Friday, May 17, 2019
Headlines for May 10, 2019
Headlines with an * are the ones we managed to fit in in our allotted time slot.
Worst, Most Misleading & Funniest Headlines for May 10, 2019
*Not a headline but the most jaw-dropping media outrage of the week (and probably the year), in an article about a military helicopter crash in Venezuela:
Originally read: “Pressure has been mounting on Maduro to step down following elections in January in which voters chose opposition leader Juan Guaidó over him for president.”!!! The article has two authors, and presumably also editors and proofreaders.
Now reads: “Pressure has been mounting on Maduro to step down since January, when opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president and was backed by the US and dozens of other nations.”
And this was not the only CNN “error”. As Dave Lindorff has noted (https://fair.org/home/failed-coup-a-fake-corporate-news-story-designed-to-trick-venezuelan-soldiers-and-us-public/), on April 30, the day of the last coup attempt, CNN ran a report that claimed Guaidó was on the La Carlota military airfield in eastern Caracas, which Guaidó said had been “liberated.” According to CNN, he was addressing “thousands of supporters” on the scene. Neither of those things was true, and neither was backed up by the video they ran, leading to the inescapable conclusion that these were deliberate lies, not just errors.
*American sanctions killed thousands in Venezuela
A new paper from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), by economists Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs, finds that economic sanctions implemented by the Trump administration since August 2017 have caused tens of thousands of deaths and are rapidly worsening the humanitarian crisis.
Why am I highlighting this? Because, outside of left/progressive media, this weekly paper in Union and Middlesex Counties, NJ is the ONLY U.S. media outlet who covered this important story. #FakeNewsByOmission
*Trump’s Latin American allies want change in Venezuela, but not U.S. intervention
Headlines like this reinforce the impression that the U.S. is not already intervening in Venezuela, and perpetuate the lie that sanctions are diplomacy, not war.
*ABC, NBC, and MSNBC prime-time shows ignored landmark UN report on biodiversity
Only three of 26 prime-time news programs on major networks covered the report
Only three of 26 prime-time news programs on major networks covered the report
1 million plant and animal species are at risk of extinction due to expansive human development. Important? Not to corporate media. More #FakeNewsByOmission
*Want to build a far-right movement?
Spain’s Vox party shows how.
Front page of the website several days running. “The story of Vox also belongs to a larger global story about the online and offline campaign tactics developed by the American alt-right and the European far right, which are now used throughout the world. The use of social media marketing to exacerbate polarization; of websites created especially to feed polarized narratives; of private fan groups that pass around conspiracy theories; of language that deliberately undermines trust in “mainstream” politicians and journalists: Fans of the party that wants to “Make Spain Great Again” used all of these tactics to move its message from the fringes to the mainstream.”
*What Makes a Coup Succeed? Confidence, Consensus and a Sense of Inevitability
Helpful advice from the Times. An example: “Some of Mr. Guaidó’s failures have been tactical, such as issuing his call to action on Twitter, Mr. Singh said. Coup leaders traditionally favor national TV and radio stations because seizing them is a way to convince the country that they have already taken control.”
FBI director tells Congress he has no evidence of ‘spying’ on Trump campaign
Implication of the headline is that nothing happened. No, it did, and Wray isn’t denying it, he just calls it “surveillance” instead. “Surveillance” which included sending people pretending to be something other than they were, offering money, etc. Wray says “that’s not the term I would use” (about “spying”) but I’m pretty sure that “surveillance” isn’t the term most people would use about what happened to George Papadopoulos.
Russian Collusion in Venezuela
Why does Donald Trump believe Putin instead of his advisers?
Trump said Putin "is not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela, other than he’d like to see something positive happen for Venezuela. And I feel the same way." As if the U.S. is not involved in Venezuela, and definitely not in a positive way! (40,000 dead from sanctions). But that's not the WSJ's problem with what Trump said, not at all. No, it's the claim that Russia "is not looking to get involved". So Russia sells arms to Venezuela, which is no secret, and Trump is hardly denying that, but apparently selling arms now constitutes "collusion". The article itself refers to Russian "incursions" into Venezuela. Of course it repeats the fiction (based solely on Mike Pompeo's claim) that Maduro was about to board a plane to Cuba but was talked out of it by Russia, and calls the coup attempt an "attempt by democrats to restore the constitution." Amazingly the editorial does NOT repeat the claim that there are 20,000 Cuban troops in Venezuela, nor Russian troops.