This is absolutely how mainstream US outlets think: exactly what is said there by Rid (one of those centrist Professor outlets use to elevate their unhinged conspiracy theories with a facade of expertise):
*We have no idea if this conspiracy is true, but we will say it anyway.*
There is no question -- none -- that mainstream US news outlets disseminate more unhinged, unproven conspiracy theories -- and do far more damage with them -- than QAnon, or whichever fringe group they want you to focus on, can achieve in 1,000 years.
See for yourself:
US media outlets outside of right-wing sites were desperate not to report the Hunter emails and to block their reporters from doing so. So they just started printing that it was "Russian disinformation," knowing there was no basis for that, until they could figure out what to do.
One of the US's best reporters, @mtaibbi, just published an great and well-researched article documenting how many lies US media outlets are telling to protect Biden.
It's on Substack. I doubt any liberal-left outlet would publish it. That's why Taibbi is more popular than ever.
Independent journalists like Taibbi, and platforms and outlets that won't censor, are more rare than ever, especially now when most national journalists are in full-on Elect Biden mode at the expense of everything else. Support them:
The only silver lining in all of this is that media outlets are so desperate to help Biden win that they're not even pretending anymore. No pretense. There's great clarity in that. To the NPR Public Editor Note, the CNN panel and that Rid quote, add this stunning @camanpour clip:
No purported news outlet has worth if it constrains or censors writers and reporters and forces them to advance the partisan preferences of editors or to flatter the ideological presuppositions of their audience. Support independent journalism: only those outlets that are free.
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I find it so interesting when long-obvious truths suddenly are acknowledged in mainstream circles.
Here, in the WPost, even @TaylorLorenz (!!) admits that the hordes of #Resistance freaks and anti-Trump obsessives are as conspiratorial and deranged as what they claim QAnon is:
Here's @SohrabAhmari in the @NewStatesman on how many prominent liberals -- not anonymous Twitter trolls but major DNC donors and academics -- are deranged and drowning in moronic conspiracy theories.
@SohrabAhmari @NewStatesman Just by the way: a non-trivial sector of the Brazilian left still believes the 2018 stabbing attack on Jair Bolsonaro was fake -- despite doctor testimony, his multiple surgeries, etc. -- and now believes the same about the attack on Trump.🇧🇷
Also: US corporate media always tries to deny "journalist" status to anyone who actually does real adversarial reporting against the US Govt, rather than just doing a Natasha Bertrand of writing down what CIA orders.
Assange won multiple journalism awards around the world:👇
I urge everyone to watch the repulsive exchange between Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani at the 2008 GOP debate Dave mentioned.
It shows how blind and repressive the Bush-Cheney-era GOP - and US - were, and still are, to core truths about our foreign policy:
That military aggression by the US and allies (Israel) will produce "blowback" -- meaning the people we bomb will hate us and want to kill us in return -- was created by the CIA!
Yet it's so taboo that TikTok was forced to censor the bin Laden letter because it discuss this.
To prosecute Hunter Biden, FBI has to say -- and has testified -- that his laptop and every document on it is authentic and unaltered.
Not one media outlet who spread the CIA's bullshit "Russian disinformation" lie has retracted it or apologized:
One more time: the people who most loudly and continuously claim that they are combatting "disinformation" are the exact people who spread it most aggressively and easily. Just look:
For weeks before the 2020 election, corporate media and CIA united to fabricate this complete lie to shield Joe Biden from incriminating reporting about his family's business activities in China and Ukraine.
This exchange alone proves what a pathological liar Fauci is.
One week after receiving emails from top epidemiologists arguing the virus was likely a lab leak, Fauci caused a virtual ban on questioning COVID's origin.
But he's a liberal folk hero so only GOP can raise this:
Before anything was known about COVID's origins, Fauci engineered a fake consensus that it was naturally occurring: in part because he had connections to the Wuhan lab.
People were banned online from questioning or debating it, until even Biden Admin admitted they don't know:👇
And just to show how cynically liberals weaponize racism:
It was decreed that "lab leak theory" was racist even though the more racist theory was theirs: that the Chinese are so unsanitary that filthy wet markets caused it.
The only thing that should have mattered was truth.