Media Manipulation News Stories

Excerpts of Key Media Manipulation News Stories in Major Media

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The former opinion editor of the New York Times, James Bennet, took his former employer to task recently in a lengthy essay. The headline of the piece boldly asserted that the New York Times has "lost its way." Inasmuch as the newspaper represents professional expectations and standards for the entire journalism world, Bennet could be translated as saying the broader news industry has also lost its way. The Times is just the largest float at the front of a parade heading in the wrong direction. Public sentiment about the news industry as a whole is at dismal levels. Gallup polling shows Americans' confidence in the news media to report in a "full, fair and accurate way" is at historically low levels. Given this lack of trust, it only stands to reason that Americans are less likely to follow the news at all. There is no need to consume news from sources one can't trust. Journalists rank near the bottom of public ratings of professions in terms of ethics and honesty. Activism has replaced journalism's former mission to provide fact-based information on which citizens can manage their lives and hold the powerful accountable. Of course, opinion and analysis have always been a part of journalism. But there has long been a sense in the journalism profession that such activist content was to be confined to designated sections, and that the news was to be fact-driven and balanced. Fairness is a skill that journalists once prided themselves on achieving.

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In early 2024, a new, grim chapter may be written in the annals of journalistic history. Julian Assange, the publisher of Wikileaks, could board a plane for extradition to the United States, where he faces up to 175 years in prison on espionage charges for the crime of publishing newsworthy information. The persecution of Assange is clear evidence that the Biden administration is overseeing the silent death of the First Amendment–with global consequences. Wikileaks exposed not only civilian casualties, torture, and other human rights abuses through projects such as the Iraq War Logs, but also published documents that offer invaluable insight into conflicts still raging today. For example, cables released by Wikileaks in the 2010 Cablegate leaks show Israel's policy towards Gaza in the years following Hamas's election victory in 2006. According to the cable, Israel determined that Hamas's rise in Gaza would benefit them as it would allow the Israeli military to "deal with Gaza as a hostile state" and so turned down a Palestinian Authority request for assistance in defeating Hamas. Israeli policy to blockaded Gaza was to "keep the Gazan economy functioning at the lowest possible level consistent with avoiding humanitarian crisis." The application of the Espionage Act in the US sets a chilling precedent that reverberates far beyond Assange's individual fate. The struggle for press freedom is ongoing.

Note: The US prosecution of Assange undermines press freedom. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.

A whistleblower has come forward with an explosive new trove of documents. They describe the activities of an "anti-disinformation" group called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, or CTIL, that officially began as the volunteer project of data scientists and defense and intelligence veterans but whose tactics over time appear to have been absorbed into ... those of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In 2019, US and UK military and intelligence contractors ... developed the sweeping censorship framework. CTIL ... partnered with [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency] (CISA) in the spring of 2020. CTIL's approach to "disinformation" went far beyond censorship. The group engaged in offensive operations to influence public opinion, discussing ways to promote "counter-messaging," co-opt hashtags, dilute disfavored messaging, create sock puppet accounts, and infiltrate private invite-only groups. The ambitions of the 2020 pioneers of the Censorship Industrial Complex went far beyond simply urging Twitter to slap a warning label on Tweets, or to put individuals on blacklists. The [Adversarial Misinformation and Influence Tactics and Techniques] framework calls for discrediting individuals as a necessary prerequisite of demanding censorship against them. It calls for training influencers to spread messages. And it calls for trying to get banks to cut off financial services to individuals who organize rallies or events. [CTIL] laments that governments and corporate media no longer have full  control of information. "For a long time, the ability to reach mass audiences belonged to the nation-state (e.g. in the USA via broadcast licensing through ABC, CBS and NBC). Now, however, control of informational instruments has been allowed to devolve to large technology companies who have been blissfully complacent and complicit in facilitating access to the public for information operators at a fraction of what it would have cost them by other means."

Note: The extensive collusion between Big Tech and government officials to censor COVID information is barely beginning to come to light. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.

A second whistleblower has come forward with Slack messages showing far greater government and military involvement in the Cyber Threat Intelligence League (CTIL) than we had previously discovered. The CTIL Slack "disinformation" channel and the "law enforcement escalation" channel included current and former FBI employees, as well as personnel from the Michigan Cyber Command Center, the US Defense Digital Service (DDS), and at least one European government. Some of the military's involvement in censoring information and shaping opinion has been out in the open. In 2017, the DOD added "information" as the seventh joint function of the military. With the addition of "information" as a function of defense, DOD effectively declared that citizens' perceptions, attitudes, decisions, and behaviors were subject to military scrutiny and manipulation. The Censorship Industrial Complex ... aims to undermine and denigrate populist actors and movements through allegations that anti-government sentiment is linked to hate, conspiracy theories, or Russia. Supposed attempts to stop "disinformation" are really attempts to prevent opposition and challenges to the international political and military order. The new files suggest that the US and UK military and intelligence officials and contractors created the Censorship Industrial Complex's to defeat populist sentiment, not just individuals.

Note: The extensive collusion between Big Tech and government officials to censor COVID information is barely beginning to come to light. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.

The Moderna misinformation reports, reported here for the first time, reveal what the pharmaceutical company is willing to do to shape public discourse around its marquee product. The mRNA COVID-19 vaccine catapulted the company to a $100 billion valuation. Behind the scenes, the marketing arm of the company has been working with former law enforcement officials and public health officials to monitor and influence vaccine policy. Key to this is a drug industry-funded NGO called Public Good Projects. PGP works closely with social media platforms, government agencies and news websites to confront the "root cause of vaccine hesitancy" by rapidly identifying and "shutting down misinformation." A network of 45,000 healthcare professionals are given talking points "and advice on how to respond when vaccine misinformation goes mainstream", according to an email from Moderna. An official training programme, developed by Moderna and PGP, alongside the American Board of Internal Medicine, [helps] healthcare workers identify medical misinformation. The online course, called the "Infodemic Training Program", represents an official partnership between biopharma and the NGO world. Meanwhile, Moderna also retains Talkwalker which uses its "Blue Silk" artificial intelligence to monitor vaccine-related conversations across 150 million websites in nearly 200 countries. Claims are automatically deemed "misinformation" if they encourage vaccine hesitancy. As the pandemic abates, Moderna is, if anything, ratcheting up its surveillance operation.

Note: Strategies to silence and censor those who challenge mainstream narratives enable COVID vaccine pharmaceutical giants to downplay the significant, emerging health risks associated with the COVID shots. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

Meta's top executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, ignored warnings for years about harms to teens on its platforms such as Instagram, a company whistleblower told a Senate subcommittee. Meta instead fosters a culture of "see no evil, hear no evil" that overlooks evidence of harm internally while publicly presenting carefully crafted metrics to downplay the issue, said Arturo Bejar, an ex-Facebook engineering director and consultant. Bejar is the latest former insider to level public allegations that the tech giant knowingly turns a blind eye to problems that its policies and technology cannot cheaply or easily address. [Bejar] first became motivated to study the issue because of unwanted sexual advances his own 14-year-old daughter received from strangers on Instagram. "It is unacceptable that a 13-year-old girl gets propositioned on social media," Bejar testified, citing a statistic from his research finding that more than 25% of 13-to-15-year-olds have reported receiving unwanted sexual advances on Instagram. Lawmakers on Tuesday ripped into the social media giant. "They hid from this committee and all of Congress evidence of the harms that they knew was credible," said ... Sen. Richard Blumenthal. Missouri Republican Josh Hawley blasted Big Tech companies for spending "gobs" of money ... to thwart bills that would restrict the industry's power. He also accused Meta of "cooking the books" on data related to mental health harms.

Note: Read how Instagram connects a vast pedophile network. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.

Ever since Israel responded to Hamas's atrocities with a vicious onslaught that has killed more than 8,000 Palestinians there has been an attempt to silence, intimidate and harass Palestinian sympathisers. Inevitably, it is Palestinians who suffer the brunt of a campaign to stigmatise even the most basic opposition to the mass slaughter of their people. Viet Thanh Nguyen, the son of refugees and a sympathiser with other displaced people, had a talk at the 92nd Street Y centre in New York postponed after he signed an open letter demanding an "end to the violence and destruction in Palestine". What of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, whose longstanding conference in Houston was cancelled following the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce describing the event as "a conference for Hamas supporters"? The Hilton cited security concerns as the reason for the cancellation. The keynote speaker, Rashida Tlaib, the first ever elected Palestinian-American congresswoman, has been targeted by a Republican smear campaign, with an attempt to censure her for "antisemitic activity" and "sympathising with terrorist organisations" – all baseless attacks. Meanwhile, MSNBC reportedly stopped three of its Muslim broadcasters from presenting their shows, with no explanation. The broadcaster claimed any change in programming as "coincidental". This intimidation has deadly consequences: it undermines public pressure on Israel's western allies to stop the slaughter and end the occupation.

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

Last month, a multi-party delegation of Australian Members of Parliament visited the United States to actively lobby U.S. officials to cease their efforts to extradite Julian Assange. The founder of Wikileaks is an Australian citizen facing charges filed by the Trump administration under the infamous Espionage Act of 1917 for revealing US war crimes and violations of international law. The revelations were called "Cable gate," a set of 251,000 confidential cables from the US State Department that disclosed corruption, diplomatic scandals and spy affairs on an international scale. On January 4, 2021, British criminal court judge Vanessa Baraister denied the US government's request to extradite Assange. Given the fact that he had been confined in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years and then held in the Balmarsh high-security prison since April 12, 2019, the judge found that Assange's mental condition "is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America." The Biden DOJ appealed that ruling and convinced the British higher courts to reverse Judge Baraister. As a result, Assange is now subject to extradition unless his further legal appeals can prevail. For Australians, securing the release of Assange is broadly supported by a coalition that transcends partisan politics. The Australian delegation last month included members of Parliament from the majority Labor Party, the conservative opposition, the Greens, the National party, and an independent party.

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

In March of 2021 a nonprofit group called the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) released a report about online misinformation. Founded [by] Imran Ahmed, the CCDH ... provides the White House with a powerful weapon to use against critics including RFK Jr. and [Elon] Musk, while also pressuring platforms like Facebook and Twitter to enforce the administration's policies. One rumor that came up ... is that [Ahmed] works for British intelligence. "There's nothing surprising about this," said Mike Benz, a former State Department official who now runs the Foundation for Freedom Online, a free-speech watchdog. "This is not the first rodeo of British and U.S. intelligence services creating a cutout for the purpose of influencing the online news economy, to rig public debate in favor of political speech that supports agency agendas." CCDH's ... chairman is Simon Clark, a former senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a D.C. think tank aligned with the corporate arm of the Democratic Party. One might conclude that CCDH functions as an arm of the corporate wing of the Democratic Party, to be deployed against the perceived enemies of corporate Democrats, whether they come from the left or the right. Clark was also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensics Lab. "The Atlantic Council, in the past several years, has had seven CIA directors on its board of directors or board of advisers," said Benz. "And it's one of the premier architects of online censorship."

Note: Read an excellent piece on what gave rise to the modern censorship regime. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.

A federal court of appeals ruled earlier this month that the White House, surgeon general, CDC and FBI "likely violated the First Amendment" by exerting a pressure campaign on social media companies to censor COVID-19 skeptics – including Stanford epidemiologist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine, economics and health research policy at Stanford University, co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration in the fall of 2020 with professors from Harvard and Oxford. The epidemiologists advocated for "focused protection" – safeguarding the most vulnerable Americans while cautiously allowing others to function as normally as possible – rather than broad pandemic lockdowns. "We were just acting as scientists, but almost immediately we were censored," said Bhattacharya. "Google de-boosted us. Our Facebook page was removed. It was just a crazy time. "The kinds of things that the federal government was telling social media companies to censor included us – along with millions of other posts from countless other people who were criticizing government COVID policy," he added. A New Orleans-based three-judge panel found that the federal government "likely coerced or significantly encouraged social-media platforms to moderate content" by vaguely threatening adverse regulatory consequences if social media companies did not suppress certain viewpoints on the pandemic.

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

At the heart of America's political and cultural turmoil is a crisis of trust. In the space of a generation, the people's confidence in their leaders and their most important institutions to do the right thing has collapsed. The federal government, big business, the media, education, science and medicine, technology, religious institutions, law enforcement and others have seen a precipitous decline. Since 1979 Gallup has measured trust among the public in the most important American institutions. Its latest survey ... found that across the nine key institutions Gallup has tracked consistently, the proportion of Americans who said they had "a great deal or quite a lot of confidence" averaged out at 26%. That is the lowest figure ever recorded. Some institutions have forfeited more trust than others. In 1979 Gallup found that 51% of Americans had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers. This year the number was 18%. The biggest factor driving mistrust ... is surely the widening cultural gap between the people who have led and thrived in our major institutions and the rest of the population. The past 20 years have seen the rapid emergence of a new elite–expensively educated, versed in progressive nostrums, increasingly distant from and disdainful of the rest of America and its values. This crowd comprises much of the nation's permanent government classes, almost its entire academic establishment, most of the people who control its news and cultural output, and a good deal of its corporate elite.

Note: About half of Americans lost faith in the scientific community after this "new elite" repeatedly misled the public on issues related to the pandemic. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and media manipulation from reliable sources.

The Biden administration likely infringed upon the First Amendment when it leaned on social media companies to remove false or misleading COVID-19 content, a federal court of appeals ruled Friday – narrowing a bombshell district court order that barred several officials and agencies from communicating with the platforms. The White House, surgeon general, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI "likely coerced or significantly encouraged social-media platforms to moderate content" and in doing so, "likely violated the First Amendment," the New Orleans-based Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals determined. The three-judge panel, however, adjusted the scope of US District Judge Terry Doughty's July 4 order ... removing officials from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the State Department from the injunction. The Fifth Circuit vacated nine of the 10 provisions in Doughty's order that prevented Biden administration officials from "urging, encouraging, pressuring" or "inducing" social media companies from removing content. Similarly, the appeals court determined that "following up with social-media companies" about content moderation, "requesting content reports from social-media companies" or asking platforms to "Be on The Lookout" for certain types of material does not violate individuals' First Amendment rights. 

Note: Many posts that were censored contained factual information on COVID-related issues. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and media manipulation from reliable sources.

Leading up to the August Republican presidential primary debate ... An RNC official told Google via email that the debate would be streaming exclusively on the upstart video platform Rumble. The August 23 debate was broadcast on Fox News and streamed on Fox Nation, which requires a subscription, while Rumble was the only one to stream it for free. On the day of and during the debate, however, potential viewers who searched Google for "GOP debate stream" were returned links to YouTube, Fox News, and news articles about the debate, according to screen recordings. Rumble was nowhere on the first page. For Rumble, which is currently in discovery in an antitrust lawsuit against Google in California, this is a case of Google suppressing its competitors in favor of its own product, YouTube. YouTube is owned by Google, and it has regularly been the subject of anticompetitive allegations from rivals, who charge that Google unfairly and illegally favors YouTube in its search algorithm. Google, in fact, is in the middle of a landmark antitrust trial, charged with anticompetitive practices by the Department of Justice. The company would not have been required by antitrust law to promote [Rumble's] link. It would, however, be barred from suppressing the competitor's link from organic results. The fact that Rumble's link did not appear on the first page even though it was the most relevant link the search could return means either the search engine failed at its task or the link was suppressed.

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

The New York Times tried to block a web crawler that was affiliated with the famous Internet Archive. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has long been used to compare webpages as they are updated over time, clearly delineating the differences between two iterations of any given page. Several years ago, the archive added a feature called "Changes" that lets users compare two archived versions of a website from different dates or times on a single display. The tool can be used to uncover changes in news stories that have been made without any accompanying editorial notes, so-called stealth edits. The Times has, in the past, faced public criticisms over some of its stealth edits. In a notorious 2016 incident, the paper revised an article about then-Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. ... drastically after publication – changing the tone from one of praise to skepticism. More recently, the Times stealth-edited an article that originally listed "death" as one of six ways "you can still cancel your federal student loan debt." Following the edit, the "death" section title was changed to a more opaque heading of "debt won't carry on." A service called NewsDiffs – which provides a similar comparative service but focuses on news outlets such as the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, and others – has also chronicled a long list of significant examples of articles that have undergone stealth edits, though the service appears to not have been updated in several years.

Note: The manipulation of media coverage for Bernie Sanders' campaign was widespread, as discussed in an WantToKnow.info interview with media activist Tony Brasunas. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.

Google fought hard to be the default search engine on smartphones and browsers so it "can manipulate your choices," an expert on human behavior testified for the government at the closely watched antitrust trial. Antonio Rangel, a behavioral economist ... took the stand for the second day and said Google has leaned heavily on default settings to keep users hooked on its search engine and other lucrative services. The Justice Department is arguing ... that the Alphabet unit sought agreements with mobile carriers to win powerful default positions on smartphones to dominate search. The antitrust case – the largest of its kind in more than two decades – will ultimately hinge on whether Google is determined to have taken anticompetitive steps to cut off rivals while building its search behemoth. In testimony on Wednesday, Rangel questioned Google's argument that users could easily switch their default search engine, telling the court that he acquired an Android smartphone and found that it took 10 steps for the owner to switch Google for Microsoft's Bing. "That is considerable choice friction," Rangel said. Justice Department attorneys said Google paid "more than $10 billion per year" to major companies, including smartphone makers Apple and Samsung, browser operators like Mozilla and wireless providers such as AT&T, to secure a 91% share of the search market. The case's outcome won't be determined by a jury. Instead, US District Judge Amit Mehta will reach a determination on the outcome.

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

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.

When I began my journalism career in Chicago in the 1980s, there were still some old crusty working-class guys around the newsroom. Now we're not only a college-dominated profession; we're an elite-college-dominated profession. Only 0.8 percent of college students graduate from the super-elite 12 schools (the Ivy League colleges, plus Stanford, M.I.T., Duke and the University of Chicago). A 2018 study found that more than 50 percent of the staff writers at the beloved New York Times and The Wall Street Journal attended one of the 29 most elite universities in the nation. Members of our class also segregate ourselves into a few booming metro areas. In 2020, Biden won only 500 or so counties, but together they are responsible for 71 percent of the American economy. Trump won over 2,500 counties, responsible for only 29 percent. Like all elites, we use language and mores as tools to recognize one another and exclude others. Using words like "problematic," "cisgender," "Latinx" and "intersectional" is a sure sign that you've got cultural capital. Meanwhile, members of the less-educated classes have to walk on eggshells because they never know when we've changed the usage rules so that something that was sayable five years ago now gets you fired. Does this mean that I think the people in my class are vicious and evil? No. Most of us are earnest, kind and public-spirited. But we take for granted and benefit from systems that have become oppressive.

Note: Watch an excellent interview of journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon discussing how journalism has shifted from being a working class trade that held the powerful accountable to an elite industry that serves the upper class. She articulates that mainstream news has abandoned and divided the working class by creating a culture war around identity and race. Elites shaping the news industry benefit from this political polarization, which hides the tragic reality of income inequality that affect all races across political lines.

This week, Rep. Byron Donald (R-Fla.) tried to do the impossible. After he and his colleagues presented a labyrinth of LLC shell companies and accounts used to funnel as much as $10 million to Biden family members, Donald tried to induce the press to show some interest in the massive corruption scandal. "For those in the press, this easy pickings & Pulitzer-level stuff right here," he pleaded. Despite showing nine Biden family members allegedly receiving funds from corrupt figures in Romania, China and other countries, The New Republic quickly ran a story headlined "Republicans Finally Admit They Have No Incriminating Evidence on Joe Biden." For many of us, it was otherworldly. A decade ago, when then-Vice President Joe Biden was denouncing corruption in Romania and Ukraine and promising action by the United States, massive payments were flowing to his son Hunter Biden and a variety of family members, including Biden grandchildren. The brilliance of the Biden team was that it invested the media in this scandal at the outset by burying the laptop story as "Russian disinformation" before the election. That was, of course, false, but it took two years for most major media outlets to admit that the laptop was authentic. But the media then ignored what was on that "authentic laptop." Hundreds of emails detailed potentially criminal conduct and raw influence peddling in foreign countries. The media simply fails to see the story.

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

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