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No ISIS Where Russia Is Bombing–Except Last Week, When ISIS Was Killing Gay...
Photo allegedly showing ISIS killing a man in Homs, Syria, for homosexuality earlier this year (Daily Mail, 7/23/15) President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia suddenly escalated the stakes in his contest...
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Fox, Daily Beast Stories on Cubans in Syria Lack One Thing: Evidence of...
Fox News illustrated its report on Cubans in Syria with a Reuters photo of Cubans not in Syria. Fox News (10/14/15) reported last week that Cuba has sent Gen. Leopoldo Cintra Frias and hundreds of...
View Article‘They’re Not Americans’: CNN Guest Justifies Massive Attacks on Civilians
CNN host Michael Smerconish (Huffington Post, 11/23/15) brought onto his November 21 show former CIA officer Michael Scheuer, who said that if the US is going to go after ISIS, it should take out every...
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Pentagon Must Be Thankful for the Turkey Washington Post Gave Its Readers
The Washington Post illustrates a story contrasting Russian and US bombing of Syria with a slideshow of photos of the results of Russian bombing (or, as in this case, Syrian government bombing)–but no...
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Reporting (or Not) the Ties Between US-Armed Syrian Rebels and Al Qaeda’s...
A crucial problem in news media coverage of the Syrian civil war has been how to characterize the relationship between the so-called “moderate” opposition forces armed by the CIA, on one hand, and the...
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‘You Wouldn’t Use It for a Purely Humanitarian Drop’
(photo: James L. Harper Jr./USAF) David Swanson, of WarIsACrime.org and the group RootsAction, had a disturbing catch (American Herald Tribune, 3/19/16). Noting that there are reportedly areas of Syria...
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‘Do Something’ About Refugees? US Has Done Plenty to Create Them
It didn’t take long for the universal and entirely justified outrage over a photograph of a dead three-year-old to be hijacked by the “do something” pundits. The “something” that’s supposed to be...
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US-Led Airstrikes Kill as Many Civilians as Nice Attack–but Get No Front-Page...
The Intercept (7/19/16) illustrated its article on a deadly airstrike in Syria with a photo of a victim receiving medical attention. (Photo: Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images) A coalition airstrike...
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How Media Distorted Syrian Ceasefire’s Breakdown
Coverage of the breakdown of the partial ceasefire in Syria illustrated the main way corporate news media distort public understanding of a major foreign policy story. The problem is not that the key...
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‘What Is Aleppo?’ Asks Gary Johnson–and NYT Gives Three Wrong Answers
Media mocked Gary Johnson for his Aleppo ignorance, but some attempts to inform him weren’t much better. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, when asked in an MSNBC interview (Morning Joe, 9/8/16) what...
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When Is Direct Military Intervention Not Direct Military Intervention?
A US warplane takes off from a US aircraft carrier to bomb targets in Syria. (cc photo: Alex King/US Navy) “President Obama has long refused to approve direct military intervention in Syria,” the New...
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Media Roll Out Welcome Mat for ‘Humanitarian’ War in Syria
Hillary Clinton told Goldman Sachs that a no-fly zone is “going to kill a lot of Syrians.” (cc photo: Gage Skidmore) As she marches toward the US presidency, Hillary Clinton has stepped up her...
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In Syria, Western Media Cheer Al Qaeda
This Daily Beast headline (8/8/16) was an unusually direct acknowledgement of Al Qaeda’s role in Aleppo. The Syrian government—a dictatorship known for imprisoning, torturing and disappearing...
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Soundbites October 2016
Spreading Rumors of Spreading Rumors of Electoral Fraud Washington Post illustrates its speculation about Russian plots with an image of Moscow gratuitously photographed through a construction fence....
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Soundbites November 2016
Erin Burnett, Outside Agitator Todd Walther, a spokesperson for the Charlotte, N.C., police union, told CNN host Erin Burnett (OutFront, 9/22/16) that most of those protesting the police killing of...
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NYT Says Congress Has ‘Duty’ to Make War–Rather Than the Right to Reject It
The New York Times argues that Congress has a duty to authorize war–rather than a responsibility to determine whether war should be fought. As reports come in detailing the degree to which Donald Trump...
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The Return of the Dangerous ‘Obama Did Nothing’ Narrative on Syria
One of great ironies of our oversaturated media environment is that, often, the biggest falsehoods and most transparent acts of political theater enjoy the most widespread acceptance and demonstrate...
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The Essential Pundit Take: ‘Trump Became President’ by Bombing Syria
Fareed Zakaria: Presidents “don’t need to go to a pesky Congress every time they want military force.” “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States” last night, CNN host Fareed Zakaria...
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Five Top Papers Run 18 Opinion Pieces Praising Syria Strikes–Zero Are Critical
Not The Onion. Five major US newspapers—the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and New York Daily News—offered no opinion space to anyone opposed to Donald Trump’s Thursday...
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Out of 47 Major Editorials on Trump’s Syria Strikes, Only One Opposed
Of the top 100 US newspapers, 47 ran editorials on President Donald Trump’s Syria airstrikes last week: 39 in favor, seven ambiguous and only one opposed to the military attack. In other words, 83...
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