Eric Zuesse

To say that the U.S. public don’t care if ‘news’media lie, is shocking, but I shall here present evidence that it actually is true — not in some mere theory, but in empirical fact.

A typical example of Americans not caring about the truthfulness, nor even about the honesty, of their sources of alleged ‘news’, is that, during the period of October 3rd through the 5th, there were two news-reports both of which were true, but which, when taken together, display the total disconnect between newsmedia-honesty, on the one hand, and the confidence that the American people have in the nation's ‘news’media, on the other.

One of these two news-reports was published on October 5th by the anonymous blogger who has come to be, amongst readers who closely follow and investigate the war in Syria, the most-trusted source of reporting on it, and the article was headlined, "Russia Issues Third Warning Against U.S. Cooperation With Terrorists”, and it provided links to each of the three recent instances in which the U.S. Government was cooperating with ISIS to defeat Syria and its defender Russia, in Syria. It summarily described the ways in which the U.S. had been exposed (but not by U.S. ‘news’media) as having been providing vital intelligence and other crucial assistance to ISIS, in ISIS’s efforts to overthrow and replace the existing Syrian Government (headed by Bashar al-Assad). That report should be read by anyone who proceeds further here, because it covers events that were certainly of top international importance and that might even precipitate war between the U.S. and Russia, but which were reported little if at all in U.S. ’news’media. Of course, it would be very bad for U.S. ’news’media to allow the U.S. to become involved in a nuclear war against Russia and to have hidden, from the American public, the U.S. Government’s provocations which had produced such a war. The U.S. here was helping ISIS kill Russian and Syrian soldiers in Syria, who are trying to eradicate ISIS and all other jihadist groups there (including Al Qaeda etc.). Obviously, ISIS is not popular amongst the American public; and, for the United States to be constantly condemning ISIS in public, while secretly assisting ISIS to kill Russian troops and Syrian Government troops inside Syria (whose Government had invited Russia into the war to assist it to survive the onslaughts from ISIS and from the other U.S.-backed fundamentalist-Sunni jihadist groups who are backed also by Saudi Arabia and by some other fundamentalist-Islamic Sunni governments, as well as by the U.S. Government), would be disapproved of by the American people, if they were to have been informed of it. Some Americans would even be disturbed to recognize that the U.S. and its allies in Syria are all invaders there, very unlike those Russian troops are, because Russians are allies of the existing government — quite the opposite of invaders (such as the U.S. and its allies there). Some Americans dislike not only ISIS, but invaders and invasions, on basic principle. But American ‘news’media are very supportive of all of the U.S. Government’s invasions — Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc. So, that was a very important article about very important matters that are being hidden from the U.S. public by the U.S. ‘news’ media.

The other news-report was from Reuters, and it headlined, on October 3rd, “The press, branded the 'enemy' by Trump, increasingly trusted by the public: Reuters/Ipsos poll”.

The report about the three warnings from Russia, proves (as do many other evidences) the deceit, the selective covering-up of crucial facts, by the U.S. press. It’s not a “press” in the democratic sense, but instead a pro-invasion propaganda-operation — it is a propaganda-operation (as that October 5th article proved, and I have documented also many times, such as here, here, and here). However, Reuters reports that “The poll of more than 14,300 people found that the percentage of adults who said they had a “great deal” or “some” confidence in the press rose to 48 percent in September from 39 percent last November.”

How much sheer lying has been exposed (but not by the press) about America’s press, during that time? I, and many others who are not in the press, or who are no longer in the press, have reported plenty of it (such as I’ve linked-to here, and others are, in turn, additionally linked-to in each one of those articles about our scandalous American press-institution). Here, then, are a few of my own recent reports about important context for accurately interpreting this Reuters article, which is intentionally not mentioned (but is instead hidden) by Reuters:

One, just a few weeks ago, headlined "U.S. Near Bottom In Public Trust Of Newsmedia” and reported that:

“According to the most extensive study ever done of the public’s usages of, and trust in, the newsmedia in their country — a study that (in late January early February) scientifically sampled thousands of people in each one of 36 different industrialized countries — the United States scored #28, which was in the bottom 22% of all 36 nations, regarding the public’s trust of the newsmedia.”

That study was done by the Reuters Institute, under the title “Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017”. That title was credited in my rews-report, as being its source; and, so, my article about the “Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017” should show up in a Google seach for “Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017”, but it does not (which raises a question about the search-engine). However one other news-report about the “Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017” does show up in a google search of that title: the Irish Times headlined “Report shows trust in news higher in Ireland than International average”, and it opened:

“Irish people under the age of 35 are more likely to pay for online news, according to the latest Oxford Reuters Digital News Report published today. The report notes that, despite growing up with free online entertainment, younger people have developed the habit of paying for some media. In Ireland, the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups are most likely to pay for online news, at 12 per cent and 13 per cent respectively. Irish people have a strong interest in news and have higher levels of trust in the news media than the international average, according to the report.”

Furthermore, a duckduckgo.com search for that Reuters title, "Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017” shows an article headlined "Media Coverage for the Digital News Report 2017”, and that’s a news-report from, and published by, the Reuters Institute itself; and you can see there what the titles are of the news-reports about it, which Reuters itself had found and reported in their own story, and none of those titles would be of any interest to the general public, all of those titles were published only in the trade press for the journalism industry and for the public relations (or propaganda) industry (it’s now actually one industry-group). The news-report that I had done, didn’t show up anywhere, but it was the only general-interest news-report that had been based upon that massive Reuters Institute study, the only report focusing on what is of general interest in it. All the rest of the ‘news’media had ignored it altogether; and, though I submitted that news-report, the only one ever about the general-interest findings contained in the “Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017,” to all U.S. general-interest ‘news’media, the only media which published it, were: washingtonsblog, informationclearinghouse, off-guardian, greanvillepost, and rinf, plus mirror-sites of any of those (all of which sites are even smaller than those). So, unless a person happens to follow those sites, the individual won’t know anything of the important findings in that massive Reuters study.

And, my news-report on it pointed out that the Reuters study showed far below-average public confidence in the ‘news’media by Americans as opposed to the global average. But when, just a few months later, Reuters did a story which showed that Americans’ trust in the ‘news’media had increased, that merited a Reuters news-story to the general press, even though their global study, which had been published just months earlier, and which showed widespread distrust by Americans of the ‘news’media as compared to the publics in other countries, Reuters informed only PR agencies and ‘journalism’ corporations and professors about that study, and without any indication ever to anyone that the distrust of the press by the publics in a few countries, such as France and America, was very high (and that it was astronomically high in Greece and in Korea — only 23% trust in each). The ‘news’media hide their rottennesses, instead of investigating and reporting them.

Obviously, the press does a big cover-up job on its own rottennesses, which are institutional, and not merely “a few bad apples.”

Other news-reports that I have done on this subject include, for example, a report about how the press hid from the public the fact that when George W. Bush said on 7 September 2002 that the IAEA had found that Saddam Hussein was only six months from having a nuclear bomb, the press hid from the public the IAEA’s prompt and repeated statements that they had never issued any such finding or report at all. The invasion was based on such lies and cover-ups. After commonly repeated instances such as that, going on for so many years, and always hiding that the U.S. Government is lying in order to invade some country or other, why doesn’t the U.S. public yet recognize that the U.S. press is what one finds in a dictatorship such as the U.S. has been proven to be, and not an authentic journalistic institution at all. If the Greeks and Koreans have a 23% level of trust in their ‘news’media, is the only reason for Americans’ having a 38% level of trust (as shown on page 21) the U.S. media’s greater effectiveness at fooling its public?

This news-report will (as I routinely do) be submitted to all U.S. national ‘news’media for publication. How many do you think will publish it? And, how many of those will be major ‘news’media? Just google the headline here, “U.S. Public Don’t Care if ‘News’media Lie”, in order to find out which the honest few actually are. But don’t trust Google, either. The entire media-institution is rotten. And, it’s not because of errors. It’s because of the lies and the cover-ups, which are systematic, and which pump things to support the ideology that’s called “neoliberalism” in economics, and “neoconservatism” in foreign policies. It used to be called simply: “imperialism.” It’s the modern ideology of dictatorship. It’s the ideology of the American press, and that’s an overwhelmingly documented fact — no mere hypothesis, at all.

The U.S. ‘news’media drown the public in neoliberal-neoconservative propaganda. And that’s the reason why online-searching for this headline won’t find this article at the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, CNN, Slate, etc. — not at any of the ‘news’ media that pumped in 2002 and 2003 for invading Iraq. Nothing has changed about the U.S. press during at least the past 15 years. And the American public just don’t much care that they’re being constantly lied-to by the major ‘news’media and are voting on that deceived basis.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity, and of Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.
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