Media

  John Pilger 26 september, 2018 The death of Robert Parry earlier this year felt like a farewell to the age of the reporter. Parry was “a trailblazer for independent journalism”, wrote Seymour Hersh, with whom he shared much in common. Hersh revealed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the secret bombing of Cambodia, Parry exposed Iran-Contra, a drugs and gun-running conspiracy that led to the White House. In 2016, they separately produced compelling evidence that the Assad government in Syria had not used chemical weapons. They were not forgiven. Originally published at johnpilger.com Driven from the “mainstream”, Hersh must publish his work outside the United States. Parry set up his own independent news website Consortium News, where, in a final piece following a stroke, he referred to journalism’s veneration of “approved opinions” while “unapproved evidence is brushed aside or disparaged regardless of its quality.” Although journalism was always...

Dansk Institut for Internationale Studier, DIIS, har netop udgivet en publikation om ”Trolde i dit feed. Russisk desinformation”, der specielt skal hjælpe gymnasieelever med at forstå fake news. Dog kun russiske. Rapporten er selv et glimrende eksempel på desinformation og fake news – eller snarere fortiede nyheder, der er værre end fake, nemlig fakta og perspektiver på begivenheder, du aldrig får. Derfor har vi på TFF taget et kig på DIIS’s arbejde. Først fra et fra et freds- og konfliktperspektiv med Jan Øberg og dernæst et retorisk perspektiv med Jesper Munk Jakobsen. ”Trolde i dit feed. Russisk desinformation” kan findes her. Jan Øberg Læser man DIIS’s publikation om russisk desinformation fra et freds- og konflikt- perspektiv, vil det være nemt at konkludere, at Rusland bliver fremstillet som en ensidig negativ bidrager til konflikten mod vesten og Danmark. Det man undlader at informere læseren om er, at Rusland er part i...

In examining the future, we must look to the past. As we watch the media today, we are spoon fed more and more propaganda and fear of the unknown, that we should be afraid of the unknown and have full faith that our government is keeping us safe from the unknown. But by looking at media today, those of us who are old enough will be reminded of the era of Cold War news articles, the hysteria of how the Russians would invade and how we should duck and cover under tables in our kitchens for the ensuing nuclear war. Under this mass hysteria, all Western governments were convinced that we should join Western allies to fight the unknown evil that lies to the east. Later through my travels in Russia during the height of the Cold War with a peace delegation, we were shocked by the poverty of the...

  By Gordon M. Hahn August 31, 2018 As the West has turned more and more to Soviet/Russian methods of the ‘big lie’ in order to advance democracy and its interests, the Russia-West propaganda war had produced a post-fact world in which disinformation comes to be believed by its purveyors. Both sides, forgetting the previous disinformation and lies from the most recent crisis of the day, reiterate their previous claims as part of the reason for believing the next series of disinformation and lies surrounding the current crisis of the day. This process of propaganda plague has filled the fake news on both sides of the Atlantic since Georgia through Syria, Ukraine, Syria, Skripal, Syria again. Russia has its RT and state television; the US has RFERL and state-tied mass media across the West. To be sure, the West has a problem with promoting a united message with messy changes...

  TFF launches a new educational series on regime change in the Middle East to help prevent a repetition on Iran – #NotIranToo   TFF is about to publish a series of articles on regime change in the Middle East over the last few decades. The series has a special focus on Iran because it is now abundantly clear that the U.S. under Trump’s formal administration – but perhaps more under the elites that make up the Deep State underlying it – seems bent on building up to at least a political, psychological and economic war on Iran and – in the worst of cases – also to some kind of military action too. The series consists of sections of Chapter 12 in a forthcoming book by eminent scholar and TFF Board member, Farhang Jahanpour, Oxford University. In a comprehensive preface, he explains his own intellectual path and journalistic work...

Det er en gammel floskel at kalde sommerferien for agurketid. Der er ingen historier at skrive om for de danske journalister, når erhvervslivets ledere, debattørerne og politikerne på Christiansborg er på sommerferie. Agurketid kunne dog også ses som en mulighed for at skue udover landegrænsen, og måske man vil opdage en verden fyldt af historier, som mangler at blive fortalt. Hvis man generelt følger danske mediers dækning af de mest presserende konflikter, som foregår udenfor landets grænser, er det et stofområde, som jeg vil påstå er i en nedadgående kurve. Når det drejer sig om internationale konflikter og krige virker det faktisk som om det er blandt de lavest prioriteret samtaleemner på landets redaktioner. Det står i skarp kontrast til det faktum at Yemen er udpeget af Unicef som den største humanitære krise siden 2. verdenskrig.* Medierne har stort set ikke bragt artikler i juli måned om krisen i Yemen...

Re-posted from TFF’s earlier website on November 1, 2016 with links to later materials being added at the bottom. TFF PressInfo # 392: Just how grey are the White Helmets and their backers? Added at the bottom of the article on November 23, 2016: The – bizarre – White Helmet Mannequin Challenge video; The Swedish Institute of International Affairs’s event with the White Helmets on November 24; The Right Livelihood Award Foundation’s Award Ceremony to take place on November 25. • • While thousands of humanitarian organisations around the world are struggling fiercely with diminishing support from governments and the public, one has achieved a surprising amount of support from Western governments in a surprisingly short period of time and gained a surprising attention from mainstream media and ditto political elites: The Syrian Civil Defence or White Helmets. Their name of course makes you think of the UN’s Blue Helmets...

A personal pledge provoked by the debates about Syria   By Jan Oberg   Summary About 95% of all debates about conflicts and war that we see in politics, mainstream media, the Internet and social media focus on the violence, who uses more or less of it and who is, therefore, the evil party. This approach places direct violence – such as human rights violations, killings, bombings etc. – in the centre of the attention and that is unfortunate because violence is always only a symptom. I call this the simplifying or reductionist approach; invariably it has populist connotations too and usually ends up in mud-slinging. I argue in this analysis that this reductionist approach is counterproductive and that – because of the defining characteristics of these debates – the underlying conflicts/problems that cause the violence are never in focus and that no international complex conflict can be explained even...

  By Lyle Jeremy Rubin July 26, 2018  Any Russian interference is only a small part of the “election meddling” we should care about… I think we are due for a little perspective on Russia. I was trained at NSA headquarters as a signals intelligence officer in the Marines. This was about a decade ago, and I was by no means an area specialist. That said, I was privy to relevant briefs. At the time I learned that U.S. cyber operations in Russia, across Russia’s periphery, and around the world already dwarfed Russian operations in size, capability, and frequency. It wasn’t even close, and the expectation was that the gap was about to grow a whole lot wider. Published at currentaffairs.org This should hardly come as a surprise. Just compare the defense budgets of the United States and Russia. The president recently signed a gargantuan $700 billion gift to the Pentagon,...

Video interview with Miko Peled of July 20, 2018 We strongly recommend that you go to Peled’s excellent blog, see his articles and video and read about his now classical book, “The General’s Son. Journey of an Israeli in Palestine.” You’ll also find an interesting one on his recent visit to Iran and how people react to his going to Iran. And why not subscribe to his blog? Here is civil courage, analytical mind, passion and truth in one, a man who knows – compare that with the mainstream media’s coverage of the issue that are his.

By John Schwarz July 11, 2018 2 Jun 2018 – At the beginning of Seymour Hersh’s new memoir, “Reporter,” he tells a story from his first job in journalism, at the City News Bureau of Chicago. City News stationed a reporter at Chicago’s police headquarters 24 hours a day to cover whatever incidents were radioed in. Hersh, then in his early 20s, was responsible for the late shift. One night, he writes, this happened: Two cops called in to report that a robbery suspect had been shot trying to avoid arrest. The cops who had done the shooting were driving in to make a report. … I raced down to the basement parking lot in the hope of getting some firsthand quotes before calling in the story. The driver – white, beefy, and very Irish, like far too many Chicago cops then – obviously did not see me as he...

Man kan vælge at læse en rapports resultater, som man gerne vil læse dem, man kan også bestræbe sig på at læse en rapports resultater så objektivt, som man formår, eller man kan lade være med at læse den overhovedet og videreformidle, hvad andre har læst. Det sidste er højst sandsynligt tilfældet for de danske medier i forbindelse med OPCW’s undersøgelse af det ”formodede” kemiske angreb i Douma i Syrien, som nyhedsmedier verden over kunne rapportere om for fire måneder siden den 7. april 2018. Den 5 juli. 2018 udkom OPCW med de foreløbige resultater af deres undersøgelse.   Da nyheden tikkede ind i april om, at et kemisk angreb i Syrien havde fundet sted, var reaktionen fra omverden i første omgang forståelig, da billederne talte deres tydelige sprog. En video begyndte at florere, der viste, at børn i Douma blev sprøjtet til med vand og fik proppet inhalatorer i...