.”
The Washington Post (3/7/22) also noted:
In 2017, three Democratic members of Congress sought an investigation into why it was still on the air despite evidence that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election. The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission at the time, Ajit Pai, declined to take action, saying the First Amendment would bar his agency “from interfering with a broadcast licensee’s choice of programming, even if that programming may be objectionable to many listeners.”
Chilling effect on speech
In 2020, the New York Times (2/13/20) called the arrival of Radio Sputnik in Kansas City “an unabashed exploitation of American values and openness.” Those loopholes have subsequently been closed.
I have been interviewed several times on Sputnik programs about my articles here at FAIR (e.g. By Any Means Necessary, 4/26/23, 5/27/23, 9/27/23). I have objected to much of the network’s coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which its website still calls a “special operation,” as if it’s gallbladder surgery. But I am open to talking as a source to many forms of media.
Sanctions that scare broadcasters against carrying Sputnik do carry a chilling effect on speech; if programmers know that a certain kind of content could open them up to government punishment, most are going to steer well clear of that content.
The feds have made it clear that their punishments are serious. In 2009, New York City small-business owner Javed Iqbal “was sentenced…to nearly six years in prison for assisting terrorists by providing satellite television services to Hezbollah’s television station, Al Manar” (New York Times, 4/23/09). This is an outlet that Middle East reporters constantly monitor, as they do with lots of other Middle East media.
The New York Times (2/13/20) called Sputnik “Russian agitprop,” carrying the message that “that America is damaged goods.” The Kansas City Star editorial board (3/4/22) said that listeners to KCXL, which carried Sputnik programming, were “bombarded with pro-Putin talk” thanks to Sputnik. The paper wondered why such programming was airing in the area. “Money talks,” the board said. “Or maybe we should say rubles.”
These critiques are hard to argue with, as you’d be hard-pressed to find investigations of the Russian government or its business elite in such media. Government broadcasters, whether it’s VoA or Sputnik, are not meant to be fair and balanced newsrooms, but vehicles to convey official thinking about the news to the rest of the world.
But Ted Rall, the cartoonist and political commentator who co-hosted the Sputnik show Final Countdown, challenged the idea that Sputnik’s content was government-managed. “We were no one’s dupes,” he wrote in an email to FAIR explaining the end of the network’s airing in the US:
I have worked in print and broadcast journalism for most of my life in a variety of roles at a wide variety of outlets, and I cannot recall an organization that gave me as much freedom to say whatever I felt like about any topic whatsoever.
He said that his show offered “an incredibly interesting, intelligent roster of political analysts,” which he believed were on par with “the finest journalists at NPR, the major broadcast networks or anywhere else.”
‘Growing wave of threats’
The president of the US equivalent of Radio Sputnik said that its operations being shut down in Russia “shows that Moscow considers independent reporting to be ‘an existential threat'” (RFE/RL, (2/20/24). So what does the shutting down of Sputnik show?
Belendiuk, for his part, called Sputnik’s content “divisive.” That’s a term that could be applied to lots of US radio content, like right-wing talk shows and religious broadcasting that consigns nonbelievers to Hell. The FCC’s Fairness Doctrine has been gone for a while (Extra!, 1–2/05; Washington Post, 2/4/21). At FAIR,we have long documented that US corporate media serve a propaganda function for the US government, much of it false or deceptive.
But when official enemy states treat US-owned outlets the way the US is treating Russia’s, that’s considered an assault on a free press. When the US’s anti-Russia broadcaster, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (2/20/24), was put on a government watch list that “effectively bans RFE/RL from working in Russia and exposes anyone who cooperates with the outlet to potential prosecution,” the outlet reported that its president, Stephen Capus, responded that “the move shows that Moscow considers independent reporting to be ‘an existential threat.'”
And when Russia barred a VoA reporter from entering the country, the CEO of the government agency that runs both VoA and RFE/RL, Amanda Bennett, told VoA (3/14/24):
The Russian government’s decision to ban VoA national security correspondent Jeff Seldin from its country echoes a growing wave of threats to press freedom by authoritarian regimes.
That’s heavy stuff, but ultimately the US is doing the same thing. In the case of Sputnik, sanctions seemed to have crushed the network. RT America fell without overt government pressure, as it shut down its operations after “DirecTV, the largest US satellite TV operator, stopped carrying RT America…a decision based on Russia’s attack on Ukraine” (CNBC, 3/3/22).
And the US State Department (1/20/22) said:
RT and Sputnik’s role as disinformation and propaganda outlets is most obvious when they report on issues of political importance to the Kremlin. A prevalent example is Russia’s use of RT and Sputnik to attempt to change public opinions about Ukraine in Europe, the United States, and as far away as Latin America. When factual reporting on major foreign policy priorities is not favorable, Russia uses state-funded international media outlets to inject pro-Kremlin disinformation and propaganda into the information environment.
Harsh, but again, this is what state broadcasters have been doing for decades, and if we as Americans dislike American outlets being blocked abroad, then we are, at this point, getting a taste of our own medicine.
‘Begin with the least popular victim’
Reporters Without Borders dropped the US’s press freedom ranking in 2024, “thanks in part to consolidation that has gutted local news and forced corporations to prioritize profits over public service” (Axios, 5/7/24).
Actions like the moves against Sputnik are troubling, and not just as another sign of a roiling new Cold War. While the US prides itself on being a model of free expression, journalists here have been concerned for some time now about the nation’s decline in press freedom (Axios, 5/7/24; FAIR.org, 3/16/21).
“In this situation, journalists should be absolutely terrified that the US government will come after them next,” Rall said. “President Biden unilaterally killed a media outlet with the stroke of a pen. Yes, it’s a foreign outlet, but the First Amendment is supposed to protect those.”
For FAIR, the action against Sputnik seems no less dangerous than local government attempts to silence even small domestic outlets like the Marion County Record (FAIR.org, 8/14/23) and the Asheville Blade (FAIR.org, 6/8/23). For example, the New York Times (10/21/24) recently fretted that former President Donald Trump’s statement that “CBS should lose its license” was a sign that if he is elected, he would pressure the FCC to revoke licenses of major network affiliate stations. The recent news about Sputnik makes that idea far more possible.
Rall added that he didn’t believe that the US government would stop after taking action against Russian outlets.
“Any effort at censorship is going to begin with the least popular victim and then creep and spread after that,” he said.
... learns the first-hand what Kursk adventure means for NATO. Radio Liberty human herpes, aka "journos", have been taking interview of VSU but something went wrong.
(Video at link.)
Now, I am all for freedom of press and journalism, when it is responsible, the problem here is that Radio Liberty is not journalism as is not most of MSM in the West. They are propaganda outlets, with Radio Liberty in particular being a front for CIA. So, are they "journalists"? No, average journo of any MSM is a whore, sometimes a whore as an asset of intel services. So, RL boys and girls wanted to see real war--they got it. What happens at Kursk is the death of 14 brigades of VSU, together with a truck-load of all kinds of "volunteers". There is a group of Latin American (Colombian et al) "fighters" pinned down in Kursk cauldron and they beg for medevac and withdrawal--not happening, they all will die now. The atrocities committed by all kinds of "volunteers" against Russian civilians are that of SS level atrocities. This is how NATO fights... Not a single bitch from NYT, WSJ or Financial Times will report that--because they are participants and enablers of this. Hence--they are war criminals. All of them.
Cringeworthy Words in the Battle of Ideas
Posted by Greg Godels | Oct 20, 2024
If you believe, as I do, that the war of ideas is a critical front in political struggle, then clarity and logic become a necessity in that war. Indeed, the war of ideas can often become a war of words or phrases. When we allow or accept phrases like “the axis of evil” or words like “deplorables” to uncritically enter popular discourse, we have lost a skirmish in the ideological struggle.
This project is not the same as the language policing so popular with liberals. It is not an excuse for shaming, embarrassing, or demeaning people because they are ignorant or dismissive of liberal etiquette.
Instead, it’s a search for focus and rigor, an attempt to sharpen our tools in the war of ideas.
Therefore, it’s time to call out words or expressions that mislead, distort, or poison our discourse. Below, I nominate several candidates for retirement, restraint, or caution.
●Terrorism: Those holding power have persistently labeled their weaker opponents who rise up as “terrorists”. Virtually every anti-colonial movement in the post-war period has been called “terrorist”, regardless of the tactics employed in their struggle or whether those tactics were defensive or offensive. From the Indian National Congress to the Mau Mau movement, to the Palestine Liberation Organization, to the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, to the African National Congress, oppressors have denounced the oppressed as terrorists. The term lost any even minimal credence with the US government’s blatant and blatantly inconsistent use as a slander against socialist Cuba. Retirement of the term is obligatory.
●Middle Class: There is no middle class except in the clouded minds of those who dispute that the US and other advanced capitalist societies are class societies. Of course there is a statistical middle when incomes and wealth are divided into three, five, seven, or more parts. But those divisions are arbitrary and virtually meaningless. We can speak loosely of a middle stratum, provided we understand that there is no significant social boundary with the strata on either side. “Middle” itself identifies no useful socio-economic category.
Of course there are classes and significant strata identifiable by socio-economic criteria. One such criterion that has stood the test of time is the Marxist class distinction between those who own and control the wealth-producing assets and those who must secure employment from them. This remains a clear and rigorous divide with vast social, political, and economic consequences.
When politicians and labor leaders refer to the “middle class”, we can be sure that they have no intention of challenging real, existing class society and its inevitable inequality, oppression, and destruction.
●Authoritarianism: When the Soviet Union fell, capitalist ruling classes reserved the shop-worn Cold War term “totalitarianism” for People’s China and the remaining countries ruled by Communist Parties. Yet there were many countries that structurally embraced the institutions of bourgeois democracy– regular elections, representative bodies, legal institutions, and constitutions–though earning the ire of the Euro-American ruling classes and their media and academic lapdogs. A new term was appropriated to condemn the dissenters for allegedly abusing, corrupting, or influencing those institutions: authoritarianism.
Countries like Russia, Venezuela, or Iran– while sharing look-alike institutions with the “liberal” democracies– are condemned as authoritarian, even though their institutions function similarly, or sometimes better, than their accusing critics. US critics depicting other countries as authoritarian are particularly hypocritical, coming from a country where political outcomes are determined by money or power to a greater extent than any other place on the planet. International polling (here and here) consistently shows that the people in supposedly authoritarian-ruled countries have greater trust in their governments than their Euro-American counterparts, a finding that surely sends the word “authoritarianism” to the historical dustbin.
●Fascism: The word “fascism” has a legitimate use to refer to a specific historical period, its essential features, and the common conditions that generate its arrival. Its twentieth century rise in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution, from the volatility in the wake of a global war, and coincident with severe economic instability is no mere accident, but vital to our understanding. Just as the conditions of its development were unprecedented, fascism was unprecedented, generated by a profound challenge to the capitalist order. Fascism was a desperate reaction to a powerful, emergent revolutionary working class movement, growing political illegitimacy, and economic collapse. The word’s rigorous use requires that these conditions be met.
Instead, the word has come to be used by unprincipled political operatives in the way that the charge of Communism has been used so often by unscrupulous redbaiters, trading on emotions. Bereft of a telling argument for a policy or strategy, philistines fall back on fascist-baiting, to paint their opponents with an association with Blackshirts, Stormtroopers, and the Gestapo. Weaponizing “fascism” distracts from revealing the actual obstacles to change and devising real answers to those obstacles.
●Neoliberalism: The era– beginning in the 1970s– identified with policies first associated with Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US– has often been called “neoliberalism”. There is some logic to labeling the period accordingly, drawing attention to its similarity to an earlier period of laissez faire capitalism before the Keynesian revolution and before intensified government oversight of the capitalist economy. Academic writers David Harvey and Gary Gerstle have understood the term in a more precise way as an effort to “restore and consolidate class power”, in Harvey’s words.
But “neoliberalism” has come to connote a rightwing-imposed deviation from the benign, social democratic, social safety net regime of the heralded thirty glorious post-war years. With this interpretation, capitalism with a humane, happy face was interrupted by a far right counter-revolution, leading to massive deregulation, privatization, commodification, market fetishism, and rabid individualism.
Omitted from this tale is the harsh and telling fact that the post-war social democratic consensus was rapidly collapsing before intensified global competition, pressure on profits, inflation mutating into stagflation, and unemployment. That deviation from classical economic liberalism left its own scars on working people. The crisis of the New Deal model– widely followed internationally– opened the door to options, quickly filled by the far right zealots of market fundamentalism.
Neoliberalism, understood as the disease and not a symptom, deflects attention from diagnosing the real disease: capitalism.
●Deep State: The idea that there is a highly visible, superficial state that is widely believed to be the governing body, but merely a facade for a far deeper, secret apparatus, is an attractive alternative to the official, widely circulated myths of popular sovereignty. From various perspectives that apparatus is the CIA, Freemasons, followers of Lyndon Larouche, George Soros, or zombies.
And therein lies the problem: the deep state is whatever the latest schemer, plotter, or crackpot says it is. The vague idea of a wizard (of Oz?) pulling strings behind the scenes is the genesis of conspiracy theories, and should be seen as such.
There is a far more robust, time-tested, and scientific concept to describe the bogus high school civics class picture of transparent, democratic, and representative governance uniquely practiced by the advanced capitalist countries. That well-founded concept is the notion of a ruling class, developed by– but not exclusive to– Marxists. A ruling class has both shallow and deep features– overt and covert aspects– that work together to maintain class rule. While elements of the ruling class may differ on how best to guarantee the interests of the elites– typically the employer class– they all agree that they will promote and protect those interests.
Where the so-called “deep state” conjures a picture of puppeteers hidden in the shadows manipulating and distorting a benign government structure, the ruling class concept offers a robust and rational picture of the existing asymmetry of power and wealth generating a governing body that operates to preserve and protect that asymmetry. Absent a countervailing force organized to wrest the power away, one would expect no less from a social order constructed on inequality of wealth and income.
It is not plots, conspiracies, or intrigues that shape how we are ruled, but the social composition of our states. “Deep State” leads us away from that understanding.
Microaggressions and Safe Spaces: The “social justice” industry– academics, NGOs, non-profits, and consultants– creates its own language of social advancement. Certainly many engaged in the industry are well meant, but also transactional. They believe that their services are best commodified and paid for with promotions, donations, grants, and direct compensation. Accordingly, they have an interest in creating new justice-rendering commodities, new social justice services. Microaggressions and Safe Spaces are the basis for such new commodities.
In a just society, all spaces should be safe. Short of a commitment to making all public spaces safe, designating certain spaces as safe is necessarily supporting privilege for those with access to that space, whether determined by lot, merit, or by special characteristics. Safety, like health, is not something merited by a specific time, place, or group. Safe spaces invokes the logic of a gated community.
Microaggressions become relevant in a world without war, poverty, genocide, and exploitation. Until those gross aggressions are gone, microaggressions– the bruising of individual sentiments– remain matters of etiquette. Hurt feelings, slights, and discomforting words or body language belong in the realm of interpersonal misfortunes and not in the realm of social injustice.
The “social justice” industry fails us because it is caught between sponsors, donors, and administrators heavily invested in the existing order and the radical needs of the victims of that order. Too often they offer the victims empty or useless words as salve for deep wounds.
Again, the point sought here is not to shame, accuse, or denigrate, but to sharpen language to better advance the struggle for social justice, to win the battle of ideas. Those who oppose social change benefit when words are chosen for their emotive power, when they subtly reflect class bias, or when they distort a real insight.
First thing, we replace 'terrorists' with 'counter-terrorists' when referring to the Axis of Resistance.
******
U.S. Election AI Deepfake and American media Deepfakes or political deep fake artificial intelligence disinformation as a fake American candidate concept as false news cyber threat to deceptively influence voters and voting.
U.S. is spending $28 billion on Sinophobic propaganda to colonise your brain
Originally published: Pearls and Irritations on October 22, 2024 by Eugene Doyle (more by Pearls and Irritations) (Posted Oct 23, 2024)
Whoever owns the narrative owns the world—and things just got a lot tougher for those of us opposed to the metastasising brain cancer known as U.S. influence campaigns—or “perception management”.
In a staggering increase in funding for propaganda and covert action the U.S. House has passed the Countering the PRC (People’s Republic of China) Malign Influence Fund, kicking in an extra $1.6 billion. How they spend this and other influence funds will largely be a secret but, rest assured, your neural pathways are in their crosshairs. Politicians, generals, journalists, media outlets, influencers and all sorts of organisations will be bought and owned in an expanded effort to get you to accept the U.S. narrative on China, Israel, Palestine, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, Syria and anything else they deem as necessary.
U.S. disinformation/perception management campaigns are enormously important—they help convince millions of older white people in the Western world (they have pretty much lost everyone else) that the U.S. has the right to assassinate political leaders, kill millions of non-white people, especially women and children, and generally justify the unjustifiable: Israelis raping shackled prisoners or incinerating hospitals and tent cities is ok, the U.S. didn’t realise what all those bombs would be used for, it’s unfortunate but unavoidable that Israelis get to steal and steal Palestinian land, and so forth. Kneecapping Iran, trying to knock Russia out of the ranks of the great powers, ending free trade and weaponising the global economy to stop the rise of Chinese tech—these all require acquiescence from Western voters. Welcome to the US’s desperate attempt to maintain global cultural hegemony.
The countering China malign influence bill
After a decisive 351-36 vote the U.S. Countering PRC Malign Influence bill will deliver an extra USD $1.6 billion to the info warriors between now and 2027. The spend is new money, in addition to the hundreds of millions being spent on the National Endowment for Democracy, 1st Special Forces Command, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, Office for Cuba Broadcasting, and all manner of think tanks, NGOs, and client universities like Stanford. The billionaire and Western state media kick in their services largely for free. Then there are the major agencies. According to the Federation of American Scientists the combined intelligence budget of the USA exceeds $28 billion, much of it housed within the U.S. $1 trillion defence budget and lavished on agencies like the NSA, CIA, Defence Intelligence Agency, and National Reconnaissance Office that specialises in signals intelligence (spying). They run Ops—largely covert activities designed to destabilise governments, promote colour revolutions, own journalists, discredit, kill or deplatform opponents and entrench U.S. ideological hegemony. One example: the NSA has 20,000 civilian staff, 20,000 military staff and a vast network of contractors. Its budget runs into billions and it is a key cog in what Professor Henry Farrell of Johns Hopkins University calls America’s Underground Empire.
Marcus Stanley, a Director at Responsible Statecraft, a Washington-based think tank, says the Countering the PRC Malign Influence Fund will represent a significant increase in international influence operations:
That’s a massive spend–about twice, for example, the annual operating expenditure of CNN.
Imagine that—more than CNN, more than the BBC World Service—a sum of money that dwarfs the already gigantic amount of money the U.S. spends via its principal coordinating agency for propaganda, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, with an annual budget of around $100 million. U.S. troll farms, think tanks, intimidation campaigns, muscling major platforms to ban or silence critical voices—it’s all happening right now and will get far worse in the near future.
The scale of what we are up against is vast—but the stakes couldn’t be higher. Our media in large measure has excluded the majority of analysts, politicians, researchers and independent thinkers who challenge the dominant narrative on the issues that will determine our species’ future. Thirty million people have downloaded just one of Professor John Mearsheimer’s lectures—“Why Ukraine is the West’s fault”; he is undoubtedly one of the world’s top geopolitical thinkers and public intellectuals but, like Noam Chomsky in an earlier generation, has been barred from the major channels.
In the past month Professor Glenn Diesen, another top geopolitical thinker, an expert on the emerging Eurasian world order, and a very decent human being, was one of several commentators banned for “hate speech” on Youtube. It was so ludicrous that, after pressure from people like Professor Jeffrey Sachs, his and a number of other channels were reinstated without explanation or apology.
Purging voices is now standard operating procedure in the West. Julian Assange may be free but he paid a tremendous price. Others got the message and are suitably compliant. As Edward Snowden said: “When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals.” Welcome to our world.
U.S. information/disinformation also almost certainly dwarfs the combined spend on influence campaigns of all other countries combined—and yet you’re told to fear Chinese disinformation, look under your mattress every night for Russian influencers, and so on. I want to hear more Chinese commentators, Russian commentators, Yemeni, Turkish, Malaysian, Indonesian, Georgian, Libyan, Nigerien, you name it. Their opinions matter.
Our media environment is so dystopian we find it perfectly normal that when Russia, Iran, Palestine or many countries are discussed, the MSM turn to Americans, Israelis, British or other Western Europeans to explain to us what these excluded Others think. We virtually never get to hear extended interviews with any of the West’s strategic competitors or victims, and our populations are so mentally enslaved it doesn’t come across to them as distinctly weird.
Some commie bastard, I think Karl Marx himself, said the dominant ideas in society are those of the ruling class. The Americans know only too well that whoever owns the narrative owns the world. That’s Cultural Hegemony 101. If they lose control of the narrative—for example, if the majority of the passive populations of the West wake up and realise they and their governments really are party to genocide, that a new world is starting to take shape that will drive the demi-gods of the West back into the ranks of humanity, then ordinary people may actually start to challenge why, for example, infrastructure in the American homeland is falling apart but the military industrial complex has unlimited funds to blow other people’s infrastructure apart.
What is at stake is epochal in its scale and implications for future generations. In the midst of a genocide, on the edge of wars that could wreck the global economy, we are also experiencing an increasingly ruthless war being waged to eliminate or silence dissent. All of this means we have to build a better media environment that will challenge the dominant narrative; we have to find the courage within ourselves to oppose the terrible trajectory the Western elites have committed us to.
The emerging media world outside the mainstream needs support to survive, thrive and reach more people. Pearls & Irritations in Australia, Counterpunch in the U.S., Jadaliyya, Neutrality Studies, Zeteo, Palestine Chronicle, Judging Freedom, Breaking Points, Drop Site, DDN, Dialogue Works, Asia Pacific Report, the Duran, Rachel Blevins, Grayzone, Middle East Monitor, Novara Media, Deep Dive with Col. Danny Davis, Electronic Intifada, and Democracy Now—these are sources of intellectual nourishment and serious news and analysis. My personal heroes are people like John Menadue, Pascal Lottaz, Ambassador Chas Freeman, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, Mouin Rabbani, Hanan Ashrawi, John Whitbeck, every Palestinian journalist in Gaza, Shir Hever, Norman Finkelstein, Seyed Mohammad Marandi, Owen Jones, John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris, Katie Halper, Aaron Mate, former PMs Helen Clark and Paul Keating … and more than I can mention here. I don’t have to agree with every position they take but I know my intellectual life has been significantly enlightened by them—and I’m deeply grateful for the work they do for us all.
If we want a better, fairer world to emerge where all people are treated as humans worthy of dignity we all need to do our part by broadening our own intellectual lives and helping more of our friends and acquaintances to look beyond the increasingly tightly curated world of the mainstream media. That’s worth something even $28 billion can’t buy.
Looking at NPR‘s sources (e.g., FAIR.org, 9/18/18) consistently finds a bias not to the left, but to the center and right.
The notion that liberal is 'left' is an artifact of conservative Republican politics dating to the FDR administration but proving serviceable to them to this day. 'Liberal' is the center of capitalist politics, with the progressive/social democrats being the relative left in a capitalist society. Npr has always been liberal, which in practical terms don't mean much to the working class.
The genuine left demands an end to capitalism by whatever means possible. The same should be said of serious environmentalists.
That is how the ruling class has set the boundaries of civil discourse.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Non-Endorsements Another Sign of Our Billionaire-Dominated Politics
Ari Paul
Guardian (9/23/16): “The lack of transparency around Soon-Shiong’s reasons for not allowing his paper to make a presidential endorsement has left journalists in the Los Angeles Times’ newsroom frustrated and confused.”[/quote]
The LA Times was widely expected to support the Democrat, Vice President Kamala Harris, a Southern California resident and former senator from the state. The paper’s editorial board enthusiastically supported Joe Biden in 2020 (9/10/20) and Hillary Clinton four years before that (9/23/16).
According to news reports, the paper had been preparing an endorsement until Soon-Shiong reached across the wall that is supposed to separate the business and editorial wings of a newspaper. He tried to rationalize his decision, according to the Guardian:
“I think my fear is, if we chose either one, that it would just add to the division,” Soon-Shiong told Spectrum News, noting he was a “registered independent.”
On Wednesday, Soon-Shiong tweeted that he had asked the editorial board to instead publish a list of positive and negative attributes about both of the presidential candidates, but that the board had refused.
Soon-Shiong said that the dangers of divisiveness in American politics was highlighted by the responses to his tweet about his decision not to endorse, saying the feed had “gone a little crazy when we just said, ‘You decide.’”
And the LA Times is not alone. The Jeff Bezos–owned Washington Post will also issue no presidential endorsement, for the first time since 1980 (NPR, 10/25/24). Former editor-in-chief Martin Baron called the move “cowardice,” telling NPR:
Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners). History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.
Alarms about editorial freedom
Stat (11/21/16): “Soon-Shiong called it an ‘incredible honor’ to dine with Trump, who ‘truly wants to advance health care for all.’”
Soon-Shiong, who bought the LA Times from Tronc in 2018, attempted to portray himself as a defender of the free press against attacks from then-President Donald Trump (CNBC, 9/7/18). But Soon-Shiong—a doctor who made a fortune in the for-profit medical industry (New Yorker, 10/25/21)—was not shy about his ambitions for a top health position in the Trump administration (Stat, 11/21/16, 1/25/17).
Is Soon-Shiong trying to make nice with Trump? One thing we know about him is that he’s not big on paying taxes; “He hasn’t paid federal income tax in five consecutive recent years,” ProPublica (12/8/21) reported.
He’s also not overly concerned about ethical niceties; Stat (7/20/17) has raised questions about conflicts of interest in his medical business and how they might impact patients. A Politico investigation (4/9/17) of Soon-Shiong’s research foundation found widespread self-dealing:
Of the nearly $59.6 million in foundation expenditures between its founding in 2010 and 2015, the most recent year for which records are available, over 70% have gone to Soon-Shiong–affiliated not-for-profits and for-profits, along with entities that do business with his for-profit firms.
This isn’t the first time Soon-Shiong’s intervention at the paper has raised alarms about editorial freedom. The Daily Beast (10/22/24) reported that earlier this year “executive editor Kevin Merida resigned after Soon-Shiong tried to block a story that accused one of his friends’ dogs of biting a woman in a Los Angeles park.”
Layoffs at the Times earlier this year also sparked outrage from trade unionists and journalists. “A delegation of 10 members of Congress warned Soon-Shiong in a letter that sweeping media layoffs could undermine democracy in a high-stakes election year,” reported Los Angeles Magazine (1/23/24).
There was also a racial element, the Times union said in a statement (Editor and Publisher, 1/24/24):
It also means the company has reneged on its promises to diversify its ranks since young journalists of color have been disproportionately affected. The Black, AAPI and Latino Caucuses have suffered devastating losses.
Bezos is far better known than Soon-Shiong; while it’s not reported that he directly intervened to stop a Post endorsement, like at the LA Times, NPR noted that Bezos depends on harmonious interactions with the federal government, as the company he founded, Amazon, depends on government contracts. Conflict-of-interest questions have long surrounded his control of the paper (FAIR.org, 3/1/14, 3/14/18, 9/19/19; CJR, 9/27/22; Guardian, 6/12/24; CNN, 6/18/24).[/quote]
Helping a fellow billionaire
NPR (10/25/24): Elon Musk “has become one of the leading boosters of baseless claims that Democrats are bringing in immigrants to illegally vote for them — a conspiracy theory that Trump and other Republicans have made core to their narratives about the 2024 election.”
It’s hard to ignore that in blocking endorsements expected to go to Trump’s opponent, billionaire owners are using their media power to help a fellow billionaire. With the Washington Post, readers can easily assume that Bezos cares more about not offending the powerful than its now-laughable slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
Bill Grueskin (X, 10/25/24), a professor at Columbia Journalism School, said that these endorsements are “unimportant politically” because “few votes would be swayed”—the Los Angeles area and the Beltway are solidly blue. But there’s an ominous factor here, he said, because “the billionaire owners are (intentionally or not) sending a signal to the newsrooms: Prepare to accommodate your coverage to a Trump regime.”
Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, is likewise using his wealth and his ownership of the social media network Twitter (rebranded as X) to boost Trump (PBS, 10/21/24; NPR, 10/25/24).
And Republican megadonor and billionaire Miriam Adelson “shelled out $95 million to the pro-Donald Trump Preserve America PAC during its third quarter,” Forbes (10/15/24) reported. Her late husband bought the Las Vegas Review-Journal in December of 2015 (AP, 12/17/15), and as the New York Times (1/2/16) reported:
Suspicions about his motives for paying a lavish $140 million for the newspaper last month are based on his reputation in Las Vegas as a figure comfortable with using his money in support of his numerous business and political concerns, said more than a dozen of the current and former Review-Journal staffers and local civic figures who have worked closely with him.
Big money has played an enormous part in US elections, especially since the Citizens United decision eviscerated limits on campaign spending (PBS, 2/1/23). “A handful of powerful megadonors have played an outsized role in shaping the 2024 presidential race through mammoth donations toward their favored candidates,” Axios (10/23/24) reported. These megadonors “skew Republican,” the Washington Post (10/16/24) reported.
Much of the press in the United States has, correctly, portrayed a second Trump term as a threat to democracy and a move toward corrupt autocracy, eroding institutions like the free press and independent justice system (Atlantic, 8/2/23; New York Times, 9/21/24, 10/3/24, 10/22/24; MSNBC, 10/22/24; NPR, 10/22/24). Yet the intervention of Soon-Shiong and his fellow moguls is an indication that our media are already not in democratic hands. Far from it; they are in the hands of the billionaire class. And it is sure to have an impact on this election.
As though the Dems are not a party of the rich...No, these media guys are just hedging their bets, not wanting to offend the incoming prez. They smell a Trump win, which should be taken seriously. But then, they were wrong in 2016.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Do they not understand how boring this nonsense is?
How Russia, China and Iran Are Interfering in the Presidential Election (archived) - New York Times
Eight years after Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, foreign influence with American voters has grown more sophisticated. That could have outsize consequences in the 2024 race.
Written by three 'journalists' and published at the top of the NYT's homepage the intro reads:
When Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, spreading divisive and inflammatory posts online to stoke outrage, its posts were brash and riddled with spelling errors and strange syntax. They were designed to get attention by any means necessary.
“Hillary is a Satan,” one Russian-made Facebook post read.
Posts like that 'one Russian-made Facebook post' (seen by how many?) 'interfered' in the 2016 election and were the reason for Hillery's loss?
Now, eight years later, foreign interference in American elections has become far more sophisticated, and far more difficult to track.
Disinformation from abroad — particularly from Russia, China and Iran — has matured into a consistent and pernicious threat, as the countries test, iterate and deploy increasingly nuanced tactics, according to U.S. intelligence and defense officials, tech companies and academic researchers. The ability to sway even a small pocket of Americans could have outsize consequences for the presidential election, which polls generally consider a neck-and-neck race.
U.S. presidential election campaigns spend billions of dollars on fine tuned advertisements aimed at carefully targeted micro-audiences. It isn't even plausible that social media posts by this or that foreign actor could have comparable effects.
Russia, according to American intelligence assessments, aims to bolster the candidacy of former President Donald J. Trump, while Iran favors his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. China appears to have no preferred outcome.
Should we not be especially afraid of the 'sophisticated' and 'difficult to track' foreign interference by China because it has no preferred outcome?
Here is the NYT's example for it:
This year, a deepfake video of a Republican congressman from Virginia circulated on TikTok, accompanied by a Chinese caption falsely claiming that the politician was soliciting votes for a critic of Beijing who sought (and later won) the Taiwanese presidency.
How could a fake video of a Republican congressman with Chinese caption that was used to discredit a Taiwanese politician influence a U.S. election in which China has 'no preferred outcome'? What is the logic therein?
I have no idea. Nor has the New York Times. It just claims that it does.
Whoever works in western media which carries nonsense like the above should contemplate how much they are contributing to this:
For the third consecutive year, more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount. Another 33% of Americans express “not very much” confidence.
Posted by b on October 29, 2024 at 9:01 UTC | Permalink
Matt Taibbi: Media Falls Below Congress in Trust Survey (Excerpt)
November 3, 2024
By Matt Taibbi, Substack, 10/17/24
The just-released results from Gallup’s Trust in Media Survey leave no doubt that members of my profession are officially America’s lowest life form. Gallup asked:
In general, how much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media — such as newspapers, T.V. and radio — when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly — a great deal, a fair amount, not very much, or none at all?
A great deal 7
Fair amount 25
Not very much 29
None at all 39
The Great Deal/Fair Amount number of 32% merely ties Gallup’s lowest-ever number, first recorded in 2016. The more shocking result is the combined Not much (29%) and None at all (39!) number of 68%. That is one point lower than the 67% figure posted by the usual standard-setter for mistrust: “The legislative branch, consisting of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.” It’s really not that close, as most distrust of Congress is of the softer, “Not very much” variety (44%), while the press laps elected counterparts by 15 points (39%-24%) in the far more hardcore None at all category.
It’s impossible to overstate this embarrassment. There are necrophiliacs who wouldn’t touch a congressional corpse. You may not hesitate to sacrifice a congressman in a lifeboat, but you think twice about eating him, even starving. Record fines for misconduct, and more informational access to behaviors like legal insider trading mean the elected officials Twain called America’s only “distinctly native criminal class” are hated more than ever. Yet expectations for journalists are now lower than those for Congress. Asked about trust in a politician, “None at all” is what people say when they expect nothing to get done. With media, it’s what you say if you don’t even trust a reporter to tell the time. It’s an extraordinary indictment…
Media Blame Left for Trump Victory—Rather Than Their Own Fear-Based Business Model
Julie Hollar and Jim Naureckas
Election Focus 2024Corporate media may not have all the same goals as MAGA Republicans, but they share the same strategy: Fear works.
Appeals to fear have an advantage over other kinds of messages in that they stimulate the deeper parts of our brains, those associated with fight-or-flight responses. Fear-based messages tend to circumvent our higher reasoning faculties and demand our attention, because evolution has taught our species to react strongly and quickly to things that are dangerous.
This innate human tendency has long been noted by the media industry (Psychology Today, 12/27/21), resulting in the old press adage, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Politicians, too, are aware of this brain hack (Conversation, 1/11/19)—and no one relies on evoking fear more than once-and-future President Donald Trump (New York Times, 10/1/24).
This is why coverage of issues in this election season have dovetailed so well with the Trump campaign’s lines of attack against the Biden/Harris administration—even in outlets that are editorially opposed, at least ostensibly, to Trumpism.
Scary issues
]
Corporate media rarely point, as this New York Times graphic (7/24/24) did, that crime has fallen dramatically since 1991, and continued to fall during the Biden/Harris administration.
Take immigration, a topic that could easily be covered as a human interest story, with profiles of people struggling to reach a better life against stark challenges. Instead, corporate media tend to report on it as a “border crisis,” with a “flood” of often-faceless migrants whose very existence is treated as a threat (FAIR.org, 5/24/21).
This is the news business deciding that fear attracts and holds an audience better than empathy does. And that business model would be undermined by reporting that consistently acknowledged that the percentage of US residents who are undocumented workers rose only slightly under the Biden administration, from 3.2% in 2019 to 3.3% in 2022 (the latest year available)—and is down from a peak of 4.0% in 2007 (Pew, 7/22/24; FAIR.org, 10/16/24).
With refugees treated as a scourge in centrist and right-wing media alike, is it any wonder that Trump can harvest votes by promising to do something about this menace? Eleven percent of respondents in NBC‘s exit poll said that immigration was the single issue that mattered most in casting their vote; 90% of the voters in that group voted for Trump.
Crime is another fear-based issue that Trump hammered on in his stump speech. “Have you seen what’s been happening?” he said of Washington, DC (Washington Post, 3/11/24). “Have you seen people being murdered? They come from South Carolina to go for a nice visit and they end up being murdered, shot, mugged, beat up.”
Trump could make such hyperbolic claims sound credible because corporate media had paved the way with alarmist coverage of crime (FAIR.org, 11/10/22). It was rare to see a report that acknowledged, as an infographic in the New York Times (7/24/24) did, that crime has dropped considerably from 2020 to 2024, when it hit a four-decade low (FAIR.org, 7/26/24).
‘Classic fear campaign’
Republicans spent so much on transphobic ads (Truthout, 11/5/04) because they knew voters had been primed by media to fear trans people.
Trans people, improbably enough, are another favorite subject of fear stories for media and MAGA alike. “Republicans spent nearly $215 million on network TV ads vilifying transgender people this election cycle,” Truthout (11/5/04) reported, with Trump spending “more money on anti-trans ads than on ads concerning housing, immigration and the economy combined.”
Journalist Erin Reed (PBS NewsHour, 11/2/24) described this as “a classic fear campaign”:
The purpose of a fear campaign is to distract you from issues that you normally care about by making you so afraid of a group of people, of somebody like me, for instance, that you’re willing to throw everything else away because you’re scared.
Transphobia has been a major theme in right-wing media, but has been a prominent feature of centrist news coverage as well, particularly in the New York Times (FAIR.org, 5/11/23). Rather than reporting centered on trans people, which could have humanized a marginalized demographic that’s unfamiliar to many readers, the Times chose instead to present trans youth in particular as a threat—focusing on “whether trans people are receiving too many rights, and accessing too much medical care, too quickly,” as FAIR noted.
‘Alienating voters’ with ‘progressive agenda’
The New York Times (11/6/24) didn’t want people to vote for Trump—but its reporting contributed to the perception that “an infusion of immigrants” and “a porous southern border” were among “the nation’s urgent problems.”
But rather than examining their own role in promoting the irrational fears that were the lifeblood of the successful Trump campaign, corporate media focused on their perennial electoral scapegoat: the left (FAIR.org, 11/5/21). The New York Times editorial board (11/6/24) quickly diagnosed the Democrats’ problem (aside from sticking with Biden too long):
The party must also take a hard look at why it lost the election…. It took too long to recognize that large swaths of their progressive agenda were alienating voters, including some of the most loyal supporters of their party. And Democrats have struggled for three elections now to settle on a persuasive message that resonates with Americans from both parties who have lost faith in the system—which pushed skeptical voters toward the more obviously disruptive figure, even though a large majority of Americans acknowledge his serious faults. If the Democrats are to effectively oppose Mr. Trump, it must be not just through resisting his worst impulses but also by offering a vision of what they would do to improve the lives of all Americans and respond to anxieties that people have about the direction of the country and how they would change it.
It’s a mind-boggling contortion of logic. The Times doesn’t say which aspects of Democrats’ “progressive agenda” were so alienating to people. But the media all agreed—based largely on exit polls—that Republicans won because of the economy and immigration. The “persuasive message” and “vision…to improve the lives of all Americans” that Democrats failed to offer was pretty clearly an economic one. Which is exactly what progressives in the party have been pushing for the last decade: Medicare for All, a wealth tax, a living minimum wage, etc. In other words, if the Democrats had adopted a progressive agenda, it likely would have been their best shot at offering that vision to improve people’s lives.
More likely, the paper was referring to “identity politics,” which has been a media scapegoat for years—indeed, pundits roundly blamed Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump on identity politics (or “political correctness”) (FAIR.org, 11/20/16). Then, as now, it was an accusation without evidence.
‘Democratic self-sabotage’
W
The Washington Post‘s Matt Bai (11/6/24) thought Trump’s anti-trans ads resonated with “a lot of traditionally Democratic voters who feel like the party is consumed with cultural issues.”
At the Washington Post, columnist Matt Bai‘s answer (11/6/24) to “Where Did Kamala Harris’s Campaign Go Wrong?” was, in part, that “Democrats have dug themselves into a hole on cultural issues and identity politics,” naming Trump’s transphobic ads as evidence of that. (In a Post roundup of columnist opinions, Bai declared that Harris “couldn’t outrun her party’s focus on trans rights and fighting other forms of oppression.”)
At the same time, Bai acknowledged that he does “think of Trump as being equally consumed with identity—just a different kind.” Fortunately for Republicans, Bai and his fellow journalists never take their kind of identity politics as worth highlighting (FAIR.org, 9/18/24).
George Will (10/6/24), a Never Trumper at the Washington Post, chalked up Harris’s loss largely to “the Democratic Party’s self-sabotage, via identity politics (race, gender), that made Harris vice president.”
Bret Stephens (10/6/24), one of the New York Times‘ set of Never Trumpers, likewise pointed a finger at Democrats’ supposed tilt toward progressives and “identity.” Much like other pundits, Stephens argued that “the politics of today’s left is heavy on social engineering according to group identity.”
Of the Harris campaigns’ “tactical missteps,” Stephens’ first complaint was “her choice of a progressive running mate”—Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. He also accused the party of a “dismissiveness toward the moral objections many Americans have to various progressive causes.” Here he mentioned trans kids’ rights, DEI seminars and “new terminology that is supposed to be more inclusive,” none of which Harris vocally embraced.
But underlying all of these arguments is a giant fundamental problem: It’s simply a fantasy (advanced repeatedly by Republicans) that Harris was running on identity politics, or as a radical progressive. News articles (e.g., Slate, 9/5/24; Forbes, 11/5/24) regularly acknowledged that Harris, in contrast to Hillary Clinton, for instance, shied away from centering her gender or ethnic background, or appealing to identity in her campaign.
‘Wary and alienated’
In a rare instance of actually listening to left-wing voices, a New York Times article (10/24/24) focused on pre-election warnings that Harris “risks chilling Democratic enthusiasm by alienating progressives and working-class voters.”
The Times‘ own reporting made Harris’s distancing from progressive politics perfectly clear not two weeks ago, in an article (10/24/24) headlined, “As Harris Courts Republicans, the Left Grows Wary and Alienated.” In a rare example of the Times centering a left perspective in a political article, reporters Nicholas Nehamas and Erica L. Green wrote:
In making her closing argument this month, Ms. Harris has campaigned four times with Liz Cheney, the Republican former congresswoman, stumping with her more than with any other ally. She has appeared more in October with the billionaire Mark Cuban than with Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers and one of the nation’s most visible labor leaders.
She has centered her economic platform on middle-class issues like small businesses and entrepreneurship rather than raising the minimum wage, a deeply held goal of many Democrats that polls well across the board. She has taken a harder-line stance on the border than has any member of her party in a generation and has talked more prominently about owning a Glock than about combating climate change. She has not broken from President Biden on the war Israel is waging in Gaza.
Kamala Harris did not run as a progressive, either in terms of economic policy or identity politics. But to a corporate media that largely complemented, rather than countered, Trump’s fear-based narratives on immigrants, trans people and crime, blaming the left is infinitely more appealing than recognizing their own culpability.
Bernie the Sheepdog and his band of treacherous acolytes? Please...Bernie ought to shut his trap about the election, by kowtowing to the DNC starting in 2016 he has gotten Trump elected twice now. All of his 'speaking truth to power' is a useless palliative.
Human rights for all people is definitely the bailiwick of a genuine Left. But making such theoretical metaphysical twaddle as 'Queer Theory' the centerpiece of a so-called left program reflects an abuse of priorities and misdirection from what the Left is.
As I've said many times, there will be no progress until the Democratic Party is disdained by the working class. Even now damage control is under way, 'the Party must return to it's roots', yadda yadda. Well, the Democratic Party's roots are in slavery. The New Deal legislation which these liars refer to was passed in just two years, 1936-1938, and the party has spent the subsequent years back-pedaling. Don't believe the bullshit, we see this song & dance every time they lose. Then when they win they go Right...
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
The Israel Lobbyists Writing America’s News
Posted by Internationalist 360° on November 12, 2024
Alan Macleod
A MintPress News investigation has found hundreds of former employees of Israel lobbying groups such as AIPAC, StandWithUs and CAMERA working in top newsrooms across the country, writing and producing America’s news – including on Israel-Palestine. These outlets include MSNBC, The New York Times, CNN and Fox News.
Some of these former lobbyists are responsible for producing content on Israel and Palestine – a gigantic and undisclosed conflict of interest. Many key U.S. newsroom staff were also formerly Israeli spies or intelligence agents, standing in stark contrast to journalists with pro-Palestine sentiments, who have been purged en masse since October 7, 2023.
This investigation is part of a series detailing Israel’s influence on American media. A previous report exposed the former Israeli spies and military intelligence officials working in U.S. newsrooms.
The fight for control over the Israel-Palestine narrative has been as intense as the war on the ground itself. U.S. media have been widely criticized for displaying a distinct bias towards the Israeli perspective. However, a new investigation from MintPress News reveals that not only is the press skewed in favor of Israel, but it is also written and produced by Israeli lobbyists themselves. This investigation unearths a network of hundreds of former members of the Israel lobby working at some of America’s most influential news organizations, helping to shape the public’s understanding of events in the Middle East. In the process, it helps whitewash Israeli crimes and manufacture consent for continued U.S. participation in what a wide range of international organizations have described as a genocide.
Advocacy to Journalism: Israel’s Influence at NBCUniversal
“Hi! My name is Kayla Steinberg…The summer before my first year of college, I attended the AIPAC New England Leadership Dinner and absolutely loved it. After going to Saban, I knew I had to get involved in [AIPAC] and go back to Israel…I dream of being a journalist someday, and I hope to write about Israel or Judaism. WIPAC and AIPAC have taught me so much about how important it is for the U.S. to be Israel’s greatest friend, and I know now why I am proudly pro-Israel.”
So wrote Kayla Steinberg in 2018, while she was working for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, widely considered the centerpiece of the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. AIPAC has been one of the most generous political donors this election cycle, doling out $100 million to hundreds of political candidates.
Steinberg did indeed become a journalist. Since 2022, she has been a producer at NBC News, pitching, scripting, producing and editing stories across NBCUniversal’s news channels, including MSNBC, CNBC and NBC News. Steinberg, who once stated publicly that “pro-Israel advocacy” was a key interest of hers, produced the NBC documentary, “Epidemic of Hate: Antisemitism in America,” which equated U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s criticism of AIPAC with the white supremacist marchers at the infamous Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, VA.
Steinberg is one of many former Israel lobbyists hired by NBCUniversal, a conglomerate that owns over a dozen channels, including CNBC, NBC News and MSNBC. Emma Goss, for instance, began her career in media by traveling to Israel to make a documentary for Write on For Israel. This Zionist group aims to educate young Jewish students to “make a difference on college campuses” by learning about Jewish identity and anti-Semitism in American universities.
While in college, she was a reporter for the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC). The ICC states its mission is to “inspire American college students to see Israel as a source of pride and empower them to stand up for Israel on campus” and to “unite the many pro-Israel organizations that operate on campuses across the United States” through coordination and sharing research and resources.
Even before graduating, Goss had already begun to work for MSNBC, helping to produce “Morning Joe,” one of their flagship news shows. She went on to work for NBCUniversal for four years, helping produce, pitch, research, edit and book guests for The Today Show, MSNBC and NBC Nightly News. In 2018, she left to work in local media and, as of 2023, works as a reporter at NBC Bay Area.
CNBC lead work reporter Gili Malinsky has an even closer relationship with Israel and its lobby. Until 2011, she was a commander in the Israeli Defense Forces, specifically in their public relations department. Malinsky (who has dual American and Israeli citizenship) led a unit dedicated to communicating the IDF’s story with the outside world, overseeing the military’s social media presence, as well as sending IDF officers abroad on public relations trips and organizing tours for foreign dignitaries to see the Israeli military in action.
In 2011, she moved seamlessly into working for Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces (FIDF), becoming their marketing coordinator. FIDF is an American group that raises money for supplies and support for Israeli soldiers, as well as encouraging Americans to enlist in the Israeli military. Its stated goal is to “champion the courageous men and women of the IDF and care for their needs through transformational opportunities and support as they protect the State of Israel and her people.”
After working for the FIDF, Malinsky embarked upon a career in journalism, becoming a staff writer at CBS and contributing to The New York Times, Vice, The Daily Beast, NBC News and others. Since 2020, she has worked at CNBC. Although a business reporter, in the wake of the October 7 assault, Malinsky contributed to the network’s coverage of Israel-Palestine. For example, she co-wrote one article detailing the trauma suffered by the families of the Israeli festivalgoers killed by Hamas, a group she matter-of-factly identified as a terrorist organization.
Noga Even, an NBCUniversal manager, is also a former Israel lobbyist. Between 2017 and 2018, she worked for StandWithUs, a conservative group that coordinates closely with the Israeli government to push a pro-Israel message on campuses globally. StandWithUs’ mission statement notes that its purpose is to “support Israel and fight antisemitism around the world.” In 2017, she organized an IDF soldier speaking tour in Texas with the intent of “putting a human face” on the Israeli military. The soldiers in question told hundreds of high schoolers in attendance about the supposed “strict IDF moral code while fighting an enemy that hides behind its civilians.”
Even later went on to work for the Israeli Embassy in the United States before, in 2023, being hired by NBCUniversal.
CNBC’s markets and investing reporter Samantha Subin began her career working for various Israel lobby groups. In 2016, she interned at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a pro-Israel think tank created by the research director of AIPAC as a front group. One former AIPAC employee involved in its creation noted, “There was no question that WINEP was to be AIPAC’s cutout. It was funded by AIPAC donors, staffed by AIPAC employees, and located one door away, down the hall, from AIPAC Headquarters.” In their book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” authors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt describe WINEP as a core part of the lobby, “funded and run by individuals who are deeply committed to advancing Israel’s agenda.”
Subin went on to work for the TAMID group, which describes itself as “seek[ing] to forge a strong connection to Israel for the next generation of business leaders.” While still at TAMID, she managed to get her foot in the door at CNBC, and has worked as a reporter there since 2021.
Another former TAMID employee working at CNBC is Benji Stawski. In 2016, Stawski co-founded a TAMID chapter at his local Bentley University. He later moved to CNN and, since 2022, has been an editor at CNBC.
For Israel and its lobby, having these sorts of advocates in newsrooms across America is a dream. With dozens—if not hundreds—of individuals fact-checking pro-Palestine arguments, booking pro-Israel guests, pitching stories that cast Israel in a positive light and its adversaries negatively, and weaving Zionist narratives into reporting, it’s no surprise that U.S. corporate media shows a pronounced bias in favor of Israel and its perspectives.
Older Americans who still rely on cable news and newspapers support the Israeli attack on its neighbors, while younger people who use social media as their primary source of information side with the Palestinians.
The connections to pro-Israel organizations extend to the leadership of NBCUniversal as well. Danny Bittker, the company’s vice president of production and operations, worked for many years for BBYO, eventually becoming its regional director. BBYO (B’nai B’rith Youth Organization) is a group that sends young Jewish teens to Israel. It is far from a politically neutral body, however. A measure of this can be seen on its homepage, where visitors are currently greeted with a gigantic banner reading, “We Support Israel and Stand By Its Right to Defend Itself.”
Brandon Glantz, NBCUniversal’s senior director of global privacy operations, previously worked for Hillel International, the largest Jewish campus organization in the world. Some at Hillel might object to being called part of the Zionist Lobby in America. Helpfully, then, on his own LinkedIn page, Glantz described his role at Hillel as “conduct[ing] all Israel advocacy on the University of Florida campus.”
Yelena Kutikova, a director and vice president of learning and development at NBCUniversal until May of this year, was previously a director for the United Jewish Appeal — Federation of New York. Kutikova worked for over three years at UJA-NY, a group that raises money to build illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine and coaches American politicians and pundits on how to best advocate for Israel. Earlier this year, leaked documents showed sessions convened by the UJA advised U.S. officials to spread highly questionable claims about mass rapes on October 7 as a way to deflect criticism away from Israel’s slaughter in Gaza.
Other former Israel lobbyists who have gone on to work for the network include longtime MSNBC producer Alana Heller, a former intern at AIPAC; Sara Bernstein, formerly of Hillel International, who went on to work for Paramount, the Discovery Channel and NBCUniversal; and Sarah Poss, a former intern at the Anti-Defamation League, who, since 2019, has worked in various roles at NBC News and MSNBC.
NBCUniversal does not appear to view these individuals’ backgrounds as conflicts of interest or red flags. In fact, their history of lobbying for Israel may be seen as an asset, especially given that MSNBC’s executive producer, Moshe Arenstein, was an IDF intelligence commander for many years. Arenstein joined MSNBC in 2003 and has since produced news on a broad range of political topics, including coverage of Israel and Palestine.
It seems likely that the enormous overlap between the Israel lobby and MSNBC at least played a part in the network’s decision to, in the wake of the October 7 attacks, suspend its only three Muslim anchors. MSNBC quietly and without explanation pulled Ayman Mohieddine, Ali Velshi and Mehdi Hasan from the air. Employees immediately understood this as a message to the rest of the staff. “The mood is very similar to what had happened post 9/11 with the whole you are either with us or against us argument,” one employee told Arab News. Hasan, a vocal critic of Israel, left the network and has never addressed speculation about his departure, only adding to the evidence that he was pushed out due to his political views.
Fox News and the Pro-Israel Pipeline
At the other end of the American elite political spectrum lies Fox News. And yet, on the issue of Israel, the network’s coverage has been markedly similar to MSNBC’s. Like MSNBC, Fox News employs a wide range of former Israeli lobbyists in key positions within its company.
Before becoming a journalist, Rachel Wolf worked for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA), a right-wing pressure group that tries to minimize or silence criticism of Israel in the press. While still at CAMERA, Wolf interned at the Zionist Organization of America, compiling dossiers on pro-Palestine figures and authoring memos full of talking points against anti-Zionist speakers appearing on campuses. She left CAMERA to work at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. and soon became a speechwriter for Israel’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, where she worked aiding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Wolf then moved to Israel to join the IDF, where she served as a spokesperson for the military, producing press releases, running their social media campaigns, and developing, in her own words, “innovative” strategies to humanize the group. Only one year after leaving the IDF, she joined the “Hannity” program on Fox News and is now the company’s homepage and social media editor.
A retweet by Fox News social media editor Rachel Wolf on her personal X account
Wolf’s colleague at Fox News, Olivia Johnson, was formerly Director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), an organization that aims to build and strengthen the military bond between the United States and Israel. A recent JINSA report calls for the United States to support Israel in a war against Iran. After leaving JINSA, Johnson worked for CBS News and, since 2011, has been a broadcast associate at Fox.
Nicole Cooper worked for AIPAC between 2019 and 2020, helping to organize conferences and other events. Soon after leaving the lobby group, she was offered the executive assistant position to the Fox News network President.
Finally, Sarah Schornstein’s career has seen her run the gamut of pro-Israel groups, including seven months with AIPAC, an internship with Hillel and JINSA, and a position with CAMERA, where she, in her own words, was charged with “monitor[ing] any anti-Semitic/anti-Zionist activity on my campus” – a statement that suggests she sees the two as one and the same. In 2021, she also worked for Israel’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, where she policed NGOs being invited to the forum to ensure they do not “have a harmful impact on Israeli interests.” In 2022, she worked at the Abraham Accords Peace Institute, a group dedicated to promoting the normalization of Israel in the Arab world. Since 2021, she has been at Fox News, producing some of its most influential shows, including “Cavuto Live!”
Host Neil Cavuto regularly invites Israeli advocates and officials onto his show, throwing them softball questions and allowing them to present a pro-Israel narrative unchallenged. In October, for example, Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon appeared on the show, claiming that his country was responding to Iranian aggression by launching “retaliatory” strikes against a rogue state.
CNN’s Israel Connections: Former IDF, Unit 8200, and Israel Lobbyists
CNN is widely considered among the most prestigious networks in broadcast journalism. And yet, like NBCUniversal and Fox, this study found large numbers of CNN employees with backgrounds in Israeli advocacy.
Jenny Friedland began her professional career at the American Jewish Committee, a strongly pro-Israel organization, which lists “defeating Boycott Divestment and Sanctions” as one of their primary goals and recently published an article headlined, “Five Reasons Why the Events in Gaza Are Not ‘Genocide.’” Friedland has been a producer for CNN since 2019, primarily for Fareed Zakaria’s show.
Another CNN producer, Hannah Rabinowitz, previously worked for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a group that purports to be an anti-racist organization but, in practice, often uses claims of anti-Semitism to shield Israel from criticism. A recent MintPress News investigation found that the ADL’s claims of a surge in Anti-Semitism across America were based upon labeling pro-Palestine marches as inherently anti-Semitic. ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt stated as much, going so far as to say that anti-Zionism was not just anti-Semitic but that it equates to “genocide.” Greenblatt explained that “Every Jewish person is a Zionist…it is fundamental to our existence.” This will undoubtedly be news to the large plurality of American Jews under 40, who, polls show, consider Israel to be a racist Apartheid state.
The ADL has, for decades, spied on progressive American groups, including the AFL-CIO, Greenpeace, the United Farmworkers, and a host of left-wing Jewish groups. It also secretly passed much of this research onto the Israeli government, whom the FBI, internal memos show, believe funded their activities.
CNN also employs an alarming number of former Israeli soldiers and spies. Among them is Ami Kaufman, a writer and producer of “Amanpour,” the network’s flagship news and global affairs show. Before working at CNN, Kaufman was a weapons specialist in the IDF, and between 2003 and 2004, worked for the CIA at their Foreign Broadcast Information Service.
Another CNN producer, Tamar Michaelis, previously served as an official spokesperson for the IDF.
Shachar Peled, meanwhile, spent three years as an officer in the Israeli military intelligence group Unit 8200, leading a team of analysts in surveillance and cyberwarfare. She also served as a technology analyst for the Israeli intelligence service, Shin Bet. In 2017, she was hired as a producer and writer by CNN and spent three years putting together segments for Zakaria and Amanpour’s shows. Google later hired her to become their Senior Media Specialist.
Unit 8200 is among the most notorious spying agencies in the world and is widely thought to be behind the recent Lebanon pager attack that injured thousands of civilians. It utilizes big data to create a digital dragnet on Palestinians and uses A.I. to determine the likelihood of individuals being members of Hamas or other proscribed organizations. The agency then uses this data to create gigantic kill lists of tens of thousands of people, which it used in its campaign against Gaza.
Unit 8200 alumni also went on to work closely with Israeli authorities in developing the infamous Pegasus spying software, created to spy on politicians, journalists and civil rights leaders the world over.
Tal Heinrich is another Unit 8200 agent turned journalist. In 2014, CNN hired her to be the field and desk producer for the network’s Jerusalem Bureau, where she oversaw its coverage of Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s 2014 attack on Gaza. Heinrich later left CNN and is now the official spokesperson of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A previous MintPress News investigation profiled Peled, Heinrich and other Israel ex-spies who work in America’s newsrooms.
And while never having worked for a lobby organization, Israeli-American CNN news producer Gili Ramen seems to act as an unofficial lobbyist, beseeching anyone with the chance to go on birthright tours and penning long “love letters” to Israel, detailing how she “fell in love” with her “magical” “homeland.”
Critics have claimed that CNN’s coverage of the attack on Gaza has been among the most biased and misleading anywhere to be seen, the network repeating Israeli talking points and ignoring Palestinian suffering. This has not gone unnoticed by ordinary Palestinians. Last year, a live CNN segment from Ramallah was broken up by angry demonstrators. “Fuck CNN! You are genocide supporters! You are not welcome here, genocide supporters” Fuck CNN!” one man told host Clarissa Ward before the live broadcast was cut.
From Birthright to Byline: Israel Ties Run Deep in America’s Newspaper of Record
Pro-Israel lobbyists are not confined to broadcast media; they are also present in print newsrooms nationwide, including at the United States’ most prestigious and influential publication, The New York Times.
Dalit Shalom, the Times’ director of product design, was formerly a guide for birthright trips – an Israeli government-funded program to gift free tours of Israel for young Jews in the hopes that they will settle there. He also worked for the Jewish Agency for Israel, an offshoot of the World Zionist Organization, whose mission statement is to “ensure that every Jewish person feels an unbreakable bond to one another and to Israel,” and encourages Jewish immigration to the country.
Before his career in journalism, Adam Rasgon, the Times’ correspondent in Jerusalem, interned at the Shalem Center, a now-defunct group founded in 1994 to “enrich and strengthen the State of Israel.” From there, he went to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Sofia Poznansky, a New York Times newsroom assistant, previously worked for Masa Israel Journey, an Israeli government-funded project to entice foreign Jewish people to the country. It works closely with lobby groups such as StandWithUs, the ADL and Hillel.
Before joining the New York Times as an editorial assistant, Rania Raskin worked for the Tivkah Fund, an organization dedicated to promoting Zionism among young Jewish Americans. Raskin aids top Times columnists such as Pamela Paul, David French, and Bret Stephens.
Since Raskin has been assisting Stephens, he has produced columns entitled “We Absolutely Need to Escalate in Iran,” “The Genocide Charge Against Israel Is a Moral Obscenity,” “Hezbollah is Everyone’s Problem,” “The Appalling Tactics of the ‘Free Palestine’ Movement,” “Abolish the U.N.’s Palestinian Refugee Agency,” “The left is Dooming any Hope for a Palestinian State,” and “Hamas Bears the Blame for Every Death in this War.”
Of course, neither Stephens nor the Times needed Raskin’s assistance to promote an aggressively pro-Israel agenda. A study by MintPress News earlier this year analyzed coverage of the Yemeni Red Sea blockade by The New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News. The study found that these outlets consistently maintained a pro-Israel perspective. This included frequently highlighting that Yemen’s Ansar Allah is Iranian-backed while not similarly noting U.S. support for Israel and portraying Yemen as the aggressor in the conflict.
From Lobbyist to Local News
While this investigation has concentrated on four outlets, the phenomenon of former Israel lobbyists producing America’s news is widespread across the corporate press.
For example, between 2010 and 2012, Beatrice Peterson was a delegate for AIPAC. She later became a producer for Politico and is currently a reporter and producer at ABC News.
In 2018, Erica Scott left her job as the ADL’s media and communications specialist to work at CBS This Morning. She is currently CBS News’ editorial producer.
Another current CBS News producer, Betsy Shuller, previously was a public relations associate for Hillel International. Shuller has also worked for CNN, ABC, and NBC.
In 2021, Oren Oppenheim left UChicago Hillel to join ABC News, where he is currently a political unit journalist.
Currently a technical project manager for The Washington Post, Lisa Jacobsen was previously the program director at the American Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, a group pushing for more robust pro-Israel policies in the United States.
Eliyahu Kamisher was formerly an intern for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a research assistant at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East and African Studies in Tel Aviv and is now a reporter at Bloomberg News.
In addition, this investigation found dozens of former Israel lobbyists working in local news across the United States.
Switching Sides: The Newsroom to War Room Pipeline
Not only do pro-Israel partisans go to work in America’s newsrooms, but journalists also leave their jobs to work for the Israel lobby, creating a highly problematic revolving door between the two professions.
Benjamin Bell, for example, left a long and successful career in the media that included being deputy managing editor and politics coordinating producer for ABC News and the senior editor of features and planning at CNN+ to become the director of broadcast media at the Israeli Consulate General in New York.
Jake Novak’s career arc followed a similar trajectory. A former producer at CNN and senior producer at Fox Business, in 2021, he left his job as a columnist and political analyst at CNBC to become the media director of the Israeli Consulate in New York. The previous year, Novak wrote an article about the assassination of Iranian leader Qassem Soleimani entitled “America just took out the world’s no.1 bad guy.”
Originally an associate producer for CNN, where she wrote and produced content for leading shows such as “Amanpour,” Phoenix Berman left her job at CBS Philadelphia earlier this year to become an investigative researcher for the Anti-Defamation League.
In 2008, Darren Mackoff ended a long career as a producer for Fox News and NBC News, taking up the position of senior communications manager and deputy press secretary for AIPAC.
The ADL’s social media strategist and director of sports engagement, Alex Freeman, also has a background in broadcast journalism. Freeman left his position as a writer and producer for Fox News to join the pro-Israel group.
Former CBS News, PBS and Fox News producer Anna Olson is currently serving as director of digital content for Hillel International.
Naveed Jamali, meanwhile, has jumped between journalism, the lobby and back again. A former intelligence analyst at MSNBC and contributor to The Daily Beast, between 2020 and 2022, he was the ADL’s Belfer Fellow. His ADL profile describes him as an “FBI asset.” Today, he is the executive producer and editor-at-large of the influential magazine Newsweek.
Jonathan Harounoff, currently a contributing writer to the New York Post, was, until recently, JINSA’s director of communications. He has just started a new job as an international spokesperson and senior communications advisor to the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations. Considering Israel’s actions and the U.N. response to them (the U.N. continues to vote to condemn Israel and demand a ceasefire), Harounoff is likely a busy man.
Censorship or Standards? The Cost of Pro-Palestine Advocacy
The ease with which hundreds of individuals can jump between the pro-Israel lobby and the newsroom stands in stark contrast to how journalists publicly (or even privately) advocating for Palestinian rights have been treated.
In 2021, the Associated Press fired news associate Emily Wilder after it was alleged that, while at college, she was a member of pro-Palestine groups, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine. The witch hunt against a young Jewish journalist was led and amplified by the likes of Fox News, who appeared to believe expressing support for Palestine robbed her of her credibility, even as the network, as this investigation has shown, employed multiple former members of Israel lobby groups.
Three years previously, CNN sacked contributor Marc Lamont Hill after he called for a free Palestine “from the river to the sea” during an address he made to the United Nations. Unsurprisingly, pro-Israel groups were among those lobbying CNN the hardest to take action against what they deemed unacceptable speech.
The Hill, meanwhile, dismissed Katie Halper after she called Israel an Apartheid state on air. That so many of those fired for their positions on Israel have been Jewish is no coincidence. The Middle East has always been of particular concern to American Jews, and progressive, anti-Zionist Jewish groups are among the primary targets of the Israel lobby.
Halper’s exit set the tone at The Hill. And so when its host, Briahna Joy Gray (another strong critic of Israel’s attack on Gaza), was also dismissed earlier this year, it came as no surprise to her. “It finally happened. The Hill has fired me. There should be no doubt that [The Hill] has a clear pattern of suppressing speech — particularly when it’s critical of the state of Israel,” she tweeted.
Gray’s departure was part of a broader post-October 7 trend, with newsrooms across the West cracking down on pro-Palestine sentiment being shared. In the wake of the Hamas assault, the BBC pulled six reporters from its Arabic news service off the air. Around the same time, The Guardian announced it would not renew the contract of one of its longest-serving cartoonists, Steve Bell. The newspaper had recently refused to print a cartoon satirizing Netanyahu and the attack on Gaza.
Across the Atlantic, The New York Times fired Palestinian photojournalist Hosam Salam over comments he made supporting factions resisting Israel.
Thus, while outlets across the board were rushing out editorials declaring their solidarity with Israel, even as it embarked on a rampage through Gaza, young, progressive journalists received the message loud and clear: this is no place for you.
A case in point is Malak Silmi, a Palestinian-American reporter who left the profession in disgust, filled with disillusionment at what she experienced. “I do not believe I can be valued as a journalist by a media industry that delegitimizes and demonizes Palestinian journalists and allows for reporting that incites and justifies attacks against them,” she wrote in January, explaining her decision to walk away from the industry.
Words Matter: How Newsrooms Shape the Narrative
Silmi’s comments are borne out by studies. More journalists were killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza than in any other conflict over a similar period. Yet outlets such as the New York Times have shown little interest in Israel’s war on journalists, and when they do cover it, they rarely identify Israel as the culprit in their headlines.
A study of leading American outlets by media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting found that the word “brutal” was overwhelmingly used in reference to Palestinians and their actions and rarely used to describe Israel. These choices cue and prompt readers to feel one way about the conflict; they are brutes, and we are compassionate.
These sorts of discrepancies do not happen by accident. A leaked New York Times memo from last November revealed that company management explicitly instructed its reporters not to use words such as “genocide,” “slaughter,” and “ethnic cleansing” when discussing Israel’s actions. Times staff must refrain from using words like “refugee camp,” “occupied territory,” or even “Palestine” in their reporting, making it almost impossible to convey some of the most basic facts to their audience.
Likewise, CNN employees face similar pressure. Last October, new C.E.O. Mark Thompson sent out a memo to all staff instructing them to make sure that Hamas (and not Israel) is presented as responsible for the violence, that they must always use the moniker “Hamas-controlled” when discussing the Gaza Health Ministry and their civilian death figures, and barring them from any reporting of Hamas’ viewpoint, which its senior director of news standards and practices told staff was “not newsworthy” and amounted to “inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda.”
German media conglomerate Axel Springer, meanwhile, forces all of its employees to sign what amounts to a loyalty oath to support “the trans-Atlantic alliance and Israel.” Last year, the company fired a Lebanese employee who, through internal channels, questioned the requirement.
An outsized role in American politics
The Israel lobby played an outsized role in this year’s elections, spending over $100 million to promote Zionist candidates and relentlessly attack progressive critics of Israel. All 362 AIPAC-endorsed candidates won their races. “Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics,” AIPAC boasts.
To be sure, AIPAC only endorses candidates it believes have a good chance of winning to promote its image as a kingmaker in U.S. politics. But it has also played a significant part in suppressing progressive change in the country by successfully primarying critics of Israel, such as Jamal Bowman and Cori Bush. AIPAC spent over $30 million ousting the pair in two of the most expensive House primaries in history. “I want to thank our partners at AIPAC,” Bush’s opponent, Wesley Bell, said, adding that he was “not getting across the finish line without you.”
AIPAC also helps push reactionary and racist political ideas into American life, supporting one candidate who proposed a bill to deport Palestinians from the U.S.
It is clear that Israel and its supporters play an outsized role in American politics. But few are aware of the extent to which our news is written and produced by individuals with backgrounds in groups lobbying for Israel. This investigation was able to find hundreds of individuals from prestigious news outlets who previously worked for AIPAC, StandWithUs, CAMERA, or other organizations commonly identified as core pillars of the pro-Israel lobby. It is still far from an exhaustive list. For brevity’s sake, it only highlighted a handful of the most prominent and influential U.S. media networks. Nor did it touch upon the army of former lobbyists working at smaller channels or in local media.
This investigation does not accuse any of those noted above or claim they are unworthy of holding those positions and should be fired. But it does highlight the extent to which pro-Israel sentiment is considered so normal in elite circles, so much so that former Israel lobbyists, spies, and soldiers can be charged with producing supposedly objective and unbiased reporting, even on Middle Eastern issues.
And even as former employees of Israel lobby groups are hired en masse, those speaking out against Israel’s attacks on its neighbors, or even suspected of harboring pro-Palestine sympathies, are jettisoned from corporate media’s ranks. When it comes to Israel-Palestine, there exists a glaring double standard in our media. In our supposedly free and open system, you can hold any opinions you like, so long as they are pro-Israel.
The information presented here is likely common knowledge in newsrooms. And yet, it has been essentially ignored by the media, who seem to consider it unremarkable. This investigation is not claiming that people with pro-Israel views should be barred from working in the media. However, these backgrounds and blatant conflicts of interest should, at the very least, be disclosed, particularly when covering the ongoing violence in the Middle East.
Despite the commitment to truth, transparency and journalistic integrity often touted by the likes of the New York Times and other newsrooms across America, U.S. media have failed in their ability to provide the public with truthful reporting of the facts when it comes to Israel-Palestine. Their approach throws to the wind guidelines from organizations like the Society of Professional Journalists, which dictate that journalists “avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived,” and “disclose unavoidable conflicts.”
Similarly, the Global Charter of Ethics for Journalists outlines a newsroom’s “duty to disclose any affiliations that could affect coverage.” Instead, former lobbyists and figures with ties to pro-Israel groups are given free rein to shape narratives around the Middle East. No wonder that Americans’ understanding of the conflict, its history, and the stakes involved is so poor.
This lack of transparency is, in part, the reason for Americans’ fragile trust in the media—now at roughly 30%, according to recent polls. The revelation that much of our news is literally written and produced by former Israeli spies and lobbyists is not going to help that number improve.
Hasbara’s Birth: Israel’s War on Media Exposed
Posted by Internationalist 360° on November 11, 2024
Kit Klarenberg
Ever since Israel’s October 1st invasion of Lebanon, the Western media has been a witting, willing accomplice to the sadistic, criminal assault. Mainstream journalists have worked overtime to whitewash, distort, and conceal the Zionist entity’s murderous rampage, which has claimed thousands of civilian lives, and injured and displaced many more. Serving as Tel Aviv’s perpetual megaphone and apologist is a role for which major news outlets have eagerly volunteered for decades. Their crusade has only become turbocharged following the Gaza genocide erupting.
In the first week of October, Israeli Occupation Forces fired 355 bullets at a car containing a five-year-old, then shot at rescue workers who rushed to save her life. A horrific crime – yet, per mainstream headlines, she was simply a “girl killed in Gaza”. The circumstances and perpetrators of her death, if mentioned at all, were invariably buried at the bottom of reports, well-hidden from the 80% of people who only read headlines, not accompanying articles.
By contrast, on October 15th, Sky News was very keen that its viewers know the names and faces of four “teenage” IOF soldiers “killed” in a “Hezbollah drone attack”, therefore humanizing and infantalising individuals who, by mere token of their service in the Zionist entity’s military forces, are definitionally guilty of genocide. In passing, the same report briskly noted: “‘23 die’ in Gaza school strike”. Their identities, ages, and photos, let alone clarity on who or what murdered them, weren’t provided.
Moreover, the inverted commas incongruously hovering around the number of Palestinians killed subtly undermined that claim’s credibility, while reducing the defenseless child victims to a mere afterthought, compared to the considerably more important quartet of deceased IOF genocidaires. As MintPress News senior staff writer Alan MacLeod put it, “in years to come, students in university departments around the world will be studying the propaganda embedded in this headline. It’s truly incredible how much propaganda has been packed into 16 words.”
The mainstream media’s systematic use of distancing, evasive language, omission and other duplicitous chicanery to downplay or outright justify Israel’s murder of innocent civilians, while simultaneously dehumanizing their victims and delegitimizing Palestinian resistance against brutal, illegal IOF occupation, is as unconscionable as it is well-documented. Amazingly though, ‘twasn’t ever thus. Once upon a time, mainstream news networks exposed Zionist crimes without qualification, and anchors and pundits openly condemned these actions on live TV, to audiences of millions.
The story of how Western media was transformed into the Zionist entity’s doting, servile propaganda appendage is not only a fascinating and sordid hidden chronicle. It is a deeply educational lesson in how imperial power can so easily subordinate supposed arbiters of truth to its will. Comprehending how we got to where we are furthermore equips us with the tools to assess, identify, and deconstruct lies large and small – and effectively challenge and counter not only Israel’s falsehoods, but entire sick, settler colonial endeavor.
‘Neighborhood Bully’
On June 6th 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon. The effort was ostensibly intended to drive Palestinian Liberation Organization freedom fighters away from their positions on the Zionist entity’s northern border. But, as the IOF savagely pushed ever-deeper into the country, including Beirut, it became clear ethnic cleansing, massacres, and land theft were – as in Palestine – the true goal. And throughout the Lebanese capital, news crews from major TV networks and reporters from the West’s biggest newspapers were waiting for them.
IOF personnel carriers near a Beirut mosque, June 1982
The Zionist entity’s rapacious bloodlust and casual contempt for Arab lives had hitherto been by and large successfully concealed from the outside world. Suddenly though, scenes of deliberate IOF airstrikes on residential housing blocks, Tel Aviv’s trigger-happy soldiers running amok in Beirut’s streets, and hospitals overflowing with civilians suffering from grave injuries, including chemical burns due to Israel’s use of phosphorus shells, were broadcast the world over, to nigh-universal outcry. As veteran NBC news anchor John Chancellor contemporarily explained to Western viewers:
“What in the world is going on? Israel’s security problem, on its border, is 50 miles to the south. What’s an Israeli army doing here in Beirut? The answer is we are now dealing with an imperial Israel, which is solving its problems in someone else’s country, world opinion be damned.”
Global shock and repulsion at the Zionist entity’s conduct would only ratchet during the IOF’s resultant illegal military occupation of swaths of Lebanon. In September 1982, an Israel-backed armed Christian militia, Phalange, entered Sabra, a Beirut neighborhood home to many Palestinians displaced by the 1948 Nakba. Over a two day span, they slaughtered up to 3,500 people, while mutilating and raping countless others. Again, unfortunately for Tel Aviv, mainstream journalists were on hand to document these heinous crimes first-hand.
Survivors of the Sabra massacre, surrounded by carnage
To say the least, the Zionist entity had an international PR disaster of historic proportions on its bloodsoaked hands. The risk that further exposure of its genocidal nature might decisively and permanently shift global opinion in favor of the Palestinians and Arab world more generally was significant. The attack on Lebanon had already spurred Western news outlets to critically reassess other illegal annexations and occupations in which Israel was and remains engaged. As ABC News reporter Richard Threlkeld commented at the time:
“Israel was always that gallant little underdog democracy fighting for survival against all the odds. Now the Israelis have annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, settled down more or less permanently on the West Bank, and occupied close to half of Lebanon. In the interests of self-defense, that gallant little underdog, Israel, has suddenly started behaving like the neighborhood bully.”
So it was that in the summer of 1984, the American Jewish Congress – a major Zionist lobby organization – convened a conference in Jerusalem, Israel’s Public Image: Problems and Remedies. It was chaired by U.S. advertising supremo Carl Spielgovel, who a decade earlier provided pro bono advice to the Israeli government on strategies for publicly communicating why Tel Aviv refused to adhere to the terms of the Henry Kissinger-brokered 1973 Sinai Accords. As Spielgovel later recalled:
“It occurred to me then that the Israelis were doing a good job at training their military people, and they were doing a relatively good job at training their diplomatic corps. But they weren’t spending any time training information officers, people who could present Israel’s case to embassies and TV anchormen around the world. Over the years, I made this a personal cause celebre.”
The 1984 Jerusalem conference offered Spielgovel, and a welter of Western advertising and public relations executives, media specialists, editors, journalists, and leaders of major Zionist advocacy groups in tow, an opportunity to achieve that malign objective. Together, they hammered out a dedicated strategy for ensuring the “crisis” caused by news reporting on the invasion of Lebanon two years earlier would never be repeated. Their antidote? Ceaseless, methodical, and wide-ranging “Hasbara” – Hebrew for propaganda – for “changing people’s minds [and] making them think differently.”
‘Big Scoop’
The AJC subsequently published records of the conference. They offer extraordinarily candid insight into how multiple Hasbara strategies, which have been in perpetual operation ever since, were birthed. For example, basic propaganda messages were agreed. This included emphasizing Israel’s regional importance to the U.S. and Europe, Western cultural and political values, geographic vulnerability, and supposed striving for peace, in the face of implacable Palestinian belligerence and intransigence. As Judith Elizur, an expert in “communications” from Tel Aviv’s Hebrew University explained:
“Because the ‘power dimension’ of Israel’s image is so problematic, it seems to me that Hasbara must concentrate on reinforcing other aspects of Israel that have a positive appeal – medicine, agriculture, science, archaeology…We have been too preoccupied with extinguishing political brush fires. We need to devote more of our resources to long-range image-making. We must recreate a multi-dimensional image of Israel which will assure us the basic support we require in times of crisis.”
Excerpt from American Jewish Congress newsletter
There was extensive discussion of how to present “unpalatable policies” to Western populations, and counter the perception of Israel as “Goliath steamrolling” across West Asia, against adversaries “outgunned, outclassed and outmanned” with “no capacity to resist.” The necessity of training Jewish diaspora in countering criticism of Israel was considered paramount. AJC’s president lamented that “many American Jews” had condemned the invasion of Lebanon, and “did us a terrible disservice.” Any such future “disagreement” would make it “very difficult for us to conduct Hasbara effectively.”
Joseph Block, Pepsi’s former vice president of public relations, stressed the need for a dedicated, 24/7 Zionist entity press operation “equipped to offer foreign journalists an occasional exclusive or scoop” and engage in other media outreach, in order to balance critical coverage, and get reporters and newsrooms ‘on side’. He suggested that had Israeli officials “briefed NBC and other networks appropriately” and given them “a big scoop” during Lebanon’s invasion, “then a different story would have reached America’s 90 million TV households”:
“News doesn’t just jump into a camera. It’s directed. It’s managed. It’s made accessible. Public relations is a process that makes news available in a particular form. In the US, PR is as important as accounting, the law and the military…As a corporate spokesman for two of America’s top 50 corporations, I wish I had a shekel for every time I said, ‘no comment’ to a reporter. I was always careful, however, not to antagonize or intimidate the reporter. I knew I had to live with him or her.”
Yoram Ettinger, media analysis chief at the Israel Information Center, concurred, declaring that media framing on the Zionist entity’s actions needed to be framed in advance. “Actions” such as “blowing up houses”, which were “difficult to explain”, could be preemptively justified or at least relativized by placing them “in context”, while “[drawing] analogies that others will understand.” This would serve to “help others to interpret their meaning” in accordance with Tel Aviv’s own perspectives.
The Conference hoped such efforts would mean “our American friends will be able to take a more activist posture as amplifiers of our policy,” and assist them in “tucking away the house problems in a back room.” It was also suggested Zionists on an individual and organizational level serve as a rapid reaction force, deluging news outlets with complaints en masse should their coverage of Israel be at all critical. One attendee boasted of their personal success in this regard:
“One day CBS News Radio reported that an American soldier had been hurt by stepping on an Israeli cluster bomb at the Beirut airport. I called CBS to point out that no one had established the bomb was an Israeli one. One hour later CBS reported that an American soldier had stepped on a bomb; this time the report omitted any reference to Israel.”
‘Frequent Violations’
Another deeply impactful recommendation emanated directly from Carl Spielgovel. Namely, constructing a “training program that will import carefully selected information specialists” from Israel to U.S. advertising and PR agencies, and major news outlets, to teach them the tricks of the trade, ensure Hasbara was conducted to full effect, and forge personal relationships between Zionist entity officials and the organizations to which they were seconded.
In turn, these “specialists” would be advised by a U.S.-Israeli council of “wise persons who can project different scenarios and how to cope with them,” on issues such as “annexation and Jerusalem.” Spielgovel keenly stressed he was “not suggesting that we make policy,” but rather “we should make the best minds available to help elucidate the consequences of certain policies.” This would guarantee the American people would never forget that Tel Aviv is Washington’s “staunch political and military ally.”
Spielgovel went on to suggest future AJC conferences on the topic should include input from “young people” and people of color, in order to better market Tel Aviv to diverse “constituencies”. After all, “Hasbara needs to implant in the consciousness of the world the day-to-day existence” of Israeli citizens,” therefore requiring daily “stories in the arts, business and cooking sections of US newspapers.” Accordingly, a dedicated Hasbara program for cultivating expert Zionist propagandists Stateside has operated ever since.
Such was its success, before long the operation was expanded to include school and university students globally, so they can serve as aggressive Zionist entity advocates and apologists in classrooms and on campuses. Often, graduates of these Zionist entity-funded initiatives go on to enter influential professions, including journalism, where they continue to spread the gospel of Hasbara, and preach Israel’s innocence. The impact on Western media reporting on Palestine in the West has been dramatic.
To a significant degree, the vision of Tel Aviv as “the gallant little underdog democracy fighting for survival against all the odds” has been restored. Despite the ongoing 21st century Holocaust in Gaza, little to no attempt is ever made by mainstream outlets to even vaguely contextualize resistance to brutal Zionist annexation, imperialism, invasion, and occupation. Israel is almost invariably described as acting in “self defense”, against attacks from “terrorists”. And Western journalists know there may be consequences if they fail to toe the line.
The rapid reaction force mooted at the 1984 AJC conference is very much operational. A veritable army of Hasbara-trained individuals and Zionist lobby organizations stands constantly ready to harass and threaten news outlets if a story is framed the “wrong” way, and/or portrays Israel in a remotely negative light. A senior BBC producer once told veteran media critic Greg Philo:
“We wait in fear for the telephone call from the Israelis. The only issue we face then is how high up it’s come from them. Has it come from a monitoring group? Has it come from the Israeli embassy? And how high has it gone up our organization? Has it reached the editor or director general? I have had journalists on the phone to me before a major news report, asking which words can I use – ‘is it alright if I say this’?”
An October exposé by Al Jazeera based on testimony from BBC and CNN whistleblowers revealed extensive “pro-Israel bias in coverage, systematic double standards and frequent violations of journalistic principles” at both networks, in no small part due to internal concerns over how certain coverage might be perceived and responded to by Zionist entity officials. Yet, independent activists and journalists are not subject to such institutional concerns – and ever since October 7th 2023, they have challenged Hasbara propaganda with devastating effect.
Were it not for diligent sleuthing by MintPress News, The Grayzone, Electronic Intifada and many others, egregious slanders peddled by the Zionist entity from the Gaza genocide’s inception – such as Hamas committing mass rape or beheading infants – might never have been comprehensively incinerated, and still today serve as “context” for Israel’s annihilation of Palestinians. Meanwhile, untold numbers of concerned citizens online have energetically rebutted Western narratives on the conflict in real-time, each and every day. This may have helped foment backlash in mainstream newsrooms.
It is a deeply poetic justice that the same techniques of information warfare perfected under Hasbara’s auspices have been turned on the Zionist entity and its public defenders. These methods allowed Israel to get away with its slow motion erasure of the Palestinian people over many decades, with at least tacit consent from Western populations. Those days are over, and never returning. Israel’s former propaganda targets and victims can now beat Zionists at their own game, with the most potent forces of all on their side – truth, and justice.
Western imperialism has always been a cesspool of lies, but now its media flush is busted
Finian Cunningham
November 25, 2024
Now the Western media no longer have credibility or authority. The Western cesspool has a busted flush.
The war between the United States-led imperialist powers and Russia that is playing out in Ukraine is not merely a proxy conflict. It is an existential showdown for the U.S. hegemonic system, benignly known as the “West”.
The high stakes of this showdown explain why it has assumed such extreme geopolitical tension to the point where there are palpable fears that the conflict could escalate to a nuclear World War Three conflagration.
We have arrived at this abysmal danger in large part because the Western-controlled media have distorted and lied about the conflict to cover up the responsibility of the Western imperialist powers.
The Western media have performed as they have always done – to serve as a propaganda system to promote false claims and warped history in such a way as to enable the Western regimes to act criminally but with the cover of apparent virtue.
The United States and its imperialist partners in the NATO alliance claim that they are defending the sovereignty and democracy of Ukraine from “unprovoked aggression” by Russia. The Western media have indulged this narrative by repeating it incessantly, while strenuously omitting alternative perspectives.
Understanding the cause of the conflict is impossible if one were to rely solely on Western media for information. Because the “information” is essentially a propaganda narrative aimed at giving the U.S. and its NATO partners a license for what is otherwise their provocative military offensive on Russia’s borders. Russia’s deep-seated concerns about NATO’s relentless expansion since the end of the Cold War – despite assurances to the contrary from former U.S. leaders – are belittled by Western media.
The Western media will not tell its consumers about the CIA coup in Kiev in 2014 that overthrew an elected president to install a NeoNazi regime. The Western media called it a pro-democracy movement. The Western media will not tell its consumers about how the NATO powers weaponized the Kiev regime over the following decade to wage a low-intensity war of aggression against the Russian-speaking people of Ukraine, culminating in Russia’s military intervention in February 2022.
The Western media won’t tell its consumers that Ukraine has always been an object of intrigue for the U.S. and its NATO partners as a way to destabilize Russia and formerly the Soviet Union.
Destabilizing Russia and other foreign states is what Western imperialist powers have been doing throughout history, specifically since 1945, even though such interference in foreign states is a violation of the UN Charter and international law. Some independent historians like the late William Blum estimate at least 100 instances of the U.S. invading or interfering in other nations since the end of World War Two through election manipulation, sabotage by unconventional warfare, or fueling proxy armed conflicts.
No sooner had the UN Charter been established in June 1945 to protect nations’ sovereignty, and the U.S., Britain and other Western imperialist states began recruiting Ukrainian fascists who had collaborated with Nazi Germany in its extermination of Slavic peoples. Remember, the Soviet Union had lost 27-30 million people during World War Two to Nazi imperialism. A temporary war-time alliance formed between the Soviet Union and the U.S. and Britain was quickly rejected by Washington and London and replaced by the Cold War. The redeployment of Nazi remnants by the Western imperialists against the Soviet Union was a staggering act of treachery.
The Western media played a vital role during the decades of the Cold War to whitewash and normalize the criminal conduct of Western imperialism. They portrayed the Cold War conflict as one of “noble West” versus “evil communism”.
Even when the Western imperialists were waging genocidal wars in Korea, Vietnam, and across Southeast Asia, as well as Latin America and Africa, the Western media served the same function over and over again. To be crude, they acted as a systematic toilet flush. They dutifully swept away the putrid filth and crimes of the Western regimes so that the Western public and the rest of the world could not examine too closely the lies and preposterous falsehoods.
In particular, the United States’ imperialist regime has been spectacular in being able to get away with genocidal wars and multiple violations of the UN Charter through covert and overt aggressions – and yet after all that infinite mayhem and malice, the U.S. political leaders and media are brazen enough to proclaim what should be the mind-boggling nonsense of their country being exceptionally virtuous, the leader of the “free world”, the “indispensable nation”, the custodian of the “rules-based global order,” and so on.
How is it possible to utter such lies and falsehoods? The Western media is the janitor to clean up the foul mess and stench of lies. We see this still happening – to some degree with lesser efficacy – in the appalling genocide in Gaza. How is it possible for Western states to keep supporting the Israeli regime’s mass murder of civilians every day and for the U.S. to veto a ceasefire five times at the UN Security Council? To some extent, the Western media have acted to normalize the genocide and to shield Western governments from condemnation for their sponsoring of the Israeli regime. The genocide in Gaza is part of why the Western media and the Western imperialist regimes have been fatally exposed for their criminality. The other critical exposure is the insanely dangerous war being waged against Russia in Ukraine.
Granted, Western media have at times reported on the crimes and misdemeanors of their governments in the conduct of foreign relations and wars. We could mention here the reporting of the Pentagon Papers in the early 1970s, which exposed the imperialist criminality of the Vietnam War. But such breakthroughs are akin to cracks in an otherwise monolithic system of lies and disinformation.
For the most part, the Western media’s fundamental role has been whitewashing, apologizing, or covering up the crimes of their governments. That makes the Western media complicit in the imperialist crimes by misleading the public into accepting crimes under the guise of a justifiable pretext, such as “fighting communism” in Vietnam instead of genocide of Vietnamese, or “eradicating weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq instead of Western plunder of the Middle East.
When has the American or British media ever been held to account by the prosecution for publishing lies that enabled imperialist crimes, such as the Vietnam War or the War on Iraq?
For decades, the Western media functioned rather effectively as the propaganda arm of Western imperialism. Of course, there were healthy skeptics and critics among the public who could see through the lies and distortions. But generally, the propaganda system known as “Western news media” tended to command the public’s acceptance and trust. The CIA referred to the Western media as the “Mighty Wurlitzer, and to a large extent, the media played the tunes and swayed the people to sing and dance accordingly.
In the age of alternative news outlets and global information, the Western establishment media have lost their monopoly on manipulation and have fallen into fatal disrepute. Donald Trump’s mocking term “fake news” has resonated widely not just among his supporters but across the globe. The Western media have become an object of scorn and derision for the lies and warmongering justifications they peddle.
The lies over the Iraq War were a big exposé. More recently, the Russia-Gate nonsense over Trump, the Gaza genocide, and the insane proxy war in Ukraine against Russia have also fatally undermined the Western imperial war-and-lie machine. The election of Trump in the U.S. can be seen as a rejection of the establishment media and their instruction on how to vote.
In the Ukraine proxy war, the United States and its imperialist partners in crime have reached a certain historical dead-end. Their lies have caught up with them.
The Western regimes have always been a cesspool of lies and filth over their war crimes and crimes against humanity in every continent.
In desperation to preserve their hegemonic dominance, the Western imperialist powers are pushing the conflict with Russia to the point of inciting nuclear war. Russia is not backing down. It has the military strength to be defiant, but also its politicians are much too knowledgeable about history to be deceived by Western regimes. The lies of Western regimes are no longer tenable, and their criminal aggression is no longer tolerable.
In previous times, the Western regimes got away with their murderous mayhem because the lies they told were dutifully laundered and sluiced away by the complicit media. But now the Western media no longer have credibility or authority. The Western cesspool has a busted flush.
An Example from Switzerland: Neuchâtel Becomes Second Canton to Enshrine Right to “Offline Life” in Constitution
Posted on November 29, 2024 by Nick Corbishley
“It is a question of having access to all the services of the State without having a computer, smartphone or tablet.”
As the world becomes steadily digitised, it is getting harder and harder to do even the simplest of things offline, while surveillance and control of the online world is escalating. Access to essential services is increasingly restricted to a specific platform or app that is often linked to Big Tech platforms and services. At the same time, many of those same apps and tech platforms are undergoing a process of rapid “enshittification” — so much so that Macquarie Dictionary has crowned the Cory Doctorow-coined term as its word of the year.
Here’s how the Australian dictionary defines enshittification:
“The gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking.”
App-Controlled Lockers and Car Park Meters
Just yesterday, my wife and I tried to rent a luggage locker at a Mexico City bus station for a couple of hours to avoid having to lug our luggage around with us before catching our connecting journey, only to find that doing so required downloading an app and sharing our personal data and bank details with the app company — all to pay one dollar fifty in storage fees. Needless to say, we declined.
In Germany, the logistics giant DHL has introduced new, “lean” parcel lockers where customers can only collect parcels if they use the company’s “Post & DHL App” on their smartphones. As the European Digital Rights network (EDRi) reports, anyone who is unable to receive a parcel at home may be redirected to one of these lockers: “in this case, the only way to receive parcels without the app is to request a second delivery to the original address – an option that is time-limited and well-hidden on DHL’s website.”
Another example I’ve noticed during my recent visits to the UK is parking. For decades motorists using a car park in my home town had fed coins into a meter and got a ticket. Then, about ten years ago, a new meter was introduced offering a card alternative to cash, which seemed like a good idea at the time. Some years later a parking app was included. Yet more choice! Then a new meter was unveiled – payment by card or app only. Within a year, the meter had disappeared altogether. In its place stood a sign instructing customers to pay by app only.
The assumption was clear: every driver wishing to park their car has a smart phone and knows how to download and operate apps, and is quite happy to share their personal data and bank account information with an obscure, probably foreign-based app company.
To cap things off, the mobile coverage was poor and the price of parking had gone up to include an extra fee for the app company. Worse still, in many parts of the UK enterprising fraudsters have begun placing QR code stickers on top of the parking apps’ QR codes, directing unsuspecting carpark users to fake websites designed to extract their bank card or account details. Victims of these scams end up losing far more than the price of a couple of hours’ parking. The ultimate insult: many get fined for not buying a parking ticket.
So, what had begun as a process of broadening customer choice had ended up narrowing it to the point at which the only way for customers to pay for their parking was with a smart phone. And instead of costs going down, they were going up, so that the app company – a new 21st century middleman – could turn a tidy profit. Rather than being quicker and more convenient, this new system is making life more difficult for many customers, and is even making some easy prey for fraudsters. As the Sheffield Star reports, customers are not happy:
Anne Middleton, of High Green, said: “I’m not to keen on that idea actually. I quite like to put my cash in. I’m not good with the apps, I always get it wrong.”
She said she had used apps and had one or two on her phone. But she added: “Generally they go wrong, so we end up not bothering or we find one that takes cash.”
Briony Salter, from Wincobank, agreed parking companies only allowing apps was unacceptable. She said: “I wish they would do parking meters – it’s easier if people have got change.
“Not everyone has a smart phone so I think it’s a very new generation thing. There are a lot of older people who may not be very handy with a phone. Maybe just going back to old payment systems is a lot easier than it is currently.”
Sara and Ian Hobson, from Woodhouse, both felt app-only was unacceptable.
Ian said: “Most people don’t know how to do it with an app. You have to download the app, then you have to pay. It’s easier just to get some coins out and put them in.”
“Digital Coercion”
Unfortunately, governments, banks and businesses in many countries are doing everything they can to drive out the use of cash for basic services like public transport and parking, and replace them with purely digital payment means. They are also making it increasingly difficult to interact with government and receive state benefits without using smart phone apps. Ukraine’s “Diia” digital ID and governance platform, launched in February 2020, offers a perfect template, according to USAID, the European Union and the United Nations Development Program.
“Digital coercion” — a term I learnt from the German financial journalist and digital rights activist, Norbert Häring — is on the rise just about everywhere. As Häring reported in September, this should hardly come as a surprise given that one of the main organisations pushing for the rapid rollout of digital public infrastructure (digital ID, digital health passes, instant payment systems, central bank digital currency…) is the corporate-controlled, WEF-partnered United Nations.
In September, a Global Digital Pact was quietly adopted at the UN Future Summit. According to Häring, neither the UN nor the German government, which was significantly involved in the preparation of the summit, “made serious efforts to inform the public about what is planned, or even to have it discussed in parliaments and the media”:
It has also not been disclosed which corporations, foundations and hand-picked representatives of so-called civil society are allowed to sit at the negotiating table.
In the text of the treaty, we learn by way of introduction that digital technologies “offer immense potential benefits for human welfare and the progress of societies” and that we must therefore eliminate any digital divide between countries and within countries. The declared goal is “a digital future for everyone”.
What is important is what is not in the contract. The word voluntary occurs only in connection with the signing of the contract. For the citizens, however, there is no right to choose a future for themselves other than a completely digitised one. After all, that would open up a digital divide that must no longer exist. There is no provision for a right to settle many of one’s affairs in the traditional way in dealing with other people instead of computers. No one should be allowed to choose that their children are taught by teachers instead of computers, or that conversations with the doctor and treatments remain a secret instead of being packed into the servers of the IT companies. Nothing in the treaty indicates that such a right was even considered.
But digital coercion may soon be less of a problem for the residents of the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel. A few days ago, an overwhelming majority of citizens (91%) voted by referendum to adopt a constitutional amendment that guarantees its citizens a right to “digital integrity”. As Häring notes, the new constitutional law offers sweeping digital protections (machine translated):
This includes the right to protection against abusive data processing, to security in the digital realm, to an offline life so that the state cannot impose digital relationships, and to be forgotten online. The right to live offline is intended to ensure that people are not forced to operate exclusively in the digital world. The canton also undertakes to offer access to human contacts in the administration. Well worth imitating.
The cantonal government now faces the challenge of protecting these new rights. As RTS reported last week, the central government sees the right to digital integrity as primarily symbolic since the scope of its application is limited to relations between the State and citizens. This would seem to suggest that the cantonal government cannot force private companies to comply with the rules.
“The risk of such a symbolic provision, of very limited scope, is to create disproportionate expectations among the public that ultimately may not be met,” said Crystel Graf, the State Councillor in charge of digital affairs.
That said, it is usually local or central government departments or state-owned companies that are pushing digital-only options for public services. As such, making sure that government services can be accessed through non-digital means is a step in the right direction.
Neuchâtel is not the first canton to take this step, nor is it likely to be the last, with similar projects under consideration in the cantons of Vaud and Jura. Last year, the people of Geneva voted overwhelmingly (94%) to enshrine digital integrity within the canton’s constitution. According to the RTS article, a year later, the results are not yet visible to the general public, but they are taking shape behind the scenes (machine translated):
For example, all cantonal laws have been scrutinised with one objective: to ensure that they respect digital integrity.
…It is a question of having access to all the services of the State without having a computer, smartphone or tablet or, conversely, of ensuring the security of our data if we wish to go digital.
According to the spokesperson for the Geneva Department of Digital Affairs, it is difficult to draw a quantitative assessment following this vote. He specifies that this new article of law has the merit of creating a new fundamental right to be respected in any new action or decision of the State.
It will be interesting to see if this trend travels beyond Swiss borders. Earlier this year, Digitalcourage, a German privacy rights and digital rights organisation, launched a petition calling for a new fundamental law: the right to access basic services without being forced to use a digital solution. As governments in both the West and the Rest of the World, including all five of the founding BRICS nations, herd their populaces toward a Big Tech-controlled Digital Gulag, a bill of digital rights is needed more than ever before.
I wholly endorse these measures. Already I cannot establish a Telegram account because I do not have or want a 'smart phone' and so cannot be 'verified. Same with some blogs which offer free options to their paid content if verified by smart phone. I have a desk top and it is enough, no need for a digital ball&chain. I do this site but try to get away from the damn machine as much as possible.
“enshittification” is found wherever there is monopoly.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
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