The impending death of western media

westernmediaGordon Duff Correspondent
SEVERAL recent events have “burned” the Press, sometimes called the “mainstream media” or “the news.” At one time, the great newspapers, the New York Times, The Guardian, a list of a dozen or so, combined with CBS News, the home of media “stars” such as Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow and the BBC, kept the world abreast of events. Those days are long gone. The great writers are gone, investigative journalism is dead, replaced by “blogging,” a haphazard affair of “robo-lies” overwhelming a very few newer unfunded and largely unnoticed “media stars.”

The events we speak of are the ISIS/ISIL phenomenon, the coup in the Ukraine and the current Ebola crisis.

All three expose huge problems with the media, not the simple bias which has plagued the mainstream news for decades, not even the laziness of actors reading press releases replacing reputation and renown.

The press is dead. News is an information business, dependent on sources, on ability to check facts, to discern reality from fantasy. For decades the corporations that bought the world’s media had been able to sell their advertising and peddle propaganda, even hide scandals and spin events.

In America, the fall came when the Murdoch media empire, a collection of sex, fear porn and conspiracy theory “married” America’s pro-Wall Street political party, the “GOP,” becoming its “mouthpiece.”

In Britain, the Murdoch empire became the mechanism of corruption, bribery, blackmail and espionage, all hidden behind a veneer of “phone hacking,” soft pornography and Islamophobia.

In America, Murdoch not only owns Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, both laughable if their content weren’t insidious, but Murdoch also owns half a dozen “entertainment” networks as well, blending television drama of surprising quality with endless plotlines about “Iranian and Pakistani terrorists.”

The same actors who, in one show play Mossad agents always helping out their slovenly American counterparts, alternate playing Iranian nuclear plotters.
Burned by Events

ISIL/ISIS has been a news disaster. Nothing whatsoever has come out of regions controlled by ISIS/ISIL. They refuse to “embed” reporters, choosing instead to stick to operational security that, to any trained analyst, should have revealed long ago that they are not what they seem.

The media has left their audience not only with questions but with the certainty that there is both no ability to report on the Middle East and a strong desire to keep information from audiences. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened but, due to the nature of the dramatic acts, rape, be-headings and the like, normally the press would want as many details as possible. There is a long-time saying at American schools of journalism which is, “If it bleeds, it reads.”

Ukraine is another problem for the media. Time and time again, the media have announced the fall of pro-Russian regions of Ukraine and then, only days later, has to announce the Ukrainian army in full retreat. Then, there is the story about Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, the blatant attempt to blame rebels or Russia using altered satellite photos, forged documents and wild conjecture. When the Russian government repeatedly released exculpatory evidence, clearly demonstrating the press to be “making it all up,” simply walking away from the scene of their own crimes no longer worked.

Ebola may kill the press more quickly than some of those infected with that horrific disease. The press has been shown to have no assets in Africa at all, no press relationships, no government sources, no bureaus. Press TV, Russia Today and Veterans Today have more press assets in Africa than the British, French and US media combined. Thus, when entire nations are “locked down” and entire villages, even cities, are cordoned off and dozens or hundreds, no one really knows, of dead bodies lie in the streets, no one is there to report it.

Worse still, the seriousness of the problem becomes fodder for outright fabrication by the media, based on the election year political agendas. Ebola has proven, not only that the press can’t be relied on but, moreover, that they are dangerous as well.
Laziness

The world’s largest network is CNN, formerly part of Turner Broadcasting, an organisation “gobbled up” by Time Warner Broadcasting. With nearly 100 million people viewing CNN around the world each day, it is surprising how CNN, in actuality, does very little news analysis and will at times run the same online web “front page” for four days in a row.
Of that potential viewership, individual news shows often have fewer viewers or listeners than amateur podcasts, with numbers being well under 500 000. For Internet traffic with regard to CNN, the majority of “time on site” is spent waiting through commercials and slow load times to view the injured from train wrecks. Seventy percent of their “traffic,” web and broadcast, is tied to gossip and subjects involving sexuality.

Foreign Alternatives
The first foreign owned network to be seen in the US and Britain is Al Jazeera, owned by the royal family of Qatar, host to a number of American military bases and primary financier of what “conspiracy theorists” call “false flag terrorism.”

For years, millions of Americans advocating blocking Al Jazeera and even shooting down its satellite facilities with air defence missiles, unaware that the owners of Al Jazeera are closely aligned with the US.

Except for extensive military censorship of Israeli press, something crippling to their credibility, their overall competence is admirable. Iran has, by far, the most controversial and most powerful media presence outside the US and Britain with its Fars News Network.

Fars, Press TV and al-Alam typically present in depth reporting, not seen in the west often focused on exposing propaganda and bias in media.
The response in the West has been to ban access to commercial broadcast capabilities, block satellite access and continually subject these news organisations to cyber-attacks. — Press TV.

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