How Is the US Mainstream Media Any Different from Soviet-Era Pravda?
In the era of the Soviet Union, the Russian people were fed, exclusively, a steady informational diet of propaganda; an anointed version of the “news” that advanced a preferred narrative vetted by their totalitarian government. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, Russians were able to see and hear reports from around the world and they were shocked at how completely in the dark they had been about the facts; the truth.
Fast forward to today in the United States and the free West.
In the aftermath of the 2016 and 2020 General Elections, the COVID event, and myriad other current global events – including Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it isn’t unusual to believe that everything presented in the information sphere – and, without a doubt, on social media – is either slanted, not the whole-truth, or an outright lie.
Our mainstream media outlets routinely present an ideologically-biased narrative meant to sway public opinion on the subject being presented to their preferred viewpoint regardless of – and often times despite – the facts.
Two perfect examples come in the Hunter Biden scandal and the coverage of the COVID “pandemic.”
During the COVID event, the traditional avenue of public debate was decimated by not only our federal and state governments but also by a cooperative private sector and mainstream media. Each openly and willingly colluded to advance a singular unchallengeable narrative; one which was defended with the open, aggressive, and coordinated use of censorship and personal attack.
Chris Pandolfo reported at TheBlaze.com:
“Hundreds of news organizations were paid by the federal government to advertise for the vaccines as part of a ‘comprehensive media campaign’...[T]he Biden administration purchased ads on TV, radio, in print, and on social media to build vaccine confidence, timing this effort with the increasing availability of the vaccines. The government also relied on earned media featuring ‘influencers’ from ‘communities hit hard by COVID-19’ and ‘experts’ like White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and other academics to be interviewed and promote vaccination in the news.
“Though virtually all of these newsrooms produced stories covering the COVID-19 vaccines, the taxpayer dollars flowing to their companies were not disclosed to audiences in news reports, since common practice dictates that editorial teams operate independently of media advertising departments and news teams felt no need to make the disclosure, as some publications reached for comment explained.”
Any thinking person with an IQ over that of an acorn recognizes this effort as a propaganda campaign. This becomes even more egregiously apparent when the subject of censoring dissent is added to the mix.
Not only did the federal government, in collusion with BigPharma and the mainstream and social media complex, advance a pro-active propaganda campaign, but they also demonized and censored anyone who dared to oppose it, including the most qualified person on the planet to educate and inform the public on the mRNA vaccines, Dr. Robert Malone, the creator of the mRNA therapy.
Malone, in his excellent Substack newsletter, goes right after the propaganda machine labeling it, “state-funded media” and “a new web of politics, strategies, and fear-porn to shape and control the minds and thoughts of the gullible public. A propaganda forever war against the general populace, waged by our elected leaders and their deep state allies.”
Dr. Malone isn’t wrong. In 2021, the Biden administration and the Schumer-Pelosi-led Congress authorized over $1 billion in media expenditures to advance the White House preferred narrative. This narrative ignored and attempted to invalidate the effectiveness of ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, monoclonal antibody treatments, and natural immunity, all of which, as it turns out, are not only effective but also the preferred treatments to the DNA-altering mRNA vaccine therapies.
The propagandist media hammered on the pro-vaccine message to the point it “canceled” physicians with opposing viewpoints and legitimate concerns; concerns that are now turning out to be valid and warranted.
Then we have The New York Times’s epiphany about Hunter Biden’s laptop and his nefarious, unethical, and very possibly illegal activities in Ukraine, China, and Russia.
Almost two years from the first revelations about the damning information on Hunter Biden’s laptop and the Biden family’s shady and unethical relationships with government-connected entities in Ukraine, Russia, and China – and after an exhaustive campaign by the Biden campaign and its mainstream and social media accomplices to not only discredit the initial The New York Post expose but also to censor any mention of it prior to the election, The New York Times finally admits to the truth.
As Glenn Greenwald reports in his Substack newsletter:
“On October 14, 2020 – less than three weeks before Americans were set to vote – the nation's oldest newspaper, The New York Post, began publishing a series of reports about the business dealings of the Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in countries in which Biden, as Vice President, wielded considerable influence (including Ukraine and China) and would again if elected president.
“The backlash against this reporting was immediate and intense, leading to suppression of the story by US corporate media outlets and censorship of the story by leading Silicon Valley monopolies. The disinformation campaign against this reporting was led by the CIA's all-but-official spokesperson Natasha Bertrand (then of Politico, now with CNN), whose article on October 19 appeared under this headline: ‘Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say’...
“But a media that was overwhelmingly desperate to ensure Trump's defeat had no time for facts or annoying details such as what these former officials actually said or whether it was in fact true. They had an election to manipulate. As a result, that these emails were ‘Russian disinformation’ – meaning that they were fake and that Russia manufactured them – became an article of faith among the US's justifiably despised class of media employees.”
In its coverage this week, The New York Times was forced to admit:
“People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer, and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.”
It would appear that the fascist-Left, in collusion with the mainstream and social media complex, accomplished a potent propaganda campaign against the American people and one that almost certainly affected the outcome of the 2020 General Election.
Why This Is Important
It has become a common question in the United States and around the world. If the mainstream media is so biased and propagandistic, what outlets can be trusted to provide accurate, fact-based, honest information?
The answer to that question is one of the hardest to come by these days. The people are furious and frustrated with having been so blatantly and overtly manipulated; lied to, and I would have to say rightly so.
In theory, the perpetrator of untruths – as well as the facilitators of untruthful propaganda – would be disciplined and/or culled by the marketplace. Common sense pleads the case that if a politician, political campaign, or media outlet were discovered to have purposefully engaged in deception and the propagation of lies to affect a preferred outcome, that untrustworthiness would lead to defeat at the polls and the demise of the news outlet in the marketplace.
But people are creatures of habit by nature and in today’s fast-paced information age we fall into the bad habit of returning to the scene of the crime, and with information bombarding us from every angle, the powers that be – whether by design or not – have inflicted upon the people an informational Cytokine Storm facilitated by the employment of the Cloward-Piven Strategy.
More important than how our government – in collusion with the mainstream and social media complex – has achieved their informational manipulation of public opinion, is for us to realize what our media has become in its relationship to government.
Today’s American media – mainstream and social, with all of its agenda-driven content and fact-checking censorship, has transformed itself from a check and balance to government into a propagandizing lapdog for government and unworthy of First Amendment protection. Today’s American media has devolved into yesterday’s Soviet-Era Pravda; a government-controlled propaganda machine, not to be trusted to offer anything other than the preferred, government-anointed narrative.
So, how do we vet our information for truth? How do we avoid the propaganda of the mainstream and social media complex?
You can’t limit your information intake to outlets that only give you one point of view. Today, you have to quest to digest several versions of any given story from a variety of news and information outlets so that you have consumed a spectrum of vantage points from furthest Left to furthest Right and all points in between.
You must accumulate the common points in each – the who, what, where, when, and how of it all – and then assemble your rubric baseline of commonly-held beliefs on the matter (chances are if both Pravda and The New York Post say the car in the accident was red, then it was red).
Over a course of time, you must begin to recognize patterns in how disingenuous “journalists” and publications try to manipulate your understanding of an issue. Once realized and recognized, it becomes easier to cull that information from the story.
In the end, it is up to each and every one of us to deduce the basic facts, identify the manipulation, and craft our own understanding of the facts as they commonly present across the informational spectrum. Then, and only then, can we even come close to understanding the true facts of any given matter.
Then, of course, there is the societal cancer that is believing you know what a story is all about simply by reading the headline. Those who engage in that practice are more dangerous to the truth than the propagandists.
Today’s Headlines
Energy Department Authorizes Additional Liquefied Natural Gas Exports
Fascist-Left in Congress Press Biden to Declare National Emergency, Restrict Fossil Fuels
DoJ Investigating Hunter Biden for Foreign Lobbying Violations, Tax Evasion, Money Laundering
Biden Supreme Court Nominee Jackson Praised NYT's False-Narrative 1619 Project
SCOTUS Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson Has ‘Pattern' of Leniency Toward Child Porn Offenders
US Pays $127 Million to Settle Lawsuit Claiming FBI Negligence in Florida Mass Shooting
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem Signs Law Banning Private Financial Sources from Funding Elections
Putin's Calls for Russian 'Self-Purification' of 'Traitors' As Mass Graves Are Dug
'Several Hundred Thousand Crypto Addresses' Tied to Russia-Based Sanctioned Actors Identified
UN Votes to Establish Ties with Taliban Government in Afghanistan
Mom Sues School District to See Children’s Ethnic and Gender Studies Curriculum
Portland Children's Hospital Directs Boys to Sex-Toy Shop in Guide on How to Tuck Their Genitals
In an era past the sole purpose of "news" was to inform the general public on pertinent issues. It was not important to like the reporter, nor side commentary. It was, in the words of Jack Webb, "just the facts".
Today it is a 'rush for the ratings" and a popularitiy contest chocked full of panel discussions and commentary are more interesting and memorable than the cold hard facts. With the well designed sets, eye-pleasing participants and gottch one liners, news has become an 'entertainment hour' requiring a modicum of critical thinking to descern the facts from opinions.
The greatest lesson learned at a Mother or Father's knee is how to think and logical problem soving. Sadly these lesons have been all but discarded these last decades. They've be replaced by indulgence and free will.
We all take pleasure in having our opinion validated and cheat ourselves with the tendency to migrate to the source that does with exclusitivity. This bears the question, "How do you know what is right or wrong without a compairson source? This article clearly explains how this is done. Knowledge is truly power.
The fallacies of social media are so abundant they require an entire response of their own. I will say just this. Use Caution and know even the mst reliable source can be wrong.