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The U.S. government continues to attack media companies and journalists that report on any narrative that is contrary to the war talk they are selling.
Washington has taken a shot at the Zero Hedge website for printing information from Russian sources regarding the Ukrainian conflict that is contrary to the line President Biden, his spokespeople and the mainstream media are peddling.
History is Repeating Itself
Name the war, and see how America’s Presstitutes—media whores who get paid to put out by their government whore masters and corporate pimps—love the warmongers and ban the peacemakers, “the children of God.”
There is no clearer example than the grand media platform extended to John McCain and other war-hawks during the lead-up to the Iraq War, while others who saw through the war criminal George W. Bush’s Washington lies, that Saddam Hussein had WMDs and ties to Al Qaeda, or even questioned those lies, were blackballed.
We and many others knew the Iraq War was based on false pretense and mass media propaganda, such as those promoted by “The Paper of Record,” The New York Times: “U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts;” “An Iraqi Defector Tells of Work on at Least 20 Hidden Weapon Sites;” “Defectors Bolster U.S. Case Against Iraq, Officials Say.”
Indeed, numerous studies prove the pervasive media support for that war.
A Columbia Journalism Review study, as well as work by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, concluded that the number of pro-war editorials and Op-Ed columns among the country’s major metro newspapers outnumbered anti-war perspectives by a nearly 10-to-1 margin.
The Associated Press was first to report that U.S. intelligence officials claimed Zero Hedge published and promoted articles that were created by media entities controlled by Moscow—unaware of their ties to Russian intelligence.
Fast Forward
Zero Hedge has denied the allegations in the AP report and said it publishes a “wide spectrum of views that cover both sides of a given story.” The website—which was founded by Daniel Ivandjiiski, rose in prominence after the 2008 financial crisis. It has been accused in the past of publishing controversial stories and its Twitter account has been permanently banned.
On 9 March 2020, The New Republic published an article titled, “IS ZERO HEDGE A RUSSIAN TROJAN HORSE?” that pointed to a 2018 RAND Institute study that said the website’s commentary “frequently echo the Kremlin line.”
Part of the report said the website took a “particular interest” in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was allegedly shot down by Russian separatists in the region—killing 298. The website “published a story claiming, without evidence, that the U.S. was using the MH17 crash as a pretext for a NATO invasion of eastern Ukraine.”
The AP report said Zero Hedge has been critical of President Joe Biden and allegations against his son Hunter. The report also said articles for the website have been penned by people with ties to the Strategic Culture Foundation, which has been sanctioned by the Biden administration over allegations of election interference in 2020.
“The bottom line is that such hit piece accusations that we somehow work with or for the Kremlin are nothing new: we have repeatedly faced similar allegations over the years, and we can absolutely confirm that all of them are ‘errors,’” Zero Hedge said.
TRENDSPOST: The messaging war between the U.S. and Russia has hit a fever pitch with both countries looking to sell the better narrative to sway international opinion of the crisis in Ukraine.
Beyond the series of deadly wars the U.S. has launched since the end of World War II, we’ve seen the tactic the government used during the COVID War—when anyone who questioned Washington’s narrative was quickly tarred, feathered, and removed from the public eye.
This is nothing more than another attempt by the government to silence any voice it cannot control, and how better to raise these suspicions than with two unnamed “intelligence officials.”
The reports tying Zero Hedge to these Russian organizations raise some concern that the website is not as transparent enough with its readers, but to write off any opposite view as Russian disinformation is dangerous for the public discourse. A vibrant, independent media is important for democracy; otherwise, you’re forced to march with the corporate media groupthink.
TRENDPOST: As we have reported, when Washington ramps up the war talk, the media marches off to their orders. We had noted, for example, that in the lead-up to the Iraq War, those who questioned it were minimized and demonized, and is well documented in the book, “What Happened,” by Scott McClellan, George W. Bush’s former press secretary during the run-up to the Iraq War.
“We overplayed and overstated the case for war,” admitted McClellan, as we detailed in our June, 2008 Trends Journal, special edition, “TRENDS AND TRAGEDIES.”
“I was part of this propaganda campaign, absolutely,” he wrote saying he was a member of the “culture of deception,” and that “the media would serve as complicit enablers.”
And enable they did. McClellan’s book details how major media “stars” such as CBS’s Katie Couric admitted, “There was a sense, a pressure from the corporations who own where we work, and from government itself, to really squash any kind of dissent.”
Yes, they “own where we work” and they own who they are, too. Male, female, race, creed, color… Couric, like all the rest, are not “journalists” but merely Presstitutes who put out for their corporate pimps “who own where we work.”
The media propaganda mill keeps spinning out its lies, and the vast majority of the public buy into those lies, obediently repeating what they have been told and “patriotically” giving up their lives and money in the march toward the next illegal and immoral war.
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