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American journalism is officially dead. "Reporters" are now activists, overtly biased.


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2021 Apr 10, 10:02pm   130,363 views  1,306 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (60)   💰tip   ignore  

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-cbs-scandal-you-may-have-missed-because-of-the-60-minutes-hit-job-on-ron-desantis/ar-BB1ftBVU

The CBS scandal you may have missed because of the 60 Minutes hit job on Ron DeSantis

The news network has published an article advising major companies on ways to "fight" Republican-backed voting laws. The report’s original headline read, “3 ways companies can help fight Georgia's restrictive new voting law.” Naturally, the story itself contains several tips on how businesses can protest Georgia-style legislation.

This is not journalism. This is political advocacy, and it’s all done in service of a traditional beneficiary of the press’s ethical lapses.

Imagine, for a moment, if one of the three major networks published a story advising businesses on how to “fight” ultra-permissive abortion laws. It’d be unthinkable. Yet, here, is CBS doing exactly that sort of politicking, but for bills such as the one passed recently in Georgia.

Perhaps realizing it had strayed headfirst into political advocacy, CBS amended the report’s headline eventually, softening its tone into something decidedly less partisan.

The headline as it appears online now reads, “Activists are calling on big companies to challenge new voting laws. Here's what they're asking for.”

In a way, this is actually worse than the original. At least in the original, CBS had the guts to declare its allegiance outright. The amended version chooses instead to hide behind “activists” to push an obvious political position.

As for the report itself, it remains unchanged. It still outlines various ways in which businesses can “fight” voting laws championed by Republican legislatures. It is still just as partisan as the day it first published.

“Do not donate," the report recommends. "Activists said companies should immediately stop making donations to Barry Fleming and Michael Dugan, the Georgia Republicans who co-sponsored the voting changes."

It continues, naming and shaming major businesses such as Delta and Home Depot for donating to Fleming and Dugan.

"Ending political donations is one of the most immediately impactful steps a company can take to sway lawmakers," the article reads.

The article also says companies can help fight Georgia-style voting laws by producing ads that "help stamp out efforts nationwide to pass voting laws similar to Georgia's," including in Arizona and Texas.

"Activists say it isn't enough for companies to issue tepid public statements in defense of voting rights," the CBS report reads. "Instead, companies should launch television and social media ads that oppose efforts in Georgia, Arizona, Texas and other states considering voter restrictions."

Companies, the story continues, can also support the coercive monstrosity known as the “For the People Act."

"If passed,” the CBS report reads, “the act would create same-day and online voter registration nationwide. It would also require states to overhaul their registration systems. The act seeks to expand absentee voting, limit the states' ability to remove people from voter rolls, increase federal funds for election security and reform the redistricting process.”

Though the CBS article is several days old, you likely missed it amid the network’s other major ethical lapse, when it promoted the lie that Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis rewarded a grocery chain with an “exclusive” deal to distribute coronavirus vaccines as part of a “pay for play” scheme involving political contributions.

If you missed all of this voting law boycott business when it happened, you can be forgiven. After all, CBS’s “report” on DeSantis is possibly the worst political hit job since Dan Rather went on-air with forgeries of former President George W. Bush's National Guard service record.

It’s obviously not a great situation when one media scandal is obscured by a concurrent scandal and all by the same newsroom. If there are adults still left at CBS, now would be a good time to take back control.


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1180   Patrick   2024 Aug 2, 11:35am  

https://www.mintpressnews.com/documents-show-bill-gates-has-given-319-million-to-media-outlets/278943/


SEATTLE — Up until his recent messy divorce, Bill Gates enjoyed something of a free pass in corporate media. Generally presented as a kindly nerd who wants to save the world, the Microsoft co-founder was even unironically christened “Saint Bill” by The Guardian.

While other billionaires’ media empires are relatively well known, the extent to which Gates’s cash underwrites the modern media landscape is not. After sorting through over 30,000 individual grants, MintPress can reveal that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) has made over $300 million worth of donations to fund media projects.

Recipients of this cash include many of America’s most important news outlets, including CNN, NBC, NPR, PBS and The Atlantic. Gates also sponsors a myriad of influential foreign organizations, including the BBC, The Guardian, The Financial Times and The Daily Telegraph in the United Kingdom; prominent European newspapers such as Le Monde (France), Der Spiegel (Germany) and El País (Spain); as well as big global broadcasters like Al-Jazeera.

The Gates Foundation money going towards media programs has been split up into a number of sections, presented in descending numerical order, and includes a link to the relevant grant on the organization’s website.

Awards Directly to Media Outlets:

NPR- $24,663,066
The Guardian (including TheGuardian.org)- $12,951,391
Cascade Public Media – $10,895,016
Public Radio International (PRI.org/TheWorld.org)- $7,719,113
The Conversation- $6,664,271
Univision- $5,924,043
Der Spiegel (Germany)- $5,437,294
Project Syndicate- $5,280,186
Education Week – $4,898,240
WETA- $4,529,400
NBCUniversal Media- $4,373,500
Nation Media Group (Kenya) – $4,073,194
Le Monde (France)- $4,014,512
Bhekisisa (South Africa) – $3,990,182
El País – $3,968,184
BBC- $3,668,657
CNN- $3,600,000
KCET- $3,520,703
Population Communications International (population.org) – $3,500,000
The Daily Telegraph – $3,446,801
Chalkbeat – $2,672,491
The Education Post- $2,639,193
Rockhopper Productions (U.K.) – $2,480,392
Corporation for Public Broadcasting – $2,430,949
UpWorthy – $2,339,023
Financial Times – $2,309,845
The 74 Media- $2,275,344
Texas Tribune- $2,317,163
Punch (Nigeria) – $2,175,675
News Deeply – $1,612,122
The Atlantic- $1,403,453
Minnesota Public Radio- $1,290,898
YR Media- $1,125,000
The New Humanitarian- $1,046,457
Sheger FM (Ethiopia) – $1,004,600
Al-Jazeera- $1,000,000
ProPublica- $1,000,000
Crosscut Public Media – $810,000
Grist Magazine- $750,000
Kurzgesagt – $570,000
Educational Broadcasting Corp – $506,504
Classical 98.1 – $500,000
PBS – $499,997
Gannett – $499,651
Mail and Guardian (South Africa)- $492,974
Inside Higher Ed.- $439,910
BusinessDay (Nigeria) – $416,900
Medium.com – $412,000
Nutopia- $350,000
Independent Television Broadcasting Inc. – $300,000
Independent Television Service, Inc. – $300,000
Caixin Media (China) – $250,000
Pacific News Service – $225,000
National Journal – $220,638
Chronicle of Higher Education – $149,994
Belle and Wissell, Co. $100,000
Media Trust – $100,000
New York Public Radio – $77,290
KUOW – Puget Sound Public Radio – $5,310
Together, these donations total $166,216,526. The money is generally directed towards issues close to the Gateses hearts. For example, the $3.6 million CNN grant went towards “report[ing] on gender equality with a particular focus on least developed countries, producing journalism on the everyday inequalities endured by women and girls across the world,” while the Texas Tribune received millions to “to increase public awareness and engagement of education reform issues in Texas.” Given that Bill is one of the charter schools’ most fervent supporters, a cynic might interpret this as planting pro-corporate charter school propaganda into the media, disguised as objective news reporting.

The Gates Foundation has also given nearly $63 million to charities closely aligned with big media outlets, including nearly $53 million to BBC Media Action, over $9 million to MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation, and $1 million to The New York Times Neediest Causes Fund. While not specifically funding journalism, donations to the philanthropic arm of a media player should still be noted.

Gates continues to underwrite a wide network of investigative journalism centers as well, totaling just over $38 million, more than half of which has gone to the D.C.-based International Center for Journalists to expand and develop African media.

These centers include:

International Center for Journalists- $20,436,938
Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (Nigeria) – $3,800,357
The Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting – $2,432,552
Fondation EurActiv Politech – $2,368,300
International Women’s Media Foundation – $1,500,000
Center for Investigative Reporting – $1,446,639
InterMedia Survey institute – $1,297,545
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism – $1,068,169
Internews Network – $985,126
Communications Consortium Media Center – $858,000
Institute for Nonprofit News – $650,021
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies- $382,997
Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (Nigeria) – $360,211
Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies – $254,500
Global Forum for Media Development (Belgium) – $124,823
Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting – $100,000
In addition to this, the Gates Foundation also plies press and journalism associations with cash, to the tune of at least $12 million. For example, the National Newspaper Publishers Association — a group representing more than 200 outlets — has received $3.2 million.

The list of these organizations includes:

Education Writers Association – $5,938,475
National Newspaper Publishers Association – $3,249,176
National Press Foundation- $1,916,172
Washington News Council- $698,200
American Society of News Editors Foundation – $250,000
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press- $25,000
This brings our running total up to $216.4 million.

The foundation also puts up the money to directly train journalists all over the world, in the form of scholarships, courses and workshops. Today, it is possible for an individual to train as a reporter thanks to a Gates Foundation grant, find work at a Gates-funded outlet, and to belong to a press association funded by Gates. This is especially true of journalists working in the fields of health, education and global development, the ones Gates himself is most active in and where scrutiny of the billionaire’s actions and motives are most necessary.

Gates Foundation grants pertaining to the instruction of journalists include:

Johns Hopkins University – $1,866,408
Teachers College, Columbia University- $1,462,500
University of California Berkeley- $767,800
Tsinghua University (China) – $450,000
Seattle University – $414,524
Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies – $254,500
Rhodes University (South Africa) – $189,000
Montclair State University- $160,538
Pan-Atlantic University Foundation – $130,718
World Health Organization – $38,403
The Aftermath Project- $15,435
The BMGF also pays for a wide range of specific media campaigns around the world. For example, since 2014 it has donated $5.7 million to the Population Foundation of India in order to create dramas that promote sexual and reproductive health, with the intent to increase family planning methods in South Asia. Meanwhile, it alloted over $3.5 million to a Senegalese organization to develop radio shows and online content that would feature health information. Supporters consider this to be helping critically underfunded media, while opponents might consider it a case of a billionaire using his money to plant his ideas and opinions into the press.

Media projects supported by the Gates Foundation:

European Journalism Centre – $20,060,048
World University Service of Canada – $12,127,622
Well Told Story Limited – $9,870,333
Solutions Journalism Inc.- $7,254,755
Entertainment Industry Foundation – $6,688,208
Population Foundation of India- $5,749,826 –
Participant Media – $3,914,207
Réseau Africain de l’Education pour la santé- $3,561,683
New America – $3,405,859
AllAfrica Foundation – $2,311,529
Steps International – $2,208,265
Center for Advocacy and Research – $2,200,630
The Sesame Workshop – $2,030,307
Panos Institute West Africa – $1,809,850
Open Cities Lab – $1,601,452
Harvard university – $1,190,527
Learning Matters – $1,078,048
The Aaron Diamond Aids Research Center- $981,631
Thomson Media Foundation- $860,628
Communications Consortium Media Center – $858,000
StoryThings- $799,536
Center for Rural Strategies – $749,945
The New Venture Fund – $700,000
Helianthus Media – $575,064
University of Southern California- $550,000
World Health Organization- $530,095
Phi Delta Kappa International – $446,000
Ikana Media – $425,000
Seattle Foundation – $305,000
EducationNC – $300,000
Beijing Guokr Interactive – $300,000
Upswell- $246,918
The African Academy of Sciences – $208,708
Seeking Modern Applications for Real Transformation (SMART) – $201,781
Bay Area Video Coalition- $190,000
PowHERful Foundation – $185,953
PTA Florida Congress of Parents and Teachers – $150,000
ProSocial – $100,000
Boston University – $100,000
National Center for Families Learning – $100,000
Development Media International – $100,000
Ahmadu Bello University- $100,000
Indonesian eHealth and Telemedicine Society – $100,000
The Filmmakers Collaborative – $50,000
Foundation for Public Broadcasting in Georgia Inc. – $25,000
SIFF – $13,000
Total: $97,315,408

$319.4 MILLION AND (A LOT) MORE

Added together, these Gates-sponsored media projects come to a total of $319.4 million. However, there are clear shortcomings with this non-exhaustive list, meaning the true figure is undoubtedly far higher. ...
1181   Patrick   2024 Aug 2, 11:50am  

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/its-complicated-friday-august-2-2024


You really don’t hate the media nearly enough. According to the Herald, the CDC recommends the hastily-approved, untested mRNA-RSV shot for pregnant women :

For kids, while most RSV infections are mild, some babies and young children who
are born premature, have a weaker immune system or another medical condition
might be more at risk for severe illness, according to the CDC.
That's why the CDC says it recommends maternal RSV vaccination during pregnancy
or giving babies RSV monoclonal antibodies. "Most infants will not need both," the
agency said.

No thanks. I say good luck to them. You couldn’t get me near an RSV shot even if you offered me a free ticket to Fauci’s sentencing hearing. Tempting, but hard pass.

I’m just a lawyer, not a doctor, so I’m not giving anybody medical advice. But I plan to sit this one out. I never even heard of RSV until the covid bucks began drying up. I bet they just made it up. So I’ll take my own chances.


We also don't hate the criminals at the CDC enough either.
1186   Patrick   2024 Aug 11, 1:57pm  

https://barsoom.substack.com/p/through-the-chilled-years-ahead




It seems far more probable that the rumours of phantom anti-immigration rallies were planted and disseminated by state intelligence and associated private sector consulting firms, which then coordinated a ‘response’ across the astroturf activist NGOs and primary state propaganda platforms. The obvious goal is to wrest back control of the narrative by insinuating that the majority of the British people stand with the occupation government, while those struggling for national liberation are a tiny minority of low-status thugs.
1193   Ceffer   2024 Aug 13, 10:45pm  

Patrick says





The shadows are running the DNC as a tyrannical and lawless dictatorship, without even the participation of their so called useful idiot ranks or advise and consent.

So, what unilateral horrors await the Republic if they election fraud their way in again?
1199   Patrick   2024 Aug 22, 11:00am  

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/coached-friday-august-22-2024-c-and


Stoney-faced CNN panelists along the bench were forced to sit and listen, while one overly truthful panelist criticized Kamala for claiming Trump caused the country’s problems even though she’s been in the White House for nearly four years now. Why hasn’t she already fixed these problems? Worse, he pointed out that, “Democrats have controlled the White House for 12 of the last 16 years, and somehow, it’s still all Trump’s fault.”

The other panelists gave their best impressions of poker players holding terrible cards.


Lol, that panelist will not be invited back, ever.
1205   Patrick   2024 Aug 27, 5:06pm  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList


JournoList (sometimes referred to as the J-List)[1] was a private Google Groups forum for discussing politics and the news media with 400 left-leaning[2] journalists, academics and others. Ezra Klein created the online forum in February 2007 while blogging at The American Prospect and shut it down on June 25, 2010 amid wider public exposure. Journalists later pointed out various off-color statements made by members of the list denigrating conservatives. Others defended such statements as being taken out of context or simply a matter of private candor. ...

Responding to the Jeremiah Wright controversy surrounding Obama's campaign, one JournoList contributor, Spencer Ackerman of The Washington Independent, stated "If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead, take one of them – Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares – and call them racists".[7][8] Chris Hayes of The Nation was requesting ideas from other journalists for best ways to criticize Sarah Palin in an email thread.[9]

Ackerman was also quoted as saying, "find a right winger's [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously, I mean this rhetorically."[10] According to media scholar Jim A. Kuypers, the hatred of conservatives was strong on the list. Sarah Spitz, an NPR affiliate producer, had written that she would "laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out", if she would witness Rush Limbaugh having a heart attack.[8] ...

Tucker Carlson, who edited several of Strong's articles about JournoList, wrote in a July 22 article: "Again and again, we discovered members of Journolist working to coordinate talking points on behalf of Democratic politicians, principally Barack Obama. That is not journalism, and those who engage in it are not journalists. They should stop pretending to be. The news organizations they work for should stop pretending, too. ... I've been in journalism my entire adult life, and have often defended it against fellow conservatives who claim the news business is fundamentally corrupt. It's harder to make that defense now. It will be easier when honest (and, yes, liberal) journalists denounce what happened on Journolist as wrong."[8] Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard, discussed JournoList saying, "... hundreds of journalists have gotten together, on an online listserv called JournoList, to promote liberalism and liberal politicians at the expense of traditional journalism."[11]
1214   Patrick   2024 Sep 5, 11:19am  

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/the-orthodox-express-thursday-september


Weinstein proposed that captured corporate media’s only job is to publish orthodoxy. In other words, stories like “Republican Liz Cheney endorses Harris” aren’t actually meant to convince anybody that there is some rising groundswell of Republican opposition to Trump. Rather, corporate media is signaling to the orthodox establishment’s members what is permissible for them to think and say.

People whose careers depend on established institutional structures implicitly understand this. If, like Weinstein, someone decides to challenge or break with the approved narrative, they risk losing their careers and reputations. Questioning the narrative means losing invitations, opportunities, promotions, and killing your career.

In this way, the corporate media serves as the day-to-day mechanism for rapidly disseminating ‘safe’ groupthink. The participants —especially those in government, academia, and international corporations— know that straying from media-established boundaries means risking scapegoat status and excommunication.

After all, Weinstein should know. That’s what happened to him.

Over time, corporate media has evolved from being a source of investigative journalism and watchdog reporting into a mechanical device for reinforcing consensus among elites.

Weinstein’s theory helps us understand how in 2023, Time could rail against ultraprocessed foods, but one year later in 2024, after the Trump-Kennedy alliance, can turn on a dime and publish silly headlines like “What if Ultra-Processed Foods Aren’t as Bad as You Think?”

It also explains why corporate media seems blithely unconcerned about its historically low levels of trust. There is a simple explanation. It doesn’t care about public trust, because its mission is to maintain cohesion among the elite class, not to provide honest, transparent information to the masses. Thus, publishing false or exaggerated stories that serve a particular political or corporate interest are useful for keeping the right people in alignment.

In other words, the general population’s trust is secondary or even irrelevant because the real power brokers —decision-makers in government, business, and academia— are still receiving and aligning with the messages the media sends. As long as the right people (those with influence and authority) continue to trust and engage with corporate media, the public can be safely ignored.

Even more dystopian, the erosion of media trust doesn’t even hurt its mission at all. If anything, it might even help maintain the status quo, by keeping the unwashed general public out of the conversation.

When we see media’s narrative spin machine working, like when it tells us ultraprocessed foods aren’t really that bad, or that Republican Liz Cheney is breaking with the party, or that America is systemically racist, we must not frame those narratives in terms of how horrible the media is, but rather understand that media is telling Democrats and captured elites how to think.

The best vaccine for these virus-like mind-control narratives is mockery. Every narrative has a simple anti-narrative waiting to be discovered. That’s why memes are effective, and it’s why the deep state coalition cannot tolerate free speech.
1215   Patrick   2024 Sep 9, 8:41am  

https://babylonbee.com/news/10-famous-quotes-from-history-as-reported-by-the-associated-press


As everyone knows, the Associated Press is 100% trustworthy in every single quote they have ever covered. It truly seems like they are the only ones, apart from us at the Bee, who don't add any bias or spin to their stories.

To commemorate the AP's long and distinguished record of quoting people accurately, we at the Babylon Bee have put together 10 famous historical quotes as reported by the Associated Press:

"The only thing we have… is fear itself." — Franklin D. Roosevelt: What a downer!

"That's one small... man." — Neil Armstrong: Everyone looks small from the moon, Neil.

"You miss one hundred percent of the shots you... take." — Wayne Gretzky: Sometimes, the truth hurts.

"I am literally....... Hitler." — Donald Trump: Can't believe he just came out and said it.

"Ask not." — John F. Kennedy: Words the Kamala campaign lives by.

"I have a dream that one day... little boys will be... little girls." — Martin Luther King Jr.: Oh dear.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that men are... endowed... well." — Declaration of Independence: A strange beginning to the American Revolution.

"Give me death!" — Patrick Henry: Not a smart request.

"December... will live in infamy" — Franklin D. Roosevelt: Gee, someone hates Christmas.

"I did... that woman." — Bill Clinton: Okay, the AP might have gotten this one right.

Thanks for all your great work, AP!
1217   Patrick   2024 Sep 15, 9:19am  

https://modernity.news/2024/09/15/new-low-fake-news-cnn-uses-fake-photoshopped-fat-trump-image/


During a segment criticising Trump supporting journalist Laura Loomer, CNN hit a new low by using a completely fake image of the former president that had been photoshopped to make him look grossly obese.

The ridiculous image was displayed by host Anderson Cooper on Friday during the segment. ...

There’s no way this is a ‘mistake’.

CNN knew the image was doctored and used it regardless.

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