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Stephen Lendman Correspondent
WESTERN major media march to the same drummer – dutifully regurgitating managed news misinformation garbage, wilfully burying hard truths on issues mattering most.

Alternative sources beholden to truth and full disclosure operate by different standards – engendering ire among Western nations wanting their high crimes suppressed – bashing sources revealing them.

The EU Observer (EUO) claims independent credentials while supporting policies responsible news sources denounce.

Independently reporting hard truths isn’t its long suit. Its editor, Lisbeth Kirk, is the wife of former Danish European Parliament member Jens-Peter Bonde. Human Rights Watch’s European and Central Asian advocacy director Veronika Szente Goldston calls its journalists “the most in-your-face in Brussels.”

EUO irresponsibly bashed Russia’s Sputnik News and RT International — two reputable sources for news, information and analysis — polar opposite Western media propaganda. It shamelessly called their reporting valued by growing millions “broadcasting fabrications and hate speech from their bureaus in EU cities.”

It touted plans by EU officials to counter what they called “use and misuse of communications tools . . . play(ing) an important role in the dramatic political, economic and security-related developments (in) Eastern (European countries) over the past 18 months.”

It drafted a nine-page “action plan” intended to convey “positive” messages. It’ll increase funding to blast out Europe’s view of things more effectively.

It wants EU policies promoted in former Russian republics the old-fashioned way — by repeating Big Lies often enough until most people believe them.

A new EU foreign service cell called East StratComTeam operating by September will run things — functioning as a European ministry of propaganda. It’ll “develop dedicated communication material on priority issues…put at the disposal of the EU’s political leadership, press services, EU delegations and EU member states.”

Material circulated in Russia and other EU countries aims to let news consumers “easily understand that political and economic reforms promoted by the EU can, over time, have a positive impact on their daily lives” — even though precisely the opposite is true. It wants so-called benefits Europeans enjoy explained to people continent-wide. Will millions of unemployed, underemployed and impoverished people buy what’s plainly untrue from their own experience? Sputnik News, RT, US independent sources like the Progressive Radio Network and numerous others, steadily gain audience strength at the expense of scoundrel media people abandon for good reason. Growing numbers want truth and full disclosure on things affecting their lives and welfare. Politicians in Western countries want ordinary people treated like mushrooms — well-watered and in the dark.

RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said “the European Union is diligently trying to stifle the alternative voice of RT at a time when in Europe there are hundreds of newspapers, television channels and radio stations which set out only one point of view on what is happening in the world.” The BBC is Fox News with an English accent. US so-called public radio and broadcasting are no different — telling listeners and viewers everything except what they most need to know.

Simonyan explained “Britain (has) an entire army brigade of 1,500 men…whose tasks include the fight against Russia on social networks. NATO has a task force aimed at countering Russian influence throughout the world.”

“Only recently, Deutsche Welle launched a 24-hour television channel in English to counter RT. At the same time, nearly all the major Western media, including the BBC, DW and Euronews have long disseminated their information in the Russian language, while Radio Liberty, funded directly by the US government, broadcasts in Russian.” “(I)f after all this, the EU still complains that they are losing the ‘information war’ against Russia, perhaps it’s time to realise that” growing numbers of people are fed up with being lied to.

• Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].