Press Freedom v. Major Media Disinformation and Fake News
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
First Amendment “freedom of speech (and) the press” includes no major media rights to willfully report disinformation, Big Lies and fake news – suppressing what’s true and verifiable on issues mattering most.
CNN notoriously is the most distrusted name in so-called television news. Along with other Western media, it’s a virtual mouthpiece for wealth, power and privileged interests.
They feature a daily drumbeat of deplorable rubbish, abandoning journalism the way it’s supposed to be.
CNN is the worst of the worst. Ted Turner’s 1980 creation reflects both travesty and tragedy – polar opposite how the American Press Institute defines journalism, saying:
It’s “the gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information,” adding:
Its “characteristics and practices…separate journalism from other forms of communication…mak(ing) it indispensable to democratic societies.”
“(J)ournalism provide(s) citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments.”
Media scholar/critic Robert McChesney said “collapse of a viable journalism (in America) is a significant factor — but by no means the only one — in explaining the shriveled and dilapidated state of US democracy.”
A free press in America exists in name only. Legitimate journalism is absent in the mainstream, available only through alternative sources, mainly online.
What passes for major media in America replicates what goes on in all totalitarian societies – political systems where ruling authorities exert total control, including over media.
In the US, the fourth estate goes along with the dirty system voluntarily, sticking with the official censored narrative on major geopolitical and domestic issues, truth-telling banished from reporting, concealing what powerful dark forces want suppressed.
Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, major media overwhelming were one-sided for Hillary, functioning as de facto press agents, criticizing Trump for the wrong reasons, not the right ones – continuing biased reporting post-election.
They’re militantly Russophobic and hostile to virtually all other sovereign independent countries for not subordinating their interests to Washington.
Disinformation and fake news are what they do best, journalism used as advocacy for powerful interests.
Time and again, CNN was caught red-handed reporting fake news, proving it’s the most untrustworthy name in television news.
It makes painful watching, insulting viewers, never letting facts interfere with its willfully deceptive reporting.
Following a DLT shouting match with CNN’s arrogant/ill-mannered Jim Acosta, Trump suspended his White House press pass “until further notice.”
CNN sued for reinstatement. On Friday, federal Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the White House to temporarily reinstate Acosta – rejecting the Trump regime’s claim that “(n)o journalist has a First Amendment right to enter the White House.”
He’s yet to rule on whether the suspension was constitutional. A White House statement said it’ll reinstate Acosta’s press pass, but will “further develop rules and processes to ensure fair and orderly press conferences in the future.”
Acosta and others like him mock what legitimate journalism is all about. Inviolable press freedom doesn’t give reporters, commentators, and editors the right to lie, deceive, and otherwise betray viewers and readers with disinformation and fake news.
It’s what CNN and the rest of America’s major media establishment do best.
It’s why following their reporting assures knowing nothing about issues mattering most – only what powerful interests want people to know.
VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].
My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
