I used to work in the printing trade and these "news" outlets have always been dubious about telling the truth of events, particularly when it paints the ruling tyrant in a bad light. Most did however reserve a desk for a maverick reporter to publish a column somewhere in the body of their otherwise propaganda rag. Some one like a John Pilger or Christopher Hitchens could get stories out in MSM up until maybe the first Gulf war, but since then the war in the west against truth telling journalism has been viscous. Julian Assange being the most publicised case but lately even quoting humanitarian organisations on the genocide can get reporters sacked, at least that is so in the penal colony and certainly the UK. In the UK the media was respectfully requested not to play 'Give Peace a Chance', John Lennon during the first gulf war. Freedom of speech is an illusion.
Returning home from the UK at that time I happened to be seated next to a Palestinian girl/woman of about my same age and was gobsmacked about her story of exile and her families treatment by Israel. Weren't we told Israel were the good guys? Travel doesn't so much broaden your mind but exposes how narrow your conditioning has been.
PS. Just watched the 3rd installment of 'It's Revolution or Death' submedia. You have a rare talent for communication, excellent production all round.
Your point about how debates frame the discussion reminded me (more viscerally than the usual evocation of "critical thinking" usually does) how important the skill of asking good questions is, almost as important as having good answers, but we know which one society trains more...
So your bottom line: read Al Jezeera, support Al Jezeera, listen to Democracy Now, don’t read the NYT, don’t read the Boston Globe, or at least don’t believe those corrupted bastions of journalism? That’s reasonable. I’m with you. The system has been corrupted. Look at NPR: it’s become a joke. It is what it is, and thanks to you and others like you, we can take it all with a grain of salt. I can’t just get my news from Substack, and I don’t want to live in the dark. Walter Cronkite is dead. It’s a Brave New World. I still have some faith in human intelligence.
Not exactly. The Globe does some decent local reporting and both the Globe and the Times occasionally do good in-depth investigations... but both fall fully into the limitations of mainstream journalism described in Manufacturing Consent and elsewhere, and the Times pretty systematically supports large scale harm perpetrated by the US government... both of them are completely inadequate and spread misinformation about the ecological crisis, and they both support the continuity of colonial institutions...
Al Jazeera also has major limitations but it tends to have a much better take on "the news". It just doesn't go to the roots of the news as a construct and what it leaves out. (That would be like a doctor abolishing the hospital).
Democracy Now is sometimes really good and often quite bad. They're mostly like to spread misinformation or to use erasure against movements and people more radical than themselves, especially in times of growing resistance. I remember they were quick to spread lies and be manipulative regarding anarchists and other currents in the anti-war and anti-globalization movement who were actually doing way more of the ground work and being way more productive than the progressives DN usually addresses. They tended to distort movements but do good investigative work about social problems. Honestly I haven't paid much attention to them since the '00s.
Your readers might be interested in the dossier published by Writers Against the War On Gaza (WAWOG) detailing the many high-ranking NYT writing, editorial and executive staff with direct ties to the Zionist entity: https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/dossier
I used to work in the printing trade and these "news" outlets have always been dubious about telling the truth of events, particularly when it paints the ruling tyrant in a bad light. Most did however reserve a desk for a maverick reporter to publish a column somewhere in the body of their otherwise propaganda rag. Some one like a John Pilger or Christopher Hitchens could get stories out in MSM up until maybe the first Gulf war, but since then the war in the west against truth telling journalism has been viscous. Julian Assange being the most publicised case but lately even quoting humanitarian organisations on the genocide can get reporters sacked, at least that is so in the penal colony and certainly the UK. In the UK the media was respectfully requested not to play 'Give Peace a Chance', John Lennon during the first gulf war. Freedom of speech is an illusion.
Returning home from the UK at that time I happened to be seated next to a Palestinian girl/woman of about my same age and was gobsmacked about her story of exile and her families treatment by Israel. Weren't we told Israel were the good guys? Travel doesn't so much broaden your mind but exposes how narrow your conditioning has been.
PS. Just watched the 3rd installment of 'It's Revolution or Death' submedia. You have a rare talent for communication, excellent production all round.
Thanks for sharing this. Yeah, it's all... so fucking rough. They've managed to construct a society-wide prison that most people don't seem to see.
Thank you for this much-needed, difficult, tender, brave, and important discussion.
Your point about how debates frame the discussion reminded me (more viscerally than the usual evocation of "critical thinking" usually does) how important the skill of asking good questions is, almost as important as having good answers, but we know which one society trains more...
Thank you for the post!
This was very good. Thank you.
So your bottom line: read Al Jezeera, support Al Jezeera, listen to Democracy Now, don’t read the NYT, don’t read the Boston Globe, or at least don’t believe those corrupted bastions of journalism? That’s reasonable. I’m with you. The system has been corrupted. Look at NPR: it’s become a joke. It is what it is, and thanks to you and others like you, we can take it all with a grain of salt. I can’t just get my news from Substack, and I don’t want to live in the dark. Walter Cronkite is dead. It’s a Brave New World. I still have some faith in human intelligence.
Not exactly. The Globe does some decent local reporting and both the Globe and the Times occasionally do good in-depth investigations... but both fall fully into the limitations of mainstream journalism described in Manufacturing Consent and elsewhere, and the Times pretty systematically supports large scale harm perpetrated by the US government... both of them are completely inadequate and spread misinformation about the ecological crisis, and they both support the continuity of colonial institutions...
Al Jazeera also has major limitations but it tends to have a much better take on "the news". It just doesn't go to the roots of the news as a construct and what it leaves out. (That would be like a doctor abolishing the hospital).
Democracy Now is sometimes really good and often quite bad. They're mostly like to spread misinformation or to use erasure against movements and people more radical than themselves, especially in times of growing resistance. I remember they were quick to spread lies and be manipulative regarding anarchists and other currents in the anti-war and anti-globalization movement who were actually doing way more of the ground work and being way more productive than the progressives DN usually addresses. They tended to distort movements but do good investigative work about social problems. Honestly I haven't paid much attention to them since the '00s.
Your readers might be interested in the dossier published by Writers Against the War On Gaza (WAWOG) detailing the many high-ranking NYT writing, editorial and executive staff with direct ties to the Zionist entity: https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/dossier