The events in Ukraine in 2014 provided my first wake up call regarding fake news. I was, at that time, an avid reader of the NYTimes. I had begun my mornings for nearly 40 years with a cup of coffee and a cover to cover (skipping autos and travel) hardcopy of what was, at that time, my favorite news source. My favorite section was on Tuesdays, the Science Times.
One morning in 2014 I noticed that the news about Ukraine had done an about face. It was as if everything they had told me about Ukraine up until 24 hours earlier had never been said. In a very small nutshell, just the day before, a sensible Putin was saying "Don't involve me in your petty squabbles" and the next he was an aggressor and was endangering the entire world by invading Ukraine.
In subsequent discussions with persons on FB about the falsehoods being reported on Ukraine, I found the news from the previous week could no longer be found. At that point, I knew my favorite news source was lying to us. Now I go to the NYTimes only to find the lies, which are many.
I am pleased to have found this compilation of events in Ukraine, which corroborates my lay person's understandings of them from eight years ago. I haven't finished the video yet. I would love to hear your thoughts on this issue.
Welcome to our world in combating the mainstream media propagandists spreading fake news and accusing others of doing so, whitewashing their terrorists' crimes and accusing the victims of those crimes, and guess what? When there were no massacres or crimes to accuse our army of killing their own families and people and destroying their own country while Al Qaeda foreign suicide bombers are in Syria were the good guys, they told us, they themselves made news by carrying out terrorist attacks and accusing our troops of it..
One infamous incident was the blowing up of an oil pipeline in Homs, Central Syria, the pipeline feeds the main country's refinery which in turn feeds the electric power generating plants on one of the coldest nights in the winter, CNN reported it not far from the site, had one of the activists showing the place where 'the Assad forces' what they called the national army of Syria, of bombing the pipeline to suppress the people's aspiration for freedoms, they only committed a small mistake, the CNN crew which included a lady (Arwa Damon) who made later reports embedded with Al Qaeda without fear and wearing a head cover, a former Marine who was the cameraman and a 3rd guy, they only forgot they're using the Syrian national internet provider to have their direct line to their IP in Atlanta, and our engineers noticed an unusually high consumption of data in a remote supposedly abandoned building in a destroyed and under the terrorists control neighborhood, the ISP managed to spoof in the connection and got a full copy of the feed showing the CNN crew setting up their cameras toward where the explosion will happen hours before, going to the site of where the explosion will happen to make sure the camera is pointed correctly, having all night feed going to their HQ in the States, then filming the smoke rising from the pipeline and immediately having their activist reporting 'it was the Syrian army that destroyed the pipeline,' and within minutes it was all over the world's news..
Syrians do not believe western mainstream media because they lived through the lies, watch the full process in this report: When CNN Crew Blew Up the Oil Pipeline in Homs.
The video exposing CNN and others is painful to watch. As one Syrian asks "How can people do this?" That is a mystery we still need to solve. How and why do so many human beings participate in these lies? We elevate obvious liars as truth tellers, and disbelieve our own common sense.
After watching several mass shootings in the US live and identifying that they always follow a template and have clearly been managed by news related entities, I have no doubt that the actions you describe occur regularly. CNN is one of the worst offenders as far as I can tell. They've been caught setting up false news stories many times. And yet, many many people still think CNN is doing good work. ugh.
Regarding event s in Syria specifically, I always ask "Why would Syria do that to its own people?!" That we Americans will believe almost any evil deed has been done by others, and that no evil deeds are done by us, is one of my greatest shames.
That's the main logic those debating with us fail when put forward to them: Do you really think that a Syrian army officer would kill his family and that a Chechen or Saudi suicide bomber is in Syria to save them from him? If this is logic to you then I can't debate further, and if one of them is a psychopath, what about the tens of thousands of others?
Another question would be: how come ISIS and its affiliates never attacked Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or Israel, but only attack the countries that oppose Israel?
Btw, it's not a CNN exclusivity in leading the clan, they compete among themselves, one of the other such stories involved the office manager of Reuters in Syria a Jordanian guy called Khaled Oweiss, I never forget their names because of the sheer madness of their reporting and the consequences of what they did. This particular guy made a report from the National Hospital in Daraa in the very first days of the war on Syria, the hospital was receiving injuries from a clash during a protest in the city, many died from both sides, a typical formula, during his reporting a policeman was rushed to the ER, he was wounded by a bullet:
the report: how did this happen?
The wounded policeman on the stretcher: We were securing the area to preserve peace, I'm from the riot control unit..
Reuters Reporter: Who shot at you?
wounded policeman with his voice getting weaker: I was shot from the protesters side..
Reporter repeating in louder voice: you say you were shot by your officer for refusing to shoot at the protesters?
wounded policeman gathers all his strength or what's left of it: NO, I'm telling you i got shot from the protesters side...
Reuters Reporter asking loudly: but why would your officer shoot at you, didn't you tell him you cannot shoot at peaceful protetsers?
Wounded policeman gets into the operation room.
Surely enough, the video report aired on all stations show this interview with the volume of the voice of the wounded policeman lowered even lower and only can be heard saying protesters, shot, and the selected words, and the Reuters reporters voice loud and clear, and then he says: see how brave these policemen are taking the bullets for refusing to follow Assad's security orders..
How did we get to know what happened? There was a Syrian TV station 1 cameraman filming the whole scene and caught the dialogue which was aired on all Syrian channels, the police arrest the Jordanian Reuters reporter and international onslaught on Syria oppressing the media by detaining the journalists... Under extreme pressure from international organizations, the Syrian authorities release the Jordanian guy and expels all foreign media with him, the most sane decision the Syrian state ever took.
Btw, soon after, all Syrian tv channels, online media, and print are taken down the satellites until this very day and all editors in chief of news media in Syria are on the European and US sanctions list... the freedom of speech at its best.
It's all quite shocking, but we must face the fact that our media lie to us regularly. I no longer pay any attention to American MSM, any broadcasting station left or right. It's a waste of time.
I am grateful to have come across your work. Thank you for doing it.
Even the media here in my place are biased and corrupt, mediamen take bribes from the politicians so that the politician's image will be fragrant to the masses.
Media should be apolitical but their owners takes sides for their own interests. So it is just dangerous for the common people especially now that social media came to the mix in disseminating what is not true creating confusion to many.