The horrifying rise of total mass media blackouts on inconvenient news stories
By newseditors // 2021-07-06
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Two different media watchdog outlets, Media Lens and Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), have published articles on the complete blackout in mainstream news institutions on the revelation by Icelandic newspaper Stundin that a US superseding indictment in the case against Julian Assange was based on false testimony from diagnosed sociopath and convicted child molester Sigurdur Thordarson. (Article by Caitlin Johnstone republished from CaitlinJohnstone.com) FAIR's Alan MacLeod writes that "as of Friday, July 2, there has been literally zero coverage of it in corporate media; not one word in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NBC News, Fox News or NPR." "A search online for either 'Assange' or 'Thordarson' will elicit zero relevant articles from establishment sources, either US or elsewhere in the Anglosphere, even in tech-focused platforms like the Verge, Wired or Gizmodo," MacLeod adds. https://twitter.com/FAIRmediawatch/status/1411023615349297155?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1411023615349297155%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fcaitlinjohnstone.com%2F2021%2F07%2F03%2Fthe-horrifying-rise-of-total-mass-media-blackouts-on-inconvenient-news-stories%2F "We have not found a single report by any 'serious' UK broadcaster or newspaper," says the report by Media Lens. "But in a sane world, Stundin’s revelations about a key Assange witness – that Thordarson lied in exchange for immunity from prosecution – would have been headline news everywhere, with extensive media coverage on BBC News at Six and Ten, ITV News, Channel 4 News, front-page stories in the Times, Telegraph, the Guardian and more." "For those who still believe the media provides news, please read this," tweeted Australian journalist John Pilger regarding the Media Lens report. "Having led the persecution of Julian Assange, the 'free press' is uniformly silent on sensational news that the case against Assange has collapsed. Shame on my fellow journalists." As we discussed the other day, this weird, creepy media blackout has parallels with another total blackout on a different major news story which also involved WikiLeaks. In late 2019 the leak outlet Assange founded was publishing multiple documents from whistleblowers in the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) revealing that the organisation’s leadership actively tampered in the investigation into an alleged chlorine gas attack in Douma, Syria in 2018 to support the US government narrative on the allegation, yet the mass media wouldn’t touch it. A Newsweek reporter resigned from his position during this scandalous blackout and published the emails of his editors forbidding him from covering the story on the grounds that no other major outlet had reported on it. Make no mistake, this is most certainly a new phenomenon. If you don't believe me, contrast the blackout on these stories with the mass media coverage on WikiLeaks revelations a few short years earlier. The press eagerly lapped up the 2016 publications of Democratic Party emails and actively collaborated with WikiLeaks in the publication of the Chelsea Manning leaks in 2010. Even the more recent Vault 7 leaks published in 2017 received plenty of media coverage. Yet now every WikiLeaks-related story that is inconvenient for the US-centralized empire is carefully kept out of mainstream attention, with a jarring uniformity and consistency we’ve never experienced before. If the media environment of today had existed ten or fifteen years earlier, it's possible that most people wouldn't even know who Assange is, much less the important information about the powerful that WikiLeaks has brought to light. https://twitter.com/johnpilger/status/1410912394314932226?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1410912394314932226%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fcaitlinjohnstone.com%2F2021%2F07%2F03%2Fthe-horrifying-rise-of-total-mass-media-blackouts-on-inconvenient-news-stories%2F We also caught a strong whiff of this new trend in the near-total blackout on the Hunter Biden October surprise last year, which only went mainstream because it stood to benefit one of America's two mainstream political factions. After the New York Post first broke the story we saw mainstream media figures publicly explaining to each other why it was fine not to cover it with reasoning that was all over the map, from it's a waste of time to it's just too darn complicated to it's not our job to research these things to the Washington Post's notorious "We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren't." Anyone who dared publicize the leaks anywhere near the mainstream liberal echo chamber was bashed into submission by the herd, and without any legitimate reason it was treated like a complete non-story at best and a sinister Russian op at worst. And then, lo and behold, in April of this year Hunter Biden acknowledged that the leaks could very well have come from his laptop after all, and not from some GRU psyop. And I think that whole ordeal gives us some answers into this disturbing new dynamic of complete blackouts on major news stories. Last year The Spectator's Stephen L Miller described how the consensus formed among the mainstream press since Clinton's 2016 loss that it is their moral duty to be uncritical of Trump's opponent and suppress any news stories which might benefit them. "For almost four years now, journalists have shamed their colleagues and themselves over what I will call the 'but her emails' dilemma," Miller writes. "Those who reported dutifully on the ill-timed federal investigation into Hillary Clinton's private server and spillage of classified information have been cast out and shunted away from the journalist cool kids' table. Focusing so much on what was, at the time, a considerable scandal, has been written off by many in the media as a blunder. They believe their friends and colleagues helped put Trump in the White House by focusing on a nothing-burger of a Clinton scandal when they should have been highlighting Trump's foibles. It's an error no journalist wants to repeat." https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/989211328907751426?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E989211328907751426%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fcaitlinjohnstone.com%2F2021%2F07%2F03%2Fthe-horrifying-rise-of-total-mass-media-blackouts-on-inconvenient-news-stories%2F Read more at: CaitlinJohnstone.com and MediaFactWatch.com.
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