Wow. On Thursday night the Washington Post, a premiere newspaper in the USA did a darling act of pure desparation. They actually published a list of 200 news organizations that they said were "routine peddlers of Russian propaganda." Written by reporter Craig Timberg the headline read "Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake new' during election, experts say. The so called "experts" are anonymous and beyond shady characters.
The anonymous hit squad is a website named "ProporNot". Its rallying cry is that America has been sucked in by a massive Russian "misinformation campaign." Two hundred spurious and nefarious news outlets have tricked and deceived a gullible US populace into believing "fake news".
Alt.news writes," Though the supposed experts behind PropOrNot remain unknown, the site has been granted a veneer of credibility thanks to the Washington Post, and journalists from the New York Times, including deputy Washington editor Jonathan Weissman to former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer, are hailing Timberg's story as Pulitzer-level journalism. "Russia appears to have successfully hacked American democracy," declared Sahil Kapur, the senior political reporter for Bloomberg. The dead-enders of Hillary Clinton's campaign for president have also seized on PropOrNot's claims as proof that the election was rigged, with Clinton confidant and Center For American Progress president Neera Tanden declaring, "Wake up people," as she blasted out the Washington Post article on Russian black ops."
It feels as if we are in the Twilight Zone, and we have been transported back to the fifties where there are Russians hiding behind every bush waiting to subvert the glory of democracy to the pinko dregs of communism. Did we really just read this in the Washington Post? Is Obama's senior advisor calling this farce Pulitzer-level journalism? Are we really wanting to start an all out cold war with Mr. Putin and Russia? Have we gone mad?
Okay, whose on the list of Russian propaganda fake news sites anyway? You guessed it, anyone who speaks out against the US government in any way. It does not matter if you are on the right, or the left. If you dare to criticize the government, you are .... a Russian plant!
Glenn Greenwald writes, "Included on this blacklist of supposed propaganda outlets are prominent independent left-wing news sites such as Truthout, Naked Capitalism, Black Agenda Report, Consortium News and Truthdig.
Also included are popular libertarian hubs such as Zero Hedge, Antiwar.com and the Ron Paul Institute, along with the hugely influential right-wing website the Drudge Report and the publishing site WikiLeaks. Far-right, virulently anti-Muslim blogs such as Bare Naked Islam are likewise dubbed Kremlin mouthpieces. Basically, everyone who isn't comfortably within the centrist Hillary-Clinton/Jeb-Bush spectrum is guilty. On its Twitter account, the group announced a new "plugin" that automatically alerts the user that a visited website has been designated by the group to be a Russian propaganda outlet."
The site itself Propornot states: "Please note that our criteria are behavioral. That means the characteristics of the propaganda outlets we identify are motivation-agnostic. For purposes of this definition it does not matter whether the sites listed here are being knowingly directed and paid by Russian intelligence officers, or whether they even knew they were echoing Russian propaganda at any particular point: If they meet these criteria, they are at the very least acting as bona-fide "useful idiots" of the Russian intelligence services, and are worthy of further scrutiny.
We assess that this overall Russian effort is at least semi-centralized, with multiple Russian projects and influence operations working in parallel to manage the direct and outsourced production of propaganda across a wide range of outlets. It is data-driven, and rewards effective entrepreneurship and innovation with increased funding and other resources."
That this is reckless is an absolute understatement. The mainstream media is so threatened by independent news sources that it has decided to go kamikaze. It has named, branded and libeled any news source that does not kowtow to the party line. Right, left, environmental, anti-war, Libertarian, you veer from the proscribed news, as dictated by the five big corporations that own the major news outlets and you are a labeled a Russian propaganda outlet. And, there will now be a "plugin" available that automatically alerts the user that a visited site has been designated a Russian propaganda outlet.
Dear readers, that this is happening in the United States is like the theater of the absurd. Critics of the main stream press had long complained of a streamlined journalism that was no longer news but a mouthpiece of the corporations that owned them. Now, it is worse than anyone could have dreamed of. The offending parties, those independent news sources that dared to think outside the box, dared to think on their own have been named, tarred and feathered, with the Russian smear of treason. Seekers of truth have been branded with a red R.
And, yes, of course, you are reading a listed culprit of deception. Pravda RU is proudly listed with the other news organizations that dare to print what is truth and not corporate drivel to soothe the masses into compliance. Congratulations on your ability to seek out truth, and dare to see outside the matrix.
Nancy O'Brien Simpson
Ms. Simpson was a radio personality in New York. She was a staff writer for The Liberty Report. A PBS documentary was done on her activism for human rights. She is a psychotherapist and political commentator.