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Extra! November 2022 Soundbites FAIR ([link removed])


** Coverage of Dugina Bombing Put Journalists ‘on Front Lines’
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When Russian journalist Darya Dugina was killed by a car bomb in Moscow in August, CNN (8/27/22 ([link removed]) ) framed her death not as a terroristic attack on the media but as a blow to “Russia’s vast disinformation machine,” saying Dugina was “on the front lines” of Russia’s war effort. (CNN noted that Dugina ran a “disguised English-language online platform ([link removed]) that pushed a pro-Kremlin worldview to Western readers,” scolding her United World International for not disclosing its Russian origins—much like CNN does not describe itself ([link removed]) as a US-based outlet, but rather as a “world leader in online news and information.”)

NPR (8/24/22 ([link removed]) ) called her a “Russian propagandist” whose killing signaled the war was coming to Russian elites in their own territory. Foreign Policy (8/26/22 ([link removed]) ) called Dugina a “dead propagandist” whose “martyrdom” did more to achieve her goals in death than she could have hoped for in life. These suggestions that journalists who support their nation’s war aims are fair game for assassination put many US journalists in dangerous positions—including name-brand pundits like Thomas Friedman ([link removed]) and Bill O’Reilly ([link removed]) who have called on the US to commit war crimes in terms more bloodthirsty than any attributed to Dugina (FAIR.org, 9/23/22
([link removed]) ).


** Azov: From ‘Neo-Nazi’ to ‘Celebrated’
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Three years ago, describing an Australian white supremacist charged with massacring 49 people in New Zealand, the New York Times (3/15/19 ([link removed]) ) wrote: “On his flak jacket was a symbol commonly used by the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary organization.”
NYT: Released Azov commanders have an emotional reunion with family members in Turkey.

Azov's Neo-Nazi bona fides are irrefutable, but the Times was still waxing sentimental.

Last month, the Times ran a story (10/4/22 ([link removed]) ) that began, “Commanders of Ukraine’s celebrated Azov Battalion have held an emotional reunion with their families in Turkey, Ukrainian officials said, honoring the fighters released from Russian confinement last month.” The story went on to say that the group’s fighting “has become a powerful symbol of the suffering inflicted by Russia and the resistance mounted by Ukraine.”

Not a word in the article hinted at the unit’s far-right politics, whose founder hoped Ukraine would “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen (subhumans)” (Guardian,3/13/18 ([link removed]) ). The group’s insignia is closely modeled on a symbol of the German SS; an FBI report asserted that Azov is “believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States–based white supremacy organizations” (RFE/RL, 11/14/18 ([link removed]) ).


** The Washington Post, Which Considers Itself a Newspaper...
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Reporting on Russian citizenship being granted to Edward Snowden, who revealed massive illegal domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency, the Washington Post (9/26/22 ([link removed]) ) referred to “the 39-year-old Snowden, who considers himself a whistleblower....“ Maybe the Post should return the Pulitzer Prize it won (Washington Post, 4/14/14 ([link removed]) ) for reporting on the revelations of the not-sure-he’s-a-whistleblower?


** ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’
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Washington Post headlines compiled by Alan MacLeod (Twitter, 10/7/22 ([link removed]) ):

—The CIA Funded a Culture War Against Communism. It Should Do So Again. (8/22/18 ([link removed]) )

—Biden Has Requested an Increase in Defense Spending. It’s Not Nearly Enough. (3/29/22 ([link removed]) )

—Drone Strikes Are Bad; No Drone Strikes Would Be Worse (5/1/15 ([link removed]) )

—In the Long Run, Wars Make Us Safer and Richer (4/25/14 ([link removed]) )


** 'High Crime'—Compared to What?
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Violent crime rate by year

FBI violent crime rate, 1990-21 (Statista).

"GOP Redoubles Efforts to Tie Democrats to High Crime Rates," the New York Times (9/26/22 ([link removed]) ) reported. The FBI estimates ([link removed]) there were about 396 violent crimes per 100,000 people in 2021; that's down 2% since 2020, up 9% since 2014 (the safest year for violent crime in recent decades) and down 48%, nearly half, since it peaked in 1991. The New York Times summed that up in its headline as "high crime rates"--because, after all, that's what Republicans want to tie Democrats to.


** Fitting the Narrative
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“I’ll never forget when the New York Post sent me to Penn Station to ask New Yorkers their thoughts on fare evaders. Not one person cared. After I sent my notes to the rewrite desk, I got an angry call from an editor: ‘That’s not what we wanted.’ The reporting didn’t fit their narrative.”

—Reporter Blake Patterson, now at NOLA.com (Twitter, 10/5/22)


** ‘Holding Up the Hope’
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Noam Chomsky (cc photo: Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación Argentina)

Noam Chomsky

David Barsamian: Talk about the importance of independent progressive media like Democracy Now! and Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting. And, may I say, Alternative Radio? Publishers like Verso, Haymarket, Monthly Review, City Lights and the New Press. Magazines like Jacobin, The Nation, the Progressive and In These Times. Online magazines like TomDispatch, the Intercept and ScheerPost. Community radio stations like KGNU, WMNF and KPFK. How important are they in countering the dominant corporate narrative?

Noam Chomsky: What else is going to counter it? They are the ones holding up the hope that we’ll be able to find ways to counter these highly harmful, destructive developments we’re discussing.

The core method is, of course, education. People have to come to understand what’s happening in the world. That requires the means to disseminate information and analysis, opening up opportunities for discussion, which you’re not going to find, for the most part, in the mainstream. Maybe occasionally at the margins. A lot of what we’ve been talking about is not discussed at all, or only marginally within the major media. So these conversations have to be brought to the public through such channels.

—The Nation (10/11/22 ([link removed]) )
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