This article was previously published December 06, 2020, and has been updated with new information. Sharyl Attkisson is an award-winning investigative journalist with uncompromising integrity. Her book, “Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism,” was released in November 2020. In this, her third book, she addresses one of the most pressing issues of our time: media bias and the deterioration of objective journalism — a topic on which she has first-hand experience. A former anchor at CNN and CBS News, Attkisson now produces her own Sunday television news program, "Full Measure," as well as two podcasts: "Full Measure After Hours" and "The Sharyl Attkisson Podcast," in which she covers the kinds of stories that mainstream news no longer touches. Slanted MediaPropaganda through media certainly isn't a new thing. Starting in the late 1940s,1 the CIA ran a well-documented but at the time covert campaign called "Operation Mockingbird," in which they recruited journalists as assets to spread propaganda — news slanted in one way or another. While the program is always referred to in the past tense, as it is said to have been ended in the 1970s,2 evidence suggests it never really stopped.
Big Industry Also Influences the NewsMultinational industries, the drug industry in particular, also has a similar level of influence over content relating to their particular interests. In 1996, direct-to-consumer drug advertising was legalized, and as drug advertising became a major income stream for media companies, their reporting on health and medicine became increasingly biased. The reason is simple. They cannot afford to "bite the hand that feeds them." If an advertiser doesn't want the public to know about a particular finding, all they have to do to influence the reporting is to threaten to withdraw its advertising, which will hurt the media company's bottom line. Drug companies have also become major sponsors of medical education; thus, doctors are taught to prescribe drugs for all ills, but they're not taught about the side effects and drawbacks of those drugs. Today, the drug industry also controls fact-checking organizations such as NewsGuard, as it is funded by Publicis, which is supported by drug companies. When feeding from the Big Pharma trough, how could they possibly be objective in their fact-checking? Reality shows us they can't because they aren't.. Big Tech — Master Manipulators of MindsBig Tech companies, of course, are also masters of censoring anything that might hurt themselves or their technocratic allies. As just one of countless examples, you can no longer post a link to Mercola.com on Twitter. First, they added a false warning that made it look like my site contained dangerous malware when readers would click on a posted link. After a while, they simply blocked the ability to post links to our site altogether.
Presidential Treatment Takes on a New MeaningIn her book, Attkisson also spends an entire chapter dissecting the highly-biased treatment of President Trump, and how the media have, through their own admission, suspended traditional journalistic ethics simply because they consider him "uniquely dangerous."
The Invention of LyingPrior to President Trump, virtually no one in the media would accuse someone of lying. The standard was to question an individual's statement or point out a discrepancy to another source, but not call it an outright lie, because it's easy to get confused on specifics. A lie is a very specific allegation that implies an intent to deceive. Just because you misremember a fact doesn't mean you lied.
Massaging COVID-19 MessagesIn terms of health, COVID-19 reporting has taken censorship and media manipulation to brand new heights, eclipsing just about all previous efforts. They don't even hide the bias anymore. All social media platforms are openly censoring dissenting views about the virus, particularly its origin and treatment. Even well-respected doctors and scientists have been axed for speaking against the desired narrative dictated by the World Health Organization. August 26, 2020, the CDC had released data3 showing 94% of people who had died during the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. died "with" the virus, not "from" it. Only 6% had COVID-19 listed as the sole cause of death on the death certificate. Hence, at that time the real death toll, those who unarguably died as a direct result of the infection, was only around 10,000. "For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death," the CDC stated. This is an important distinction. Yet mainstream media continued to report that nearly 200,000 had died "from" COVID-19 in the U.S, and have continued to add to the numbers, thereby increasing and ensuring national fear so they can continue to implement their lockdowns, face mask and vaccine mandates and other strategies to limit our personal freedoms and liberty.
When a 'Case' Is Not a CaseThe media are also grossly misusing the term "case," in reference to the COVID-19 case load. A case is a medical term for a patient with a symptomatic type of infection. It's not someone who tests positive for antibodies or pieces of viral DNA. By referring to all positive tests as "cases," they're able to fan the flames of panic, making the situation sound far worse than it actually is. Many still do not understand that most of those who test positive for SARS-CoV-2 are asymptomatic. They think these are sick people in the hospital and that rising "case" numbers are a reflection of a rise in deaths. Statistics reveal this simply isn't true, and that there's not a linear correlation between positive tests and deaths caused by COVID alone.
Search for Truth and Unbiased FactsThe clear take-home message I got from reading, "Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism," is that there's a profoundly serious problem with most mainstream conventional media. The obvious question is: Where can you go to get the truth? We would like to be informed, but we also want the truth. We don't have time to waste to be brainwashed by propaganda. At the end of her book, Attkisson lists a variety of sources she's come to trust. It may be worth getting the book for those recommendations alone.
from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/11/27/sharyl-attkisson-media-bias.aspx
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