By Claire Bernish<\/a><\/p>\n A now-notorious list of ostensibly \u201cfake\u201d news sites \u2014 created by a liberal professor, seemingly out of thin air \u2014 spread like wildfire online in the past two days and was eagerly reprinted by corporate media presstitutes hoping to vindicate their own failed reporting on the 2016 election.<\/p>\n But branding perfectly legitimate outlets with the same scarlet letter as those devoid of integrity deemed the professor\u2019s list a spurious attempt to defame alternative and independent media<\/a> \u2014 anyone dissenting from the left\u2019s mainstream narrative \u2014 as a whole.<\/p>\n This is, in no uncertain terms, a hit list <\/strong>\u2014 or, at least, a laughable attempt \u2014 and it fits conveniently into the establishment\u2019s burgeoning war on independent media disguised as a battle against fake news<\/a>.<\/p>\n When corporate media outlets from the Independent<\/i><\/a> and Business Insider<\/i><\/a>, to the Los Angeles Times<\/i><\/a> and NYMag<\/a><\/em> scrambled over one another to reprint this irresponsibly contrived hit list, they proved yet again a lack of journalistic integrity \u2014 the same issue that originally caused regular subscribers to abandon them in the first place.<\/p>\n Indeed, in this otherwise unknown professor\u2019s foray into the world of journalism, a glaring mistake was made \u2014 the only mainstream outlets making the list were those who had heralded Bernie Sanders as the best candidate for the White House.<\/p>\n Such an obvious attempt to control thought could only be conjured in a totalitarian regime.<\/p>\n In fact, failing to place the exact corporate media organizations on the list, who for nearly a year praised fealty only to Hillary Clinton \u2014 and for decades have foisted on the public countless mendacious whoppers \u2014 constitutes a comedic lack of honesty. So, to bring that irony front and center, it\u2019s imperative to examine some mainstream lies \u2014 most of which had appalling consequences \u2014 including the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the United States and around the world.<\/p>\n President George W. Bush decided to unleash the full force of the U.S. military upon the world in a new policy of war writ large disguised as a war on terrorism following the attacks of September 11, 2001. First arbitrarily designating Afghanistan as its primary victim due to the supposed identities of the attackers, Bush then chose Iraq to feel the wrath, and set out to invade the country following dubious claims Saddam Hussein harbored destructive chemical and biological weapons and was actively seeking far stronger munitions.<\/p>\n \u201cIntelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised,\u201d the president asserted<\/a> in a public address on March 17, 2003. \u201cThis regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq\u2019s neighbors and against Iraq\u2019s people.\u201d<\/p>\n Bush\u2019s assertions were questioned by not only human rights experts, but by U.N. weapons inspectors<\/a> and countless others \u2014 so shortly after the U.S. invaded the sovereign nation, the New York Times <\/em>took up the slack to fill in the appropriate casus belli<\/em>.<\/p>\n Judith Miller notoriously reported<\/a> on a source she described only as an Iraqi scientist who had seen several extensive caches of such weapons stored somewhere in the country. American weapons experts, she claimed, \u201csaid the scientist told them that President Saddam Hussein\u2019s government had destroyed some stockpiles of deadly agents as early as the mid-1990\u2019s, transferred others to Syria, and had recently focused its efforts instead on research and development projects that are virtually impervious to detection by international inspectors, and even American forces on the ground combing through Iraq\u2019s giant weapons plants.\u201d<\/p>\n In hindsight, Miller\u2019s problematic report turned out to be horrendously flawed<\/a>, and the Times<\/em> spent months attempting to backtrack<\/a>, but the damage \u2014 fomenting widescale public support for a war no one wanted the military to undertake \u2014 had been done. Years later in 2014, the Times <\/em>\u2014 after much internal strife \u2014 again took up Miller\u2019s case, in a series reporting<\/a> catastrophic injuries<\/a> U.S. military personnel suffered in handling chemical weapons in Iraq. But that report, and the parroting<\/a> of it by multiple<\/a> other mainstream<\/a> mainstays, failed to fully disclose Hussein had been oblivious to the stockpiles presence \u2014 something the CIA had clearly stated<\/a> in a report<\/a>.<\/p>\n Often, the American mainstream media becomes a de facto government employee, taking the claims of U.S. officials and reporting them as proven fact \u2014 and nothing exemplifies this penchant better than reporting on the Gulf of Tonkin incident \u2014 perhaps one of most flagrant lies ever dreamed up as a justification for war.<\/p>\n On August 5, 1964, the New York Times<\/em> reported<\/a> \u201cPresident Johnson has ordered retaliatory action against gunboats and \u2018certain supporting facilities in North Vietnam\u2019 after renewed attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.\u201d Additional outlets, such as the Washington Post<\/em>, echoed this claim.<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t true. At all. In fact, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, as it became known, turned out to be a fictitious creation courtesy of the government<\/a> to escalate war in Vietnam \u2014 leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of U.S. troops and millions of Vietnamese, fomenting the largest anti-war movement in American history, and tarnishing the reputation of a nation once considered at least somewhat noble in the eyes of the world.<\/p>\n In 2010, more than 1,100 transcripts from the Vietnam era were released, proving Congress and officials raised serious doubts<\/a> about the information fed to them by the Pentagon and White House. But while this internal grumbling took place, mainstream media dutifully reported official statements as if the veracity of the information couldn\u2019t be disputed.<\/p>\n Tom Wells, author of the exhaustive expos\u00e9 The War Within: America\u2019s Battle Over Vietnam<\/em><\/a>, explained<\/a> the media egregiously erred in \u201calmost exclusive reliance on U.S. government officials as sources of information\u201d<\/strong> and \u201creluctance to question official pronouncements on \u2018national security issues.\u2019\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n If due diligence had been performed, and reporters had raised appropriate doubts about the Gulf of Tonkin false flag, it\u2019s arguable whether support for the contentious war would have lasted as long as it did.<\/p>\n CNN <\/em>sent reporter Amber Lyon and a crew to U.S. ally Bahrain for a documentary about technology\u2019s role in the 2011 people\u2019s uprising known as the Arab Spring, ultimately titled \u201ciRevolution: Online Warriors of the Arab Spring<\/strong>\u201d \u2014 but what they encountered instead bore the hallmarks of a repressive and violent regime, and its attempt to filter and censor the truth. Lyon and the other CNN <\/em>reporters went to great lengths to speak with sources participating in the massive uprising \u2014 one the Bahraini government wished to quash at all costs.<\/p>\n \u201cBy the time the CNN crew arrived,\u201d the Guardian <\/em>reported<\/a>, \u201cmany of the sources who had agreed to speak to them were either in hiding or had disappeared. Regime opponents whom they interviewed suffered recriminations, as did ordinary citizens who worked with them as fixers. Leading human rights activist Nabeel Rajab was charged with crimes<\/a> shortly after speaking to the CNN team. A doctor who gave the crew a tour of his village and arranged meetings with government opponents, Saeed Ayyad, had his house burned<\/a> to the ground shortly after. Their local fixer was fired ten days after working with them.\u201d<\/p>\n Even the CNN <\/em>crew experienced the wrath of the regime, upon showing up to interview one source, the Guardian <\/em>continued, \u201c\u201820 heavily-armed men\u2019, whose faces were \u2018covered with black ski masks\u2019, \u2018jumped from military vehicles\u2019, and then \u2018pointed machine guns at\u2019 the journalists, forcing them to the ground. The regime\u2019s security forces seized their cameras and deleted their photos and video footage, and then detained and interrogated them for the next six hours.\u201d<\/p>\n After returning to the U.S., Lyon felt it her duty to expose the abuse being perpetrated by the government of an ally nation \u2014 but CNN International<\/em> didn\u2019t agree. CNN U.S.<\/i> eventually aired the one-hour documentary. Once. CNN International<\/em> never did<\/strong> \u2014 worse, the organization gave Lyon the cold shoulder, ignoring her repeated requests to return to Bahrain, which would have put CNN ahead of the game in reporting government brutality. Its failure to air the documentary and refusal to provide justification for doing so angered seasoned CNN<\/em> and other mainstream established journalists across the board.<\/p>\n Lyon met with CNN International<\/i> president Tony Maddox twice \u2014 he first promised to investigate why the documentary wasn\u2019t aired, and then turned against her, warning the journalist not to discuss the matter publicly. Bahraini officials contacted CNN International<\/i> repeatedly complaining about Lyon\u2019s continued reporting on what she\u2019d witnessed. Intimidation continued until she was eventually laid off, putatively for an unrelated matter.<\/p>\n Attempting to save face, CNN International<\/em> rebuffed<\/a> the Guardian<\/em>\u2019s account and interview with Lyon \u2014 but the effort was an impotent justification for the obvious failure of integrity.<\/p>\n But threats for Lyon to remain silent followed her off the job, and when she persisted in exposing the Bahraini regime, as well as the suppression by CNN<\/em>, the outlet sent a stern warning to halt. Lyon, however, said she had never signed a non-disclosure agreement and would not be pressured into their lies \u2014 ultimately walking away reputation in hand \u2014 something that could not<\/em> be said for CNN<\/em>.<\/p>\n Wayne Shelby Simmons made guest appearances on Fox News<\/em> as a security expert with insider expertise from his work as a CIA operative \u2014 for over a decade. However, Simmons had never been employed by the agency \u2014 in fact, the imposter\u2019s lies eventually caught up with him and he was arrested and sentenced to 33 months in prison<\/a>.<\/p>\n In other words, mainstream Fox News <\/em>didn\u2019t bother with journalism at all \u2014 proffering fake expertise as the real deal \u2014 because the outlet failed the most basic of tasks any hourly wage employer would perform.<\/p>\n Simmons\u2019 commentaries weren\u2019t harmless stabs in the dark, either \u2014 relentlessly parroting baseless Islamophobic rhetoric to drum up support for the government\u2019s insidious war on terror likely poisoned the minds of thousands of viewers, furthering the already divisive atmosphere in the U.S.<\/p>\n According to the Drug Policy Alliance, over $51 billion<\/a> is spent fighting the war on drugs in the United States \u2014 each year. In 2015, a striking 38.6 percent of all arrests for drug possession were for cannabis<\/a> \u2014 643,121 people were arrested for marijuana-related offenses.<\/p>\n What those figures don\u2019t show are the millions of lives ruined by criminal conviction for the government\u2019s unjustifiable quest to eradicate, demonize, and vilify this beneficial<\/a> plant. It would be an impossible task to tally the number of families whose homes have been destroyed by SWAT teams searching for marijuana<\/a> \u2014 whether or not police bothered<\/a> to verify an address<\/a>. An untold number of others have been slain<\/a> by police for the same reason.<\/p>\n But worst of all, the mainstream media propagates nonsensical, false propaganda about cannabis to convince the gullible and ignorant among us to equate it with heroin, cocaine, and other \u2018illicit\u2019 substances. It is nothing like any of these. Companies like the green ace<\/a> offer cannabis legally in Canada and I can only hope The United States follows suit in the future. And while a majority of the populace has seen through such lies, some outlets have obstinately continued the drug war \u2014 seemingly of their own volition. This is despite the fact that marijuana is slowly becoming legalized across a number of states, many of which feature a large number of successful marketing cannabis<\/a> businesses that are legally bringing lots of money into the economy thanks to the plant. With this being said, considering there are many factors determine cannabis prices<\/a>, whether you are someone who aims to work in this industry or a medical marijuana patient, this is something worth checking out, as the rules surrounding this constantly change. <\/p>\n Fortunately, the Internet has provided the public with alternatives to these corporate media lies \u2014 and as of two years ago, despite these and other claims about pot being a dangerous substance, Pew Research Center found<\/a> fully 69 percent of the population <\/strong>felt alcohol<\/a> was more harmful than cannabis.<\/p>\n * * *<\/strong><\/p>\n While this list presents only a few of the bigger lies of the corporate press, there are innumerable examples of its proud history of actual fake news. Keep these in mind when the mainstream presstitutes rush to reprint a hit list targeting journalists and outlets whose narratives counter the establishment. Indeed, it would be the corporate media \u2014 with its vast captive audience \u2014 who most deserves to be listed as propagators of lies.<\/p>\n1. George W. Bush\u2019s Weapons of Mass Destruction<\/h3>\n
2. Gulf of Tonkin Incident<\/h3>\n
3. Suppression of brutality perpetrated in Bahrain during the Arab Spring<\/h3>\n
4. That time Fox News hired a CIA operative who wasn\u2019t a CIA operative<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/mainstream-media-fake-news.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cInstead of verifying whether Simmons had actually worked for the CIA, Fox News and the Agency allowed him to make fools out of Bill O\u2019Reilly<\/a>, Sean Hannity<\/a>, Andrew Napolitano<\/a>, Neil Cavuto<\/a>, and everyone at Fox & Friends<\/a> for over the last twelve years. <\/strong>After building a false reputation as a CIA agent on Fox News, Simmons obtained an interim security clearance when an unnamed government contractor hired him in 2008. Simmons also falsely claimed on national security forms that his prior arrests and criminal convictions were directly related to his supposed intelligence work for the CIA<\/strong>, and that he had previously held a top secret security clearance from 1973 to 2000,\u201d The Free Thought Project<\/em>\u2019s Andrew Emett explained<\/a>.<\/p>\n5. Vapid anti-marijuana propaganda and the furtherance of the war on drugs<\/h3>\n
<\/a>\u201cIt actually causes heart attacks. It increases your heart rate. And on and on,\u201d Samadi claimed<\/a>, fecklessly distorting statistics. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing in Colorado that we had 13 kids that came to the emergency [room] and ended up in the ICU as a result of overdose from marijuana. Now we have crack babies coming in because pregnant women are smoking this whole marijuana business.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n\n
<\/div>\n