Mollie Hemingway describes how the MSM Russiagate-coverage sausage is made
It’s not pretty. But for the most part it’s been extraordinarily effective at covering up the worst scandal in American history, so that a great many people have no idea what happened or why it matters:
A New York Times reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for his role perpetrating the Russia collusion hoax was tasked with framing the news that a former top FBI lawyer was to plead guilty to deliberately fabricating evidence against a Donald Trump campaign affiliate targeted in the Russia probe. The resulting article is a case study in how to write propaganda.
Adam Goldman broke, and cushioned, the news that former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was to plead guilty to fabricating evidence in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant application to spy on Trump campaign affiliate Carter Page.His job was to present the news as something other than an indictment of the FBI’s handling of the Russia collusion hoax, to signal to other media that they should move on from the story as quickly as possible, and to hide his own newspaper’s multi-year participation in the Russia collusion hoax. One intelligence source described it as an “insult” to his intelligence and “beyond Pravda,” a reference to the official newspaper of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. Here’s how Goldman did it.
Please read the whole thing.
I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again: do not make the mistake of thinking writers in the MSM such as Goldman are stupid. Nor are they uninformed. They are propagandists, and they are very good at what they do.
Readers of Pravda tended to know that the paper was the mouthpiece of the Soviet leadership and that it was a purveyor of lies. But I contend that most readers of the NY Times do not know that their paper is writing propaganda rather than news – or rather, through cherry-picking and omission and clever wordsmithing, innuendos and only sometimes using outright lies – turning the bare bones of the news into utterly convincing propaganda for the garden-variety self-designated intellectual who reads the Times and considers it a great source of information.
In that way, the Times writers (and many others in the MSM) are far better than their counterparts in Pravda: more subtle, more clever, more hidden, and ultimately more convincing to way too many people.
“But I contend that most readers of the NY Times do not know that their paper is writing propaganda rather than news”
One of the primary challenges facing us today is that people on the Right know the media is biased against them and people on the far Left know the media is biased against them (seriously, just look how Bernie Sanders was treated during the Democratic primaries), but a great many center-Left/ people are completely and utterly blind to media bias.
Mike
“many center-Left/ people are completely and utterly blind to media bias.”
Why shouldn’t they groove in their “social superiority” over the Deplorables?
There are many power centers controlled by the bad guys.
But if I could wave a magic wand and liberate just one, it would be the media.
Give us a media that is even moderately balanced, and a lot of the nation’s problems will begin to self-heal.
“There is no news in Pravda and no truth in Izvestia.” –Soviet joke
(Pravda means “truth” and Izvestia means “news” or “information”)
I beg to differ. I don’t think the attempt by high government officials (which may well be continuing), in league with a sitting President, a national political party, and the highest echelons of the media, to overturn the results of the 2016 election is the “worst scandal in American history.” I think it is the worst crime committed in American history, because it disenfranchised 63 million Americans.
Cap’n Rusty:
The two are not mutually exclusive.
Mbunge: “that people on the Right know the media is biased against them and people on the far Left know the media is biased against them”. That latter point is important. People on the right don’t tend to see that distinction between the establishment left as represented by Biden/Harris and the radicals. But it’s real and significant. The Biden-Harris-Clinton types would be put against the wall right along with conservatives if the hard left had its way.
My first comment deepens neo’s point that NYTimes deceptions, above, are not accidental. These are calculated and intentional. The second is about the brand new book (correction: out tomorrow) on the early life of Karl’s Marx and his much neglected obsessions with Hell against Christianity, a topic sure to alarm the orthodox religious of neo’s readers, which underscores his intended, later, pathological resentement (ie, Nietsche’s somewhat deeper and surely broader version of our English notion of “resentment”).
A True story from nine year’s ago: a young, close friend of mine in his mid-20s, was finishing his masters at the School of Journalism on “Journalism and Media Studies.” His masters thesis concerned the public morality of capitalism. That is, what have people thought about economic capitalism through mass media?
And he needed three professors on his thesis committee to evaluate it. But all were anti-capitalist Marxists. All in the School of Journalism.
And he averred that he was the only one of the 50 grad students in his class “out of the closet” as a non-Leftist.
From the book blurb:
“Well before Karl Marx was writing about the hell of communism, he was writing about hell.
“ ‘Thus Heaven I’ve forfeited, I know it full well,’ he wrote in a poem in 1837, a decade before his Manifesto. ‘My soul, once true to God, is chosen for Hell.’ ”
From a pre-print early take posted on Amazon:
Marx’s favorite quote from Mephistopheles: “Everything that exists deserves to perish.” Marx goes into suicide pacts (two of his daughters died this way!). Marx’s racism included that the Jew descended from Ape-like n-word deleted.
Tough, awful stuff. And historically, revealing the much suppressed Marx. Now, I’ve heard about this ignored phase of Marx’s life before. But the timeliness and relevance of this dive into this influential phase of his life cannot be overstated.
More pre-release insight from Sebastian Gorka, who interviews author Paul Kengor here http://player.listenlive.co/57181
(Kengor also wrote the authoritative book on Obama’s teenaged intellectual mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, “The Communist,” who indeed was a card carrying Communist Party member.)
Coda on my friend? I got a pro-capitalist on my buddy’s thesis committee, and he got his masters degree.
The ringer was an economic historian in the econ Department at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Lee Alston is now at Indiana University. (And in case you’re curious, my buddy Tobin Spratte self-published his thesis as a book, available at Amazon.com.)
T J:
Marx was extremely anti-Semitic as well.
Mac on Bunge:
Traditionally, the right regards the Left as well intended but ignorant. This year that’s changed. They are out and about intending to do evil and not defending the people when in power.
If the Left is identified with evil, today, how far does that go? How long and deep does “the evil Left” label penetrate popular consciousnesses? And how do we measure this?
This is going to be enormously important to shaping our political future. If the label cements among the people, a heretofore very unlikely third Republican term in the Office of President can grow markedly likelier — depending on the leadership talent available.
Of course, many see George H. W. Bush as a disappointment. But the mission of reforming education that’s spawned Moronielle Demons from Communist Hell must be excavated like Hercules heaving dung in the Augean stable. More time is essential. A third term is essential to achieving re-Americanisation of the dangerously corrupt educational system, from top to bottom.
I remember the night around the dinner table in 1954 that Edward R Murrow on the CBS evening radio news spent his whole program calling out Senator Joseph McCarthy for his excesses of his anti communist campaign. My father, an FDR liberal and Keynesian economist, agreed with Murrow and often expressed relief during the McCarthy era that he had never joined any communist organisation during his student days in the 30s, or even signed a petition. My dad also used the term ‘bore from within’ to describe communist tactics. He also often expressed indignation at the false claim that Stalin had not starved the Kulaks in the Ukraine – but interestingly never mentioned the NY Times or Walter Durante. So it has been going on for a long time before Andrew Breitbart noticed. To some extent America is not a shining city on a hill, but a shell hollowed out by termites – so only the appearance of a once great country remains. While I think that is true on the institutional surface – the media, the universities, Hollywood etc – I don’t think at the level of values the struggle is over. Chris of Rights comment above citing an old Soviet joke“There is no news in Pravda and no truth in Izvestia.” seems to me where this mess is headed. We shall see in November what percentage of the population remains convinced by the propaganda in 2020. Of course a Biden win would lead to completely submerging the Russia hoax and coup attempts – down the memory hole as Orwell put it. But the system had already lost the ability to adapt and change by 2016. It will just go on failing differently because of the disruptions caused by Trump, as it will if Trump wins this year. It is hard not to notice how totalitarian the neo-Marxists are and wonder what happens when it becomes the turn of the DNC wing of the party to be eaten alive. The split in the Republican party between the traditional Republicans and the working class insurgency – white, and perhaps black and hispanic, is just not as totalitarian so far (remember McCarthy). I think Richard Fernandez got it right in his latest column when he said “A Washington establishment unable to reboot itself needs an external force, ideally the voters, to press “reset.” If the voters fail, then reality will grow a finger and push the reset button some other way.”
Neo, in Kengor’s interview, both Marx’ racist and anti-Semitic stereotyping comes through in a single direct quotation.
I think I missed sharing the book’s title: “The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration”
“…sausage…”
Remember (not so long ago) when the Democrats and its MSCM cohort were accusing Trump’s “Russian pals” of paying bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops in Afghanistan? Non-stop. And then, of course, Pelosi and her minions entered the fray. It was “Trumps Russian pals, Trump’s Russian pals, ad nauseum, all the way down the line, along with the obligatory charges of massive Trumpian “cover up”.
Turns out that it wasn’t the Russians but Obama’s and Kerry’s (et al.) Iranian friends who were paying those bounties.
https://www.blazingcatfur.ca/2020/08/17/iran-reportedly-paid-bounties-to-afghan-group-for-attacks-on-americans/
Funny how that happens….
File under: Pelosi’s Pepperoni Panzers slicing and dicing with the best of ’em.
“…fabricating evidence…”
While “fabricating” is oft used in this context, it is more accurate to describe Clinesmith’s crimes (or perhaps Goldman might prefer “unintentional mistakes”? “indiscretions”?) as PERVERTING evidence, ALTERING evidence, WITHHOLDING evidence and/or DESTROYING evidence (and then lying subsequently about THAT!) in order to willfully misinform and mislead the FISA court so that OBAMAGATE spying on Trump would be given legal imprimatur and could continue unabated.
(Or is this a semantic distinction without a difference….?)
And yes, Goldman is a particularly vicious specimen, following in the footsteps of his venomous (and inspiring? heroic?) predecessors in the USSR and Communist China.
(And no doubt his “Pulitzer Prize” should be considered just another case of offering a reward for the successful, if pathetic, perversion of the truth…something, for which the NYT apparently has a long and illustrious history.)
Important background information on Clinesmith’s activities along with other curious and questionable aspects of the whole cabal, by Andrew McCarthy:
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/connecting-the-dots-in-clinesmiths-russiagate-guilty-plea/
But it’s real and significant. The Biden-Harris-Clinton types would be put against the wall right along with conservatives if the hard left had its way.
The only significance is that the antifa creeps have a rhetorical loathing of rich people even while they’re taking sorosphere stipends. Biden’s happy to show up at a fundraiser.
The distinction between the hard left and the Democratic establishment is like that between ‘peaceful protesters’ and rioters. The distinction is one of roles within a single social nexus. There is no difference in objects, merely in methods and, perhaps, tactics.
So I hear from my sis in Seattle last night. A bunch of BLM bozos marched through a residential neighborhood banging on doors and demanding people give up their houses. My sister’s reaction to this was to muse about it as a tactic. That the substance of what they were demanding was obscene from several different angles didn’t occur to her spontaneously. This is how Democratic voters think. (She did remark that the antifa creeps consist of young people who want the laws torn up and everything re-written in a way favorable to them).
(People who chuckle at black chauvinist animadversions note they tend to complain when white people move out of neighborhoods (“white flight”) and when they move in (“gentrification”)).
In some circles, “The Babylon Bee” has commandeered the title
America’s Paper of Record.(Much like ancient court jesters were granted)
IMHO, Wikipedia, and Merriam Webster’s, are to be denied any assumption of “authoritative”,
Just sayin’
Andrew Breitbart tried to reform or blow up the media. Then he got Epsteined.
James O’Keefe? The Shadowgate female journalist?
Why are you Americans always about the land of the free and brave… all I see are a bunch of slaves that Obey your mask orders and Authorities, plus pay taxes so that CPS can do child trafficking.
What happens if We take away your sports, entertainment, Hollywood, churches, and all your other distractions. When you face your own darkness, despair, and evil, what will you do, land of the free and brave?
Rebel? Epstein yourself? Vote yourself into another slave state?
TJ
Some have pointed out that the teachers unions (NEA and “FAT” Federation of American Teachers? ;)) have done a great service by openly aligning with the BLM organization and it’s Marxist goals, and putting their power and “safety” ahead of the students. Consequently the teacher’s unions and teachers (guilt by association) have lost their status a great and grand undervalued and underpaid saints. No free meal ticket, scrutiny for their agenda and practices long overdue.
Marx’s favorite quote from Mephistopheles: “Everything that exists deserves to perish.”
Everything that lives, must die.
So why not Deep State or humanity?
In Stalin USSR, anti semitism was a crime punished by death.
Evil is live in reverse.
So long as you cling to the life of the ego and of this false matrix you all call reality, of course you are in Hell/Hade sand under the control of Deep State Satan.
The Shadowgate bitchute link is being spam blocked here.