Saudi Arabian media practices exposed by Reporters Without Borders

[Noir]

Whenever it serves its interests, Saudi Arabia channels funds to media organizations all over the world, from the United Kingdom to Iran and Senegal. The funding usually takes the form of outright donations or thousands of subscriptions (http://uk.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-saudi-arabia-has-bailed-out-failing-middle-east-media-organizations-in-exchange-for-pro-saudi-coverage-2015-6?r=US).

In 2011, for example, the Saudi embassy in London suggested funding (https://wikileaks.org/saudi-cables/doc116910.html) Wesal Farsi TV (now called Tawhid), a London-based, Persian-language TV station owned by a Sunni Iranian citizen opposed to his country’s government. In return for monthly funding and allowing Saudi Arabia to appoint a representative to its board of governors, the TV station would respond to Iranian media criticism of Saudi Arabia.

Sometimes media outlets themselves ask the Saudis for funding. This is what the head of the Afghan media centre Spogmai did (https://wikileaks.org/saudi-cables/doc116405.html) in 2009. He requested funding for the creation of a news website, a daily newspaper, a magazine and a TV station that would act as counterweights to Afghan media outlets funded by Iran or India.

Another method used by the government is to counter-attack or sanction in response to damaging media reports. This is what happened to the London-based Financial Times newspaper. It had to withdraw its correspondent and close its Riyadh bureau for publishing “lies (https://wikileaks.org/saudi-cables/doc118285.html)” about Saudi Arabia. The Saudi authorities even considered legal proceedings if the newspaper did not issue an apology and undertake to cover Saudi Arabia in a “neutral” and “objective” manner.

In an undated cable, the Saudi embassy in Berlin informed the foreign ministry about rumours of a media campaign (https://wikileaks.org/saudi-cables/doc118017.html) against Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, by the Israeli embassy in Berlin in cooperation with German media outlets. In counteract this offensive, the Saudi embassy proposed using experienced German journalists and writers to write articles about Saudi Arabia every six months, and to translate books by Saudis that would be promoted at cultural events. The five journalists were to be paid at least 7,500 euros a month.

More content and links (highlighted in red) to original docs at http://en.rsf.org/saudi-arabia-how-saudi-arabia-manipulates-09-07-2015,48090.html

[jimnyc]

Another reason why I prefer the internet, and new sources from around the world, and not just one place. The majority of them are slanted and have agendas. Sometimes you need to read 50 articles and find the truth yourself.

[NightTrain]

Media is a favorite tool of Middle East regimes and they throw obscene amounts of money at outlets to get their agenda favorably covered.

Qatar owns Al Jazeera, and they are the worst of the lot when it comes to publishing outright falsehoods & refusing to cover anything damaging to their pet causes.

Curiously, it seems the majority of the people accept the stories without questioning the source... seems almost like a cultural acceptance at face value once a particular story is in print, as opposed to Western audiences that are much more skeptical and question the motives behind the piece.

[revelarts]

http://www.debatepolicy.com/showthread.php?40228-CNN-Paid-by-foreign-gov-ts-to-run-propaganda-and-more&highlight=bahrain



3 Time Emmy Award Winning CNN Journalist: Mainstream Media Takes Money from FOREIGN Dictators to Run Flattering Propaganda
...

American “News” Networks Run Infomericals for Foreign Dictators … Pretend It’s Actual Reporting

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that the American media act as presstitutes for rich and powerful Americans.

But it turns out that the American media will turn “tricks” for foreign johns as well …

Specifically, three time Emmy award winning reporter Amber Lyon was until very recently a respected CNN reporter:
Lyon was fired from CNN after she refused to stop reporting on her first-hand experience of the systematic torture and murder of peaceful protesters by the government of Bahrain.

Lyon’s special report on Bahrain was scheduled to run on both CNN’s U.S. and international networks, but was pulled after only a limited showing due to pressure from the Bahrainis and their lobbyists.

At the same time that Lyon was risking her life to do on-the-ground reporting in Bahrain, another CNN journalist was filming a paid propaganda piece on how the Bahraini leaders are a bunch of friendly pro-democracy reformers.

That’s right … the Bahraini government paid CNN to do what was literally an infomercial for that brutal regime and pretend it was real journalism.

Lyon says that China and many other foreign, authoritarian regimes also pay CNN and other mainstream networks to run flattering propaganda pieces.

We are grateful for Ms. Lyon’s exposé of this revolting practice … especially because real reporting is treated as terrorism by the American government.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/...ropaganda.html (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/09/3-time-emmy-award-winning-cnn-journalist-mainstream-media-takes-money-from-foreign-dictators-to-run-flattering-propaganda.html)

same story from the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...sponsored-news (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/04/cnn-business-state-sponsored-news)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...ing-repression (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/04/cnn-international-documentary-bahrain-arab-spring-repression)





Leading German Journalist Admits CIA ‘Bribed’ Him and Other Leaders of the Western ‘Press’

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Posted on October 7, 2014 (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/10/leading-german-journalist-admits-cia-bribed-leaders-western-press.html) by Eric Zuesse. (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/author/eric-zuesse-2)

Eric Zuesse
Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (which is one of Germany’s largest newspapers), has decided to go public about the corruption of himself and the rest of the Western ‘news’ media, because he finds that this corruption is bringing Europe too close to a nuclear war against Russia, which he concludes the U.S. aristocracy that controls the CIA wants to bring about, or else to bring closer to the brink.
He told Russian Television (http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/10/06/bought-journalism-how-politicians-intelligence-and-high-finance-control-mass-media.html):

I’ve been a journalist for about 25 years, and I’ve been educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public. … The German and American media tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia. This is a point of no return, and I am going to stand up and say … it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my colleagues do, and have done in the past, because they are bribed to betray the people not only in Germany, all over Europe. … I am very fearful of a new war in Europe, and I don’t like to have this situation again, because war is never coming from itself, there is always people who push for war, and this is not only politicians, it is journalists too. … We have betrayed our readers, just to push for war. … I don’t want this anymore, I’m fed up with this propaganda. We live in a banana republic, and not in a democratic country where we have press freedom. …
The German media, especially, my colleagues …, day by day, write against the Russians, [these journalists] who are in transatlantic organizations, and who are supported by the United States to do so. …
I became ‘honorary citizen of the state of Oklahoma,’ … Why? Because I write pro-American. I was supported by the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA. Why? Because I am pro-American. I am fed up with it; I don’t want to do it anymore; and so I have just written a book, not to earn money, no, it will cause a lot of trouble for me. [I wrote it instead] to give the people in this country, Germany, in Europe, and all over the world, just a glimpse of … what goes on behind the closed doors. …

</tbody>

[revelarts]

CIA Operation Mockingbird
Mockingbird began the same year that the Office of Special Projects was founded by Frank Wisner. In 1951, the OSP, renamed Office of Policy Coordination, merged with the CIA and became the agency’s covert paramilitary branch. Its first and principle assignment was to influence national media toward the hatred and fear of Soviet Communism. The CIA funded the operation with money from the Marshall Plan, and bribed journalists and newspaper editors who grew wise to their ulterior motive. Mockingbird led, directly and immediately, to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s rise to power.

The operation became so widespread that the CIA started influencing international media and even international politics. It was due in large part to Mockingbird that Guatemala staged a coup d’etat against Colonel Jacobo Guzman, whom the CIA deemed communist. Mockingbird was responsible for $300,000 of the funding of the 1954 Animal Farm cartoon. They asked Walt Disney if he wanted to make the film, and he balked at the prospect. He was anti-Communist, but the novel does not end happily, and Disney wanted nothing to do with such a story.

Mockingbird also incited the 1953 Iranian coup d’etat and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. David Bruce, appointed by Dwight Eisenhower to investigate this covert propaganda, stated that Mockingbird is responsible for over 50% of international politics over the last half of the 20th Century.

10 Nefarious Conspiracies Proven True - Listverse (http://listverse.com/2013/05/02/10-nefarious-conspiracies-proven-true/)

[revelarts]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZznlUyq9E8