Media Manipulation News Articles

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Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is adding more American lobbyists to its payroll by hiring BGR Government Affairs. The contract provides BGR with $500,000 annually to assist with U.S. media outreach for the Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court, a government entity. The retainer includes the services of Jeffrey Birnbaum, a former Washington Post reporter who once covered the lobbying industry and now works as a lobbyist, as well as Ed Rogers, a former Reagan administration official who now lobbies and writes a column for the Post. The Saudi government has brought on a dizzying array of American public relations experts and lobbyists to help spin reporters and influence policymakers, [including] the Podesta Group, a lobbying firm run by a top fundraiser for the Hillary Clinton campaign, [and] Norm Coleman, the former GOP senator who leads a major Republican Super PAC. The money spent on lobbying has been used to counter growing controversies surrounding the kingdom. When Nimr al-Nimr, a peaceful government critic, was executed in January, the Podesta Group helped the regime shape media coverage ... to smear Nimr as a “terrorist.” Other American consultants working for the Saudi Embassy used social media and other efforts to attack Nimr and justify the execution. The kingdom has relied on its media and lobbying apparatus to combat criticism of its human rights record, including the growing rate of executions and beheadings.

Note: Democracy for sale? Read more about Saudi Arabia's influential charm offensive. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about government corruption and the manipulation of public opinion.

An investigation into the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal cleared the BBC of wrongdoing Thursday, even as it painted a damning portrait of an institution where employees were afraid to raise even serious concerns about sexual misconduct for fear of upsetting celebrity talent or making the corporation look bad. Savile, a BBC television presenter and popular charity figure who died in October 2011, is believed to be one of Britain's most prolific sex offenders, often targeting minors. “Celebrities were treated with kid gloves and were virtually untouchable,” said Janet Smith, a former Court of Appeal judge who conducted the inquiry, describing a BBC culture of not wanting to “rock the boat.” Smith said 117 people at the BBC admitted they had heard rumors about Savile, who abused victims on BBC premises, including the venues where his programs “Top of the Pops” and “Jim'll Fix It” were shot. Smith's review said the Savile abuse incidents dated all the way back to 1959. She identified 72 victims of Savile, both male and female. One was only 8 years old. But girls who raised concerns about Savile were treated as a “nuisance.” In one case in 1969, a girl who was molested on the “Top of the Pops” program while standing next to Savile on the podium was “ejected from the building.” The inquiry also concluded that another BBC star, sports presenter Stuart Hall, 86, also used his celebrity to shield his activities, often plying his victims with alcohol. The Hall investigation ... found 21 victims.

Note: Watch an excellent segment by Australia's "60-Minutes" team titled "Spies, Lords and Predators" on a pedophile ring in the UK which leads directly to the highest levels of government. A second suppressed documentary, "Conspiracy of Silence," goes even deeper into this sad subject in the US. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.

The people who really run the world, it turns out, are perfectly capable of silencing the presses. Consider Postmedia, the biggest newspaper chain in the country. It is largely owned by an American hedge fund ... and editorial direction is dictated from corporate headquarters. Advertiser-controlled copy designed to resemble news [takes] up ever more prominent placement. Marty Baron ... took over the Boston Globe back in 2001, [and] ordered the newspaper's investigative unit to go after pedophile priests. The investigation took a year, and produced a scoop of historic proportion - proving church complicity in covering up heinous crimes. Fifteen years later, like most North American newspapers, the Boston Globe is hobbled and shrunken. Defiance has mostly given way to naked fear, as media managers, and not just in newspapers, desperately try to hold onto splintering audiences and plummeting revenue. Baron, now executive editor of the Washington Post, acknowledged the economic forces ripping the business to shreds. But, said Baron, news institutions must place principle ahead of metrics, or our core withers, and we become clickbait hustlers for corporate paymasters. "The greatest danger to a vigorous press today," he [said], "comes from ourselves."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corporate corruption and media manipulation.

Brazil’s government is considering tightening the guidelines it currently gives doctors, hospitals, and health care providers for when to report infants born with abnormally small heads, a move intended to reduce the number of false alarms that it has received in wake of the Zika epidemic gripping Brazil. In the last few months, the nation has been grappling with a growing surge in medical reports of microcephaly, a rare condition in which babies are born with unusually small heads. According to data released this week by the Ministry of Health, there have been 4,783 reported cases since October last year. Before that, the nation had about 150 annually. But how many of the babies actually have microcephaly - and whether the condition was caused by the Zika virus - is still far from clear. Of the cases examined so far, 404 have been confirmed as having microcephaly. Only 17 of them tested positive for the Zika virus. Another 709 babies have been ruled out as having microcephaly, according to the government, underscoring the risks of false positives making the epidemic appear larger than it actually is. The remaining 3,670 cases are still being investigated. As is often the case with global health epidemics, the numbers have caused confusion. Some have wondered if Brazil was overstating the extent of its health crisis.

Note: Another article describes a doctors group which has stated the increasing microcephaly may be caused by a larvacide. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the zika virus from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.

Before Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, and Edward Snowden, the intelligence whistleblower, there was Katharine Gun. The former GCHQ employee ... was a young Mandarin specialist at the British government’s eavesdropping agency in Cheltenham. In early 2003 she received an email asking her and her colleagues to help the US government spy on UN security council delegations in New York. It was a critical moment, as Washington was seeking UN backing for its invasion of Iraq. Gun decided the world had to know, whatever the cost to her life and career. She leaked the memo to the Observer and was arrested, lost her job and faced trial under the Official Secrets Act. Thirteen years later, as bloodshed continues in Iraq, the almost forgotten story is to be brought to a new audience in Official Secrets, a movie [that] will chart Gun’s unlikely bid – courageous self-sacrifice to supporters, treachery in the view of critics – to block George W Bush and Tony Blair’s march to war. Unlike many whistleblowers who leak thousands of documents after the event, Gun was intervening in an active operation and trying to stop a war. The US National Security Agency memo told employees of GCHQ to gather “the whole gamut of information that could give American policymakers an edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals or to head off surprises”. “I saw the email and my gut reaction was pretty instantaneous, that it was highly explosive information and that it should be out in the public domain,” she recalled.

Note: The US has spent several trillion dollars pursuing a policy of endless war since 9/11. Great Britain did not believe Iraq to be a global security threat, but backed the US-led invasion on this false pretense for political reasons. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.

The mosquito-borne Zika virus is drawing global attention. Earlier today, the head of the World Health Organization said Zika is "spreading explosively." Brazil has reported more than 4,000 cases of babies born recently with microcephaly, a brain condition characterized by an abnormally small head that can lead to developmental issues or even death. That number compares with fewer than 150 cases in the country for all of 2014. The virus is mainly a health concern for women who are pregnant and it does not have long-lasting effects on most people. The virus is primarily transmitted through the Aedes aegypti mosquito. So far there is limited evidence on whether Zika can be transferred from mother to child. ​But because of the rash of microcephaly cases in Brazil, which spiked after the first confirmed case of Zika, this maternal link is "strongly suspected" and being closely studied. Only one in five of those infected with Zika show symptoms, which develop up to one week after being bitten. Most symptoms are mild, and ... can be easily treated with rest and plenty of fluids. Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti told CBC News, "the one thing to make very clear is that Zika, once it's out of your body, it's gone. It's not something like Hepatitis B or HIV that can stay in your body forever. "Overall, Zika is a very mild illness apart from what we think might be happening in pregnant women."

Note: Lots more fear mongering with this latest virus. Yet there is actually very little risk, with the possible exception of pregnant mothers, and even this is being exaggerated. Remember, powerful people want to keep us in fear, as that makes it easier to manipulate us. The swine flu, avian flu and ebola are prime examples of supposed "doomsday diseases" that turned out to harm relatively few. For more on how these diseases were manipulated and who profited, see concise summaries of deeply revealing major media news articles from reliable sources on this.

Some Marketplace reports about vitamins and supplements published in November contained incorrect information, CBC has learned. Last fall, Marketplace commissioned lab testing for samples of fish oil, vitamin C and protein powder supplements to see if consumers are actually getting what they pay for. Based on those test results, Marketplace reported that Emergen-C and two protein powders: GNC Lean Shake 25 and Cytosport Muscle Milk failed to live up to label claims. However, subsequent re-testing of the samples has found that the lab results and analysis provided to Marketplace were incorrect, and that there is no evidence of problems with those products. The original lab tests were performed by an independent lab in Michigan, which is ISO-17025 accredited, registered with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and used by the supplement industry. The lab was recommended by Neil Thanedar, co-founder and CEO of LabDoor, a company that has products tested and makes those results public to help guide consumers about vitamins and supplements. CBC re-tested some of the products at other independent, accredited labs. None of them found problems with the samples. While Thanedar admits some of the lab results he provided to Marketplace were flawed, he was still unable to explain how the mistakes were made.

Note: Definitely something fishy going on here. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.

Ramadi was liberated today, but will anyone notice? The sad fact is that nothing that actually happens on the ground against Daesh (ISIS) is likely going to have a material effect on the culture of fear that has been created to infest the American psyche by so many people who should know so much better. A whopping 59% of Democrats are unhappy with the progress President Obama has made on the war on terror, along with 86% of Republicans and 69% of independents. What did anyone expect? Since the Paris shootings, and certainly since the shootings in San Bernardino, through the efforts of our leading television news stars, Daesh has been converted into the greatest threat to Western civilization since the Battle of Tours. They are supervillains with mad computer skillz and secret Muslim mind-tricks who can turn your children into implacable murder machines. If you want to see what losing the war on terror really looks like, don't look to the Middle East. Instead, watch the television commercials approved by the various Republican presidential candidates. The three Democratic candidates are better, but not by much. You can't win a "war" on terror any more than you can win a "war" on hate or a "war" on any other easily activated human emotion, if there are enough powerful institutions that can profit from its activation. It's really up to the rest of us ... to keep things in perspective about the genuine dangers and the fantastical ones by which other people profit.

Note: Explore powerful evidence that ISIS is aided and was possibly even created by covert US support. Watch this video which shows how the US and its allies stoke war in order to pad the pockets of mega-corporations which profit greatly from arms sales. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about the manipulation of public perception.

Today, FBI director James Comey said the San Bernardino shooters never talked openly about violent jihadism on social media: "So far, in this investigation we have found no evidence of posting on social media by either of them at that period in time and thereafter reflecting their commitment to jihador to martyrdom." So where did this notion come from, anyway? The answer is a New York Times story on Sunday headlined "U.S. Visa Process Missed San Bernardino Wife's Zealotry on Social Media." It told us that Tashfeen Malik "talked openly" on social media about jihad and that, "Had the authorities found the posts years ago, they might have kept her out of the country." The story was written by Matt Apuzzo, Michael Schmidt, and Julia Preston. Do those names sound familiar? They should. The first two were also the authors of July's epic fail claiming that Hillary Clinton was the target of a criminal referral over the mishandling of classified information in her private email system. In the end, virtually everything about the story turned out to be wrong. Clinton was not a target. The referral was not criminal. The emails in question had most likely not been classified at the time Clinton saw them. That's two strikes. Schmidt and Apuzzo either have some bad sources somewhere, or else they have one really bad source somewhere. And coincidentally or not, their source(s) have provided them with two dramatic but untrue scoops that make prominent Democrats look either corrupt or incompetent.

Note: A New York Times editor admitted that the NYT failed to accurately report the news after 9/11. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about the manipulation of public perception.

John Lydon has claimed he was banned from the BBC after speaking out against Jimmy Savile. The former Sex Pistol was referring to an interview he’d given in 1978, during which he had said that Savile was “into all sorts of seediness. We all know about it but we’re not allowed to talk about it." Speaking to Piers Morgan for his Life Stories show, he said: “I’m very, very bitter that the likes of Savile and the rest of them were allowed to continue. I did my bit, I said what I had to. But they didn’t air that.” He continued: “I found myself banned from BBC radio for quite a while, for my contentious behaviour. They wouldn’t state this directly; there’d be other excuses.” The band were already in the BBC’s bad books before Lydon’s Savile comments: God Save The Queen received a total ban on radio play from the corporation in May 1977. Lydon didn’t go into the specifics of what the ban entailed, although he said: “Weren’t I right? I think most kids wanted to go on [Savile's popular show] Top of the Pops, but we all knew what that cigar muncher was up to.”

Note: Watch an excellent segment by Australia's "60-Minutes" team "Spies, Lords and Predators" on a pedophile ring in the UK which leads directly to the highest levels of government. A second suppressed documentary, "Conspiracy of Silence," goes even deeper into this topic in the US. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.

The New York Times today has a truly bizarre article regarding the U.S. and cluster bombs. The Paper of Record [claims the U.S.] government, though refusing to sign the cluster ban treaty, has nonetheless “abided by its provisions.” This claim is totally false. The U.S. has long been and remains one of the world’s most aggressive suppliers of cluster munitions, and has used those banned weapons itself in devastating ways. In December 2009 - just weeks after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize - President Obama ordered a cruise missile strike (that) “killed 35 women and children.” Among the munitions used in that strike were cluster bombs. Although the U.S. at first refused to confirm responsibility, a Yemeni journalist, Abdulelah Haider Shaye, visited the scene and found irrefutable proof that it was done by the U.S., a finding subsequently confirmed. Obama ... then forced the imprisonment for years of the Yemeni journalist who reported it. Under the treaty which The Paper of Record today claimed the U.S. honors: "Each State Party undertakes never under any circumstances to: (a) Use cluster munitions; (b) Develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile, retain or transfer to anyone, directly or indirectly, cluster munitions; (c) Assist, encourage or induce anyone to engage in any activity prohibited to a State Party under this Convention. The U.S. does not occasionally violate one of those provisions. It continually violates all of them, systematically and as a matter of policy.

Note: The international trade in cluster bombs is funded by major banks. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.

The Oscar-winning documentary film-maker Laura Poitras is suing the US government. Poitras, 51, said she had been held at borders more than 50 times between 2006 and 2012, often for hours at a time. At various times she alleges being told by officials that she was on a “no fly” list, having her electronic equipment confiscated ... and being threatened with handcuffs for taking notes. The latter incident took place when she was working on a film about the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Poitras [is] launching the legal action "because the government uses the US border to bypass the rule of law,” said the film-maker. She was repeatedly stopped until 2012, when the journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote an article about her experiences. Poitras’s reporting on the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, along with work by Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Barton Gellman contributed to the Pulitzer prize for public service won jointly by the Washington Post and the Guardian in 2014. Her film on Snowden, Citizenfour, won the 2015 Oscar for best documentary. The director is being represented by lawyers from digital-rights advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “The well-documented difficulties Ms Poitras experienced while traveling strongly suggest that she was improperly targeted by federal agencies as a result of her journalistic activities,” senior counsel David Sobel told the Intercept. “Those agencies are now attempting to conceal information that would shed light on tactics that appear to have been illegal.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in the intelligence community and attempts to manipulate mass media.

Three days after the New York Times revealed that the U.S. government was secretly monitoring the calls and emails of people inside the United States without court-approved warrants, the National Security Agency issued a top-secret assessment of the damage done to intelligence efforts by the story. The conclusion: the information could lead terrorists to try to evade detection. Yet the agency gave no specific examples of investigations that had been jeopardized. The December 2005 bombshell story, by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, set off a debate about the George W. Bush administration's expansion of spying powers after the 9/11 attacks, and also about the Times editors' decision to delay its publication for a year. White House officials had warned the Times that revealing the program would have grave consequences for national security. "To this day we've never seen any evidence – despite all the claims they made to keep us from publishing – that it did any tangible damage to national security, " Lichtblau told The Intercept. "The reality was that the story ... didn't tell terrorists anything that they didn't know," he said. The NSA's damage assessment on the article ... is among the files provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The memo recounts meetings in 2004 and 2005 in which administration officials disclosed "certain details of the special program to select individuals from the New York Times to dissuade them from publishing a story on the program at that time."

Note: You can read the revealing memo mentioned at the link above. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on civil liberties from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Media Information Center.

Last week in the Boston area, a 26-year-old black Muslim man was shot and killed by agents of the FBI and Boston Police Department. A surveillance video ... was finally released on Monday. It’s virtually impossible to know what happened from this highly touted video, other than the fact that [Usaamah] Rahim appears to have been walking peacefully when he was approached by multiple individuals, wearing no police uniforms, in a threatening, military-style formation. Rahim’s family issued a statement detailing the numerous questions raised by the video. Early reports claimed that there was a third conspirator beyond Rahim and [his nephew and accused co-conspirator David] Wright. The FBI affidavit filed against Wright repeatedly references a “third person” who plotted with Rahim and Wright and met with them. Yet there has been no further mention of this “third person,” and apparently no arrest of him. Why not? Is that third person an FBI informant? Is this yet another case where the director and prime mover of a scary “terror plot” is in fact the FBI itself. What basis exists for the highly inflammatory claim that Rahim was “linked to” or “inspired by” ISIS? He was not only wary of being set up by the FBI, but specifically said he was “preaching AGAINST violence and terrorism.” As AP noted, on social media Rahim “spoke out against the kind of violence Islamic State extremists are fomenting across the Middle East,” and “made none of the violent calls to arms many supporters of armed extremist groups espouse on social media.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about the erosion of civil liberties and the manipulation of public perception.

Last week, WikiLeaks disturbed many journalists with an initiative to crowd-source a $100,000 “bounty” on the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. In traditional newsrooms, the idea of offering a cash incentive for the leaking of confidential documents is anathema. But WikiLeaks ... leaves us no choice but to reconsider this prohibition. The TPP exceeds agreements like Nafta in scope and scale and involves far-reaching foreign policy decisions. Its measures will touch the lives of every citizen in the 12 countries expected to sign the pact. Chapters already leaked suggest that the deal restricts fair use of copyrighted material, expands medical patents and weakens public policies that govern net neutrality. Members of Congress can read the text in a secure room but cannot discuss its contents publicly. Representatives from about 600 private corporations are said to have access to the document. Yet the public is excluded. WikiLeaks has arrived at a flawed solution to a very real problem. We have reached a point in the evolution of global democracy at which secrecy and transparency are grotesquely imbalanced. Right now, the bounty may be the best shot we have at transforming the TPP process from a back-room deal to an open debate. But we need a better system to discourage unjustified secrecy, to protect sources and to encourage public-interest whistle-blowing.

Note: The Trans-Pacific Partnership may be a pending disaster. But we do not know for sure, because its contents remain secret. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in government and in the corporate world.

Last week, FAIR noticed that not one major media organization in the United States has covered the charge, reported in Colombia, “that US military soldiers and contractors had sexually abused at least fifty-four children in Colombia between 2003 and 2007 and, in all cases, the rapists were never punished–either in Colombia or stateside–due to American military personnel being immune from prosecution under diplomatic immunity agreements.” One of the rapes ... was allegedly committed by Army sergeant Michael J. Coen and an employee of a private security contractor, César Ruiz. The victim was a 12-year-old girl. They abducted her, they drugged her, they took her to the air base near the town of Melgar and raped her, they took videos of her. Colombian prosecutors issued arrest warrants [that] were “not executed because of the immunity of Coen and Ruiz.” Under a series of treaties ... members of the US military stationed in Colombia are immune from prosecution. That immunity has since been extended to private security firms. Another serious sexual assault that, like the rape described above, was covered by the Colombian press, both in print and on TV, but ignored in the United States: in 2004, “53 underage girls were sexually abused by mercenaries, who filmed and sold the tapes as pornographic material.” The private security firm involved [was identified as] DynCorp, a Virginia-based contractor.

Note: Dyncorp is only slightly less infamous than Blackwater, having been involved in numerous international outrages, including a child sex slavery ring in Bosnia in 1999. Explore powerful evidence from a suppressed Discovery Channel documentary showing that child sexual abuse scandals reach to the highest levels of government. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.

The outrageous legal attack on WikiLeaks and its staffers ... is an attack on freedom of the press itself. WikiLeaks has had their Twitter accounts secretly spied on, been forced to forfeit most of their funding after credit card companies unilaterally cut them off, had the FBI place an informant inside their news organization, watched their supporters hauled before a grand jury, and been the victim of the UK spy agency GCHQ hacking of their website and spying on their readers. Now we’ve learned that, as The Guardian reported on Sunday, the Justice Department got a warrant in 2012 to seize the contents – plus the metadata on emails received, sent, drafted and deleted – of three WikiLeaks’ staffers personal Gmail accounts. The tactics used against WikiLeaks by the Justice Department in their war on leaks [are] also used against mainstream news organizations. For example, after the Washington Post revealed in 2013 the Justice Department had gotten a warrant for the personal Gmail account of Fox News reporter James Rosen in 2010 without his knowledge. Despite the ongoing legal pressure, WikiLeaks has continued to publish important documents in the public interest.

Note: In recent years, Wikileaks' radical transparency has made draft texts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership public, and uncovered a secret CIA report that suggests the US government’s policy of assassinating foreign 'terrorists' does more harm than good. So who is the real problem here?

Former CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson has sued the Justice Department over the hacking of her computers, officially accusing the Obama administration of illegal surveillance while she was reporting on administration scandals. In a series of legal filings that seek $35 million in damages, Attkisson alleges that three separate computer forensic exams showed that hackers used sophisticated methods to surreptitiously monitor her work between 2011 and 2013. The intruders installed and periodically refreshed software to steal data and obtain passwords on her home and work computers. She also charges that the hackers monitored her audio using a Skype account. The award-winning reporter says she and her attorneys have "pretty good evidence" that these efforts were "connected" to the Justice Department. She said she was caught in a "Catch-22," forcing her to use the lawsuit and an administrative complaint to discover more about the surveillance through the discovery process and to learn the identities of the "John Does" named in the complaints. Attkisson learned through a Freedom of Information request that the FBI opened an investigation of the hacking case in May 2013, but says the bureau never interviewed her or even notified her of the probe. Attkisson resigned from CBS last March after complaining that she was increasingly unable to get her investigative stories on the air. She has published a best-selling book, "Stonewalled," about her battles against the network and the administration.

Note: Fox News was the only major media to cover this important case. Read a judge's supportive comments about this important case on Ms. Attkisson's website. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about government corruption and the disappearance of privacy.

The identity of the Sony hackers is still unknown. President Obama, in a December 19 press conference, announced: “We can confirm that North Korea engaged in this attack.” He then vowed: “We will respond. We cannot have a society in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the United States.” The ... campaign to blame North Korea actually began two days earlier, when The New York Times [reported] that North Korea was ‘centrally involved’ in the hacking of Sony Pictures computers. The same day, The Washington Post ... devoted most of its discussion to the “retaliation” available to the U.S. The NYT and Post [did not note] how sparse and unconvincing was the available evidence against North Korea. The day before Obama’s press conference, long-time expert Marc Rogers detailed his reasons for viewing the North Korea theory as “unlikely”; after Obama’s definitive accusation, he comprehensively reviewed the disclosed evidence and was even more assertive: “there is NOTHING here that directly implicates the North Koreans” and “the evidence is flimsy and speculative at best.” None of this expert skepticism made its way into countless media accounts of the Sony hack. North Korea was [reported to be] responsible for the hack, because the government said it was. That kind of reflexive embrace of government claims is ... dangerous [because such] claims can serve as a pretext for U.S. aggression.

Note: Read the complete article above to see why Glen Greenwald compares this propaganda campaign with the run-up to the Iraq War and the Gulf of Tonkin fraud. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about mass media deception from reliable sources.

Cybersecurity experts are questioning the FBI's claim that North Korea is responsible for the hack that crippled Sony Pictures. Kurt Stammberger, a senior vice president with cybersecurity firm Norse, told CBS News his company has data that doubts some of the FBI's findings. While Norse is not involved in the Sony case, it has done its own investigation. "We are very confident that this was not an attack master-minded by North Korea and that insiders were key to the implementation of one of the most devastating attacks in history," said Stammberger. He says Norse data is pointing towards a woman who calls herself "Lena" and claims to be connected with the so-called "Guardians of Peace" hacking group. Norse believes it's identified this woman as someone who worked at Sony in Los Angeles for ten years until leaving the company this past May. "There are certainly North Korean fingerprints on this but when we run all those leads to ground they turn out to be decoys or red herrings," said Stammberger. For instance while the malware used to attack Sony has been used by North Korea before, it is also used by hackers around the world every day. It's worth noting that the original demand of the hackers was for money from Sony in exchange for not releasing embarrassing information. There was no mention of the movie "The Interview." The FBI is still continuing its investigation into the Sony hack.

Note: There appears to be much more to the Sony hacking than meets the eye. Read a wired.com article showing among other things that both Sony and the FBI deny the North Korea connection.

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.