Common Dreams:
"20 Years After the Invasion of Iraq, Will the Media's Complicity Be Flushed Down the Memory Hole? As we mark the anniversary of the murderous U.S. invasion of Iraq, it's imperative to reclaim the memory of this war not only from the Bush administration officials who waged it, but also from the corporate media system that helped sell it.
As mainstream U.S. media outlets pause to remember the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it's clear that there's a lot they hope we'll forget—first and foremost, the media's own active complicity in whipping up public support for the war.
But the more you dig into mainstream news coverage from that period, as our documentary team did last week when we put together this five-minute montage from our 2007 film War Made Easy, the harder it is to forget how flagrantly news networks across the broadcast and cable landscape uncritically spread the Bush administration's propaganda and actively excluded dissenting voices.
The numbers don't lie. A 2003 report by the media watchdog Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) found that in the two weeks leading up to the invasion, ABC World News, NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, and the PBS Newshour featured a total of 267 American experts, analysts, and commentators on camera to supposedly help make sense of the march to war. Of these 267 guests, an astounding 75% were current or former government or military officials, and a grand total of one expressed any skepticism."
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/media-complicity-in-selling-iraq-war
-->Flushed down the memory hole. Our current media is too busy selling the war in Ukraine to spend much time thinking about all our government's lies and deceptions used to support the invasion of Iraq twenty years ago.
=====
Common Dreams:
"For First Time, US Democratic Voters Sympathize More With Palestinians Than Israelis: Poll. In a sign of a major shift in U.S. public perception that's largely generational, U.S. Democrats favor Palestinians by an 11-point margin. A decade ago, the gap was 36% in favor of Israelis.
Gallup poll results revealed Thursday that while, for the first time, more U.S. Democratic voters now sympathize with Palestinians than with Israelis, left-leaning respondents also 'want solutions that respect Israel's needs as well.'
According to the survey of 1,008 U.S. adults, 49% of Democrats said they sympathize more with Palestinians, while 38% favored Israelis and 13% chose neither side or said they sympathize equally with both. A decade ago, 55% of Democrats sympathized more with Israelis, while only 19% said they had more sympathy for Palestinians."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/more-democrats-sympathize-with-palestinians
-->You can read about this poll in The Times of Israel, but not in our own NYT. Very few American news outlets covered this story. American citizen, Rachel Corrie, was killed 20 years ago (March 16, 2003) by an Israeli bulldozer. Perhaps this 23 year old human rights activist did not die in vain.
=====
Reuters:
"U.S. petrochemicals giant Dow Inc and the Singapore government said they were transforming old sneakers into playgrounds and running tracks. Reuters put that promise to the test by planting hidden trackers inside 11 pairs of donated shoes. Most got exported instead. ...
Five months earlier, in July 2022, Reuters had given the shoes to a recycling program spearheaded by the Singapore government and U.S. petrochemicals giant Dow Inc. In media releases and a promotional video posted online, that effort promised to harvest the rubberized soles and midsoles of donated shoes, then grind down the material for use in building new playgrounds and running tracks in Singapore. ...
Instead, nearly all the tagged shoes ended up in the hands of Yok Impex Pte Ltd, a Singaporean second-hand goods exporter, according to the trackers and that exporter’s logistics manager. ... The findings come as environmental groups say chemical companies like Dow are making exaggerated or false claims about recycling in order to burnish their green credentials, and to undermine proposed regulations to rein in the soaring production of plastics used in single-use packaging and fast fashion."
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/global-plastic-dow-shoes/
-->What a wonderful little story about Dow Chemical lying to us, and trying to greenwash their world polluting plastics business. The Wall Street Journal was all over this story, that is before it was proven to be a fraud. And as it turns out, Dow has been lying about a number of its recycling programs, mostly either burning or burying what was supposed to be recycled. Very few in the US media covered Dow's greenwashing deceptions. I wonder why?
"20 Years After the Invasion of Iraq, Will the Media's Complicity Be Flushed Down the Memory Hole? As we mark the anniversary of the murderous U.S. invasion of Iraq, it's imperative to reclaim the memory of this war not only from the Bush administration officials who waged it, but also from the corporate media system that helped sell it.
As mainstream U.S. media outlets pause to remember the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it's clear that there's a lot they hope we'll forget—first and foremost, the media's own active complicity in whipping up public support for the war.
But the more you dig into mainstream news coverage from that period, as our documentary team did last week when we put together this five-minute montage from our 2007 film War Made Easy, the harder it is to forget how flagrantly news networks across the broadcast and cable landscape uncritically spread the Bush administration's propaganda and actively excluded dissenting voices.
The numbers don't lie. A 2003 report by the media watchdog Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) found that in the two weeks leading up to the invasion, ABC World News, NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, and the PBS Newshour featured a total of 267 American experts, analysts, and commentators on camera to supposedly help make sense of the march to war. Of these 267 guests, an astounding 75% were current or former government or military officials, and a grand total of one expressed any skepticism."
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/media-complicity-in-selling-iraq-war
-->Flushed down the memory hole. Our current media is too busy selling the war in Ukraine to spend much time thinking about all our government's lies and deceptions used to support the invasion of Iraq twenty years ago.
=====
Common Dreams:
"For First Time, US Democratic Voters Sympathize More With Palestinians Than Israelis: Poll. In a sign of a major shift in U.S. public perception that's largely generational, U.S. Democrats favor Palestinians by an 11-point margin. A decade ago, the gap was 36% in favor of Israelis.
Gallup poll results revealed Thursday that while, for the first time, more U.S. Democratic voters now sympathize with Palestinians than with Israelis, left-leaning respondents also 'want solutions that respect Israel's needs as well.'
According to the survey of 1,008 U.S. adults, 49% of Democrats said they sympathize more with Palestinians, while 38% favored Israelis and 13% chose neither side or said they sympathize equally with both. A decade ago, 55% of Democrats sympathized more with Israelis, while only 19% said they had more sympathy for Palestinians."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/more-democrats-sympathize-with-palestinians
-->You can read about this poll in The Times of Israel, but not in our own NYT. Very few American news outlets covered this story. American citizen, Rachel Corrie, was killed 20 years ago (March 16, 2003) by an Israeli bulldozer. Perhaps this 23 year old human rights activist did not die in vain.
=====
Reuters:
"U.S. petrochemicals giant Dow Inc and the Singapore government said they were transforming old sneakers into playgrounds and running tracks. Reuters put that promise to the test by planting hidden trackers inside 11 pairs of donated shoes. Most got exported instead. ...
Five months earlier, in July 2022, Reuters had given the shoes to a recycling program spearheaded by the Singapore government and U.S. petrochemicals giant Dow Inc. In media releases and a promotional video posted online, that effort promised to harvest the rubberized soles and midsoles of donated shoes, then grind down the material for use in building new playgrounds and running tracks in Singapore. ...
Instead, nearly all the tagged shoes ended up in the hands of Yok Impex Pte Ltd, a Singaporean second-hand goods exporter, according to the trackers and that exporter’s logistics manager. ... The findings come as environmental groups say chemical companies like Dow are making exaggerated or false claims about recycling in order to burnish their green credentials, and to undermine proposed regulations to rein in the soaring production of plastics used in single-use packaging and fast fashion."
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/global-plastic-dow-shoes/
-->What a wonderful little story about Dow Chemical lying to us, and trying to greenwash their world polluting plastics business. The Wall Street Journal was all over this story, that is before it was proven to be a fraud. And as it turns out, Dow has been lying about a number of its recycling programs, mostly either burning or burying what was supposed to be recycled. Very few in the US media covered Dow's greenwashing deceptions. I wonder why?
