Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR):

"US Media Require No Evidence for Claims of Electoral Fraud—in Venezuela. The media establishment was horrified when the 'Stop the Steal' mob stormed the US Capitol on January 6, and the sentence was swift: President Donald Trump, with his baseless fraud allegations and refusal to concede defeat, was responsible for the mayhem.


Corporate outlets have summarily denounced Trump’s bogus claims of vote fraud, though for years they have faithfully echoed similarly spurious accusations made about  elections held by official enemies (FAIR.org, 5/23/18, 8/23/18, 2/12/19, 8/5/19, 11/18/19, 10/30/20, 11/20/20). But media make no effort to account for years of hypocrisy and double standards.


Venezuela’s December 6 parliamentary election offers an instructive case study, with corporate journalists unquestioningly repeating Trump officials’ unsubstantiated allegations of 'fraud' there at the same time that they debunked Trump’s virtually identical claims vis-a-vis the US election. And the right-wing violence that was rightly portrayed as a threat to democracy in the US was heartily endorsed as a democratic campaign in Venezuela, where it served Washington’s foreign policy goals."

https://fair.org/home/us-media-require-no-evidence-for-claims-of-electoral-fraud-in-venezuela/


-->One of the worst examples of the NYT following the Pentagon's lead in foreign policy is the newspaper's coverage of Venezuelan elections. But it isn't just Venezuela. When it comes to elections in "enemies" of the empire, all pretense of truthful election reporting gets thrown out the window. 


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Common Dreams:

"Congressional Report Reveals Manufacturers 'Knowingly' Sold Toxin-Tainted Baby Food. 'This is what happens when you let the food and chemical companies, not the FDA, decide whether our food is safe to eat.'


Leading baby food manufacturers are selling—knowingly and without warning—unsafe products contaminated with dangerous levels of toxic heavy metals that can cause serious and often irreversible damage to infant brain development, according to a new congressional investigation that is generating renewed calls for greater regulation of the industry.


'Dangerous levels of toxic metals like arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury exist in baby foods at levels that exceed what experts and governing bodies say are permissible,' Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, which conducted the investigation, told CNN Thursday."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/05/congressional-report-reveals-manufacturers-knowingly-sold-toxin-tainted-baby-food


-->I am waiting for this story of corporate and FDA collusion in exposing millions of babies to toxic baby food. Is the story just too shameful for our newspaper of record?


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On NPR's Morning Edition (2/3/21), a guest from the Anti Defamation League was introduced to comment on racism in America. The ADF is probably the very last organization that should be given airtime to discuss racial or religious hatreds. 


From its beginning tracking neo-Nazis and other right wing groups, the ADF has devolved into attacking what it calls "Arab propaganda" on university campuses, and branding any criticism of Israel as antisemitic.


And then there is the spying the ADF has done on the ACLU, Greenpeace, NAACP, and United Farm Workers. In addition, the ADL was instrumental in opposing the building of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center and the proposed mosque and Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan. 


The ADF used its links to the NYPD to insert its racist views into police training by the showing of "The Third Jihad," a virulently Islamophobic film, to 1,500 of its officers. 


NPR decision to use the ADL to comment on racial extremism in American is typical of what is now referred to as PEP, or "progressive except for Palestine."