As World Saw Hottest Year on Record, Corporate News Cut Coverage

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Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

A journalist reports from the Santa Ana wind-driven Bond Fire burning near a hillside residence along Santiago Canyon Road in Silverado, California on December 3, 2020. (Photo: Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

“We need more climate journalism, not less,” said one Media Matters for America writer.

Last year featured not only what scientists worldwide confirmed was the hottest year in human history but also a 25% drop in corporate broadcast networks’ coverage of the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, according to an analysis released Thursday.

Media Matters for America, which has long tracked television networks’ climate coverage, reviewed transcripts and video databases for ABCCBSNBC, and Fox Broadcasting Co. The watchdog found that in 2023, despite the worsening global crisis, the networks collectively had just 1,032 minutes of coverage, down from 1,374 minutes in 2022 and 1,316 minutes in 2021.

That amounts to less than 1% of all corporate broadcast coverage aired last year, notes the analysis authored by Media Matters senior writer Evlondo Cooper with contributions from Allison Fisher, director of the group’s climate and energy program.

“Last year’s extreme climate events further illustrated the need for consistent, substantive, and wide-ranging news coverage about all facets of climate change.”

They wrote that “discussion of extreme weather events aired during 37% of coverage, or 160 out of 435 segments. June through September saw the most severe extreme weather events and accounted for just over 54% of total coverage.”

“Only 12% of climate segments on corporate broadcast news, or 52 out of 435, mentioned ‘fossil fuels,'” the pair pointed out. “This is a slight increase from 2022, when ‘fossil fuels’ were mentioned in only 8% of climate segments.”

“Solutions or actions that may be taken in response to climate change were mentioned in 22% of climate segments,” they highlighted. That ended an upward trend: 29% in 2020, 31% in 2021, and 35% in 2022.

Cooper and Fisher also noted that climate scientists made up 10% of featured guests, compared with just 4% in 2022; “white men dominated the demographics of guests featured in climate segments” for the seventh year straight; and discussions of climate justice appeared in only 5% of coverage, up from 3% the previous year.

Looking at only the “Big Three” of the television world—ABCCBS, and NBC—they found that climate coverage dropped 23% for morning news programs and 36% for nightly shows. CBS aired 42% of all climate coverage while ABC had the least of the trio and NBC had the biggest decrease from 2022.

For the review of Sunday morning political shows, the researchers included Fox. They found that in 102 combined minutes of airtime across 26 segments, CBS again led the pack—it was the only network that increased coverage, from 20 minutes in 2022 to 66 minutes, or over half the total, in 2023.

The analysis recognizes a “significant decline” in coverage of the Biden administration’s efforts to combat the climate emergency, explaining:

This reduction in corporate broadcast news attention occurred during a critical period for climate policy implementation, particularly of the Inflation Reduction Act, which continued to drive positive outcomes in the clean energy market, and new regulations announced during COP28 to curb methane emissions. Despite these significant actions, corporate broadcast networks’ focus on the administration’s climate initiatives was limited.

COP28, the United Nations’ annual climate summit near the end of the year, also received “very limited” coverage from the networks, the report says. The conference—which scientists called “a tragedy for the planet” because its final agreement didn’t demand a global fossil fuel phaseout—was mentioned in just 14 segments, accounting for 3% of climate coverage.

As Common Dreams has reported, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that in addition to being the hottest year on record, 2023 also had 28 U.S. disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage, which collectively cost at least $92.9 billion.

“Last year’s extreme climate events further illustrated the need for consistent, substantive, and wide-ranging news coverage about all facets of climate change,” Cooper and Fisher wrote. “Effective reporting should incorporate a wide range of voices during coverage of extreme weather events, major climate studies, and policy decisions; when applicable, coverage should expose systemic issues that contribute to disproportionate climate impacts; and climate coverage must consistently report not only the impacts of climate change but the drivers of global warming and the solutions that move us away from fossil fuel dependence.”

In a social media post promoting the new analysis, Cooper concluded that “we need more climate journalism, not less.”

Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingAs World Saw Hottest Year on Record, Corporate News Cut Coverage

Media Malpractice: Blacking Out Genocide and Disenfranchising Palestinian Pain

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Original article by ZACK KALDVEER and FATINAH JUDEH republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Pro-Palestinians in New York City join “Shut down colonial feminism” rally in front of Senator Kristen Gillibrand’s office, U.N. Women office and New York Times building on Friday, January 12, 2024. (Photo: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Now more than ever, Americans deserve objective, diverse, trustworthy, and contextualized coverage of Gaza.

America’s corporate media serves as a key cog in the machinery of genocide.

Rather than providing the kind of objective, fact-based reporting integral to an informed citizenry, our mainstream press bombards us with explicit and implicit biases, false narratives, dehumanization, and misdirection, serving to stifle public dissent and justify, rationalize, and conceal the systematic oppression and extermination of the people of Gaza.

As dependable propaganda tools for Israel’s aggression, our news censors truth not only by what they choose to cover and how they spin it—but what they deliberately omit. This orchestrated disinformation campaign helps ensure the ongoing and unconditional support of the U.S. government and its continued role as Israel’s dutiful genocidal benefactor.

This isn’t war. It’s mass murder. But this isn’t what most Americans are watching, reading, and hearing on the news.

How does a Palestinian-American with family in the region reconcile the disconnect between “reality” and the “story” our press is “telling”?

Consider a day in the life in Gaza: Palestinian schools, hospitals, universitiesplaces of worship, and heritage sites are being systematically destroyed. Civilians, nearly half children, are being murdered on a mass scale (over 30,000 dead, nearly half children). The calculated deprivation of food and water is literally starving families to death. Babies are being born into a living hell, with screams of terror, the ear-piercing explosions of limb-searing U.S.-made bombs, and the painful moans of their parents among the first sounds they hear. The electricity powering the oxygen machines keeping sick patients alive cut off, leaving them to struggle to gulp each of their final breaths. Amputations of children’s limbs without anesthesia with barbed wire have become obscenely routine. Broken, but alive, Palestinian bodies riddled with shrapnel require each piece to be pulled from their flesh. Hungry children are found dead with single Israeli sniper shots to the head because they made the mistake of seeking out food from an aid truck. The deliberate decimation of Gaza’s telecommunications infrastructure has left families unable to communicate with one another, or with the world, allowing daily atrocities to become increasingly invisible and unreported.

For those fighting for survival in Gaza, there is nowhere left to run, nowhere to turn, and no one to turn to. This isn’t war. It’s mass murder. But this isn’t what most Americans are watching, reading, and hearing on the news.

American Media’s Israel Bias and Censoring Journalists

Quantitative analyses conducted by The InterceptFairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and an independent collective of U.S. journalists, writers, and media makers of coverage in The York TimesWashington Post, and Los Angeles Times lay bare our news media’s dramatic pro-Israel bias. The litany of press failings are disturbing in their sheer scope and intention. Findings included the systematic undermining of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim perspectives and the invocation of inflammatory language that reinforces Islamophobic and racist tropes. Misinformation spread by Israeli officials is commonly printed along with consistent failures to scrutinize Israel’s indiscriminate killing of civilians in Gaza. Israeli deaths are disproportionately emphasized, and more humanizing language is used to describe them than Palestinians. This is to name just a few.

Case-in-point: In what’s now being called the Flour Massacre, at least 112 Palestinians in Gaza were killed and hundreds more injured after Israeli forces opened fire on civilians while waiting for food from desperately needed aid trucks. Leading news media descriptions referred to the slaughter as “food aid deaths,” “food aid-related deaths,” “chaotic incident,” and “reported killed in crowd near Gaza aid convoy.”

Do these headlines properly convey the massacre of starving civilians?

The New York Times: “As Hungry Gazans Crowd a Convoy, a Crush of Bodies, Israeli Gunshots and a Deadly Toll

The Washington Post: Chaotic Aid Delivery Turns Deadly as Israeli, Gazan Officials Trade Blame

The Guardian“Biden Says Gaza Food Aid-Related Deaths Complicate Cease-Fire Talks”

BBC: “More Than 100 Killed as Crowd Waits for Aid, Hamas-Run Health Ministry Says

Sadly, censored journalists who speak out are paying the price. The Los Angeles Times recently banned 38 journalists from covering Gaza for at least three months after they signed an open letter criticizing Western newsrooms for their biased reporting on Israel and their role in dehumanizing rhetoric that has served to justify ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

But it’s not just print that is to blame. The Guardian reported the accounts of six CNN staffers from multiple newsrooms, including more than a dozen internal memos and emails, finding that daily news decisions are shaped by a flow of directives from the CNN headquarters in Atlanta that have set strict pro-Israel guidelines on coverage. Every story on the conflict must be cleared by the Jerusalem bureau—which has close ties with Israel’s military—before broadcast or publication.

In light of these exposes, it’s no wonder then, that after four months of some of the most indiscriminate and brutal attacks on civilians in human history, a global public outcry, and overwhelming support for a cease-fire in the United Nations, the U.S. continues to fund the slaughter and block international efforts to end it.

Holding Media Accountable, Supporting Journalists, and Promoting Independent News

There is no shortage of ways people can help bring this nightmare to an end. Among them should include pressure campaigns on the corporate media to commit to journalistic integrity and truth. Outlets like CNN and The New York Times have a unique opportunity to educate millions by providing rigorous, evidence-based reporting that could serve to end the ongoing genocide—rather than enable it.

Petitions to hold CNN and The New York Times accountable deserve support. But petitions aren’t enough. Direct actions (including protests, boycotts, and sit-ins) and strategies that target these institutions’ advertisers, revenues, and reputational interests are also required.

Israel’s ongoing genocidal annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza will be reviled by history—rendering the once solemn rallying cry “Never again!” cruelly hollow.

Over 122 journalists, more than any war in history, have been killed in Gaza. Journalists seeking to put their own lives at risk to report the truth must be protected. And journalists who have stories to tell about the censorship they have endured must be encouraged to tell them, anonymously if necessary.

Finally, independent, non-corporate news serves as dependable sources of fact-based information and a powerful check on the official narratives of their corporate counterparts. Now more than ever, Americans deserve objective, diverse, trustworthy, and contextualized coverage of Gaza. Thankfully, these alternatives exist, and need our support, from Pacifica radio to a long list of independent news sites.

Israel’s ongoing genocidal annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza will be reviled by history—rendering the once solemn rallying cry “Never again!” cruelly hollow. “Never again” is not meant to be a phrase of remembrance, but a call to action. Let’s not let the corporate media forget it.

Original article by ZACK KALDVEER and FATINAH JUDEH republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingMedia Malpractice: Blacking Out Genocide and Disenfranchising Palestinian Pain

FAKE MANUFACTURED TERRORISM: Corporate Media’s Deluge of BS: Syria plane crash

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FAKE MANUFACTURED TERRORISM: Cameron government spins like Blair with Sharm el Sheikh BS

http://sputniknews.com/world/20151108/1029785601/a321-crash-investigation-media.html

A321 Crash investigators Call on Media to Stop Using Anonymous Sources

On Saturday, the Egypt-led investigation committee issued a statement, according to which the reason for the Russian Kogalymavia plane crash in Sinai is yet to be determined. The following day, Reuters reported, citing a unidentified member of the inquiry, that investigators into the plane crash in Egypt were “90 percent sure” the noise heard on the final seconds of a cockpit recording was an explosion caused by a bomb.

“News and media claims, quoting an anonymous source, allegedly one of the members of the Commission, are incorrect, and should not prevail,” Ayman Muqaddam was quoted in the statement published by the Egyptian Ministry of Civil aviation.

We’ve had an absolute deluge of bullshit from corporate media about the Sinai plane crash being a terrorist act. It appears that it was aided by UK authorities claiming that “chatter” was identified. This incident has been a wonderfull illustration of deliberate deception, of fake, manufactured terrorism.

Metrojet Flight 9268

The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations sent three of its aircraft to the crash site. The Investigative Committee also started a legal case against Kogalymavia under legislation regulating “violation of rules of flights and preparations.”[55]

Natalya Trukhacheva, the ex-wife of co-pilot Sergei Trukachev, said in an interview with NTV that her ex-husband had complained to their daughter about the aircraft’s technical state.[52][65]

The aircraft involved in the crash had suffered a tailstrike while landing in Cairo fourteen years earlier.[30][64][66] Some have drawn comparisons to Japan Airlines Flight 123, which crashed into a mountain in 1985, seven years after the plane had suffered a tailstrike while landing.[64] Flight 123 suffered catastrophic damage in mid-air while climbing to its cruising altitude. The crash of Flight 123 was caused by an incorrect repair of the aircraft’s tail section following the tailstrike, which left the rear pressure bulkhead of the plane vulnerable to metal fatigue and ultimately resulted in explosive decompression.[64] Reports on the wreckage of Flight 9268 have suggested that a “clear break” occurred near the plane’s rear pressure bulkhead, possibly indicating failure of the bulkhead.[66]

Doesn’t the Wikipedia entry strongly suggest the real cause of this accident? Why is corporate media so keen to deliberately deceive and support governments in their bullshit terrorism narrative? Is it that they are partners in the deception – two cheeks of the same arse?*

TBC

*(George Galloway)

Continue ReadingFAKE MANUFACTURED TERRORISM: Corporate Media’s Deluge of BS: Syria plane crash