The defenders of Putin's propaganda outlet are truly a wonder to behold.

There is a lot in this article which describes the same things/processes/methods that bring concern with US media outlets such as FOX and CNN.

(On Edit: Clarification to why this article applies to some US media outlets)

L-

media is a shill for fascism.

How about America cleans up its own mess first before trying to fix the the unfixable elsewhere?

cancelled all cable and news outlets and never looked back.

Russian media pimping Putin is bullshite, too.

It's not allowed on DU in LBN.

USA propaganda. See? Ours has red, white, and blue all over it. Ours is soooo red white and blue that it couldn't possibly be propaganda.

Note: I'll take RT over the NY Times any day because it's a lot easier to see verifiable facts at RT.

Seems rather shortsighted to deny concern of one due to an ongoing concern of the other.

That's why so many vote against their own interests. I'm going to rec this because I think this is not just limited to RT.

Maybe if the Global Community had access to more media and diverse info....somewhere the truth could be found in the chaos...? Better than one side controlling it all and blocking out other views. We don't need a return to the McCarthy Era and the "House Un-American Activities Committee." And let us not forget J. Edgar Hoover's FBI....which we approach with the overuse of NSA.

alright for Russian media to shill for Putin.

Mahalo Lithos.

So, this doesn't count? Or some such argument.

Thanks for sharing, Lithos. I'd missed this article somehow.

Does Buzzfeed pass for serious journalism these days?

If so, the USA has fallen a lot further than I ever thought it could.

Or do you think that going through this thread shooting the messengers is adequate reaction nowadays?

but not the articles at RT. Got it!

OK, up to you!

on a site that is NOT RT. Would that meet your approval? That has a lot more credibility in my book than Buzzfeed. But I guess I've never been a fan of gossipy news sites, even if on a rare occasion they print something that might be a bit more respectable. Who's to tell if it's really true or respectable, or just some gossip dressed up as news?

Of course, you could have read this article too, because I link to it in my signature below.

The Russian channel RT has become the voice of the people and the revolutionaries, it deserves admiration, Bolivian President Evo Morales recently remarked in response to statements made by the US Broadcasting Board of Governors' CEO Andrew Lack, who had named the channel, along with Islamic State militants, as the main challenge facing his agency.

MOSCOW, January 30 (Sputnik) – Bolivian President Morales has called the Russian television channel RT the voice of revolutionaries and of the peoples of the world, and stated that it deserves admiration.

"When the media turns into the voice of the people, especially in the voice of revolutionaries, there are those people and the media, who will judge them and falsify the truth," Morales told RT. "This media is the voice of the developing countries, the voice of the peoples of the world, and it deserves our admiration."

Despite smear campaigns, misrepresentation of facts, and outright lies, such media should continue their work to give the microphone to the peoples of the world, added the Bolivian head of state.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/world/20150130/1017540252.html

I choose not to read one article you like, and I live in a self imposed bubble?

I've read over 5000 articles, in whole or in part, just about the Ukraine crises in the last year. Include what I've read about other topics, and I submit you're the one in the bubble.

Hopefully, for your sake, it is self imposed.

MattSh provides a valuable role here at DU.

The question often asked is, "Are there any actual Putin apologists here at DU?", with the implication being that no, there are not.

And on the surface, I'd too be inclined to say, no; that most of the people who routinely parrot Russian media (or at least parrot those who parrot Russian media) are well-intentioned rubes. That they have a justifiably skeptical view of US foreign policy and interventionist past but that they have allowed themselves to be exploited by the mouthpieces of those who support a country with an arguably even more maleficent history of foreign intervention and dominionism.

And then there's MattSh, who gave us this gem:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4677598

That'll leave a mark.

Well played, sir. Well played.

While one would be naive to imagine Russia doesn't see the media as a means of propagandizing, one would be equally naive to imagine the same doesn't take place in the US. When Pomerantsev says, “What they are basically trying to undermine is the idea of a reality-based conversation ... and to use the idea of a plurality of truths to feed disinformation, which in the end looks to trash the information space," one would immediately think of the NY Times, the Washington Post, and the cable news disinformation complex if one hadn't been warned in advance he was talking about Eastasia--sorry, I meant Russia.

And, while it is always worth questioning media bias and Pomerantsev no doubt has some interesting stories to tell given his background, his co-authorship of The Menace of Unreality with Michael Weiss, noted neocon and warmonger (sorry, Department of Redundancy Department), suggests taking at least a grain of salt before designating all media things Russian as irredeemably evil based on his say so.

"His father... is a writer, poet and broadcaster who fell afoul of...the K.G.B. for distributing works by ...Solzhenitsyn and...Nabokov. Encouraged to take the exit visas that were then sometimes available to Soviet Jews, the family left in 1978 for Vienna.... A couple of years later, Igor Pomerantsev was offered a job in the Russian service of the BBC World Service."

"Apart from a brief period in Munich, when his father moved to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Peter Pomerantsev grew up as what he calls an “accidental Brit” in London"

"FOR a time, at least, Mr. Pomerantsev, now 37, seems also to have been at home in the raucous world of middlebrow Russian television"


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/14/world/europe/russian-tv-insider-says-putin-is-running-the-show-in-ukraine.html?_r=0

person there.

He's a Senior Fellow at Legatum. He has an office. I'd say he's a bit more at home *there*.

Legatum is a private investment firm headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Legatum invests proprietary capital in commercial investments...The Legatum Institute is an independent policy, advisory and advocacy organisation within the Legatum group of companies based in London, United Kingdom.[1] The Institute researches and promotes the principles that drive the creation of global prosperity and the expansion of human liberty. The Institute undertakes original and collaborative research and publishes case studies and ancillary literature. Recent initiatives include the launch of the Legatum Prosperity Index,[2] which measures prosperity across countries as a combination of material wealth and life satisfaction...Legatum made a structured gift of USD50 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to create a Center which will support the Legatum Fellows...

Legatum was founded in the United Arab Emirates, in December 2006 by Chairman of Legatum Global Holdings, Christopher Chandler, formerly President of the holding company for the Sovereign Global group of companies ("Sovereign&quot , which he co-founded with his older brother Richard Chandler (businessman) in 1986...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legatum

Call me so not surprised.

When the US government was looking for propagandists for it's latest world adventures, the NY Times volunteered to become not only the whole trumpet section, but the whole brass section as well.

We are free to acknowledge that basically all major news outlets are propaganda/infotainment.

Sid

Columbia Journalism Review

02:50 PM - January 21, 2013
Smith-Mundt reform: In with a whimper?

It’s now legal to broadcast Voice of America stateside, but few seem to notice
- See more at: http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/smith-mundt_modernization_pass.php#sthash.TLAr4kQE.dpuf

Last spring, there was a spate of commentary about Congressional efforts to relax the domestic dissemination ban on content produced for foreign audiences by US government-sponsored broadcasters. Imposed by a series of amendments to the US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, also known as the Smith-Mundt Act, they prevented the likes of Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Asia from being distributed in the United States. The ban was passed in 1972, in the wake of McCarthy-era fears of a communist infiltration leading to contamination of the message broadcast overseas.

When President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law in early January, he authorized implementation of the Smith Mundt Modernization Act, eliminating the domestic dissemination ban. In contrast to the alarmist punditry that surfaced last May—critics said that a repeal would allow the US to subject its own citizens to propaganda—the actual change has prompted little discussion outside of public diplomacy and international broadcast circles.

As of July 1, 2013, content produced by the five US government-sponsored broadcasters, all overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, will no longer be subject to the ban. In practice, not much will change. As one longtime US international broadcasting expert observed, the legislation simply changes the legal status of an already hard-to-enforce ban, “allowing de jure to catch up with de facto.” A formal statement from Voice of America, the flagship US international broadcaster, praised the change, emphasizing both the resulting transparency and the opportunity it now offers for Americans to learn more about this US foreign policy tool. As one board member declared, “All Americans will now have access to the vital and informative reporting of our accomplished journalists around the world who are working under difficult circumstances in closed societies and developing countries.”

----snip-----

Only 12 percent of the references to Voice of America directly quoted reporting done by the broadcaster and just another 3 percent of the references used indirect quotes from the news organization. Thus, although VOA is well regarded as a news source overseas, only 15 percent of the already-limited references to VOA in the American print media examined contained any content attributed to the broadcaster.

That such references appear at all, however, suggests that major American print media outlets do follow VOA’s reporting. It is in this context that the repeal of the domestic dissemination ban may have the greatest impact. With the ban’s removal, there is no longer any question about whether it is legal to refer to or to use VOA or other international broadcasting content in domestic news. The benefits of such usage are manifold. Not the least of these potential benefits is the fact that, as a media organization with a budget of more than $700 million and content produced in more than 50 languages, the Broadcasting Board of Governors’s five broadcasters may prove to be a rich source of internationally oriented content for mainstream American news organizations and for ethnic media outlets.

The repeal of the domestic dissemination ban happened quietly, and it’s possible there will yet be fallout as awareness of the action spreads. But when it comes to US international broadcasting, uneasiness about potential propaganda can give way to the American public finally getting the chance to judge for itself.

-
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/smith-mundt_modernization_pass.php


------------------------


LA Times Reporter Caught Falsifying Articles with CIA
Andrew Emett
NationofChange / News Investigation
Published: Monday 8 September 2014


In violation of journalistic ethics and the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, former Los Angeles Times reporter Ken Dilanian allowed CIA handlers to edit his articles prior to publication and reported false information to manipulate his audience. Responding to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, the CIA released hundreds of pages documenting the agency’s dubious relationship with national security reporters. Operating under a glaring lack of oversight, the CIA has been exploiting establishment journalists since its inception.

The newly released documents cover Dilanian’s correspondence with the CIA from March to July 2012. In his emails, Dilanian repeatedly broke ethical guidelines by submitting his articles to the CIA allowing them to alter facts in order to portray the agency in a more favorable light. Receiving false intelligence from the CIA, Dilanian reported a drone strike had successfully killed Al Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libi without causing any collateral damage. According to Amnesty International and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, at least 20 people were killed in the attack and several more wounded. Although some of the casualties had probably been Al Qaeda members, the other victims were rescue workers slaughtered in a follow-up drone strike.

While collaborating on an article with L.A. Times reporter David Cloud, Dilanian submitted a draft asking his CIA handlers to approve the version before it went to print. Dissatisfied with the earlier draft, the CIA later approved a softened version of the article that Dilanian and Cloud published on May 16. While collaborating with L.A. Times reporter Rebecca Keegan, Dilanian downplayed the CIA’s participation in leaking classified information to director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal for their factually inaccurate propaganda film, Zero Dark Thirty.

After leaving the L.A. Times last May, Dilanian has become an intelligence reporter for the Associated Press. He claims the AP does not allow him to submit articles to the CIA prior to publication and admits, “I shouldn’t have done it, and I wouldn’t do it now.”

Other national security reporters who corresponded with the CIA during this timeframe include Brian Bennett of the L.A. Times, David Ignatius of The Washington Post, Matt Apuzzo of The New York Times, Siobhan Gorman of The Wall Street Journal, Adam Goldman of The Washington Post, and Scott Shane of The New York Times.


As a contributing editor for Rolling Stone in 2011, Michael Hastings revealed Lt. Gen. William Caldwell had been illegally deploying psychological operations (psy-ops) against U.S. Senators visiting Afghanistan. According to the Defense Department, psy-ops utilize propaganda and psychological tactics to influence emotions and behaviors on hostile foreign groups. Federal law has forbidden the military from practicing psy-ops on Americans since the passage of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948. But a provision in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) overturned parts of the Smith-Mundt Act by authorizing propaganda produced by the State Department and Broadcasting Board of Governors to be used against U.S. citizens.

After New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh exposed CIA corruption and massive spying programs against U.S. citizens on December 22, 1974, the government launched a series of investigations revealing illegal CIA activities. The toothless Rockefeller Commission, Church Committee, Nedzi Committee, and Pike Committee exposed several scandals and eventually led to the creation of the permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. During Operation CHAOS, the CIA infiltrated domestic anti-war groups while reading U.S. mail delivered to and from foreign countries. One of the first illegal programs implemented by the CIA was Operation Mockingbird, which recruited journalists to work for the agency on a volunteer or paid basis.

On October 20, 1977, Carl Bernstein wrote a Rolling Stone article revealing over 400 American journalists secretly working for the CIA. The agency manipulated hundreds of journalists, editors, and executives into reporting propaganda and false information to the American public. CIA collaborators worked within The New York Times, CBS, Time Inc., ABC, the Associated Press, NBC, Reuters, Newsweek, Hearst Newspapers, and numerous other media organizations. Between 1954 and 1961, CBS President Sig Mickelson compromised journalistic ethics by secretly entering into an agreement with the CIA.

http://www.nationofchange.org/la-times-reporter-caught-falsifying-articles-cia-1410186373

Sid