How to read the news
The only truth you can close to know for sure is what you see and hear and understand for yourself first hand. Even this is subjective to your bias and senses, but it’s likely to be more certain and true for you than anyone else giving you an account of the story.
In saying that obviously we cannot be in all places at once. We rely on others to report to us ‘the news’.
I prefer independent journalism, by which I mean journalism not paid for 100% by powerful corporations or the state. Both of whom always have an agenda. That doesn’t mean they are always lying, it means they always have an agenda which often becomes a bias and this is always related to power, influence and money.
The corporate and state media, especially the western system with which I’m personally most familiar, is long intertwined. They have long worked together. You can see this by researching the CFR and trilateral commission in the US, where for decades the owners and editors of the corporate media have worked side by side the CIA, world bank, corporate elite in the financial sector, state department and other major corporate powers connected to the US government. The same is found in the UK, even with basic research of the history of the BBC executive leadership who close to always are comprised of representation of powerful corporate interests.
Many know the NYT as a mouth piece of the CIA. The Washington post, and plenty more beside, they all get fed the same stories by the intelligence PR teams then mass repeat – if a lie is told enough times by enough people it becomes truth to the many…Most the main corporate ‘news’ channels are stenographers for the intelligence agencies to run their PR lines.
Many are aware of the influence of the Murdoch crowd for example but there are pleny more foundations and billionaire ‘philanthropists’ giving positive sounding names to what amounts to when dug into to lay open and clear – a propaganda machine masquerading as the opposite. And of course, any government would wish to control the influence over the majority it’s people. It is how they stay in power. If they have the resources then they would also wish to exert influence over the population of their enemies. Regime change is cheaper and easier when you can launch it from within a country, rather than without. It also looks a lot more palatable e.g. Maidan was heavily orchestrated by the Western corporate-state and yet promoted by their PR machine as a grass roots rising up of the people overthrowing a corrupt government.
When I seek independent journalism I need to get an idea of their credentials. What have they written before? What experience do they have? Looking back at their previous work, does it seem solid? What is their bias?
When I look at corporate-state journalism, it is very similar questions I have to ask, though some become quickly answered when I already know, for example, the government narrative they are pushing and why e.g. UK government is trying to justify war with Iraq so they wil push any narrative that helps to justify that war. People need to understand that some of the same facts can be reported very differently to give often a completely distorted message in relation to the reality, without actually lying.
With the corporate media, I always look at their About page, or wherever else I need to in order to find out who owns them. What else do they own? Who else are they connected to? This is where I will understand their bias/agenda.
e.g. If a media platform has as a sponsor/donor/partner Raytheon or General Dynamics, I will make the assumption their reporting on conflicts is going to be in some way helpful to the US corporate military industry. There is zero other reason for a military corporation to be sponsoring a news platform.
In fact, there is zero reason beyond investing in their own agenda towards their own profit margins, for any corporation to be investing in a media platform.
Yes, the corporate-state media often lie. They are more inclined to bend the truth, insinuate, but are prone to outright fabrication. Often wittingly, sometimes unwittingly. They will mass repeat whatever they have been fed by their state intelligence colleagues, many of whom are long embedded within the media empires. Makes sense. Hardly some major conspiracy. As I mentioned, it is simple to confirm the major media corporations have long worked directly with the state intelligence crowds.
As an aside…it is not just the corporate media who works with the state, it is other major corporate interests as well. Blackrock, Monsanto, BP, Shell, Raytheon, Lockheed, Haliburton to name just a handful of the many powerful corporations who have long worked with the state to steer policy towards consolidating and growing their profit, power, influence, control. Again, its hardly a wild sinister conspiracy, it is logical. There is more money to be made from using western taxpayers money for foreign wars than solely for the military and media corporations. What of the resources to plunder? the redevelopment costs after the conflict? What of the ports and transport and state systems to be revived and regenerated? The agricultural land to be monetised?
As cynical and depressing as it seems, the western corporate-state work in lockstep towards mutual goals and they lie and influence us towards supporting this. Much of this shared agenda pushed through the state system by corporate power is foreign policy shaped towards war and destabilisation, both of which lead ripe for profiteering, via the media though this is portrayed as a moral crusade, a Good v Evil, a spreading of democracy, a support of brave people in foreign lands rising up against their brutal oppressors. And if you have enough of the media to spread your message, it works. Nothing rivals the western corporate-state PR machine. Nothing else on earth has the resources, the reach, the established interconnectivity and experience.
Independent platforms can be exceptionally biased, they can tell outright lies, and bend the truth hence why I suggest using the same questions to weed out the ones who lie, who embellish, to either at least understand the bias and take this into account when considering their ‘news’ or to value them as one of the objective platforms to reference often, whatever your research leads you to conclude of their transparency and expertise.
It seems sensible to divide your time between the most reliable/ expert sources you can find from all sides of a story in order to then try deduce a logical conclusion or idea. There is a chap who has long reported from Donbas (since 2014 at least) who often encourages his viewers to do just as I am suggesting. Don’t take him (or any one platform) as the only sole source of truth, research all you can, watch all sides, make up your own mind. Maybe its a gimmick, but it doesn’t matter for it is sage advice.
Can you imagine any western corporate-state media source advising you ‘Don’t just take our word for it, try some russian news, some donbas news, some iranian news, some syrian news, some iraqi news, some chinese news, some afghani news, watch as much as you can, then make up your own mind’?
You can imagine but it would be fantasizing as the western corporate-state media machine specifically includes as part of its base level of conditioning/ propaganda a steady undercurrent of demonisation of the current ‘enemy’ and all reporting that fails to paint the ‘enemy’ as the current prescribed narrative demands. The media of our designated enemies is 100% lies, we are told. Any other media that criticises the western corporate-state narrative on our designated enemies is false, we are told.
The conditioning works so well on many that they repeat it without any thought whatsoever. Asking a lemming minded dullard ‘Okay, you refuse to listen to any other side but your one. What if you were in a court of law, accused of a crime, the judge gave the prosecution chance to speak, for hours and hours, they produced witness after witness which your defence were not allowed to cross examine and when it came to your turn, and your defence team, the judge told you ‘NO’ then adjourned court and the judge/jury made their decision based solely on the prosecution case put forward. You would find this fair?? Fair cop, guv???’ Their brains do not compute this very basic foundation of justice which carries through to any objective research and reporting of a story/event. You need to get all sides. It is in the interest of especially the side that is lying to you, to make you believe any other side is lying to you. The perfect controlled population is one who listens only to their rulers, and refuses any criticism of their rulers narrative.
Avoid fact checkers – they are on the whole funded by the same corporations aiming to narrow and control free speech, and connected to the same corporate state PR machine. It really does not take much research to confirm this.
…e.g Full Fact
Funded by Google, The Omidyar Group, Meta…massive corporations worth billions with their fingers in many pies cooked by the western corporate-state system. Why would you let multi-billion $ corporations tell you who to believe? Omidyar is long connected to regime change operations and CIA partnerships. Facebook is the largest online social media network in the West, its influence worth millions and billions of $ to corporate-state partners. Google has long worked directly with Western governments.
Of course, Full fact, like all of these ‘fact checkers’ promotes the idea that they are independent, but when their funding/partners include corporate billionaire groups long working with the state, they are not promoting this…for obvious reason. And they are clearly not independent.
How about Snopes?
A member of the International Fact Checking Network! Well they sound fancy and just the authority we need eh? Snopes tells us this IFCN crowd have the highest standards of combating misinformation online. Well, case closed?Just rinse, repeat whatever Snopes tells us is safe and true? Not quite…Who are this gold standard of fact checking? The IFCN…
They are funded/run by Poynter. Who are funded by/partnered with –
Charles Koch, corporate billionaire capitalist.
Institute for War and Peace Reporting (who are funded in part by the US State Dept, Uk Foreign office, National Endowment for Democracy which is a CIA team)
Direct funding of the IFCN-
Luminate Group / Omidyar Network (see above)
Meta
Are you getting the gist here? These so called ‘fact checkers’ are funded by the same corporate state crowd who are delivering you the news, that their ‘fact checker’ pals are then telling you is True and safe to believe. The same ‘fact checker’ crowds are telling you not to trust anything that challenges the prescribed corporate-state narrative. Its doubling down on the same PR/propaganda.
Leave the fact checkers alone. They are a cheap ploy for the lazy and those absent of any capacity for critical thinking.
So, after that prancing, scurrying, meandering ramble…
I suggest –
Know the bias of the news source (research the ownership, who they work with, where their money flows). If a ‘news’ platform is sponsored by a corporation or state, they are likely to produce ‘news’ that is in line with the agenda of the sponsor.
Read/consume as many sides to a story as possible, especially if you are told not to by one side. Make up your own mind after researching the most valuable sources from all sides.
Don’t narrow your research to one side of a story. e.g. if the US and France and Uk governments are going to war with Russia, then don’t limit yourself with reporting from the US, France and UK corporate state media. Try some in-betweens, try some russian, try some independents with suitable credentials to offer insight, try some chinese, try some japanese, try some malaysian. The more sides you research the better an idea you can fathom of any semblance of truth, just by applying logical reasoning and objective research.
Read between the lines. Know the difference between an allegation and an evidence based fact.
Do not be so naive to buy into this tired idea of the West as the ‘good guys’ and anyone our government goes against are the ‘bad guys’. The recent and longer term history of the western corporate-state powers is as brutal and murderous and destructive as you can find anywhere else on the planet outside of the insect realms, often worse.
Any court of law worth the name of Justice allows both sides of the dispute/ allegation to state their case. The jury or judge then decides the case based on listening to all sides, seeing all evidence produced from all sides. This is the only way to seek the truth. If you listen to only one side of a conflict, you only have a one sided view.
Avoid at all costs using ‘fact checkers’. Why trust strangers to tell you what you can believe? Check for yourself, research for yourself, get all sides of a story and make up your own mind. Most of these ‘fact checkers’ are part of the same corporate-state network of partners, working together to narrow free speech and promote the same precribed narrative. Others offer no serious argument as to why you should believe them rather than do your own research.
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