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Excerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of little-known, yet highly revealing news articles from the media. Links are provided to the full news articles for verification. If any link fails to function, read this webpage. These articles are listed by order of importance. You can also explore these articles listed by order of the date of the news article or by the date posted. By choosing to educate ourselves, we can build a brighter future.

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.

Ford Motor Company is just one of many automakers advancing technology that weaponizes cars for mass surveillance. The ... company is currently pursuing a patent for technology that would allow vehicles to monitor the speed of nearby cars, capture images, and transmit data to law enforcement agencies. This would effectively turn vehicles into mobile surveillance units, sharing detailed information with both police and insurance companies. Ford's initiative is part of a broader trend among car manufacturers, where vehicles are increasingly used to spy on drivers and harvest data. In today's world, a smartphone can produce up to 3 gigabytes of data per hour, but recently manufactured cars can churn out up to 25 gigabytes per hour–and the cars of the future will generate even more. These vehicles now gather biometric data such as voice, iris, retina, and fingerprint recognition. In 2022, Hyundai patented eye-scanning technology to replace car keys. This data isn't just stored locally; much of it is uploaded to the cloud, a system that has proven time and again to be incredibly vulnerable. Toyota recently announced that a significant amount of customer information was stolen and posted on a popular hacking site. Imagine a scenario where hackers gain control of your car. As cybersecurity threats become more advanced, the possibility of a widespread attack is not far-fetched.

Note: FedEx is helping the police build a large AI surveillance network to track people and vehicles. Michael Hastings, a journalist investigating U.S. military and intelligence abuses, was killed in a 2013 car crash that may have been the result of a hack. For more along these lines, explore summaries of news articles on the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

In December of 2002, Sharyl Attkisson, an Emmy-winning investigative reporter for CBS News, had an unsettling interview with smallpox expert Jonathan Tucker. In a post-9/11 world, with fears of terrorists using a long-eradicated disease like smallpox as a bioweapon, the US was preparing to bring back the smallpox inoculation program. But to Tucker, the very idea was "agonizing," writes Attkisson. Why? Because it involved "weighing the risk of a possible terrorist use of smallpox ... against the known risks of the vaccine," Tucker told the author. "A ‘toxic' vaccine?" She writes. "Didn't the smallpox vaccine save the world?" But as she soon discovered, it had serious side effects, including a surprisingly high possibility of death. Attkisson witnessed firsthand how deadly the vaccine could be in April of 2003, when a colleague at NBC, journalist David Bloom, died from deep vein thrombosis while on assignment in Iraq. He'd also recently been vaccinated for smallpox, and ... thrombosis was a possible side effect of the inoculation. The majority of scientific studies are funded and even dictated by drug companies. "Studies that could stand to truly solve our most consequential health problems aren't done if they don't ultimately advance a profitable pill or injection," Attkisson writes. "These aren't necessarily drugs designed to make us well, but ones we'll ‘need' for life," writes Attkisson. Some [drug companies] hire "ghostwriters" to author studies promoting a new drug, exaggerating benefits and downplaying risks, and then paying a doctor or medical expert to sign their name to it. "We exist largely in an artificial reality brought to you by the makers of the latest pill or injection," she writes. "It's a reality where invisible forces work daily to hype fears about certain illnesses, and exaggerate the supposed benefits of treatments and cures."

Note: Top leaders in the field of medicine and science have spoken out about the rampant corruption and conflicts of interest in those industries. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.

Days after the French government arrested Pavel Durov, CEO of the encrypted messaging app Telegram, for failing to monitor and restrict communications as demanded by officials in Paris, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that his company, which owns Facebook, was subjected to censorship pressures by U.S. officials. Durov's arrest, then, stands as ... part of a concerted effort by governments, including those of nominally free countries, to control speech. Durov's alleged crime is offering encrypted communications services to everybody, including those who engage in illegality or just anger the powers that be. If bad people occasionally use encrypted apps such as Telegram, they use phones and postal services, too. The qualities that make communications systems useful to those battling authoritarianism are also helpful to those with less benign intentions. There's no way to offer security to one group without offering it to everybody. Given that Telegram was founded by a free speech champion who fled his home country after refusing to monitor and censor speech for the authorities, it's very easy to suspect that Pavel Durov has run afoul of authoritarians operating under a different flag. The Twitter Files and the Facebook Files revealed serious pressure brought to bear by the U.S. government on social media companies to stifle dissenting views and inconvenient (to the political class) news stories.

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

The arrest of Telegram's founder and the takedown of Simply Bitcoin's Youtube channel for violating Youtube's "harmful and dangerous" policy ... speaks to the power of corporations to mediate the reach of speech. French authorities have claimed that Durov was arrested, for among other things, providing "cryptology" tools. States couch their control of virtual space as an extension of their physical authority. Platforms and individuals are held to account for "crimes" being perpetuated on virtual space. One common thread is ... the idea of "misinformation." Another is to use the most heinous crimes in a witch hunt - child abuse sexual material for example. Another favorite is "terrorism." Networks like Bitcoin and Nostr are more needed than ever. They both give people geographic arbitrage, the ability to operate without corporate leadership, and a hedge against state repression. The network cannot be shut down or threatened to change its rules as quickly and as easily as arresting one CEO. Is the idea of "decentralization" possible in a world where states can arrest CEOs and founders? Nothing can prevent somebody from exchanging funds with one another using Bitcoin or expressing something on Nostr. Usage of these networks in a peer-to-peer manner with an array of self-custody wallets and clients shows a popular demand for privacy, encryption, and transmitting value without the prying eyes of the state.

Note: Watch our latest video on the potential for blockchain to fix government waste and restore financial freedom. Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.

Nearly half of the AI-based medical devices approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have not been trained on real patient data, according to a new study. The study, published in Nature Medicine, finds that 226 of the 521 devices authorised by the FDA lack published clinical validation data. "Although AI device manufacturers boast of the credibility of their technology with FDA authorisation, clearance does not mean that the devices have been properly evaluated for clinical effectiveness using real patient data," says first author Sammy Chouffani El Fassi. The US team of researchers examined the FDA's official "Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML)-Enabled Medical Devices" database. "Using these hundreds of devices in this database, we wanted to determine what it really means for an AI medical device to be FDA-authorised," says Professor Gail Henderson, a researcher at the University of North Carolina's Department of Social Medicine. Of the 521 devices in this database, just 22 were validated using the "gold standard" – randomised controlled trials, while 43% (226) didn't have any published clinical validation. Some of these devices used "phantom images" instead – computer-generated images that didn't come from real patients. The rest of the devices used retrospective or prospective validation – tests based on patient data from the past or in real-time, respectively.

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

Almost two-thirds of supermarket baby food is unhealthy while nearly all baby food labels contain misleading marketing claims designed to "trick" parents. Those are the conclusions of an eyebrow-raising study in which researchers at Australia's George Institute for Global Health analyzed 651 foods marketed for children ages 6 months to 36 months at 10 supermarket chains in the United States. The study ... found that 60% of the foods failed to meet nutritional standards set by the World Health Organization. In addition, 70% of the baby food failed to meet protein requirements, 44% exceeded total sugar recommendations, 25% failed to meet calorie recommendations, and 20% exceeded recommended sodium limits set by the WHO. The most concerning products were snack foods and pouches. "Research shows 50% of the sugar consumed from infant foods comes from pouches, and we found those were some of the worst offenders," said Dr. Elizabeth Dunford, senior study author. Sales of such convenient baby food pouches soared 900% in the U.S. in the past 13 years. Consumption of processed foods in early childhood can set lifelong habits of poor eating that could lead to obesity, diabetes, and some cancers. The study also found that 99.4% of the baby food analyzed had misleading marketing claims on the labels that violated the WHO's promotional guidelines. On average, products contained four misleading marketing claims; some had as many as eleven.

Note: Big Food profits immensely as American youth face a growing health crisis, with close to 30% prediabetic, one in six youth obese, and over half of children facing a chronic illness. Nearly 40% of conventional baby food contains toxic pesticides. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.

The past decade has seen a rapid expansion of the commercial space industry. In a 2023 white paper, a group of concerned astronomers warned against repeating Earthly "colonial practices" in outer space. Some of these colonial practices might include the enclosure of land, the exploitation of environmental resources and the destruction of landscapes – in the name of ideals such as destiny, civilization and the salvation of humanity. People of Bawaka Country in northern Australia have told the space industry that their ancestors guide human life from their home in the galaxy, and that this relationship is increasingly threatened by large orbiting satellite networks. Similarly, Inuit elders say their ancestors live on celestial bodies. Navajo leadership has asked NASA not to land human remains on the Moon. Kanaka elders have insisted that no more telescopes be built on Mauna Kea, which Native Hawaiians consider to be ancestral and sacred. These Indigenous positions stand in stark contrast with many in the industry's insistence that space is empty and inanimate. In 1967, a slew of nations including the U.S., U.K. and USSR, signed the Outer Space Treaty. This treaty declared, among other things, that no nation can own a planetary body or part of one. The nations that signed the Outer Space Treaty were effectively saying, "Let's not battle each other for territory and resources again. Let's do outer space differently."

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

The internet can be misused. It is understandable that those in the Senate might seek a government solution to protect children. The Kids Online Safety Act, known as KOSA, would impose an unprecedented duty of care on internet platforms to mitigate certain harms associated with mental health. As currently written, the bill is far too vague, and many of its key provisions are completely undefined. The bill empowers the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to regulate content that might affect mental health, yet KOSA does not explicitly define the term "mental health disorder." Instead, it references the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders…or "the most current successor edition." Even more concerning, the definition could change without any input from Congress. The sponsors of this bill will tell you that they have no desire to regulate content. In truth, this bill opens the door to nearly limitless content regulation, as people can and will argue that almost any piece of content could contribute to some form of mental health disorder. Anxiety and eating disorders are two of the undefined harms that this bill expects internet platforms to prevent and mitigate. Should we silence discussions about gun rights because it might cause some people anxiety? Could pro-life discussions cause anxiety in teenage mothers considering abortion? What about violent images from war? They are going to censor themselves, and users, rather than risk liability. This bill does not merely regulate the internet; it threatens to silence important and diverse discussions that are essential to a free society. [This] task is entrusted to a newly established speech police. The ACLU brought more than 300 high school students to Capitol Hill to urge Congress to vote no on KOSA.

Note: This article was written by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship and mental health from reliable major media sources.

Brooke Rollins, our new secretary of Agriculture, is promising to reform the department. If she's serious about eliminating waste, she'll take a hard look at the wasteful mandates and billions of U.S. tax dollars that go directly to agricultural corporations every year. Despite spending $20 billion a year of our tax dollars on farm subsidies, Americans never see most U.S. agriculture products. We only eat about 37 percent of major crops produced. Subsidies over-incentivize production of foods that are making us sick. Heavily subsidized corn often ends up as high-fructose corn syrup in heavily processed foods like sugary cereals and beverages. Through direct subsidies and import restrictions, we also prop up sugar cane and sugar beet production. The overconsumption of these unhealthy foods contributes to obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other diet-related illnesses that cost our health system more than $1 trillion a year. If Rollins really cares about making America healthy again, she should stop forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for foods that are making us ill. Consumers can still buy whatever they want without lining the pockets of corporations benefiting from over-producing unnecessary, unhealthy foods. Between 2017-2022, the U.S. agricultural industry lost more than 100,000 small and medium farms to consolidation. Currently, only 6 percent of farms produce 90 percent of all meat, dairy and poultry products.

Note: Read how our centralized, corporate-controlled food system wastes enormous amounts of food, destroys biodiversity, and relies on harmful chemicals – all while crushing local farmers and communities. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in government and in the food system.

Data breaches are a seemingly endless scourge with no simple answer, but the breach in recent months of the background-check service National Public Data illustrates just how dangerous and intractable they have become. In April, a hacker known for selling stolen information, known as USDoD, began hawking a trove of data on cybercriminal forums for $3.5 million that they said included 2.9 billion records and impacted "the entire population of USA, CA and UK." As the weeks went on, samples of the data started cropping up as other actors and legitimate researchers worked to understand its source and validate the information. By early June, it was clear that at least some of the data was legitimate and contained information like names, emails, and physical addresses in various combinations. When information is stolen from a single source, like Target customer data being stolen from Target, it's relatively straightforward to establish that source. But when information is stolen from a data broker and the company doesn't come forward about the incident, it's much more complicated to determine whether the information is legitimate and where it came from. Typically, people whose data is compromised in a breach–the true victims–aren't even aware that National Public Data held their information in the first place. Every trove of information that attackers can get their hands on ultimately fuels scamming, cybercrime, and espionage.

Note: Clearview AI scraped billions of faces off of social media without consent. At least 600 law enforcement agencies were tapping into its database of 3 billion facial images. During this time, Clearview was hacked and its entire client list – which included the Department of Justice, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Interpol, retailers and hundreds of police departments – was leaked to hackers.

Peregrine ... is essentially a super-powered Google for police data. Enter a name or address into its web-based app, and Peregrine quickly scans court records, arrest reports, police interviews, body cam footage transcripts – any police dataset imaginable – for a match. It's taken data siloed across an array of older, slower systems, and made it accessible in a simple, speedy app that can be operated from a web browser. To date, Peregrine has scored 57 contracts across a wide range of police and public safety agencies in the U.S., from Atlanta to L.A. Revenue tripled in 2023, from $3 million to $10 million. [That will] triple again to $30 million this year, bolstered by $60 million in funding from the likes of Friends & Family Capital and Founders Fund. Privacy advocates [are] concerned about indiscriminate surveillance. "We see a lot of police departments of a lot of different sizes getting access to Real Time Crime Centers now, and it's definitely facilitating a lot more general access to surveillance feeds for some of these smaller departments that would have previously found it cost prohibitive," said Beryl Lipton ... at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). "These types of companies are inherently going to have a hard time protecting privacy, because everything that they're built on is basically privacy damaging." Peregrine technology can also enable "predictive policing," long criticized for unfairly targeting poorer, non-white neighborhoods.

Note: Learn more about Palantir's involvement in domestic surveillance and controversial military technologies. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

Since religious riots tore across the central Nigerian city of Jos two decades ago, its Muslim and Christian residents have largely kept apart. They have their own neighborhoods. They vote for different political parties. But the cost-of-living crisis that has swept Nigeria over the past year has blurred some of those boundaries. "If there is hunger in the land, the hunger that the Christian is feeling is not different from the hunger the Muslim is feeling," observes Tony Young Godswill, national secretary of the Initiative for a Better and Brighter Nigeria, a pro-democracy group. When nationwide anti-government protests broke out in early August, hungry, angry Jos residents from all backgrounds poured into the streets. When Muslim demonstrators knelt to pray on a busy road one Friday afternoon, hundreds of Christian marchers spontaneously formed a tight, protective circle around them. Nigeria's protests began in response to the soaring costs of food and transport over the past year and a half, which have more than doubled in some cases. Protesters blame the economic stabilization policies of President Bola Tinubu, which have included removing a heavy subsidy on petrol and devaluing the naira, Nigeria's currency. In Abuja, the capital, Ibrahim Abdullahi was among those who marched. As a Muslim, he says he previously thought it was inappropriate for him to protest against a fellow Muslim like Mr. Tinubu. Now, he held a placard that read "We regret Tinubu."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing social division.

Liquid capital, growing market dominance, slick ads, and fawning media made it easy for giants like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon to expand their footprint and grow their bottom lines. Yet ... these companies got lazy, entitled, and demanding. They started to care less about the foundations of their business – like having happy customers and stable products – and more about making themselves feel better by reinforcing their monopolies. Big Tech has decided the way to keep customers isn't to compete or provide them with a better service but instead make it hard to leave, trick customers into buying things, or eradicate competition so that it can make things as profitable as possible, even if the experience is worse. After two decades of consistent internal innovation, Big Tech got addicted to acquisitions in the 2010s: Apple bought Siri; Meta bought WhatsApp, Instagram, and Oculus; Amazon bought Twitch; Google bought Nest and Motorola's entire mobility division. Over time, the acquisitions made it impossible for these companies to focus on delivering the features we needed. Google, Meta, Amazon, and Apple are simply no longer forces for innovation. Generative AI is the biggest, dumbest attempt that tech has ever made to escape the fallout of building companies by acquiring other companies, taking their eyes off actually inventing things, and ignoring the most important part of their world: the customer.

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

The bedrock of Google's empire sustained a major blow on Monday after a judge found its search and ad businesses violated antitrust law. The ruling, made by the District of Columbia's Judge Amit Mehta, sided with the US Justice Department and a group of states in a set of cases alleging the tech giant abused its dominance in online search. "Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly," Mehta wrote in his ruling. The findings, if upheld, could outlaw contracts that for years all but assured Google's dominance. Judge Mehta ruled that Google violated antitrust law in the markets for "general search" and "general search text" ads, which are the ads that appear at the top of the search results page. Apple, Amazon, and Meta are defending themselves against a series of other federal- and state-led antitrust suits, some of which make similar claims. Google's disputed behavior revolved around contracts it entered into with manufacturers of computer devices and mobile devices, as well as with browser services, browser developers, and wireless carriers. These contracts, the government claimed, violated antitrust laws because they made Google the mandatory default search provider. Companies that entered into those exclusive contracts have included Apple, LG, Samsung, AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Mozilla. Those deals are why smartphones ... come preloaded with Google's various apps.

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

Dr. Amit Goswami [is the] founder of the Center for Quantum Activism and former professor at the University of Oregon. the quantum revolution, which started at the beginning of the last century, has put us in the position of an unfinished revolution, otherwise known as a kind of suspended paradigm shift where the world is shifting from a situation of materialist reductionism, as it's called, where everything is regarded as based on material particles, to a world where everything is based on energy cannot be understood apart from consciousness. And that's important for us because nonviolence does not operate materially. Nonviolence operates spiritually in the domain of consciousness. "Matter is just a possibility in consciousness," [said Gaswami]. "So, consciousness chooses out of the matter waves the actual events that we experience. In the process, consciousness identifies with our brain, the observer's brain. We can talk about nonviolence in a very scientific way. If we are all originating from the same source, if we are ultimately the same consciousness that works through us, then it is complete ignorance to be violent to each other. So, the issue of nonviolence is basically a challenge of transformation. How do we transform using creativity, using the archetype of goodness, bring that into the equation of power, and learn to be nonviolent with each other?" There's a lot of mental violence going on. But the point is that the way we approach it as violence begets more violence. So, it never stops. The answer, of course, is that nonviolence has to grow from inside of us. It has to be an intuition that often happens not just once or twice during the day, but becomes a conviction, a faith that I cannot be violent to my fellow human.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing social division.

Employees of a Texas-based nonprofit that provides housing to unaccompanied migrant children repeatedly subjected minors in its care to sexual abuse and harassment, the Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged in a new lawsuit. From 2015 through at least the end of 2023, multiple employees at Southwest Key Programs, the country's largest private provider of housing for unaccompanied children, subjected unaccompanied children in their care to "repeated and unwelcome sexual abuse, harassment, and misconduct," the lawsuit said. Minors housed in its shelters were subjected to severe sexual abuse and rape, solicitation of sex acts, solicitation of nude photos and entreaties for sexually inappropriate relationships, among other acts. The children range in age from as young as five years old to teenagers just shy of eighteen years old. Southwest Key employees allegedly discouraged children from reporting abuse, in some cases threatening them and their families. One report describes a Southwest Key Youth Care Worker who repeatedly sexually abused a five-year-old girl, an eight-year-old girl and an eleven-year-old girl. He entered their bedrooms in the middle of the night to touch their "private area," and threatened to kill their families if they disclosed the abuse, according to the lawsuit. The company has come under scrutiny before. Videos from Arizona Southwest Key shelters in 2018 showed staffers physically abusing children.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on immigration corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.

Columbus landlords are now turning to artificial intelligence to evict tenants from their homes. [Attorney Jyoshu] Tsushima works for the Legal Aid Society of Southeast and Central Ohio and focuses on evictions. In June, nearly 2,000 evictions were filed within Franklin County Municipal Court. Tsushima said the county is on track to surpass 24,000 evictions for the year. In eviction court, he said both property management staffers and his clients describe software used that automatically evicts tenants. He said human employees don't determine who will be kicked out but they're the ones who place the eviction notices up on doors. Hope Matfield contacted ABC6 ... after she received an eviction notice on her door at Eden of Caleb's Crossing in Reynoldsburg in May. "They're profiting off people living in hell, basically," Matfield [said]. "I had no choice. I had to make that sacrifice, do a quick move and not know where my family was going to go right away." In February, Matfield started an escrow case against her property management group which is 5812 Investment Group. When Matfield missed a payment, the courts closed her case and gave the escrow funds to 5812 Investment Group. Matfield received her eviction notice that same day. The website for 5812 Investment Group indicates it uses software from RealPage. RealPage is subject to a series of lawsuits across the country due to algorithms multiple attorneys general claim cause price-fixing on rents.

Note: Read more about how tech companies are increasingly marketing smart tools to landlords for a troubling purpose: surveilling tenants to justify evictions or raise their rent. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.

Vaccine adverse effects are real. I know it makes some people uncomfortable to acknowledge this, but alongside the benefits of vaccines, there are cases of profound harm. Recently, the New York Times covered my story: "Thousands Believe COVID Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening?" Sadly, no one is listening yet, and very few people are willing to help. I am a research nurse practitioner who has dedicated my professional career to community health and clinical research, including vaccines. My beliefs are firmly rooted in science. Three years ago, when the COVID-19 vaccine emerged, I stepped forward to receive it. What followed was unexpected and devastating. Within hours I developed tingling along my right arm, which over days radiated across my body. A neurologist and colleague recommended that I proceed with a second dose. With the vaccine mandate from my employer at the top of my mind, I proceeded, against my own medical judgment. After the second dose, my condition rapidly worsened. I developed positional tachycardia, wildly fluctuating blood pressures, internal tremors, electrical zap sensations on my legs, intense right-sided headaches, abdominal pain and severe tinnitus. I struggle to live with all of this and more to this day. Medical gaslighting, coupled with the absence of legal recourse or adequate compensation, compounds the challenges we endure. When I reach out for help, my pleas often fall on deaf ears, or I am disparaged as a misinformed "anti-vaxxer."

Note: This article was written by Shaun Barcavage, a nurse practitioner in New York City. Explore our nuanced, uncensored investigation about this important issue. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID vaccine problems from reliable major media sources.

A little-known advertising cartel that controls 90% of global marketing spending supported efforts to defund news outlets and platforms including The Post – at points urging members to use a blacklist compiled by a shadowy government-funded group that purports to guard news consumers against "misinformation." The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), which reps 150 of the world's top companies – including ExxonMobil, GM, General Mills, McDonald's, Visa, SC Johnson and Walmart – and 60 ad associations sought to squelch online free speech through its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative, the House Judiciary Committee found. "The extent to which GARM has organized its trade association and coordinates actions that rob consumers of choices is likely illegal under the antitrust laws and threatens fundamental American freedoms," the Republican-led panel said in its 39-page report. The new report establishes links between the WFA's "responsible media" initiative and the taxpayer-funded Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a London-based group that in 2022 unveiled an ad blacklist of 10 news outlets whose opinion sections tilted conservative or libertarian, including The Post, RealClearPolitics and Reason magazine. Internal communications suggest that rather than using an objective rubric to guide decisions, GARM members simply monitored disfavored outlets closely to be able to find justification to demonetize them.

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

In May, the New York State government agreed to subsidize news media. The legislation allows tax credits for up to half of journalists' salaries. Not every outlet can write off employment costs. Excluded ... are nonprofit operations as well as those owned by publicly traded companies. Governments have tried to suppress dissenting views. If a massive chunk of journalists' income comes from one reliable source–government coffers–they'll inevitably treat government as the audience to please rather than locals who've proven difficult to court and who distrust the press. Under such subsidies, the future of local media could be one of well-funded media outlets ignored by their nominal communities as they produce reports tailored for the tastes of bureaucrats with funding power. That's been an ongoing problem with publicly funded journalism. "In Europe, we have seen governments harm the reputation and independence of public media to the point of limiting their citizens' access to differing points of view," Freedom House research analyst Jessica White wrote. In December, a report from The Future of Free Speech, an independent think tank ... warned, "the global landscape for freedom of expression has faced severe challenges in 2023. Even open democracies have implemented restrictive measures." The report documented how obsession with "hate speech," "terrorist content," and "disinformation" are wielded as bludgeons by officials against critics of government officials and their policies.

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 articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.