By Johnny Liberty

There is no doubt that the legacy news media are no longer reliable sources of solid facts, valid truth and honest opinion. Fortunately, there are now thousands of alternative sources from across the political spectrum. 

Likely, there is a 5% fact base in the legacy news media upon which rests propaganda, advertising, hype, entertainment, spin, corporate and U.S. government narratives intended to distract or misinform us from what is actually going on in our world today. 

Enjoying the Evening Snooze

The legacy news media is spoon-fed a daily dose of snooze via editorial boards, intelligence agencies, public relations departments and advertisers whereas the alternative press is reporting either a counterpoint or a reaction/response to the news of the day.

May we begin to think for ourselves, do our own research, come to our own conclusions and “detox” our minds from the evening snooze. May we learn to either “fast” or boycott both the legacy and alternative press and consider this maxim – “no garbage in, no garbage out”. 

The Global and American Power structures control all major television/cable networks, public broadcasting and major cable/satellite networks. Six corporations not only own, but control thousands of channels with a relatively consistent liberal bias and mainstream narrative. 

The same six corporations control major radio stations, magazines and newspaper chains. Most Americans get a majority of their news, information, opinions and political world view from the same legacy news sources, and now more than ever, from the internet and social media which are revolutionizing the way news is delivered.

What passes off as “news” these days is quite appalling to anyone with a modicum of intelligence and an insult to those who do not have the capacity to distinguish news from entertainment, fact from fiction or what constitutes propaganda and disinformation. 

Too many reporters, journalists and editors are busy snooping into the private lives of public officials and celebrities to actually accomplish any investigative journalism into the real issues of the day. Real journalism is an endangered species. Few have allocated the budgets necessary for independent reporting and investigative journalism as they did in the glory days of great reporters such as Walter Cronkite.

Stealing Attention from the Real Issues

In the early decades of the 21st Century there are serious concerns that deserve more attention than the sex lives of high-profile politicians or some popular celebrity’s most recent scandal. Irrelevant media spin keeps us distracted from real issues and concerns.

 Much of the legacy news media and the internet follows the path of the tabloids (e.g., National Enquirer), focuses public attention on non-issues and directs the political agenda towards the desired goals of the global elite. 

Much of the alternative independent press is busy reacting to whatever the legacy media is reporting to notice what’s really going on behind the scenes and take initiative in digging for the real news. This is changing.

FAKE NEWS = PROPAGANDA

Investigative Journalism & Whistleblowing

Investigative reporting and whistleblowing is difficult and often dangerous for a reporter if you want to keep your job and protect yourself from prosecution. 

Since September 11, 2001, “homeland security” and the resulting over-hyped war on terror, the U.S. government has used “national security” as an excuse for censorship and suppression of the free press.

Reporters whistleblowers and independent journalists (e.g., Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden) have faced prosecution, torture or persecution for shedding the light on controversial topics such as the U.S. State Department or the shadowy business dealings of powerful politicians.

Maintaining an independent, free press is absolutely essential to the continued existence of a healthy constitutional republic. Whistleblowers,  reporters, editors and their sources should be protected by law not prosecuted for doing their job.

A whistleblower is a person who exposes any kind of information or activity that is deemed illegal, unethical, or incorrect within an organization that is either private or public. The Whistleblower Protection Act was passed in 1989. It supposedly protects federal whistleblowers who work for the government and report the possible existence of any activity constituting a violation of laws or rules.

Media Spin. Propaganda & Government Public Policy

Spin doctors, image-makers, and propagandists are key policymaking posts in any government or corporate public relations department. So how is the news engineered and manufactured to justify and then create public policy? 

Spin doctors, and those behind the scenes directing them, create public policy based on public opinion and what the public will accept. Legislators follow by writing statutes which are passed and enforced by the Executive Branch. Lawmakers and politicians don not lead, they follow public opinion often directed by corporate media.

Public policy is shaped by the “image of the issue”, not the “reality of the issue”. Public policy will become what the policy should appear like, not what addresses the issue at hand or solves the problem.

Corporate media may go as far as to manufacture or fabricate the news to suit their own political agenda. Watch the films, Wag the Dog with Dustin Hoffman and Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky. These are shocking realities too true to ignore.

“Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

  The government, or shadow partnerships within government, may go as far as to engineer a catastrophe or “false flag” operation to justify legislation to further their political agendas (e.g., Waco, Oklahoma City Bombing, 911, George Floyd). A “false flag” operation is an event created by a secret cabal or “deep state” operative within a nation, then blamed on another nation, group or individual to justify an already planned response.

“…It is not by any commission from the supreme executive council, who might previously judge of the abilities, integrity, knowledge, etc., of the person to be appointed to this great trust, of deciding upon the character and good fame of the citizens; for this court is above that council, and may accuse, judge, and condemn it at pleasure. Nor is it hereditary, as in the court of dernier resort in the peerage of England. But any man who can procure pen, ink, and paper, with a press, a few types, and a huge pair of blacking balls may commissionate himself; and his court is immediately established in the plenary possession and exercise of its rights. 

For if you make the least complaint of the judge’s conduct, he dabs his blacking balls in your face wherever he meets you; and, besides tearing your private character to flitters, marks you out for the odium of the public, as an enemy to the liberty of the press.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

Abandoning the Ship of Freedom

An “independent” press is supposed to be the guardians of “liberty”, but have far too often abandoned the ship of freedom instead. Much of journalism has deteriorated into slick entertainment and sensationalism, even by the old vanguards of the media industry. 

Too often journalists, reporters and anchormen fan the flames of discontent by focusing the news on crime, violence, racism, sexism and government disinformation into their commentary. The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, Washington Post are infamous for fanning the flames of political division and polarization in America. Many others in the alternative media have followed suit.

From the vantage point of this author, responsible citizenship is not meant to be a spectator sport orchestrated by the media and the government. Real issues must never be confused with “entertainment”. Real news is rarely what the media is directing your attention towards. Can you tell the difference between news and entertainment? If not, we are all in terrible trouble.

Since the advent of social media over less than twenty years ago the domain of legacy media and independent press has changed forever in both form and delivery.

• Facebook (2004)(2.89b users), WhatsApp (2009), Messenger (2010), Instagram (2012)(1.5b users) 
• YouTube (2005)(2.3b viewers)
• LinkedIn (2003)(774m users)
• Telegram (2013)(550m users)
• Twitter (2006)(400m users)
• Rumble (2013)(321m users)
• Signal (2018)(40m users)
• Parler (2018)(2.5m users)
• Gab (2016)(1.2m users)
• WordPress (2003)(800k websites)
• Delicious (2003), Pinboard (2009)(25k users)

In the words of the comedian and radio announcer Scoop Nisker, “If you don’t like the news go out and make some of your own.”

Instead of a few monopoly players on the media board there are now tens of thousands of bloggers, networks, channels, aggregators and compilers of news available for those with the eyes to see and ears to hear. This is indeed good news for a change. 

With more players on the field, legacy media has suffered an extreme loss of viewers, readers and credibility to the extent that many of the old vanguards will either transform their business model or go out of business for good.

With the aid of social media and easy to create websites, We the People can become our own media, become citizen reporters and do our own diligence with the news. 

We the People still have the power to discern and decide what is fact vs fiction. and what is truth. It’s up to us to hold both the legacy media and alternative press accountable for what it reports or doesn’t report.

“There is no such thing…in America as an independent press. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you (reporters) who dares to write your honest opinion, and if you did, you know beforehand it would never appear in print. 

I am paid weekly to keep my honest opinion out of the paper. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.”..

“The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread.You know it, and I know it, and what folly is this, toasting an independent press?

We are the tools and the vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the Jumping Jacks. They pull the strings, and we dance.

Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.” ~ John Swinden, Former Head of The New York Times

References:

1. See APPENDIX I, II & III.
2. Wikipedia | List of U.S. Over the Air Networks; Liberty International & Truthout | Twenty Years of Media Consolidation Has Not Been Good For Our Democracy by Bill Moyers.
3. Exposing Truth | Six corporations include: Time Warner, The Walt Disney Corporation, Viacom, News Corporation, CBS Corporation, Comcast.
4. Wikipedia | List of most popular websites include: Google, YouTube, Email, Baidu, Facebook, Tencent QQ, Sohu, Taobao, Haosou, Jingdong Mall, Yahoo, Amazon, Wikipedia, Sina Corp, Sina Weibo, Zoom.
5. Statista | Most popular social networks including Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Weizin/WeChat, Instagram, Tik Tok, QQ, Sina Weibo, QZone; Statista | Most popular global mobile messenger apps (July 2020) including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, QQ, Telegram, Snapchat; Revive.
6. Wikipedia | Whistleblower; Wikipedia | Whistleblower protection; Wikipedia | Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, 5 U.S.C., 2302(b)(8)-(9), Pub.L 1010-12 as amended; Liberty International & Columbia Journalism Review | Journalism’s Gates keepers.
7. IMDB | Wag the Dog with Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro, Woody Harrelson and Willie Nelson A comic satire about the use and abuse of power in America; IMDB | Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky; Liberty International & New Matilda | Inside The Invisible Government: John Pilger On War, Propaganda, Clinton And Trump; Liberty International & Counterpunch | The Weaponization of Social Media; Children’s Health Defense | White House Enlists Social Media Giants to Suppress Vaccine ‘Misinformation’. RT | Democrats claim censorship necessary to stop ‘fascism’, but they still serve militarism and corporatism, Glenn Greenwald says.
8. Wikipedia | Benjamin Franklin; History Guy | Quote from Benjamin Franklin from On Freedom of Speech and the Press, Pennsylvania Gazette, November 17, 1737.
9. Liberty International, Collective Evolution & Global Research | War Propaganda: “Fake News” and the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Influence (OSI).
10. Harrisburg | Court of the Popular Press by Benjamin Franklin; Teaching American History | An Account of the Supremest Court of Judicature in Pennsylvania, The Court of the Press, September 12, 1789.
11. Wikipedia | Daniel Schorr; National Press Club | Phrases excerpted from the comments of Daniel Schorr at the National Press Club.
12. Wikipedia | Wes Nisker, Author, Radio Commentator, Comedian and Buddhist meditation instructor; Quote from If You Don’t Like the News…Go Out and Make Some of Your Own (Ten Speed Press).
13. National Press Club | John Swinden as the former head of The New York Times toasting the independent press at the National Press Club (1953); Author of The Occult Technology of Power.

Source: Sovereign’s Handbook by Johnny Liberty (30th Anniversary Edition), p.30- 34

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