Media Manipulation News Articles

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[A] 26-minute video called Plandemic has exploded on social media in recent days, claiming to present a view of COVID-19 that differs from the "official" narrative. The video has been viewed millions of times on YouTube via links that are replaced as quickly as the video-sharing service can remove them for violating its policy against "COVID-19 misinformation." In it, filmmaker Mikki Willis conducts an uncritical interview with Judy Mikovits. Many of Mikovits' claims concern ... conflicts that she attributes to various high-profile individuals. Among them are Dr. Anthony Fauci [and] Dr. Robert Redfield. Mikovits ... says Fauci has profited from patents bearing his name that were derived from research done at NIAID. The Associated Press did report in 2005 that scientists at the National Institutes of Health "have collected millions of dollars in royalties for experimental treatments without having to tell patients [they] had a financial connection." Fauci [was] among those who received royalty payments. Mikovits also [casts] doubt on the official statistics regarding COVID-19 deaths, saying that doctors and hospitals have been "incentivized" to count deaths unrelated to the disease. In fact, a 20% premium was tacked on to Medicare payments for treatment of COVID-19 patients. The video correctly points to U.S. cooperation with and funding for the Wuhan laboratory. In [a] 2009 paper, Mikovits is among 13 researchers who claimed to have found that a mouse retrovirus may contribute to chronic fatigue syndrome. [The paper] "sent shock waves through the scientific community, as it revealed the common use of animal and human fetal tissues were unleashing devastating plagues of chronic diseases."

Note: We've selected the parts of this article supporting Mikovits, though overall it is clearly biased against her. The article strangely fails to mention her claims Fauci stole her research and used it for profit. Why was this video banned from social media? You can still view it here or on this great website which posts many banned videos. Definitely high strangeness here, as you can read in this article about Mikovits in Science magazine. Explore independent research confirming a number of the claims of Mikovits.

According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, more than 75 percent of America's leading newspapers, magazines, and journals are behind online paywalls. And how do American news consumers react to that? Almost 80 percent of Americans steer around those paywalls and seek out a free option. Paywalls create a two-tiered system: credible, fact-based information for people who are willing to pay for it, and murkier, less-reliable information for everyone else. Simply put, paywalls get in the way of informing the public, which is the mission of journalism. And they get in the way of the public being informed, which is the foundation of democracy. It is a terrible time for the press to be failing at reaching people, during an election in which democracy is on the line. There's a simple, temporary solution: Publications should suspend their paywalls for all 2024 election coverage and all information that is beneficial to voters. Democracy does not die in darkness–it dies behind paywalls. Less than a third of Americans in a recent Gallup poll say they have "a fair amount" or a "a great deal" of trust that the news is fair and accurate. Part of the problem ... is that the platform companies, which are the largest distributors of free news, have deprioritized news. Meta has long had an uncomfortable relationship with news on Facebook. In the past year ... Meta has changed its algorithm in a way that has cost some news outlets 30 to 40 percent of their traffic.

Note: It's ironic that this story is behind a paywall. Read the complete article here using Textise, an excellent tool that converts most webpages into text-only versions. For a powerful reflection on the rise of paywalls and online ads in news outlets, read this Substack piece written by our news editor Mark Bailey. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media corruption from reliable sources.

The Washington Post has published at least four long articles dismissing the censorship revealed by the Twitter Files and Missouri v. Biden lawsuit, which is headed to the Supreme Court. By contrast, in its story on the censorship of pro-Palestinian voices, the Washington Post expresses great skepticism of Big Tech and sympathy for the people censored – the exact opposite of how it treated the issue when it was non-Leftists who were being censored. To be sure, there has been a concerning increase in demands for censorship and blacklisting since the October 7 Hamas attacks. New York University appears to be investigating a student who said, "Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life." But the alarm that the news media are raising is in striking contrast to the indifference ... to the evidence of governmental and nongovernmental censorship of a variety of disfavored views and voices relating to climate change, Covid, Ukraine, and the Biden family's influence-peddling. Media outrage about censorship of pro-Palestinian voices sent social media platforms scrambling in order to end the censorship. The Washington Post's queries forced at least one social media company to stop censoring. "After The Washington Post sent questions to TikTok about the video, the sound was restored." A Meta spokesperson said a "bug" had caused some of the trouble. "We fixed a problem that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations in some of our products," the statement said.

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Social media platforms have become an integral part of our lives, but they also pose significant challenges for our society. From spreading misinformation and hate speech to undermining democracy and privacy, social media can have negative impacts on the public good. How can we harness the power of social media for positive purposes, such as civic engagement, social justice, and education? One possible solution is to create a new kind of social media platform that is designed to serve the public interest, not the profit motive. This platform would be owned and governed by its users, who would have a say in how it operates and what content it promotes. Such a platform may sound utopian, but it is not impossible. In fact, there are already some examples of social media platforms that are trying to achieve these goals, such as Mastodon, Diaspora, and Aether. These platforms are based on the principles of decentralization, federation, and peer-to-peer communication, which allow users to have more control and autonomy over their online interactions. Civic Works ... is an emerging social networking platform that provides a more democratic, inclusive, and responsible online space for everyone. It is built on the idea that social media can be a force for good when the objective is not subverted by advertisers, marketers, or shadowy political operatives. It is a platform that inspires people to become active citizens, through civic, political, economic, and/or educational actions.

Note: The social media platform PeakD is censorship-proof and is governed by network operators who are elected by the community. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.

Swiss journalist Maurine Mercier found several United States citizens fighting in Ukraine under the guise of humanitarian work. These rudderless warriors are a symbol of a society addicted to warfare. They reflect the tensions that author and antiwar activist Norman Solomon unwinds in his brilliant new book, War Made Invisible, which examines the profound causes and costs of U.S. interventionism. Solomon's book unveils the disturbing proximity between the ruling class and corporate media since the Vietnam War, revealing how the fourth estate sustains the assumptions that make intervention possible in Ukraine and elsewhere. "The essence of propaganda is repetition," he argues. "The frequencies of certain assumptions blend into a kind of white noise," conditioning U.S. people to support military operations they never see or truly understand. This was never clearer than during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Indeed, across the media landscape, embedded intellectuals mobilized their pens to solidify public support for war. ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS all skewed their coverage. In many ways, militarism is a form of class warfare. "The fat profit margins from supplying the Pentagon and kindred agencies," Solomon explains, exacerbate economic inequality while redirecting resources away from social programs. In effect, war is perpetual because it is profitable, enriching an elite firmly entrenched in the military-industrial complex.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on war from reliable major media sources.

The FBI colluded with a Ukrainian intelligence agency to pressure social media companies into taking down accounts accused of spreading Russian disinformation – some of which belonged to Americans, a House committee said. The report issued by the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government ... is based on documents subpoenaed from Meta – the parent company of Facebook and Instagram – and Alphabet – the parent company of Google and YouTube. It alleges that the "FBI violated the First Amendment rights of Americans and potentially undermined our national security." The committees found that following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) enlisted the FBI in support of an effort to combat the spread of "Russian disinformation" on social media. As part of the effort, the SBU transmitted lists of social media accounts to the FBI that it wanted to be banned and the bureau, in turn, "routinely relayed these lists to the relevant social media platforms." The committee claims that "the authentic accounts of Americans, including a verified US State Department account and those belonging to American journalists" were ensnared in the censorship effort and flagged for social media companies to take down. The State Department's Russian-language Instagram account ... was one of the authentic American accounts flagged for removal in a list composed by the SBU and transmitted to Big Tech companies by the FBI.

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On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee released a report on how the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) "colluded with Big Tech and 'disinformation' partners to censor Americans." The 36-page report raises three familiar issues: first, government actors worked with third parties to overturn the First Amendment; second, censors prioritized political narratives over truthfulness; and third, an unaccountable bureaucracy hijacked American society. The House Report reveals that CISA, a branch of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, worked with social media platforms to censor posts it considered dis-, mis- or malinformation. Brian Scully, the head of CISA's censorship team, conceded that this process, known as "switchboarding," would "trigger content moderation." Additionally, CISA funded the nonprofit EI-ISAC in 2020 to bolster its censorship operations. In launching the nonprofit, the government boasted that it "leverage[d] DHS CISA's relationship with social media organizations to ensure priority treatment of misinformation reports." The switchboard programs directly contradict sworn testimony from CISA Director Jen Easterly. The report outlines how CISA censored "malinformation – truthful information that, according to the government, may carry the potential to mislead." Dr. Kate Starbird, a member of CISA's "Misinformation & Disinformation" subcommittee, lamented that many Americans seem to "accept malinformation as 'speech' and within democratic norms."

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An industrial estate in Yorkshire is an unlikely location for ... an artificial intelligence (AI) company used by the Government to monitor people's posts on social media. Logically has been paid more than Ł1.2 million of taxpayers' money to analyse what the Government terms "disinformation" – false information deliberately seeded online – and "misinformation", which is false information that has been spread inadvertently. It does this by "ingesting" material from more than hundreds of thousands of media sources and "all public posts on major social media platforms", using AI to identify those that are potentially problematic. It has a Ł1.2 million deal with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), as well as another worth up to Ł1.4 million with the Department of Health and Social Care to monitor threats to high-profile individuals within the vaccine service. It also has a "partnership" with Facebook, which appears to grant Logically's fact-checkers huge influence over the content other people see. A joint press release issued in July 2021 suggests that Facebook will limit the reach of certain posts if Logically says they are untrue. "When Logically rates a piece of content as false, Facebook will significantly reduce its distribution so that fewer people see it, apply a warning label to let people know that the content has been rated false, and notify people who try to share it," states the press release.

Note: Read more about how NewsGuard, a for-profit company, works closely with government agencies and major corporate advertisers to suppress dissenting views online. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.

Amid a crisis in recruitment, the U.S. military has found a new way of convincing a war-weary Generation Z to enlist: thirst traps. Chief among these attractive young women in uniform posting sexually suggestive content alongside subtle ... calls to join up is Hailey Lujan. In between the thirst traps and memes, the 21-year-old makes content extolling the fun of Army life to her 731,000 TikTok followers. Lujan is a psychological operations specialist with the Army. Her [job] is to convince, persuade and propagandize in creative new ways. The Army recruitment website description of the role sounds eerily similar to her own content. "As a Psychological Operations Specialist, you'll be an expert at persuasion," it reads, adding: "You'll assess and develop the information needed to influence and engage specific audiences. You'll broadcast important information through various mediums and assist U.S. and foreign governments, militaries, and civilian populations." Lujan is far from the only serviceperson on military TikTok (#MilTok) promoting military life, however. Juliana Keding – a military policewoman with over 900,000 followers – regularly combines thirst traps with videos about Army life. TikTok is not the only battleground for young people's minds, however. In the last year, a significant portion of the Biden administration's record-breaking $857 billion defense budget went on advertising. The Army in particular has spent large sums of money collaborating with some of YouTube's biggest stars.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the military and media manipulation from reliable sources.

In 1979 the Sandinista revolution overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. As a Spanish speaking Latino, [Enrique] Prado ... was recruited as a CIA officer responsible for overseeing the development of the Contra army based in Honduras and conducting cross border attacks on communities in Nicaragua. Prado believes they [were] the "good guys". The International Court of Justice thought otherwise. In 1986 the court ruled the US attacks on Nicaragua were violations of international law. The Reagan administration and media largely ignored the ruling. Later, journalist Gary Webb documented the catastrophic social damage inside the US caused by the cheap cocaine flooding some US cities. Webb was attacked by establishment media. In 1998 the CIA Inspector General acknowledged, "There are instances where C.I.A. did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug-trafficking activity, or take action to resolve the allegations." The US deployed Nicaraguans, Afghans and extremist Arab recruits in proxy wars across the globe. "The attacks of September 11 descend in a direct line from events in 1979, the year in which the CIA, with full presidential authority, began carrying out its largest ever clandestine operation - the secret arming of Afghan freedom fighters (mujaheddin) to wage a proxy war against the Soviet Union," [said author Chalmers Johnston].

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.

On April 20, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell admitted he orchestrated the joint letter that torpedoed the New York Post's bombshell reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop in the weeks leading up to the November 2020 US Presidential election, at the direct request of Joe Biden's campaign team. That letter ... asserted the leaked material bore unambiguous hallmarks of a Kremlin "information operation." In all, 51 former senior intelligence officials endorsed the declaration. This intervention was sufficient for Twitter to block all sharing of the NY Post's exposĂ©s and ban the outlet's official account. Twitter's public suppression of the NY Post's disclosures was complemented by a covert operation to identify and neutralize anyone discussing the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop, courtesy of Dataminr, a social media spying tool heavily connected to British and American intelligence services. In-Q-Tel [is] the CIA's venture capital arm. In 2016, The Intercept revealed In-Q-Tel was financing at least 38 separate social media spying tools, to surveil "erupting political movements, crises, epidemics, and disasters." Among them was Dataminr, which enjoys privileged access to Twitter's "firehose" – all tweets published in real time – in order to track and visualize trends as they happen. [In 2020], the U.S. was ... engulfed by incendiary large-scale protests. Dataminr kept a close eye on this upheaval every step of the way, tipping off police to the identities of demonstrators.

Note: While Hunter Biden was indicted for three felony gun charges and nine counts of tax-related crimes, his laptop also revealed suspicious business dealings with corrupt overseas firms. Learn more about the history of military-intelligence influence on the media in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.

U.S. Special Operations Command, responsible for some of the country's most secretive military endeavors, is gearing up to conduct internet propaganda and deception campaigns online using deepfake videos, according to federal contracting documents. SOCOM's next generation propaganda aspirations are outlined in a procurement document that lists capabilities it's seeking for the near future and soliciting pitches from outside parties that believe they're able to build them. Last October, SOCOM quietly released an updated version of its wish list with a new section: "Advanced technologies for use in Military Information Support Operations (MISO)," a Pentagon euphemism for its global propaganda and deception efforts. Perhaps as provocative as the mention of deepfakes is the section that follows, which notes SOCOM wishes to finely tune its offensive propaganda seemingly by spying on the intended audience through their internet-connected devices. Described as a "next generation capability to ‘takeover' Internet of Things (loT) devices for collect [sic] data and information from local populaces to enable breakdown of what messaging might be popular and accepted through sifting of data once received," the document says that the ability to eavesdrop on propaganda targets "would enable MISO to craft and promote messages that may be more readily received by local populace." In 2017, WikiLeaks published pilfered CIA files that revealed a roughly similar capability to hijack into household devices.

Note: Read more about the potential pitfalls of deepfake technologies. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

It's not enough for George Soros to fund the media and encourage stories that back up his point of view – he has to make sure no one disagrees with it. Last year, Soros partnered with ... billionaire Reid Hoffman (the co-founder of LinkedIn) to financially back a project to fight so-called disinformation. The name they chose: Good Information Inc. Major fact-checking organizations such as PolitiFact, Snopes, and others have long faced allegations of left-wing political bias – allegations a series of studies over the years have confirmed. One of the more recent studies of bias on PolitiFact found sources six times more likely to defend Biden in their "fact-checks" than check his facts. Major funding for PolitiFact's parent company, The Poynter Institute, includes the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Ford Foundation, Soros-backed Tides Foundation ... among many others. One project of the Poynter Institute specifically, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), was launched in 2015 with its initial funding coming from the National Endowment for Democracy (backed by the US State Department), the Omidyar Network, Google, Facebook, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and George Soros' Open Society Foundations. The problem, of course, is that these "fact checks" are anything but impartial. Facebook and other social-media companies censored any articles that suggested the COVID-19 virus leaked from a Wuhan lab, based on denials of scientists who had a conflict of interest.

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In the 1960s, 15-year-old Olivia Hussey and 16-year-old Leonard Whiting secured career-making roles in a film that retells the iconic love story of "Romeo and Juliet," the first film to use actors that were similar in age to the characters in the play. They were legally children when they were filmed in the nude together; the performance can now be found on sites meant for pornography. Fifty-five years later, Hussey, now 71, and Whiting, now 72, are suing Paramount Pictures for child abuse. They claim that "Romeo and Juliet" director Franco Zefirelli assured the actors that they would be wearing flesh colored garments and would not be physically nude in the scene. This allegedly changed in the last days of filming when Zefirelli asked the actors to do the scene fully nude with makeup, according to the lawsuit. [Judy] Garland was forced to take barbiturates and other drugs and live on a death-defying diet while working with the studio. Garland wrote in an unpublished autobiography that she was constantly molested behind the scenes by older men, including Louis B. Mayer, the producer and cofounder of MGM. Alyson Stoner was made to act out a rape scene when she was only 6 years old. "At 6 years old, I enter a sterile white room where a stranger stands apathetically behind a camcorder on a tripod. On cue, I perform the scene. This morning, I'm being kidnapped and raped," Stoner wrote. She developed eating disorders – among other health problems – due to stress.

Note: Read more about the disturbing history of child sex abuse in Hollywood from the courageous voices of actor Corey Feldman and Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood. Explore our archive of revealing reports from reliable media sources on high-level pedophilia and sexual abuse.

BBC reporter Marianna Spring ... created five fake Americans and opened social media accounts for them, part of an attempt to illustrate how disinformation spreads on sites like Facebook, Twitter and TikTok despite efforts to stop it, and how that impacts American politics. Spring worked with the Pew Research Center in the U.S. to set up five archetypes. Besides the very conservative Larry and very liberal Emma, there's Britney, a more populist conservative from Texas; Gabriela, a largely apolitical independent from Miami; and Michael, a Black teacher from Milwaukee who's a moderate Democrat. Emma is a lesbian who follows LGBTQ groups, is an atheist, takes an active interest in women's issues and abortion rights, supports the legalization of marijuana and follows The New York Times and NPR. These "traits" are the bait, essentially, to see how the social media companies' algorithms kick in and what material is sent their way. That's ... left Spring and the BBC vulnerable to charges that the project is ethically suspect in using false information to uncover false information. "By creating these false identities, she violates what I believe is a fairly clear ethical standard in journalism," said Bob Steele, retired ethics expert. "We should not pretend that we are someone other than ourselves, with very few exceptions." For a story last year, the Wall Street Journal created more than 100 automated accounts to see how TikTok steered users in different directions.

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The Center for Countering Digital Hate published "The Disinformation Dozen" – a report on the 12 influencers it claimed were responsible for 65 percent of anti-vaccine falsehoods disseminated on Facebook and other social media platforms. But the story of charlatans peddling fake cures and political conspiracy theories isn't the only part of the Covid misinformation saga. Distrust in public-health messaging is also sown when public-health messengers show themselves to be less than completely trustworthy. The latest set-to in this drama was a July 20 screaming match between Dr. Anthony Fauci and Senator Rand Paul. The Kentucky Republican suggested that Fauci had lied to Congress in claiming that the National Institutes of Health had never funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Fauci took vehement exception, saying the research that the N.I.H. had funded ... didn't qualify as gain-of-function, a research technique in which a pathogen is made more transmissible. The larger truth – obscured until recently by fervent efforts (including by Fauci) to dismiss the lab-leak theory for the origins of the pandemic – is that the U.S. government's scientific establishment did support gain-of-function research that deserved far more public debate than it got. Beneficiaries of that funding engaged in deceptive tactics and outright mendacity to shield their research from public scrutiny while denouncing their critics as conspiracymongers.

Note: Read what happened when the publisher of "The Real Anthony Fauci" tried to place a full page ad in the New York Times for this #1 best seller. And why have all major media refused to review this book which is rated 4.8 stars on Amazon and has over 2,000 footnotes to back up the claims made? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media manipulation and the coronavirus from reliable sources.

Rapper and activist Chuck D appeared at the White House earlier this summer, announcing that he was joining forces with YouTube and Antony Blinken's State Department to become one of Washington's "global music ambassadors." Throughout the Cold War, the United States ... spent vast sums sending famous artists such as Nina Simone, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald overseas. The CIA deliberately chose to front the campaign with black musicians, helping to soften America's image and promote a (false) message of racial harmony. Despite the official end of the Cold War, the United States has never stopped using music and musicians to foment unrest and spark regime change. The partnership between YouTube and the State Department will see the platform push pro-U.S. music and messaging across the world. This is far from YouTube's only connection to the U.S. national security state. Its parent company, Google, is essentially a creation of the CIA. Both the CIA and the NSA bankrolled the Ph.D. research of Google founder Sergey Brin, and senior CIA officials oversaw the evolution of Google during its pre-launch phase. As late as 2005, the CIA was still a major shareholder in Google. These shares resulted from Google's acquisition of Keyhole, Inc., a CIA-backed surveillance firm whose software eventually became Google Earth – the civilian offshoot of a spying software the U.S. government uses.

Note: Learn more about the CIA's longstanding propaganda network in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.

A secretive government unit worked with social media companies in an attempt to curtail discussion of controversial lockdown policies during the pandemic. The Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU) was set up by ministers to tackle supposed domestic "threats", and was used to target those critical of lockdown and questioning the mass vaccination of children. Critics of lockdown had posts removed from social media. There is growing suspicion that social media firms used technology to stop the posts being promoted, circulated or widely shared after being flagged by the CDU or its counterpart in the Cabinet Office. Documents revealed under Freedom of Information (FoI) and data protection requests showed that the activities of prominent critics of the Government's Covid policies were secretly monitored. An artificial intelligence firm (AI) was used by the Government to scour social media sites. The company flagged discussions opposing vaccine passports. Many of the issues being raised were valid at the time and have since been proven to be well-founded. The BBC also took part in secretive meetings of a government policy forum to address the so-called disinformation. It can now be revealed that the activities of Prof Carl Heneghan, the Oxford epidemiologist who has advised Boris Johnson, and Dr Alexandre de Figueiredo, a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), were monitored by government disinformation units.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and media manipulation from reliable sources.

In less than three years the federal government intervened at least 4213 times to restrict or censor posts about the Covid-19 pandemic on digital platforms. A freedom of information request by Liberal senator Alex Antic has revealed the number of interventions, but details about the reasons or the guidelines under which they were made remain secret. "It is entirely unclear to me why the Department of Home Affairs, a department which is primarily charged with the duty of overseeing matters like border control, has been using a backdoor arrangement with social media companies to influence the media in relation into matters such as public health," Senator Antic said. Senator Antic ... is now in possession of the Department of Home Affairs Online Content Incident Arrangement Procedural Guideline, which details how the government works with digital platforms such as Facebook, Meta, Twitter, Instagram and Google to monitor and intervene on content. The document is subheaded "Australia's domestic crisis response protocol for online terrorist and extreme violent content". It runs to 28 pages but aside from the title, every page has been fully redacted. A separate document ... revealed that between January 2017 and December 2022 it "had made 13,636 referrals to digital platforms to review content". More than 9000 of these were related to terrorism and violent extremism. But 4213 were "Covid-19-related referrals".

Note: Read this article without a subscription on this webpage. For a deeper analysis, see Matt Taibbi's report. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and media manipulation from reliable sources.

The U.S. Army Cyber Command told defense contractors it planned to surveil global social media use to defend the "NATO brand," according to a 2022 webinar recording reviewed by The Intercept. "NATO is one of our key brands that we are pushing, as far as our national security alliance," [Lt. Col. David Beskow] explained. The mass social media surveillance appears to be just one component of a broader initiative to use private-sector data mining to advance the Army's information warfare efforts. Beskow expressed an interest in purchasing access to nonpublic commercial web data, corporate ownership records, supply chain data, and more. While the U.S. national security establishment frequently warns against other countries' "weaponization" of social media and the broader internet, recent reporting has shown the Pentagon engages in some of the very same conduct. Researchers from Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory uncovered a network of pro-U.S. Twitter and Facebook accounts covertly operated by U.S. Central Command, an embarrassing revelation that led to a "sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare." Despite years of alarm in Washington over the threat posed by deepfake video fabrications to democratic societies, The Intercept reported last month that U.S. Special Operations Command is seeking vendors to help them make their own deepfakes to deceive foreign internet users.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.