Media Manipulation News Stories
Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on media manipulation from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.
For further exploration, delve into our comprehensive Media Manipulation Information Center.
A CBS News employee, fired after ABC executives informed CBS she'd had access to a leaked hot mic video that revealed the Disney-owned network killed a Jeffrey Epstein scoop, says she did not leak the tape and was unfairly axed without being able to defend herself. Ashley Bianco was a producer on ABCs Good Morning America before joining CBS This Morning last month. Earlier this week, the controversial group Project Veritas published the damning video in which ... anchor Amy Robach complained that her bosses killed a story that would have exposed the now-deceased child sex offender Epstein three years ago. Bianco said she was fired by CBS after the network received a call from ABC informing her new boss that she once had access to the leaked video. I did not" leak the tape, Bianco told journalist Megyn Kelly in an interview posted Friday on YouTube. Im not the whistleblower. Im sorry to ABC, but the leaker is still inside. CBS News declined to comment on Bianco's claim. Bianco denied ever communicating with anyone from Project Veritas and said she simply made a clip of the video and saved it in ABC's internal system. I never heard of Project Veritas until this, she said. Bianco, who deleted various social media accounts before speaking out, said she did not inform her manager that she clipped it, but everyone in the office was freaked out by Robachs comments. Everyone was watching it, Bianco said, noting that the purpose for clipping it was to watch it back later for office gossip. Bianco told Kelly that she doesnt know who leaked the tape because everyone at ABC was aware it existed.
Note: The silence of other most major media around this huge story is deafening. Watch an interview with the fired woman. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein from reliable major media sources.
In Vietnam, citizens were enlisted to post pro-government messages on their personal Facebook pages. The Guatemalan government used hacked and stolen social media accounts to silence dissenting opinions. Ethiopias ruling party hired people to influence social media conversations in its favor. Despite increased efforts by internet platforms like Facebook to combat internet disinformation, the use of the techniques by governments around the world is growing, according to a report released Thursday by researchers at Oxford University. Governments are spreading disinformation to discredit political opponents, bury opposing views and interfere in foreign affairs. The researchers compiled ... one of the most comprehensive inventories of disinformation practices by governments around the world. They found that the number of countries with political disinformation campaigns more than doubled to 70 in the last two years, with evidence of at least one political party or government entity in each of those countries engaging in social media manipulation. Facebook remains the No. 1 social network for disinformation, the report said. Organized propaganda campaigns were found on the platform in 56 countries. Governments have used cyber troops to shape public opinion, including networks of bots to amplify a message, groups of trolls to harass political dissidents or journalists, and scores of fake social media accounts to misrepresent how many people engaged with an issue.
Note: This article completely fails to mention the U.S., which has one of the most sophisticated disinformation programs in the world, yet because the "black budget" for this is so well hidden, few know the extent to which citizens are manipulated both in the U.S. and worldwide. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable major media sources.
About a half a dozen journalists were in a northern California courtroom to cover a third lawsuit alleging that Monsantos pesticide glyphosate causes cancer. [Sylvie] Barak told others that she was a freelancer for the BBC. When journalists searched the internet for Barak, they noticed that her LinkedIn account said she worked for FTI Consulting, a global business advisory firm that Monsanto and Bayer, Monsantos parent company, had engaged for consulting. Monsanto has also previously employed shadowy networks of consultants, PR firms, and front groups to spy on and influence reporters. And all of it appears to be part of a pattern at the company of using a variety of tactics to intimidate, mislead and discredit journalists and critics. In the latest example of Monsantos efforts to track journalists, The Guardian reported in August on internal documents from the companys fusion center, which worked to discredit reporters and nonprofits via third-party actors. In the California trial, the reporter who first identified Barak as an FTI plant said she ... saw an uptick in Monsantos industry partners contacting her as she covered the trial. A guy named Jay Byrne ... contacted her on social media to discuss how GMO criticism was part of a Russian influence campaign; when she Googled Byrne, she learned he is Monsantos former director of communications. In a January deposition, a Monsanto representative said that in 2016 the company spent around $16 or 17 million on activities to defend glyphosate.
Note: Major lawsuits are now unfolding over Monsanto's lies to regulators and the public on the dangers of glyphosate. Yet the EPA continues to use industry studies to declare Roundup safe while ignoring independent scientists. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
From Bloomberg: Fake news and social media posts are such a threat to U.S. security that the Defense Department is launching a project to repel large-scale, automated disinformation attacks. One of the Pentagons most secretive agencies, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is developing custom software that can unearth fakes hidden among more than 500,000 stories, photos, video and audio clips. Its the latest in a string of stories about new methods of control over information flow that should, but for some reason do not, horrify every working journalist. Fake news is a poorly-defined, amorphous concept that the public has been trained to fear without really understanding. Fake news has a long history in America. The worst fake news almost always involves broad-scale deceptions foisted on the public by official (and often unnamed) sources, in conjunction with oligopolistic media companies, usually in service of rallying the public behind a dubious policy objective like a war or authoritarian crackdown. From the ... Gulf of Tonkin lie that launched the Vietnam War, to the more recent WMD fiasco, true fake news is a concerted, organized, institutional phenomenon that involves deceptions cooked up at the highest levels. If theres a fake news story out there, its the fake news panic itself. Of course, the final, omnipresent ingredient in most major propaganda campaigns is the authoritarian solution. Here, its unelected, unsupervised algorithmic control over media.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable major media sources.
When the editor of a weekly paper approached me about writing a regular column about local politics, the first thing I asked her was: Are you sure you know what youd be getting yourself into? I wrote just six pieces before the column was canceled. Two centered on the need for police accountability in a city traumatized by the memory of officers standing by as neo-Nazis beat residents in the streets. In a column published in May, I mentioned a photograph taken in August 2017 of an officer with his arms around James Napier, of the neo-Confederate group the Highwaymen, and Tammy Lee of the American Freedom Keepers militia. Lees caption read: You should know the police escorted us and worked days with us 2b there. The image of a Charlottesville officer with his arm around a member of a white supremacist militia was to me a perfect illustration of a department choosing to ignore the community it serves. I shouldnt have been as surprised as I was when I received a letter from the attorney for the local Southern States Police Benevolent Association, sent on behalf of the officer in the picture. One of the remarks the letter quoted and claimed to be odious and defamatory was taken directly from the after action report, commissioned by the city. Despite the editors best efforts on my behalf and the absence of any follow through on the threat of a defamation suit, the papers owners did not want to continue to run my column.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and media manipulation from reliable major media sources.
Monsanto operated a fusion center to monitor and discredit journalists and activists, and targeted a reporter who wrote a critical book on the company, documents reveal. The records reviewed by the Guardian show Monsanto adopted a multi-pronged strategy to target Carey Gillam, a Reuters journalist who investigated the companys weedkiller and its links to cancer. Monsanto, now owned by the German pharmaceutical corporation Bayer, also monitored a not-for-profit food research organization through its intelligence fusion center, a term that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies use for operations focused on surveillance and terrorism. The documents, mostly from 2015 to 2017, were disclosed as part of an ongoing court battle on the health hazards of the companys Roundup weedkiller. Monsanto planned a series of actions to attack a book authored by Gillam prior to its release, including ... directing industry and farmer customers on how to post negative reviews. Monsanto paid Google to promote search results for Monsanto Glyphosate Carey Gillam that criticized her work. Monsanto fusion center officials wrote a lengthy report about singer Neil Youngs anti-Monsanto advocacy. The internal records dont offer significant detail on the activities or scope of the fusion center, but ... government fusion centers have increasingly raised privacy concerns surrounding the way law enforcement agencies collect data, surveil citizens and share information.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable major media sources.
Newly released documents show that another government agency, as well as the Australian Federal Police, was involved in the investigation that led to the raid on the ABC in June. The documents, obtained under Freedom of Information, reveal that the AFP refused to release certain documents relating to the June 6 raid because it said they related to an agency of the Federal Government which is exempt from FOI. Under the section cited by the AFP to justify not releasing the material - subsection 7(1) of the FOI Act - agencies which have complete exemption include the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). The raid on the ABC's Ultimo headquarters was related to the Afghan Files, a series of stories, published in 2017, which detailed incidents where Australian soldiers in Afghanistan killed unarmed men and children. [South Australian senator Rex] Patrick said ... he believed that the other agency was either ASIO or the Australian Signals Directorate. The primary role of the Australian Signals Directorate is to eavesdrop on conversations and monitor the communications of people of interest outside Australia. The story which prompted one of the raids - on News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst - was about the push by some within the Federal Government to give ASD power to monitor the communications of Australians in Australia, which is currently prohibited by law.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable major media sources.
Like many African governments, the regime of [Emmerson] Mnangagwas predecessor, Robert Mugabe, was notoriously thin-skinned about social media criticism. Indeed, only two weeks before Mr. Mugabe was deposed in a coup last November, his government had arrested a young American woman working in Zimbabwe for allegedly tweeting that the country was being run by a sick and selfish man. For now, the temperature seems to have changed. But if Zimbabwes webspace has changed since the days of Mugabe, it also contrasts with many other African countries. Across the continent ... governments have increasingly targeted social media as a way to bring unruly dissenters to heel. In Tanzania, for instance, a recently introduced law slaps a registration fee of about $900 on bloggers and online forums. A 2016 law in Rwanda makes it illegal to use a digital device to cause annoyance, inconvenience, or needless anxiety, and Egypts government recently announced a law allowing it to block any social media users with more than 5,000 followers if they disseminate fake news. In Zimbabwe, the new government has attempted to show its openness to social media as a way of visibly distancing itself from the autocratic regime of Mugabe, whose iron grip on dissent resulted in broad sanctions against the country that sent Zimbabwes economy tanking. Mnangagwa has verified his Twitter account, opened a Facebook page, and set up a broadcast list on WhatsApp to send messages to his supporters.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media corruption and civil liberties from reliable major media sources.
The mother of the first whistle-blower arrested in the Trump era says her daughter is being held under an unjust media blackout to stop the American public learning who she really is. Billie Winner-Davis' daughter Reality Winner, a US Air Force veteran, was sentenced to prison for more than five years in August 2018 as part of a deal in which she pleaded guilty to leaking a classified NSA document providing details of a 2016 Russian cyberattack on a supplier of US voting software. Winner, 27, who worked in the US Air Force's drone program, is serving the longest sentence ever given to a journalistic source by a federal court, according to the Department of Justice. CNN has repeatedly sought permission to interview Winner in federal prison, and recently accompanied Winner-Davis on the seven-hour road trip from her home to visit her daughter at FMC Carswell in Fort Worth, where she is incarcerated, but our team was not permitted to go inside. FMC Carswell's warden has denied CNN's requests. Our attempts to speak with the warden over the phone ... were unsuccessful. CNN also sought to interview Winner by telephone but was told by her mother that the former drone operator has been told by prison staff not to add media outlets to her phone list. "She has been warned and she has been frightened as far as the restrictions on her communications," Winner-Davis said. "They're telling her she cannot even have any contact with any kind of journalists or media, in any way, shape, or form."
Note: Read more about Winner's unjust prosecution for blowing the whistle on election interference. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.
In a market that sells high heels for babies and thongs for tweens, it doesn't take a genius to see that sex, if not porn, has invaded our lives. Whether we welcome it or not, television brings it into our living rooms and the Web brings it into our bedrooms. According to a 2007 study from the University of Alberta, as many as 90 percent of boys and 70 percent of girls aged 13 to 14 have accessed sexually explicit content at least once. But it isn't just sex that [Kevin] Scott is worried about. He's more interested in how we, as a culture, often mimic the most raunchy, degrading parts of itmany of which, he says, come directly from pornography. In "The Porning of America", which he has written with colleague Carmine Sarracino, a professor of American literature, the duo argue that ... the influence of porn on mainstream culture is affecting our self perceptions and behavior - in everything from fashion to body image to how we conceptualize our sexuality. Sarracino and Scott define "porning" as the way advertising and society in general have borrowed from the ideas and characteristics central to most American pornography: sex as commodity, sexuality as overt, narrow views of women and male-female relationships, bad girls and dirty boys, domination and submission. "Both boys and girls are really confused about what's appropriate," says [author Lyn Mikel] Brown. Helping kids make that distinction may be an increasingly uphill battle.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing media corruption news articles from reliable sources.
For the past 21 years, I have had the high privilege of holding a White House press pass. But no more. The White House eliminated most briefings and severely restricted access to official events. And this week came the coup de grace: After covering four presidents, I received an email informing me that Trumps press office had revoked my White House credential. Im not the only one. I was part of a mass purge of hard pass holders after the White House implemented a new standard that designated as unqualified almost the entire White House press corps, including all seven of The Posts White House correspondents. The Post requested exceptions for its seven White House reporters and for me. The White House press office granted exceptions to the other seven, but not to me. I strongly suspect its because Im a Trump critic. The White House is drastically curtailing access for all journalists. Briefings have been abolished in favor of unscheduled gaggles ... in the White House driveway. The Pentagon and State Department have done similarly. The White House has also restricted access by allowing only one journalist from a news organization at most events, and by admitting journalists to events only if they register days in advance. This has sharply reduced journalists attendance at the White House. White House officials offered me and others it disqualified a lesser credential called a six-month pass. They say it will grant equivalent access, but for various technical reasons, that isnt true.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the manipulation of public perception.
Facebook on Thursday banned conspiracy theorist and InfoWars founder Alex Jones and the accounts of other controversial figures. The company, citing violations of its policies on hate speech and promoting violence, is also blocking religious leader Louis Farrakhan, who is known for sharing anti-Semitic views; Paul Nehlen, a white nationalist who ran for Congress in 2018; far-right figures Milo Yiannopoulos and Laura Loomer; and conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson. Those individuals and accounts that represent them are also banned from photo-sharing app Instagram, which Facebook owns. They have rules, but enforcement is completely random, said Roger McNamee, a high-profile Silicon Valley investor who has become a sharp critic of Facebook. They dont do anything about it until massive harm has been done and they can no longer find a dodge. Facebook is clearly feeling pressure. McNamee said Facebooks business model depends on amplifying content that stimulates fear and outrage, and banning a few influential figures doesn't change that. "It is sacrificing a handful of the most visible extreme voices in order to protect a much larger number of users it needs to maximize profits," he said. The Menlo Park, Calif., company didnt say what specific posts or actions led to the bans, though a spokesperson said that Jones, Yiannopoulos and Loomer have all recently promoted Gavin McInnes, founder of the violence-prone far-right group the Proud Boys, whom Facebook banned in October.
Note: What happened to freedom of speech guaranteed in the US Constitution? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the manipulation of public perception.
A group of American hackers who once worked for U.S. intelligence agencies helped the United Arab Emirates spy on a BBC host, the chairman of Al Jazeera and other prominent Arab media figures during a tense 2017 confrontation pitting the UAE and its allies against the Gulf state of Qatar. The American operatives worked for Project Raven, a secret Emirati intelligence program that spied on dissidents, militants and political opponents of the UAE monarchy. A Reuters investigation in January revealed Project Ravens existence and inner workings, including the fact that it surveilled a British activist and several unnamed U.S. journalists. At first, the goal was to crack down on terrorism by helping the UAE monitor militants around the region. But Ravens mission quickly expanded to include monitoring and suppressing a range of UAE political opponents. Among its targets was Qatar, which the UAE and Saudi Arabia had long accused of fueling political opposition across the region, in part through the Qatari governments funding of Al Jazeera. The Emiratis also tapped Raven in the effort to contain dissent at home. After the Arab Spring, the operatives were increasingly tasked with targeting human rights activists and journalists who questioned the government. The Raven effort went beyond the Middle East. Operatives [targeted] the mobile phones of other media figures the UAE believed were being supported by Qatar, including journalists for London-based Arabic media outlets.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the manipulation of public perception.
Sixteen years ago this week, the United States invaded Iraq. We went in on an unconvincing excuse, articulated by George W. Bush: Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraqs neighbors and against Iraqs people. To the lie about the possession of WMDs, Bush added a few more: that Hussein trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al-Qaeda. WMD became the archetype of a modern propaganda campaign. In the popular imagination, the case for war was driven by a bunch of Republicans and one ... New York Times reporter named Judith Miller. Its been forgotten this was actually a business-wide consensus, which included the enthusiastic participation of a blue-state intelligentsia. The Washington Post and New York Times were key editorial-page drivers of the conflict; MSNBC unhired Phil Donahue and Jesse Ventura over their war skepticism; CNN flooded the airwaves with generals and ex-Pentagon stoolies, and broadcast outlets ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS stacked the deck even worse: In a two-week period before the invasion, the networks had just one American guest out of 267 who questioned the war. The WMD episode is remembered as a grotesque journalistic failure, one that led to disastrous war that spawned ISIS.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war and the manipulation of public perception.
Yesterday afternoon a colleague forwarded me an article from the Daily Mail, asking me if it could possibly be true. The article in question is an expose on Snopes.com, the fact checking site used by journalists ... that Facebook recently partnered with to fact check news stories on its platform. The Daily Mails article makes a number of claims about the sites principles and organization, [and questions] whether the site could possibly act as a trusted and neutral arbitrator of the truth. The Daily Mail appeared to be sourcing its claims from a series of emails and other documents from a court case. Neither Snopes nor its principles had issued any kind of statement ... disclaiming the story. When I reached out to David Mikkelson, the founder of Snopes, for comment, I fully expected him to respond with a lengthy email in Snopes trademark point-by-point format. It was with incredible surprise therefore that I received Davids one-sentence response which read in its entirety I'd be happy to speak with you, but I can only address some aspects in general because I'm precluded by the terms of a binding settlement agreement from discussing details of my divorce. This absolutely astounded me. Here was the one of the worlds most respected fact checking organizations, soon to be an ultimate arbitrator of truth on Facebook, saying that it cannot respond to a fact checking request because of a secrecy agreement. In short, when someone attempted to fact check the fact checker, the response was the equivalent of it's secret.
Note: For lots more on this, see this webpage. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the manipulation of public perception.
The U.S. government created a secret database of activists, journalists, and social media influencers tied to the migrant caravan and in some cases, placed alerts on their passports. At the end of 2018, roughly 5,000 immigrants from Central America made their way north through Mexico to the United States southern border. As the migrant caravan reached the San Ysidro Port of Entry in south San Diego County, so did journalists, attorneys, and advocates who were there to work and witness the events unfolding. But in the months that followed, journalists who covered the caravan, as well as those who offered assistance to caravan members, said they felt they had become targets of intense inspections and scrutiny by border officials. Documents leaked to NBC 7 Investigates show [that the] government had listed their names in a secret database of targets, where agents collected information on them. Some had alerts placed on their passports, keeping at least two photojournalists and an attorney from entering Mexico to work. The documents were provided to NBC 7 by a Homeland Security source on the condition of anonymity. The individuals listed include ten journalists, seven of whom are U.S. citizens, a U.S. attorney, and 48 people from the U.S. and other countries, labeled as organizers, instigators or their roles unknown. In addition to flagging the individuals for secondary screenings, the Homeland Security source told NBC 7 that the agents also created dossiers on each person listed.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the erosion of civil liberties.
The vast majority of the people who propose and make changes to Wikipedia are volunteers. A few people, however, have figured out how to manipulate Wikipedias supposedly neutral system to turn a profit. Thats [paid Wikipedia editor Ed] Sussmans business. And in just the past few years, companies including Axios, NBC, Nextdoor and Facebooks PR firm have all paid him to manipulate public perception using a tool most people would never think to check. One of Wikipedias more well-known rules is its prohibition on editing pages that you have any sort of direct connection to. But ... anyone, even someone financially tied to the subject in question, is allowed to merely suggest edits in the hopes that a less conflicted editor might come by, agree, and implement the changes for them. This is where a paid editor like Sussman comes in. On his website, Sussman identifies himself as a journalist, lawyer, academic and technology entrepreneur who is often called upon in crisis management situations where inaccurate or misleading information has been placed in a Wikipedia article. Sussmans main strategy for convincing editors to make the changes his clients want is to cite as many tangentially related rules as possible (he is, after all, a lawyer). He often replies to nearly every single bit of pushback with walls of text arguing his case. Trying to get through even a fraction of it is exhausting, and because Wikipedia editors are unpaid, theres little motivation to continue dealing with Sussmans arguments. So he usually gets his way.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the manipulation of public perception.
Antarctic sea ice set another record this past week, with the most amount of ice ever recorded. National Public Radio (NPR) published an article on its website last month claiming, Ten years ago, a piece of ice the size of Rhode Island disintegrated and melted in the waters off Antarctica. Two other massive ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula had suffered similar fates. There's no question that unusually warm air triggered the final demise of these huge chunks of ice. NPR failed to mention anywhere in its article that Antarctic sea ice has been growing since satellites first began measuring the ice 33 years ago. Sea ice has been above the 33-year average throughout 2012. Indeed, none of the mainstream media are covering this important story. A Google News search of the terms Antarctic, sea ice and record turns up not a single article on [this]. Page after page of Google News results for Antarctic sea ice record show links to news articles breathlessly spreading fear ... because Arctic sea ice recently set a 33-year low. Sea ice around one pole is shrinking while sea ice around another pole is growing. New data show ice mass is accumulating on the Antarctic continent as well as in the ocean surrounding Antarctica. The new data also add context to sensationalist media stories about declining ice in small portions of Antarctica (see here, for example). The mainstream media frequently publish stories focusing on ice loss in these two areas, yet the media stories rarely if ever mention that ice is accumulating over the larger area of East Antarctica and that the continent as a whole is gaining snow and ice mass.
Note: A look at US government statistics for sea ice concentration shows a gradual decrease in Arctic sea ice over the past 40 years, yet a slight overall increase in Antarctic ice for the same period. Antarctic sea ice coverage peaked in 2012 to it's highest measurement since 1978, when the graph starts. But then three years later it plunges to it's lowest ever. A NASA website and a university website also raise many questions. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on global warming from reliable major media sources.
It may have shocked the world when the publisher of the National Enquirer allegedly tried to use nude pictures to coerce Jeff Bezos. But it came as no surprise to ... veterans of the Enquirers parent company, American Media Inc. The threats, the blackmail, thats their business model, one former National Enquirer staffer told The Daily Beast. That model burst out into public view on Thursday night when Bezos - the worlds richest man, the founder of Amazon, and the owner of The Washington Post - published emails from AMI chief content officer Dylan Howard that threatened the release of a d*ck pick if the Post didnt relent in its investigation of AMI. It was a familiar moment to Paul Barresi, a private investigator who spent years working on cases that informed stories in AMI. The National Enquirer had some people who would go to a celebrity and say, unless you give in to a one-on-one interview ... were going to report XYZ, he said. The nice way of calling it was quid pro quo, but really it was blackmail. The supermarket tabloid companys bag of dirty tricks is well-chronicled and includes catch-and-kill operations: paying for an exclusive interview only to bury it, as a favor to an ally or after using the dirt to convince a celebrity to play ball with them. Most infamously, AMI has admitted it paid ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 in hush money for her story of an affair with Donald Trump, which never saw the light of day.
Note: WTK founder Fred Burks saw personally how the Enquirer is much more highly guarded than any other major media. He is almost certain it is a CIA front used to manage disinformation and discredit real stories that seem unbelievable. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the corporate world and in mass media.
There are goodbye notes and then there's William Arkin's frustrated farewell to NBC News. Arkin's 2,228-word memo to his colleagues says that his time at NBC News has been "gratifying." But he bluntly expresses his displeasure with the "Trump circus," US foreign policy failures, and the state of television news. He's far from the only person in a national newsroom to feel that way. But he is spelling it out in no uncertain terms. Arkin has worked for NBC on and off for three decades, sometimes as a military analyst, sometimes as a reporter and consultant. He describes himself as a scholar at heart, and he has authored numerous books about national security. Friday will be his last day at NBC. Arkin is a sharp critic of what he calls "perpetual war" and the "creeping fascism of homeland security." In his farewell memo, he said the American press is not aggressive enough about covering military engagements. "I find it disheartening that we do not report the failures of the generals and national security leaders," he said. "I find it shocking that we essentially condone continued American bumbling in the Middle East and now Africa through our ho-hum reporting." He said that most of his critiques of NBC apply to the rest of the news media, as well. He also said in the memo that the Trump age led NBC to start "emulating the national security state itself busy and profitable. No wars won but the ball is kept in play."
Note: See also an excellent interview with Mr. Arkin about his departure from NBC. For more on this, see this concise summary of War Is A Racket, a powerful book written by one of the most highly decorated US generals ever. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Media Information Center.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
