The Illusion of the Free Press: In 1983 a former CIA agent explains how they planted disinformation

By Jo Nova

Even in 1983, the media was just an unwitting wing of Government Agencies

Edward Snowden went looking for videos of former CIA employees that the CIA “sued into silence“. He foundwhat the CIA wanted to hide. Here, CIA officer Frank Snepp describing just how easy it was to get journalists to write exactly the stories they hoped they would write.

All those problems we see in the media today were already well developed 40 years ago. Real journalism is really rare.

On a website for people with a four-second attention span, that’s a lot of folks who stopped to watch a four-minute video from forty year years ago. Real numbers. https://t.co/shyAKE8SJt

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 9, 2022

@Snowdon says:

The entire thing is much longer, but *entirely* worth the watch. The government sued Snepp in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled intelligence workers had to submit any statement for censorship, even those unrelated to secrets.

Once an agency becomes good at lying “for the sake of the nation” or to “win the war” it’s only a hop, skip and a jump to lying to […]

CNN lost half its audience in the last year

Perhaps the audience doesn’t like being told how deplorable they are?

Good to see CNN and MSNBC getting what they deserve.

Fox News Makes Gains In 1Q Cable News Ratings While CNN, MSNBC Suffer Steep Declines

Fox News Channel was the only cable news network to make year-over-year ratings gains in the first quarter of 2022, finishing the quarter in first place and marking 81 consecutive quarters as the most-watched network in all of basic cable. FNC’s competitors, CNN and MSNBC, both suffered steep ratings declines compared to the same period one year ago.

In prime time, Fox News finished the quarter with an average total audience of 2.554 million viewers, up 3% from 2021, according to ratings data compiled by Nielsen. MSNBC finished the quarter in second place with an average total audience of 1.205 million viewers—down 46%, while CNN finished third with an average total audience of less than a million viewers: 857,000 viewers, down a staggering 56% from 2021.

Thank the Federal Reserve for mostly useless media. Easy money and big loans means the little media fish were swallowed by giant corporate conglomerates and then all the incentives […]

Media bullies attack the defenceless, then hide behind the Shield of Saintly Victimhood themselves

The scandal eh? Citizens arrested at the Capitol Riot were collecting donations from fellow Americans to pay for lawyers when USA Today swooped in to “expose” the travesty of it. Imagine the presumption of innocence and the right to “a fair trial”?

Once upon a time the second largest masthead in the US used to expose corruption in the great halls of power, but now they just attack private citizens. USA Today was wielding its influential power to cut off avenues for powerless people to raise enough money to afford better legal protection.

BLM rioters got donations direct from Kamala Harris and 13 Biden staffers, but Trump supporters are not even allowed to use Paypal or Venmo to get help from fellow Americans to cover their legal costs.

In the battle between the little guys and The Establishment Rulers, the legacy media is picking the side of Goliath, then asking us to be gentle on them.

Glenn Greenwald lobbed a sarcastic reply to the lead author:

And she and half the profession were so enraged they briefly set twitter on fire –saying she was “just an intern”, it was only her first story, and he was a […]

Besties: The Democrats and Corporate Giants in bed together and taking out each others trash

By Jo Nova

Daniel Greenfield put’s his finger on the diabolical feedback loop the West is in.

Big Gov protects the Big Tech monster from market competition — and in return Big Tech protects Big Government from political competition. Democrats have outsourced political repression of their enemies to cabals of private companies.

Nice Racket if you can get it.

The Democrats wet dream is to tar and feather opponents and then ban them from even speaking, and the conglomerate multinational octopuses are happy to oblige by tweaking search results, and suspending the right accounts. In return, they get sweet government deals and Section 230 protection. Who knew Amazon has nearly 500 federal subcontracts? When Amazon employees donate to the Democrats they’re just protecting their jobs.

When Google invests another $2 billion in Renewables, the last thing they want is climate denier Commander in Chief.

Public-Private partnerships are the unholiest anticompetitive destroyer of free speech. Big Gov works to make sure Big Tech can protect its monopoly control, while Big Tech works to make sure sure Big Gov is protected from criticism by blocking and banning free speech.

Sweet.

DEMOCRATS OUTSOURCE POLITICAL REPRESSION TO CORPORATE MONOPOLIES

Daniel Greenfield,

Democrats […]

Tweet mining in the Cancel Culture era

Skeptics have been living with “cancel culture” for years, but now, suddenly, nearly the whole Western world is.

Inside Cancel-Culture whole people and even statues are sliced out of public debate because of one breach of some optional movable rule. No matter how many years of experience or how great their achievements, one single “mistake” in the game of virtue signalling in any area means all their opinions on every topic are deemed unworthy.

Obviously, those that can’t persuade seek to cancel instead.

Here’s the brilliant Remy from late last year mocking journalists with twitter trawling fixations.

Imagine what would happen if an anchorman could say what they really thought?

“Toss him in a well and see if he floats”

PS: It’s good to see a few grown-ups like JK Rowling speaking up to end the cancel culture toxicity. It’s a shame they had to toss crumbs to the TDS crocodile. (People are looting and pillaging, but Trump‘s a “threat to Democracy”?) But otherwise they fight the good fight for free speech.

“We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.”

And so we do.

9.5 out of 10 based on 75 ratings

Kelloggs sells Social Justice Cereal, calls half the population names and posts $53m loss

The new marketing move by Kelloggs to insult half its customers doesn’t seem to be working out too well. Last year Kelloggs jumped into politics by loudly cancelling advertising on Breitbart saying the new media outlet didn’t fit their values. It was an attempt to punish the big winner in the new media for reporting politically incorrect news. Breitbart responded with the DumpKelloggs petition, and 436,000 people pledged never to buy Kelloggs again.

The company has now reported a $53 million dollar loss in the fourth quarter. It’s shutting down 39 distribution centres, potentially sacking 1,100 workers. Kelloggs share prices are back to where they were a year ago, but Kraft-Heinz is up 31%, and Post is up by 37%. Hey, but it could be a coincidence.

To get some idea of the depth of the goodwill crater left by the Kelloggs political bomb, check out Chiefio’s Bye Bye Kelloggs flaming rant last December. He won’t give a trigger warning, but tells people who need one to “get out now”. I’ve picked a tamer paragraph:

Dear Kellogg’s:

We, the Average Joe and Average Jane have put up with this Protest Shit to the absolute limit, […]

In brave PR move Kelloggs cancels Breitbart advertising and calls millions of its own customers “bigots”

It’s a novel marketing ploy to reach all the people who buy their breakfast cereals according to where they don’t advertise. It’s bound to appeal to at least three or four people, but at the risk of offending half the population.

I suspect that not too many kids plague mom and dad to buy Fruit Loops because it doesn’t support the evil Breitbart news outlet. (That’s the same one whose leading editor was so disconnected from the cereal-buying-masses that he backed the winning candidate for leader of the free world, and got a job as his right hand man. A media group on “the fringe”, eh?)

Politics is the new religion. What else explains this this latest marketing disaster, which will appeal to all the people who buy Wheeties because it’s a Democrat cereal. Investors are running. Kelloggs stocks dropped another 1.4% today.

It started when Kelloggs announced it wouldn’t advertise on Breitbart because of “values”:

Kellogg on Tuesday said it would pull its ads from Breitbart News after consumers notified the manufacturer that its products were appearing on the site. A company spokesperson told the Associated Press, “We regularly work with our media buying partners to ensure […]

Which countries will survive climate change?

Great news for Australians, Scandinavias, Greenlanders, Poms, and New Zealanders: all the headlines about how your home will be the hardest hit were wrong. Instead, your real estate will be the most valuable on Earth and everyone will want to visit you.

Thank The Guardian for its restrained headline: Countries most and least likely to survive the effects of climate change . Study source: Diply

I expect you will all be relieved. Especially after the fear you felt reading “hardest hit” headlines like these:

“Rural Australians hardest hit by climate change”

“Sydney’s urban areas to be hit hardest by global warming”

“Predictions Australia will be hardest hit by climate change”

Greenland hardest hit by climate change

“…climate change is likely to have the strongest impact on Scandinavian countries such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden.”

“Climate change is faster and more severe in the Arctic than in most of the rest of the world”

— Thanks to ClimateChangePredictions and Tom Nelson’s hardest hit list.

The original map on Diply also has a “least at risk” category, helpfully colored black and applied to no […]

Shock: Phil Jones says the obvious. BBC asks real questions.

Here’s the short version of that BBC interview. (Wow? Was it really the BBC?) This major re-framing of the story and admission of facts are part of the ClimateGate Virus epidemic. Journalists are starting to ask better questions, and researchers are starting to give better answers. OK, it’s not exactly a grilling, but neither is Roger Harrabin allowing the UN to promote its scare campaign without a few seriously-pointed questions. This represents almost as big a turnaround for Harrabin as for Jones (which I’ll expand on below). Only two years ago, he claimed skeptics were funded to spread uncertainty, and likened them to tobacco industry lobbyists. How must he feel to suddenly discover they actually had a case worth considering?

Cutting to the chase: paraphrasing Phil Jones

Stripped of the extras, Jones’ answers boil down to the following (I’ve added a few things he didn’t say [in square brackets], and skipped some questions ):

A) This recent warming trend was no different from others we have measured. The world warmed at the same rate in 1860-1880, 1919-1940, and 1975-1998. [Kinda cyclical really, every 55-60 years or so, we start another round.]

Hadley […]