Saturday 10 December 2016

How the western media produces false stories

BUSTED! Supposed Syrian Activist Group Feeding News to Big Media Exposed as a British-Run FAKE NEWS Factory
Western media has been getting its stories from a clandestine British government propaganda plant paying out salaries of up to $17,000


8 December, 2016

The Revolutionary Forces of Syria (RFS) media office, a major Syrian opposition media outfit and frequent source of information for Western media, is funded by the British government and is managed by Westerners operating out of Turkey, according to emails provided to AlterNet by a Middle East reporter RFS tried to recruit.

The outlet stirred controversy this November when it released a video at the height of the Mannequin Challenge, a pop culture craze in which people compete for how long they can freeze in place on video. The RFS video depicted a staged rescue by the White Helmets, the Western-funded rescue group that operates exclusively in rebel-held territory. RFS quickly removed the video and issued an apology out of apparent concern that the staged rescue could raise questions about the authenticity of other videos by the White Helmets.
Over the summer, the Middle East reporter, who asked not to be named, was contacted by an American acquaintance and former colleague about working for RFS.
I'm currently in Istanbul, working on a media project for the HMG [the British government],” wrote the acquaintance in an email time-stamped June 23. “We're working on media surrounding the Syrian conflict, as one of their three partners.” The email included links to RFS Media’s English website and SMO Media, an Arabic website that covers the Southern Front, a Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) group.
[W]e’re looking for a managing editor/production manager to head up our team here in Istanbul, and I thought you'd be a great fit. I was wondering if you had any interest, or knew of anyone looking to move out to Istanbul for an opportunity," the acquaintance added.
In a followup phone conversation, the acquaintance explained to the reporter what the job would entail.
I would have been talking to opposition people on the ground and writing news pieces based on statements from media activists who are affiliated with the armed groups in places like Aleppo,” the reporter later explained.
The salary offered for this task was an eye-popping $17,000 a month.
The reporter ultimately decided not to pursue the RFS position because he felt it would be journalistically unethical.
The idea that I would work for the government of a country that’s intimately involved in the Syrian conflict is one that’s incomprehensible for me as a journalist,” he told AlterNet.
This was far beyond working for state-owned media in my opinion. It was to actually be a mouthpiece for specific armed groups that are backed by a Western regime with a long history of disastrous interference in this region. That doesn’t mean I don’t have sympathy for people who are against the Syrian government. I am not pro-regime. At the same time, I am a journalist and would like to maintain my integrity at that level.”
The reporter declined to recommend others for the job, saying, “I’m not going to facilitate some dubious relationship between a reporter and what is obviously a propaganda outlet,” he said.
RFS did not respond to a request for comment.
Go-to source for information-starved Western media
Western media often relies on self-described “media activists” in areas controlled by Western- and Gulf-backed militant groups, like Jabhat al-Nusra (until recently Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria), Ahrar al-Sham, Jaish al-Islam and Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki. These groups are explicitly anti-democratic and have been implicated in human rights violations from mass execution to using caged religious minorities as human shields. Most recently, civilians fleeing rebel-held eastern Aleppo have described being fired on by militants seeking to prevent them from escaping to the safety of government-controlled territory.
Two months ago, I spoke over the phone to a frequently quoted media activist living in East Aleppo. He told me that if he publicly criticizes the armed opposition groups, he risks being tortured, or worse. Indeed, a largely ignored report by Amnesty International published in June revealed that civilians in opposition-controlled Aleppo and Idlib have been subjected to abduction, torture and summary execution simply for criticizing armed groups on social media.
RFS’s videos and hashtags are regularly picked up by major Western media outlets. One of its videos has even been cited by human rights groups as evidence of Russian war crimes. Among its most viral campaigns is #AvengersInAleppo, which featured photos of children living in East Aleppo holding up signs calling on Marvel comic book superheroes to save them. (East Aleppo is controlled by a number of extremist groups led by Al Qaeda’s renamed offshoot, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham.)
Prior to that, RFS capitalized on the popularity of Pokémon Go to sell a pro-interventionist message to Western audiences with photos of children in opposition-controlled areas of Syria holding up photos of Pokémon characters with messages calling for intervention. The campaign garnered favorable media coverage from major outlets, including the Guardian, the Washington PostCNN, the IndependentReuters, and the BBC, none of which have bothered to question the origins of RFS or similar pro-opposition outlets. 
A $3 million British government propaganda campaign for Syria’s rebels
RFS Media is just one of several different propaganda outlets financed by the U.K. Foreign Office. A recent investigation by the Guardian revealed that the British Foreign Office Conflict and Stability Fund has secretly pumped at least £2.4 million (over $3 million U.S.) into pro-rebel propaganda outfits based out of Istanbul.
The money began flowing after the British parliament voted against bombing the Syrian government in late 2013. (RFS Media launched in December 2013 in both English and Arabic.) The vote against war was attributed in large part to public pressure, as citizens on both sides of the Atlantic, reluctant to overthrow yet another Middle Eastern government after the disasters in Iraq and Libya, mobilized against another campaign for Western regime change in Syria.
After the political defeat, the U.K. Foreign Office embarked on a clandestine propaganda campaign to suppress the public’s anti-war sensibility, hiring private contractors to “produce videos, photos, military reports, radio broadcasts, print products and social media posts branded with the logos of fighting groups, and effectively run a press office for opposition fighters,” according to the Guardian.
The purpose of the propaganda, euphemistically referred to as “strategic communications” by the Foreign Office, is to clandestinely “influence the course of the war by shaping perceptions of opposition fighters” and provide “strategic communications and media operations support to the Syrian moderate armed opposition.”
Sanitizing the armed opposition as “moderate” has been a difficult task to be sure. While Western officials were well aware of the extremist and violently sectarian ideology that dominated the opposition early in the conflict, they deliberately chose to whitewash their atrocities in favor of weakening the Syrian government. RSF Media has stayed true to that goal, portraying armed groups as liberators and protectors adored by the people living under them, a narrative Western media outlets have enthusiastically echoed even as their own reporters were kidnapped, ransomed and even shot by Western-backed rebels.
This has presented a puzzling contradiction in Syria coverage. On the one hand, foreign reporters do not dare enter opposition areas for fear of being abducted. Yet the same media outlets that refrain from sending their reporters to opposition areas are comfortable amplifying propaganda that comes out of these areas with almost zero scrutiny, despite the fact that such information almost certainly requires the approval of the armed groups they fear may kidnap their reporters.
The warped picture of Syria that has been provided to Western media consumers is not the fault of the Syrian opposition, which is merely advancing its own most immediate public relations needs without regard for the objective truth, as combatants in war often do. It is, however, a damning indictment of a media establishment that has failed to scrutinize convenient pro-war narratives that serve their own governments’ geopolitical interests.

Rania Khalek is an independent journalist living in the Washington D.C. area


Glenn Greenwald Reveals How Pro-Clinton Trolls Originated Fake News Factory


8 December, 2016

In her first public speech since conceding the election, Hillary Clinton on Thursday denounced “fake news,” and called for Congress to essentially censor the internet. The problem with Clinton’s statements however, is that her own campaign led with the widespread use of the same fake news she so roundly decries.

Clinton asserted in her Thursday speech that there is an “epidemic of malicious fake news and false propaganda that flooded social media over the past year.” She also stated that “fake news” can have “real-world consequences,” and that the issue, as she understands it, “isn’t about politics or partisanship.”

It’s a danger that must be addressed and addressed quickly.” Clinton said, adding, “Bipartisan legislation is making its way through Congress to boost the government’s response to foreign propaganda, and Silicon Valley is starting to grapple with the challenge and threat of fake news. It’s imperative that leaders in both the private sector and the public sector step up to protect our democracy and innocent lives.”

The problem is, Clinton’s call for an end to free speech is hypocritical, at best.

On Friday, journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote an article for The Intercept shining a light on fake news that was specifically crafted to benefit the former First Lady in her unsuccessful presidential campaign.

In October, Greenwald noted, during the period in which WikiLeaks was releasing emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, the candidate’s campaign officials began lying to the public, claiming that the emails were doctored, and should be ignored. The claim was untrue, but was nonetheless faithfully repeated by networks and news outlets that were friendly with the Democratic candidate, such as MSNBC. © YOUTUBE/HIGH ENERGY Fox News Host Destroys Democratic Lawmaker Over Russian Hacking Claims

Official Warning: are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries & not even professionally done.
That the emails in the WikiLeaks archive were doctored or faked – and thus should be disregarded – was classic Fake News, spread not by Macedonian teenagers or Kremlin operatives but by established news outlets such as MSNBC, the Atlantic and Newsweek,” Greenwald wrote.

And, by design,” he said, “this Fake News spread like wildfire all over the internet, hungrily clicked and shared by tens of thousands of people eager to believe it was true. As a result of this deliberate disinformation campaign, anyone reporting on the contents of the emails was instantly met with claims that the documents in the archive had been proven fake.”

Soon, MSNBC’s so-called intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance began spreading a rumor that “Trumpists” were altering documents from the WikiLeaks release, and his falsehood spread like wildfire as well.

But the screengrab Nance cited as his proof did not come from supporters of the now President-elect, but from a hardcore-Clinton supporter named Marco Chacon, who was using the handle “the Omnivore” on Twitter.

Chacon previously described himself, in an article for the Daily Beast, as a creator of “fake viral news” who targeted Trump and Bernie Sanders supporters. Chacon claimed that he created fake anti-Clinton controversy to discredit those who cited it. He never expected Clinton supporters to be the ones who fell for it.


Listen to "Greenwald Says Dems' "Primary Strategy" is to Revive McCarthy" on Spreaker.


"I think one of the things that has happened is that so many reporters, especially now, are so devoted to one of the candidates, particularly Hillary Clinton, that they’re not actually interested in any news stories that they perceive don’t directly help her to win,” Greenwald told Sputnik Radio in October

The article from Glenn Greenwald


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