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https://theduran.com/how-to-know-if-a-news-medium-is-honest/

How to Know If a News-Medium Is Honest

Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)

The most-accurate — the FIRST — single measure of whether a given news-medium is honest and deserves to be called “journalism,” or else is dishonest and deserves to be called “propaganda,” is whether that news-medium refers to the U.S. Government as being a “dictatorship” (or an “aristocracy” or “oligarchy,” which is its type of dictatorship), or instead as a “democracy” (or a “democratic republic,” which is the type of ‘democracy’ that the U.S. Government claims to be). Because all of the empirical evidence is consistent that the U.S. Government is, indeed, a dictatorship by its super-rich against everyone else, calling it a “democracy” is a demonstrable lie for the media, even if that belief might be sincere for many members of the general public. Furthermore, despite that dictatorship’s propaganda to the contrary, even the American people, by a substantial majority, disbelieve their nation’s propaganda and believe that they live under a dictatorship. And that same Gallup report indicated that only 26% of Americans answered “Yes” to “Do you trust your National media?”; and, so, can a nation like THAT even possibly BE a democracy — a nation that doesn’t even trust its own “National media”? They are supposed to vote, but can’t even trust what is being conveyed to them in their mainstream ‘news’-media? Predominantly they believe that those media are dishonest. And those media are the very same ones that are trying to censor-out — and whose Government largely IS, via its agencies (including ‘nonprofits’), censoring-out — all of the non-mainstream media that are criticizing and pointing out falsehoods in the mainstream ‘news’-media. Consequently, too, for decades now, the U.S. has had far lower public approval of the job-performance of its head-of-state than is the case in most of the world’s countries, and especially in both China and Russia, which have constantly had vastly higher job-approval by their Presidents than America has been having of its Presidents. Moreover, in virtually all of America’s colonies (or ‘allies’) the job-approval of its head-of-state has been even lower than is the case in the empire’s master-country, the U.S. itself. And whom are the people who are in the very best position to rate the job-performance of the nation’s head-of-state: the residents there, or instead foreigners? Americans are widely propagandized so as to disapprove the job-performance of the head-of-state in Russia, and in China, and DO rate it very low, but is that because of the propaganda from America’s aristocracy, our billionaires and centi-millionaires, or is it because the American public know first-hand the actual truth of the matters in those two countries? Obviously: the residents there have a more accurate view of this.

On February 24th, America’s National Public Radio headlined “Vice Media and BuzzFeed become the latest news organizations to announce layoffs” and reported (at 2:40-) that “news, excepting very specific sectors of the top level — the New York Times and Wall Street Journal for example or in television — is not really a profit-center in the way people think of it as being,” and then he just dropped that thought instead of going on to say that therefore only with the funds (advertising and donations from, and the stock-ownerships by) billionaires — their ‘non-profits’ that donate to and their corporations which advertise in those ‘news’-media — cannot survive financially in a purely capitalistic (i.e., fascist) country such as the United States: the billionaires-funded media require that constant subsidization by the super-rich and their agencies. So: this statement by him EXPLAINS why the U.S. is a dictatorship by its super-rich. Once America became fascist, on 25 July 1945 — controlled by its military-industrial complex (MIC) — this has effectively been, and is, the reality in U.S.-and-‘allied’ countries. So: any ‘news’-medium there that calls it instead a ‘democracy’ is plain lying; it is asserting an overwhelmingly disproven allegation. And that’s the most-accurate single measure of whether a given news-medium is honest and deserves to be called “journalism,” or else is dishonest and deserves to be called “propaganda.”

Moreover, as I have previously documented, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had already made clear in 2017 in an historic court case that America’s news-media ignored, that both American political Parties are private corporations that are owned and controlled by a self-selecting group of lobbyists and successful politicians who in turn represent only America’s billionaires and a few of its centimillionaires, and that this was the reason why RFK Jr. (who had and still has far higher net-favorability ratings from American voters than any other U.S. Presidential candidate does) had quit the Democratic Party and launched his own (likewise billionaires-funded) Presidential campaign on 29 September 2023. The DNC had already decided that it would rather lose with Biden than win with RFK Jr. This was the collective judgment by America’s politically active billionaires.

Furthermore: on 1 February 2005, an article that was published by a journal of the American Political Science Association, American Political Science Review, titled “Who Influences U.S. Foreign Policy?”, proved that ONLY the richest Americans (via their investments and lobbying and ‘news’-media and endowed university chairs and think tanks, etc.) influence U.S. foreign policies. Marchers and demonstrators, etc. have no influence upon it whatsoever.

So: it is simply obvious, in light of all of this evidence, that America is a dictatorship, instead of any sort of authentic democracy.

The SECOND-most accurate single measure of whether a given news-medium is honest and deserves to be called “journalism,” or else is dishonest and deserves to be called “propaganda,” is whether that news-medium refers to what happened in February 2014 in Ukraine as having been a “coup” or instead as having been a “revolution”, because, like George Friedman, the head of the ‘private CIA’ firm Stratfor once said, it was “the most blatant coup in history”, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 resulted from it — or, as both NATO’s chief Jens Stoltenberg and Ukraine’s President Volodmyr Zylensky have said and repeated, “The war in Ukraine began in 2014, NOT in 2022” (though U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media deny that and claim that it started with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, and so was ‘aggressive’ not defensive for Russia, and wasn’t aggressive not ‘defensive’ for the U.S. Government and its colonies or ‘allies’ that are arming the Ukrainian stooge-regime against Russia).

And the THIRD-most-accurate single measure of whether a given alleged news-organization is authentically journalism or else is authentically propagandistic, is whether or not it is reporting on Israel’s ethnic-cleansing campaign in Gaza as being that, or not. 

So: Those are the top THREE indicators.

As was accurately (though with linguistic problems) reported in the Gallup International “2018 Opinion Poll in 58 Countries Across the Globe” (p. 11), “Tensions across the world are growing and leadership is in crisis almost everywhere. … Many point out that the gap between elites [billionaires and their hired agents] and masses is reacting [reaching] intolerable levels and [the] post WW2 global order is following [falling] apart.” This “falling apart” is happening especially in the U.S. and its colonies (‘allies’). And, the publics there are noticing it, regardless of whether they understand WHY it is happening (which is like the decline and fall of empires throughout history — it is the unlimited greed of the super-rich, and their psychopathic unconcern for the welfare of others, and the intensification of that as their empire is falling apart, during their decline-phase).

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.