Essay of the Day

Instead of doing the real job of investigative journalism and holding power accountable, the Western media is by far the most sophisticated purveyor of state-sponsored bullshit on the planet. Other nations are making strides in their use of media to disseminate and influence opinion, but the U.S. has been building and fine-tuning its doctrinal system for a century now. Studies by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, as well as relentless documentation by organizations like Fair.org, lay plain the inbuilt bias of Western mainstream media and its subservience to powerful corporate interests. It has now reached the point of pure sycophancy. Our doctrinal system is perversely effective at a) selectively using facts to create a false narrative (spinning Iranian civilian nuclear energy program as a military initiative aimed at the production of warheads); b) omitting facts to support a false narrative (the erasure of the successes of Latin leftist governments in countries such as Venezuela and Argentina, and the omission of Israeli provocations and international law within the Israel-Palestine narrative); and c) promoting whole-cloth falsehoods to create or sustain a false narrative (Iraqi WMDs).--JH

A lot of good arguments in this essay.


TS