you rub elbows with the most cringe-worthy, elite-drenched, out-to-lunch over the top One Perecenters and their Little and Big Eichmanns, that some of that smear is bound to cause bacterial overgrowth
Oh, yeah, that Nightline: Greenfield, or Koppel, the Jewish Elites, alas, this is a REAL ECHO chamber:
Oh, that false balance, the Ted Koppel shit show, having on an expert in marine ecosystems describing coral bleaching and ocean acidification, tied to climate heating and CO2 pollution, and then the slick, coiffed expert in marketing and spin from Exxon, shooting holes in the scientist’s hard work, peer reviewed studies and his cadre of a thousand other scientists working on global heating.
Terminal Velocity: Man Lost of Tribe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Subscribed
Ahh, that crap show, Koppel: Nightline.
Seventeen years ago, this crap article:
In the three months since Moran, Cynthia McFadden and Martin Bashir took the helm of a revamped “Nightline,” the ABC program — faster, far from frivolous but in some ways shallower — has enjoyed modest ratings success. Yet there has been considerable carping about the abandonment of the Ted Koppel tradition.
“Because of the tremendous shadow that Ted and the 25 years of that program still casts on the whole industry, establishing ourselves and who we are is still a challenge in the industry and with critics,” says Moran, a former White House correspondent. “The audience is getting it. . . . Because Ted and ‘Nightline’ were such an icon, any change disturbs people in our business.”
McFadden says the criticism “stings” because some of it is true.
“Sometimes we’ve deserved the knocks,” says McFadden, who also co-anchors “Primetime.” “We haven’t gotten the balance right every night. It’s very much a work in progress. . . . Sometimes we don’t give things quite enough time.” McFadden says it’s also fair to question “whether we’ve had on a few too many Hollywood types in the run-up to the Oscars.”
With its flashy Times Square studio, “Nightline” has evolved into a journalistic smorgasbord. The program isn’t serving up empty calories, but some stories seem to be of the reduced-fat variety. For all of its strengths, “Nightline” now seems difficult to distinguish from a dozen other newsmagazine or cable shows.
Still, the early returns are encouraging for ABC. For the week of Feb. 13, “Nightline” was up 3 percent in total viewers — to 3.7 million — over a year earlier, and 14 percent in the key 25-to-54 demographic. The program still trails Jay Leno and, most nights, David Letterman.
In reinventing “Nightline,” James Goldston, the British-born executive producer, also cites Koppel’s “long shadow. What one does following Ted was a complicated issue. . . . Was there an audience for the show without Ted?”
Asked if American audiences can sit still for half an hour on one subject, Goldston says that “people lead busy lives” and have no tolerance for news reports that are longer than necessary.
Oh, the good old days when I was still working for newspapers as journalist: A Red, for sure, I was, but I kept that to a low rumble most the time since calling oneself communist is/was akin to saying I was/am a mass murderer. Here, that freak show, Koppel, 1988: (source) . . . Kaplan, Koppel, Greenfield, Goldston Chomsky, well, you get the picture, for me, thirty -plus years ago.
Concision my ass. Circumcision!
JERUSALEM —
Newscaster Ted Koppel was relieved because the whole affair passed without physical violence.
Palestinian political scientist Saeb Erakat was frustrated because he thought he had been reduced to jousting with windmills.
And Ehud Olmert, a rightist member of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament), was delighted at what he saw as a public relations victory.
That’s how three key participants summed up their feelings after what “Nightline” producers described as an unprecedented “town hall” meeting between Israelis and Palestinians. The ABC news show was broadcast live from Jerusalem into American homes Tuesday night (early Wednesday here).
“If we had truly understood what we were trying to do here today, we would never have done it,” Koppel told a lopsided, mostly invited studio audience estimated at nearly 700 Jews and more than 100 Arabs.
All had risen well before dawn to travel to the Jerusalem Theater, pass through tight security checks and take their seats facing a backdrop designed to make the stage look as if it were just outside the walls of the capital’s historic Old City.
The “Nightline” crew had hoped to have at least 250 Palestinians in the audience and fewer Jews in order to more accurately mirror the population mix in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip territories that Israel has occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
However, as a Palestinian journalist noted, “People were not happy with the idea, particularly after Abu Jihad was killed. That turned off a lot of people who were interested in coming.”
The journalist referred to the April 16 assassination of Khalil Wazir, the top military commander for Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, who was more commonly known by the nom de guerre Abu Jihad, or “Father of Holy War.” While the Israeli government refuses to comment on responsibility for the killing, sources here have confirmed that it was ordered by senior government ministers and carried out by a combined army, air force, navy, and Mossad intelligence agency force.
Oh, then, more Jews, Conan, and NPR, National Propaganda Radio, asking Koppel questions, ten years ago:
KOPPEL: Neal, I hate to do it, but you’ve set me up for this. No. I guess that I’m more of a pessimist than an optimist, and I’m sure we’ll get lots of good people calling in – I hope we do – who will explain to me how wrong I am and why I’m wrong. There’s not a great deal that does give me optimism right now.
I am not hugely optimistic about the nature of communication in this country. I think we have trivialized communication to the point that everything now is reduced to snippets of thought. We respond in nanoseconds to one another. Reflection, thought are increasingly becoming a thing of the past. So no, I don’t mean to be, you know, a total fool about this. I’m sure there are many wonderful things that are still going on.
And as an immigrant who came to this country at the age of 13 from England, I love the United States deeply. I wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world, for anything. But that’s precisely why I’m so pessimistic and why I’m so depressed by it. (source)
Duh, of course I am going to look at the Beltway, the East Coast, the movers and shakers, the insiders, the rulers of media, the guests on that media, the entire bread and circus aspect of it. I mean, really, a Jew asking another Jew about the Palestine “issue”?
This was lightly precipitated by the Grayzone trying to get stuff out of a weasel: The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) contacted The Grayzone to dispute our characterization of their organization as a CIA cutout. Listen to the highly revealing conversation that ensued with the NED’s communications director.
So, this communications (sic) director of the National Endowment for Democracy is clueless, but clueless is a very good position to be in today, when stupidity and press flak crap make the grade in today’s flippant world. Note who this person is, Aun:
Former Vice President, Communications and Marketing — Population Reference Bureau
[EXPERTISE: BRANDING, CONTENT STRATEGY, PUBLIC RELATIONS, STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING.]
Leslie Aun brought experience from both the corporate and nonprofit sectors to PRB, where she led all communications activities, including public relations, marketing communications, branding and advertising, editorial services, video and graphic design, and thought leadership from 2019 to 2022.
She began her career as a print and broadcast journalist with media outlets, including Federal Times, The Washington Business Journal, WTOP Radio, and WUSA Channel 9, before holding senior-level communication positions at such organizations as MCI Communications, Sodexo, Special Olympics International, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and Venture Philanthropy Partners. As vice president of communications for the World Wildlife Fund, she led the team that won the Public Relations Society of America’s Silver Anvil Award of Excellence in the field of public relations for her work as managing director of Earth Hour, one of the largest and most successful public events for climate change in history, with more than one billion participants from around the world. Most recently, Aun headed up communications for Keolis North America, a global operator of public transit systems, and has consulted for NPR, Discovery Learning Alliance, and Snagajob.com.
A former adjunct faculty member and frequent lecturer at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies, Aun has served on the boards of numerous organizations, including Pennsylvania State University’s Sustainability Institute. A native of the Washington, D.C., area, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in government from the University of Virginia’s College of Arts and Sciences.
Oh, come on, come on. Listen to her vapidity, her denials, her out of touch with the NED nothing burger. Is Max Blumenthal really surprised?
No surprise there, Blumenthal:
We also demanded to know whether NED had instituted guidelines which prevented it from funding anti-democratic and violent actors like the coup leaders and political arsonists we detailed. In one particularly revealing exchange on the topic, Blumenthal asked Aun, “How is it pro–democracy to support mobilizations that seek to remove elected leaders?”
“Isn’t that sort of what democracy is?” she fired back in a tacit admission that her organization views foreign meddling and support for violent putschists abroad as an intrinsically democratic act.
At a loss for answers, Aun resorted to a Red Scare-style insinuation: “I’m just curious, are you supporters of the Belarusian government, of [the] Ortega government, of the Chinese government?” she asked. “I mean, those are all governments that you are working, writing — you’re supportive of, like from an editorial perspective?”
After our call with Aun, we provided her with our questions in writing. Despite repeated promises over the phone and in follow-up emails to furnish the information we requested, the NED has not done so for over 50 days since we first engaged with Aun.
Beltway Max: Wikipedia — Blumenthal was born on December 18, 1977, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Jacqueline (née Jordan) and Sidney Blumenthal. His father is a journalist and writer who served as an aide to President Bill Clinton. Blumenthal attended Georgetown Day School in Washington, DC. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history.
That is the simple background, but look at how WikiCIApedia starts Max’s entry: “Blumenthal is the editor of The Grayzone website, which is known for its apologetic coverage of authoritarian regimes such as the Chinese, Russian, Syrian, and Venezuelan governments, as well as denial of the Uyghur Genocide and other atrocities committed by these regimes.”
That is the Beltway, brother. Aun’s and Koppel’s and all those hasbara folk your family probably rubbed elbows with.
That Beltway, that Georgetown, that Virginia:
IN 2002, FORMER Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his wife attended an elegant dinner party hosted by Barbara Walters. Other participants included Time editor Henry Grunwald, one-time ABC Chair Thomas Murphy, and Peter Jennings, then the anchor of ABC “World News Tonight.”
At one point in the evening, as New York magazine recounted, Jennings addressed Kissinger and asked him, “How does it feel to be a war criminal, Henry?”
Kissinger did not respond. However, Grunwald informed Jennings that this inquiry was “unsuitable.” Walters, who considered Kissinger “the most loyal friend,” later said, “I tried to change the subject, but it was a very uncomfortable moment. [Kissinger’s wife] Nancy reacted very strongly and hurt.”
Survivors of Kissinger’s Secret War in Cambodia Reveal Unreported Mass Killings by Nick Turse
Henry Kissinger, History’s Bloodiest Social Climber
There are several notable things about this.
First, the people at the top of American society absolutely love Henry Kissinger. He is their beloved compatriot, and they are anxious to protect his delicate feelings.
Second, Jennings sincerely believed that Kissinger was a war criminal and, unusually, was willing to say this in private. Yet he didn’t have the courage to say this in public, to his audience of tens of millions of Americans. Presumably he then would no longer be invited to these sorts of parties.
Third, Kissinger’s fancy, famous, rich pals will not exactly dispute that Kissinger is a monster. Rather, bringing it up is an embarrassing social faux pas, like, say, mentioning how everyone knows that your buddy is cheating on his wife, who is sitting next to you. Why would you want to spoil the mood just when we’re all feeling toasty from the Chambertin Grand Cru and having such a lovely time?
This is the cesspool, that DC:
The District of Columbia, or Washington, DC, is the seat of the United States federal government, the U.S. capitol, and home to 20 colleges and universities. While DC is considered only the 20th most populous city in the nation, hundreds of thousands of commuters flood in from both Virginia and Maryland for work each week to this world political capital. Headquartering 177 foreign embassies, DC hosts the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school of national security and international affairs.
The bulk of the city’s postsecondary institutions fall into two categories, public or private not-for-profit, and are distributed evenly amongst three types: research universities, master’s universities (like the aforementioned Institute of World Politics), or special-focus institutions. The oldest institution in Washington, DC, is Georgetown University, which was founded in 1789, and the same institution also claims the title of oldest Jesuit and Catholic university in the US. The largest public institution title goes to the University of the District of Columbia, while the largest by-enrollment is George Washington University. Four universities operate satellite programs in the capital, and those are Arizona State, Brown, New York, and Pepperdine. When it comes to special-focus institutions, Gallaudet University is one such and teaches classes in both English and American Sign Language (ASL).
With 25% of the city’s population employed by the government, it’s unsurprising that three of the universities in Washington, DC, are maintained by the US Government, including the National Intelligence University. To be close to the federal government, many organizations are headquartered in DC, including many law firms and lobbying firms; there are also six law schools accredited by the American Bar Association. DC is also known for medical research and is home to three medical schools, as well as research institutions, including the Washington Hospital Center
Oh, those college towns:
- Los Angeles, California – 230
- New York City, New York – 200+
- Chicago, Illinois – 148
- Boston, Massachusetts – 118
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – 115
To explain why The Grayzone has referred to the NED as a “CIA cutout,” Blumenthal pointed Aun to a declassified document showing Ronald Reagan’s CIA director, William Casey, proposing the creation of a US government-funded “National Endowment.” The National Endowment for Democracy was born just months after Casey circulated the document to cabinet level Reagan officials. A cutout, Blumenthal explained during the call, is “an organization spun out as an initiative of that entity and which performs the work or advances the agenda of that entity.”
Watch Max Blumenthal’s 2018 documentary on the NED, “Inside America’s Meddling Machine.”
False Balance occurs when one tries to treat two opposing positions as equally valid when they are simply not. If one position is supported by an abundance of evidence while another is entirely bereft of it, it is profoundly misguided to afford equal air‐time and coverage to both positions.
Equivocation is a mode of speech adopted when the speaker wishes to avoid a direct answer to a question but is unwilling to resort to telling a lie. The result is a mode of speech at least partly designed to obscure communication rather than achieve clarity. However, determining what is equivocation is complex, not least as it can show attributes close to that expected when making a nuanced argument that takes account of lack of information or current controversies about the issue. This suggests the equivocation is much a product of how a given speech is interpreted by the observer.
Concision as seen in media studies, concision is a form of broadcast media censorship by limiting debate and discussion of important topics on the rationale of time allotment.
And, then, just plain zero attention is another grand thing in today’s media:
Roger Waters Declared “Enemy of Ukraine” on Myrotvorets Website
December 1, 2022
In an article published by Medium on August 22, 2022, independent journalist Deborah L. Armstrong reported on the blacklisting of Roger Waters, co-founder of the iconic rock band Pink Floyd, by Ukrainian nationalists.
In early August, Rogers was featured on a 90-minute CNN special where he publicly criticized the US government’s role in the Russia-Ukrainian war. Waters explained that the war hinged on “the action and reaction of NATO pushing right up to the Russian border, which they promised they wouldn’t do when [Mikhail] Gorbachev negotiated the withdrawal of the USSR from the whole of Eastern Europe.” The musician went on to say that Russia had a right to Crimea because the people living on the peninsula were mostly Russian.
Shortly after making these statements, the musician was blacklisted by the Ukrainian government and criticized by its allies in US corporate media.
As Armstrong reported, the Kiev-based Myrotvorets website has labeled Waters an “Enemy of Ukraine.” The website claims Waters is spreading “anti-Ukrainian propaganda,” as well as collaborating in plans to legitimize Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which would challenge Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
Waters is not the only person listed on Myrotvorets. Currently, the database includes thousands of journalists, activists, and anyone else who is declared an “Enemy of Ukraine.” Additionally, those who are listed on the site have had their home addresses, personal phone numbers, and banking information leaked online. Some people featured on the list have been harassed, threatened, assaulted, or killed as a result of the doxing. Those who have been killed are identified with the word “liquidated” (ЛИКВИДИРОВАН in Ukrainian) over their profile photo on the Myrotvorets website.
Daria Dugina, a Russian journalist, was killed in a car bomb attack on August 20, 2022, not long after a red stamp appeared across her database profile. It is believed that she was targeted because her father, the philosopher Alexander Dugin, was believed to have been a strong influence on Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian government maintains that Dugina was murdered by a Ukrainian nationalist. Dugina is not the only person on the list to have been killed. In 2015, journalist Oles Buzina and a deputy in the Ukrainian parliament, Oleg Kalashnikov, were killed only days after their information was leaked on the Myrotvorets website.
In 2016 more than 4,500 journalists and media agents were stationed to report in the Donbass territory. Investigators claim that Myrotvorets employees hacked into the Ministry of State Security of the Donetsk People’s Republic’s database and stole the phone numbers, email addresses and home addresses of foreign journalists stationed in the Donbass territory. The Myrotvorets organization accused the journalists of “collaborating with terrorists” because they were reporting on the war from non-Ukrainian held territories.
As of October, 2022, no major US corporate news outlets have covered the story, but Armstrong’s piece was picked up by several independent sites, including Monthly Review Online, The Grayzone, and Covert Action Magazine.
So it goes, so it goes, Russia-Gate:
“Promoting Falsehoods and Marginalizing Truth-Tellers: WaPo’s Revelations About Russiagate Reporting Failures Typify Legacy Media Failures”
January 17, 2023
By Nolan Higdon and Mickey Huff
The Washington Post’s coverage of a January 2023 study arguing that the post-2016 coverage of Russia election meddling may have been overblown, reveals a corrosive trend in legacy news media where the personalities and outlets that perpetuate inaccurate or false news are rewarded, and the truth-tellers who expose legacy media lies are marginalized and ostracized.
The Washington Post cited a newly published academic study from the New York University Center for Social Media and Politics that concluded there was no evidence that the content suspected of being generated from Russia meaningfully impacted voters in the 2016 election. The authors wrote “we can’t find any relationship between being exposed to these tweets and people’s change in attitudes.” However, the Post was quick to point out that the study focused on Twitter and there was still the possibility that Russian content on other platforms such as Facebook (now Meta) could have tilted the election. However, there is no solid evidence to confirm such a claim and other previous studies by media scholars Emil Marmol and Lee Major, as well as Nolan Higdon of Project Censored, found Facebook’s reach was also minimal. They were not alone.
The study the Post referenced was hardly revelatory as even more researchers had drawn the same conclusion as early as 2016. Harvard University’s Yochai Benkler and his colleagues pointed out there was no empirical evidence that online content shifted electoral votes in 2016 and noted that cable news proved to be arguably far more influential. All of these studies found that the content from Russia was minimal in scope and influence when compared to the digital content disseminated by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton’s multi-million dollar presidential campaigns, which were further boosted by billions of dollars in free coverage from legacy media. Meanwhile, seasoned journalists such as Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Aaron Maté noted the flimsy sources and baseless claims so-called “mainstream” media were relying on to convince audiences that Russia tilted the election. Rather than analyze these arguments, corporate media outlets just shot at the messengers.
So, some flak for NED, some woman who has spent her career spinning and branding and mushing up and mashing down and furthering the propaganda and marketing ploys of various non-profits, she is just one in a million getting big bucks to do nothing, that is, to do a lot:
Ahh, we don’t know if Russia attacked Ukrainian arms depot because “we wouldn’t be allowed to report on that . . . “ That fucking media.
The entire mess goes back to Koppel and his variety show:
Caitlin Johnstone: “To be clear, when I say CFR is immensely influential, I mean it is immensely influential. Its membership spans throughout the major media institutions of the western world, and it once hosted a panel where a former State Department official who was also an editor of Time Magazine openly endorsed the practice of using propaganda on Americans to influence how they think.”
Another Jewish elite, from the East Coast: Stengel was born in New York City into a Jewish family, and raised in Westchester County. He attended Princeton University and played on the Princeton Tigers basketball team as part of the 1975 National Invitation Tournament. He graduated magna cum laude in 1977. After college, he won a Rhodes Scholarship and studied English and history at Christ Church, Oxford.
Ahh, Rhodes, Princeton, Westchester County. Hmm, those East Coast Blues!
Just fucking vote now:
Caitlin: “So to be perfectly clear I will not be supporting or cheerleading any candidate in this election. Not because I don’t think Australians have a right to involve themselves in US politics (we absolutely do), but because US presidential elections are a performance designed to trick Americans into thinking they have any meaningful control over the major decisions that will be made by their government. They’re the unplugged video game controller you give your baby brother so you can stop him from whining to play without actually letting him.”
Fucking hilarious:
The Americans; and Greenfield and Chomsky and all of them know how to fool a bunch of Goyim:
Lies, truth stretchers, and anything but facts, DOA: “Report: 94 Percent of Big Provider’s Rainforest Carbon Offsets Don’t Cut Carbon — A new analysis suggests corporations’ climate commitments are based on a deeply faulty carbon market.”
What a joke, expecting a media spinner — Aun — to have ANY knowledge of her own non-profit. Different languages, Max, that you and Aun speak. Same city, same backgrounds, but . . . .
And that is it, no, with the governor of the 51st state, *elensky?
Our new governor:
Those headlines which get ZERO airplay: “Ukrainian Regime Led by Media Darling Volodymyr Zelensky Kidnaps Student Dissidents, Bans Opposition Parties, Shuts Down Independent Media, Commits Egregious War Crimes and Imposes Regressive Labor Laws” By Dmitri Kovalevich
Again, if you need air sickness bags, here you go:
Paul Haeder, Author 