Washington Post: fake-news partner with the CIA
By Jon Rappoport
Let's
frame the situation in simple terms. You work for a company that has a
very lucrative partnership with a big-time money man. That money man
gives you a piece of information and tells you it's important.
What you do every day is spread information. That's how you earn your living.
Are
you going to take that piece of info from the money man and spread it,
or are you going to question it and research it and shoot back
hard-edged questions to the money man?
If you're a
loyal employee, and if you want to keep your job, and if you're smart
enough to understand how things work, you're going to spread the money
man's piece of info and keep your head down.
You're not going to worry your pretty little head about whether the piece of info is true.
Unless
you're a complete dolt, you certainly aren't going to spread the info
with a disclaimer stating that your source, the money man, has a major
business contract with your company.
Getting the picture? The truth is irrelevant.
Here
are key statements from Norman Solomon's AlterNet article about the
Washington Post, its owner, Jeff Bezos, and the CIA (12/18/13):
"The Post's
new owner, Jeff Bezos, is the founder and CEO of Amazon -- which
recently landed a $600 million contract with the CIA. But the Post's
articles about the CIA are not disclosing that the newspaper's sole
owner is the main owner of CIA business partner Amazon."
"Even
for a multi-billionaire like Bezos, a $600 million contract is a big
deal. That's more than twice as much as Bezos paid to buy the Post four
months ago."
"And there's likely to be plenty more
where that CIA largesse came from. Amazon's offer wasn't the low bid,
but it won the CIA contract anyway by offering advanced high-tech
'cloud' infrastructure."
"Bezos personally and
publicly touts Amazon Web Services, and it's evident that Amazon will be
seeking more CIA contracts. Last month, Amazon issued a statement
saying, 'We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA'."
"As
Amazon's majority owner and the Post's only owner, Bezos stands to gain
a lot more if his newspaper does less ruffling and more soothing of CIA
feathers."
"Amazon has a bad history of currying
favor with the U.S. government's 'national security' establishment. The
media watch group FAIR pointed out what happened
after WikiLeaks published State Department cables: 'WikiLeaks was booted
from Amazon's webhosting service AWS. So at the height of public
interest in what WikiLeaks was publishing, readers were unable to access
the WikiLeaks website'."
"How's that for a commitment to the public's right to know?"
"Days ago, my colleagues at RootsAction.org launched a petition that
says: 'The Washington Post's coverage of the CIA should include full
disclosure that the sole owner of the Post is also the main owner of
Amazon -- and Amazon is now gaining huge profits directly from the
CIA'..."
"While the Post functions as a powerhouse
media outlet in the Nation's Capital, it's also a national and global
entity -- read every day by millions of people who never hold its
newsprint edition in their hands. Hundreds of daily papers reprint
the Post's news articles and opinion pieces, while online readership
spans the world."
"Propaganda largely depends on
patterns of omission and repetition. If, in its coverage of the CIA,
the Washington Post were willing to fully disclose the financial ties
that bind its owner to the CIA, such candor would shed some light on how
top-down power actually works in our society."
"'The Post is
unquestionably the political paper of record in the United States, and
how it covers governance sets the agenda for the balance of the news
media', journalism scholar Robert W. McChesney points out. 'Citizens
need to know about this conflict of interest in the columns of
the Post itself'."
"In a statement just released
by the Institute for Public Accuracy, McChesney added: 'If some official
enemy of the United States had a comparable situation -- say the owner
of the dominant newspaper in Caracas was getting $600 million in
secretive contracts from the Maduro government -- the Post itself would
lead the howling chorus impaling that newspaper and that government for
making a mockery of a free press. It is time for the Post to take a dose
of its own medicine'."
You may recall that the
Washington Post was a main player in launching stories about fake news
sites after the presidential election.
One of the biggest fake news outlets in the world took the lead in "exposing fake news."
Then,
on January 8, 2017, the Post ran a piece headlined: "It's time to
retire the tainted term 'fake news'". That was an attempt to stop the
bleeding, because independent news sites all over the world were
pointing out that mainstream news outlets had long been the biggest
purveyors of fake news. The Post writer, Margaret Sullivan, stated:
"But
though the term [fake news] hasn't been around long, its meaning
already is lost. Faster than you could say 'Pizzagate,' the label has
been co-opted to mean any number of completely different things..."
Actually,
the term has been around for quite a while. I named my site
nomorefakenews in 2001. And the term, in 2016, wasn't "co-opted." It was
turned against news outlets, like the Post, who were attacking
independent media.
The Post is in bed with the CIA to the tune of $600 million. If that isn't the foundation of fakery on a grand scale, what is?
Try
to find one major news outlet that has exposed and pounded on this
Washington Post-CIA marriage. You can't. You see, the fakers protect
their own. It's a club. If you join, you keep your mouth shut about the
inherent unholy alliances within the club. It's a rule.
Memo
to the New York Times, LA Times, CNN, FOX, NBC, CBS, ABC, BBC, Reuters,
AP: If you want to prove you're not fake, go after the Washington Post,
hammer and tongs, on their marriage to the CIA. Don't let up. Demand
conflict of interest statements from the Post, for starters.
And
here's a talking point for you. Was Jeff Bezos' cash purchase of the
Washington Post a mere coincidence, placed next to his $600 million
contract with the CIA, or did he buy the Post so he could offer the CIA
an even tighter relationship with the number-one paper of record?
Get it? Or am I going too fast for you?
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