The Pravda Media is Corrupt to the Core, and the Rot is Killing them

By Rich Kozlovich, Tags: 

Over 60 years ago I worked in the advertising department of a major metropolitan newspaper and as the years went by it appeared to me the United Press International, Associated Press and Reuters seemed to control all of what appears in the newspaper, and for the most part, TV news, since it was nothing more than reporting in a shortened form what the print media was already saying.  And since even then I was more well read than most I felt they were deliberately leaving much of what was going on in the world out of the news. My friends and associates laughed at me, snickering and shaking their heads with a bit of arrogant scorn.

The natural function of the human mind is to find patterns.  Life is all about patterns,  and seeing those patterns.  A quality that's sorely lacking in the world.  Unfortunately, those who see them early and quickly aren't necessarily appreciated. I was right and it only took over 50 or so years for the rest of the world to catch up, but now it's generally accepted the traditional news media is nothing more than a propaganda arm of the left.

Like others I’ve not watched any electronic news for years, and that includes going back to O’Reilly on Fox. I stopped watching Fox when he claimed he saw Obama’s birth certificate and that all was fine, nothing to see there.  I always thought he was a phony, and that confirmed it.

But I stopped watching 60 Minutes probably over 30 years ago, and here’s why. Mike Wallace wanted to interview the Moonies, and they said only if the entire interview was broadcast. Well, that can’t be done so they came to an agreement. Not only would 60 Minutes film the interview, so too would the Moonies.

Mike Wallace was usually totally confident in interviews, totally in control, but he was nervous and hesitant all during that interview. That’s when I realized they edited these interviews to tell the story they wanted told, not the story that existed, but since the Moonies filmed the complete interview, the usual editing was impossible.

And that was and still is true with all of these “story” tellers. Independent journalism? Sure, independent from the restrictions of truth and justice, with the Sullivan ruling giving them carte blanch to lie. I've kept track of just how rotten the media really is storing articles as source pieces, and I have a lot of them, and what appears below is just the tip of the iceberg.  

But their time is up, and it’s a Good Morning in America. 

Media Spin and Corruption

 If you've ever seen anything on PBS you've bound to have seen how they've been supported by the Annenberg Foundation, which presents itself publicly as a big supporter of public education.  Well, PBS and the Annenberg Foundation are birds of a feather.  The Annenberg Foundation was created by Walter Herbert Annenberg, highly successful and highly lauded for his integrity.  An "American businessman, investor, philanthropist, and diplomat. Annenberg owned and operated Triangle Publications", and yet he wasn't above using the media to destroy anyone who opposed him, and doing it in the same corrupt manner we see the corrupt media doing right now!

In 1966, Annenberg used the Inquirer to cast doubt on the candidacy of Democrat Milton Shapp for governor of Pennsylvania. Shapp was highly critical of the proposed merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad with the New York Central Railroad and was pushing the US Interstate Commerce Commission to prevent it from occurring. Annenberg, who was the biggest individual stockholder of the Pennsylvania Railroad, wanted to see the merger succeed (which it did) and he was frustrated with Shapp's opposition.^[15] During a press conference, an Inquirer reporter asked Shapp if he had ever been a patient in a mental hospital. Never having been in one, Shapp simply said "no." The next day, a five-column front page Inquirer headline read, "Shapp Denies Mental Institution Stay". Shapp and others have attributed his loss of the election to Annenberg's newspaper.

Blatant corruption then and nothing has changed! 

1. An Epidemic of Media Doublespeak 
2. New York Times Struggles to Explain Why It Reported News to Traumatized Readers 
3. Atlantic writer admits Democrat voters are stuck in ‘media bubbles’ and don’t know diddly squat
4.  Could the media tell the truth even if they wanted to?
5. Same Salute, Different Party: Media Spins for Cory Booker  
6. LA Riots and the Media’s “Stalinization”

Awarded for Corruption

The Pulitzer Prize people have always been a disgrace going back to Walter Duranty who wrote how Stalin wasn’t starving Soviet citizens.  Except for those estimated 10 million men, women and children in the Stalin-engineered silent massacre between 1932-1933, also known as the Holodomor.  Everyone in the journalism business knew he was a world class liar, and the NYT knew it too. Worse yet, years later and all his lies were exposed, the Pulitzer committee refused to revoke it, and the NYT refused to return it. Who wants honors from people such as these.  What they deserve is the Walter Duranty Award.  A prize for journalistic mendacity. 

1. Fake news gets nominated for an Emmy
2. 60 Minutes lionizes Trump-hating attorney Marc Elias, mastermind of the Russia hoax
3. Comments for: Scott Pelley goes drama-queen about Paramount pushing out a 60 Minutes editor, declares the man's brand of journalism 'accurate and fair'  
4. Pulitzer judges pass over iconic AP photo of Trump defiantly waving his fist with blood running down his face after assassination attempt
5.   Florida Judge Tells Gaslighting Pulitzer Board They Have to Face the Music in Trump Defamation Suit 
6. This Headline Sort of Guts The Washington Post's Pulitzer Win for Covering the Trump Assassination
7.  Esquire wins first Pulitzer for its glowing tribute of cross-dressing mayor who posted local women on porn sites and fantasized about murder
8.   Pulitzer judges pass over iconic AP photo of Trump defiantly waving his fist with blood running down his face after assassination attempt
9.  ‘60 Minutes’ report that prompted Trump lawsuit nominated for Emmy Award

Death of the Pravda Media 

1. Jen Psaki's New Show Has Been an Immense Flop, Even by MSNBC's Standards 
2. “Quite Fearless”: Jen Psaki Can Barely Contain Herself While Fawning Over Letitia James During MSNBC Interview
3. Jen Psaki's New Show Has Been an Immense Flop, Even by MSNBC's Standards  
4. Riddle Us This: Why Did NewsGuard Hire a Senior Editor Accused of Gross ‘Misconduct?’
5. Nolte: CNN’s Primetime Audience Sinks to Pathetic 
6. FTC Launches Investigation into Far-Left Group Media Matters
7. Top CNN Reporter OUT After Outlet Pays Navy Vet Millions of Dollars in Defamation Settlement
8.  Even the Biden Administration Couldn’t Believe How DUMB and GUILLIBLE the Mainstream Media Was! 
9. Maybe ‘demos’ don't watch MSNBC anymore
10. Pathetic, stupid media desperate for a headline
11. Fake news pushers: they haven’t learned, and they don’t care
12. Trump threatens major network with new legal action 
13. Trump holds nothing back as he destroys Big Media reporter
14.  Turley: The American Press Is in Precarious Times
15. 'No matter how much you hate the media, it's not enough!'  
16. Stephanopoulos and Muir Pay the Price for Their Past Treatment of Trump as ABC Sidelines Them for Primetime Interview 
17. Fake News CNN Eyes Massive Staff Cuts as Parent Company Prepares for Breakup
18. ABC News Suspends Senior White House Correspondent for Revealing Extreme Media Bias Against President Trump
19. Stephanopoulos and Muir Pay the Price for Their Past Treatment of Trump as ABC Sidelines Them for Primetime Interview 

Illegal Immigration 

1. CNN Stunned as Majority of Americans Back Trump’s Mass Deportation Plan 
2.  Fact Check: Did ABC News Deceive Readers by Referring to MS-13 as a 'Clique'? 
3.  ATTENTION DEMOCRATS AND NBC NEWS — 5TH AMENDMENT DOES NOT APPLY TO ILLEGAL ALIENS.  

Islam

1. The AP Strikes Again
2. MSNBC Calls Illegal Alien Muslim Terrorist FROM EGYPT a “White Male”
3.  Former CNN Host Just Roasted Leftists Over the Killing of Israeli Embassy Staffers
4. Hamas supporters went on a rampage in Switzerland, but the media are silent

NPR and PBS... Goodbye! 

1. NPR claims a First Amendment right to subsidized speech
2. I thought that they didn't need the money
3. Whither the National Endowment for the Arts?
4. Trump Signs EO Halting Federal $$ to NPR, PBS
5.  Why NPR and PBS Just Lost a Lot of Money 
6. Trump signs order ending taxpayer funding for NPR and PBS  
7.  Goodbye to NPR and PBS?

 Tapper Jack and the Biden Coverup Scandal

1. Traitors Benedict Arnold and Jake Tapper
2. 63% Say ‘Major Media Journalists’ Knew About and Covered up Biden’s Mental Decline 

   

3. POETIC JUSTICE: Jake Tapper’s CNN Show Sees Ratings Collapse Despite Biden Book Buzz and Media Tour
4. Jake Tapper Explains it All to You
5. Nolte Torches Tapper, Media for Biden Lies
6. Nolte: Jake Tapper’s ‘Humble’ Response to Book Backlash Is More Desperate Lie 
7. Desperate Fake Jake Tapper Hires PR Crisis Guru as Dementia Joe Book Backlash Erupts
8. The Book Grift Loophole
9. Tapper’s Book Condemns Journalists In More Ways Than One  
10. Media Covered Up Biden’s Health Issues — Angry Voters Want Them To Answer For It: I&I/TIPP Poll
11.  Biden health cover-up holds lessons for both Democrats and Republicans
12. Biden’s Late Cancer Diagnosis Exposes Democrats and the Media as Legitimate National Security Risks
13. The Joe Biden Cover-Up Scandal: A Media Meltdown Exposed
14. The fact that Axios released the audio from the Biden-Hur interview suggests something disturbing
15. Media Covered Up Biden’s Health Issues — Angry Voters Want Them To Answer For It: I&I/TIPP Poll 

 Outright deception

1. 60 Minutes lionizes Trump-hating attorney Marc Elias, mastermind of the Russia hoax
2. NYT whines about low-information voters supporting Trump... but hides real information about the corruption of big government
3.  The View Proves ABC News Has No Standards
1. Disney boss imposes stunning new talk show standard on 'The View' 
2. Anybody notice 60 Minutes's curiously rightward lurch?
   
4.  ‘Fact Checkers’ Claim NY Mayoral Candidate’s “Seize The Means Of Production” Remark Isn’t Communist
5.  The Media’s Failure to Effectively Confront Recent JFK Assassination Testimony
6. CNN’s Amber Ruffin: I’m Black, I’m Terrified, I’m ‘Less Welcome’ Under Trump
7.  Pollster: Media Pushing Fake Polls to Pressure Congressional Republicans
8.  FACT CHECK: CNN’s Anderson Cooper Falsely Claims Blacks Own 4% of Private Land in South Africa
9.  Hilarious! Reporter Ends Schumer’s Entire Career After He Attacks Trump on Bogus 100-Day Poll Numbers
10.  Unmasking the Real Threat to America's Democracy
11.  We Won’t Allow the Legacy Media to Weasel Out of Accountability for Their Role in the Great Biden Coverup 
12.  Fact Check: AP Falsely Claims Few Americans Believe in Communism
13.  How Media Exploits Climate Catastrophism 

Trump Derangement Syndrome

1. Trump’s Ratings Edge Higher As Good News Eclipses Negative Media Coverage: I&I/TIPP Poll 
2.  NATO SEC General Mark Rutte Just Levels NYT Reporter in Brilliant Breakdown of What Trump Achieved
3. The New York Times shines a spotlight on the hypocrisy of ‘No Kings’ 
4.  Commentator: I'd Rather Have a Braindead Biden in Charge Than Trump
5.  Tarlovonomics  
6. The NYT bemoans that Trump has cut over $800 million in spending on LGBTQ+ health issues
7. CBS Is Tortured by Trump, Puts Rage into '60 Minutes'

Texas Flood  

1. Dowd: GOP ‘Lack of Funding’ Made TX Flood Worse 
2. DHS Says Mainstream Media 'Deliberately Lying' in Coverage of Events Leading Up to Catastrophic TX Flood
3. ABC's George Stephanopoulos pounded for deceptive coverage of Texas flooding

Unknowns

 

 I'm not quite sure how to categorize these five pieces, so I'll leave that up to you.  

1. The New York Times concedes that Harvard can’t fight Trump
2. Weird news? Not anymore! 
3. Artificial intelligence and Marxist control 
4. Another Sign: The Left Hates Children 
5. Why This MSNBC Segment With James Comey Was Beyond Surreal

Final point worth noting about the "legacy" media, and the "alternative" media.  

Don’t Cry for Elmo, He’s Filthy Rich

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

• “Elon Musk and Marjorie Taylor Greene are trying to defund Sesame Street and dismantle PBS and NPR,” Rep. Robert Garcia claimed during hearings on the two radical leftist organizations.
• “The Trump administration’s abrupt federal grant cuts have made their way to ‘Sesame Street’—and they risk pulling the rug out from under children,” Fortune Magazine claimed.
• “Sesame Street’s Future Is in Jeopardy”, Newsweek moaned.
• “Why Does Big Bird Look So Sad?” the New York Times asked. According to the paper, the Trump administration’s cuts to USAID “stripped Sesame Workshop of some valuable grants”.

The USAID grants in question were $20 million to make an Iraqi version of Sesame Street. The Sesame Workshop previously got over $4 million to make a Bangladeshi Sesame Street and $18 million from the Pentagon and GSA to make a Sesame Street for military families.

Even assuming that there was some justifiable reason to spend $20 million making a Sesame Street for an oil-rich country which just passed a law legalizing adult men marrying members of the Sesame Street viewing audience, it has nothing to do with funding the American series.

And $20 million might be a big number somewhere, but it’s a drop in the Sesame bucket.

Every time members of Congress discuss cuts to PBS, Democrats hide behind Big Bird and Elmo, even sending the giant yellow creature to Congress in the nineties, but only 4% of Sesame Workshop’s revenues come from the federal government. If it all went away, even Count Von Count would hardly notice. 4% of Sesame Workshop’s budget wouldn’t even cover the salaries for its C-suite which were in excess of $6 million in the last reported year.

Sesame CEO Stephen Youngwood makes over $1 million a year, President Sherrie Rollins Westin earns $864,748 a year and together with the rest of the top executives account for enough money to bring Sesame Street to at least three different Islamic terrorist states.

Sesame Workshop took in $187 million in 2023 and $271 million the year before that. The non-profit has assets of $607 million. Over the last decade, those assets more than doubled.

A non-profit with over half-a-billion is not about to disappear if we stop funding Jihad Street in Iraq. The real question is why were taxpayers ever subsidizing one of the wealthiest non-profit production companies associated with PBS which can print money by selling merchandise?

20% of Sesame Workshop’s revenues come from licensing. 50% from distribution fees and royalties. Millions of dollars continue pouring in from toy and music licensing.

Sesame Street already gets sizable amounts of money from liberal foundations and billionaires like Michael Bloomberg, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, the MacArthur Foundation, and even CEO Stephen Youngwood chipped in under $49,000 of his million dollar salary and Sherrie Westin under $100,000 of her nearly seven figure salary to the Sesame Workshop.

And they can probably afford to chip in some more if Sesame Workshop is really in trouble.

The real nightmare on Sesame Street came not from the end of its nonprofit work or PBS productions, but the end of HBO MAX’s lucrative deal to screen and showcase its episodes. The HBO deal made it clear that Sesame Street was not primarily a public television property. But as Discovery, HBO’s parent company, began cutting costs, the Sesame Street deal was a casualty. It wasn’t Republican budget cuts that hurt Sesame Street, but cutbacks by the Hollywood studio most closely associated with funding BLM and other radical leftist movements.

Another crisis was caused by the Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU), one of those baffling conglomerate unions of bureaucrats that includes everything from Canadians to minor league umpires to leatherworkers, trying to unionize Sesame Street employees.

These much more serious blows to Big Bird came from lefties, including unions, not Trump, but you won’t see Democrats talking about how unions are trying to kneecap Elmo.

The USAID grant to make Sesame Street in Iraq does point to one source of the organization’s financial problems, which is that it spends too much of its budget on international programming while getting little in the way of its revenues for licensing everything from toys to puppets in international markets. Sesame Workshop brags about all the work it’s been doing in Ukraine, Lebanon and India. And that’s work that American taxpayers and audiences subsidize.

Sesame Street needs to decide whether it wants to make puppet shows for American kids or for the children of the world. Big Bird and Elmo remain lucrative in America, but there’s no reason for American taxpayers to be subsidizing Sesame Street’s outreach to Syrian migrants or teaching children in India about gender equality.

Democrats used to pretend that budget cuts to PBS threaten Sesame Street, now they admit that they’re no longer using Big Bird as an avian or puppet shield for PBS but for USAID. Elmo isn’t just being used to defend subsidies for American public television, but for Iraqi public television, and even families with faded Grovers in the house will draw the line there.

Sesame Workshop needs to choose between Sesame Street and Iftah Ya Simsim, Sim Sim Hamara and the other Sesame Streets for the Muslim world. The Pakistani Sesame Street previously had its funds cut off in 2012 over allegations of fraud and Sharaa Simsim, the version that airs in the Muslim terrorist-occupied territories in Israel, after its leaders rejected a joint production with Israel, had its funding cut over its problematic content.

Daoud Kuttab, the executive producer of Sharaa Simsim, the ‘Palestinian’ Sesame Street, wrote that the “Hamas’ operation against Israel on Oct. 7 was carried out on the basis of the internationally sanctioned right of people to resist” and that Hamas leaders did nothing wrong.

His ‘Palestinian’ Sesame Street, was funded by USAID,

Kuttab, who often pops up representing the ‘Christian’ point of view, also claimed that the Hamas attacks were a response to “Jewish supremacy” for offending Muslim religious sensibilities by praying at a Jewish holy site claimed by Islamic conquerors as a mosque.

But when funds for Jihad Street were previously pulled, Brookings published an op-ed claiming that, “Congress Makes Elmo Cry by Defunding Palestinian “Sesame Street”. And Kuttab recently resurfaced in the New Republic with an op-ed titled, “I Worked on the “Arab Sesame Street.” It Was Not a Waste of Money” in which the terror apologist claimed that American taxpayer funding for it encouraged “peace and tolerance among children of the Middle East”.

If ‘Palestinian Elmo’ didn’t want to cry, he shouldn’t have joined Hamas. And if the Sesame Workshop wants to justify its $6 million C-suite salaries, it should stop working on international shows and go back to its original mission of entertaining and teaching American children.

Merchandising and licensing makes Sesame Street financially viable and quite profitable in the United States and some western nations. The real problem is that Sesame Street became a vehicle for foreign aid and government grants in the third world.

And that is what’s threatening Big Bird and making Elmo sad.

Sesame Workshop is in trouble because it puts American kids last. Sesame Street should go back to being a street in the U.S.A. and not in Pakistan, Bangladesh or Hamastan.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.  Thank you for reading.

 

PBS Propaganda Dishonors Vietnam Veterans

April 30, 2023 By Robert F. Turner

On March 28—just two days before the congressionally proclaimed “National Vietnam War Veteran’s Day“—PBS broadcast “The Movement and the ‘Madman,’” gleefully depicting America’s resistance to blatant international Communist aggression in Vietnam as moronic and portraying leaders of the so-called “peace movement” as heroes who saved the world from nuclear disaster. The program was as absurd as it was shameful.

Jefferson advised that, when angry, count to 10 before speaking. When very angry, count to 100. Waiting a month did not quell my outrage, but today’s forty-eighth anniversary of the Communist conquest of South Vietnam necessitated a response.

I spent considerable time in Vietnam between 1968 and leaving during the 1975 final evacuation, including tours as an Army Lieutenant and Captain, a stint as a journalist, and multiple visits while serving as national security adviser to a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. After leaving the Army, I was a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, where I authored the first major English-language history of Vietnamese Communism.

Beginning in 1965, I took part in more than 100 debates, lectures, ‘teach-ins,” and other programs on the war. During that time, I encountered a litany of arguments against the war from some of the most prominent war critics in the country. Most of their alleged “facts” were clearly false—a point confirmed by the “Pentagon Papers.”...............To Read More...

PBS Crowns a New Conservative Hero with a New Show

June 4, 2018 By Colin Flaherty

If only conservatives were kinder, gentler and more "with it." Who could stop us? Certainly not Democrats. So the secret to conservative political success today is to act more like liberals, and they will like us more, too. Anyone who has spent more than ten minutes with any Republican functionary attached to some aspiring Republican office-holder knows the pitch:

Trump? He has no right to be here.
Abortion? I might not have one myself, but it is rather inconvenient to ask others to make the same choice............

Nevertheless, she is plying her nonexistent conservative credentials on PBS with great fanfare, much as David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, and Charles Krauthammer did in 2008 with the election of the Great Unifier, Barack Obama.

It's a lot like what those old luminaries' NeverTrump successors do today. Jonah Goldberg, for example, just published a column reminding everyone how conservative he is, but today's conservatives are worse than McCarthyites, because at least that crowd from the '50s had something to crow about.

In the meantime, I'll be waiting for all the liberals to flock to the new face of conservative victory – just as they did with John McCain, George Romney, Chris Christie, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Carly Fiorina, and the hundreds of others waiting for their pathetically ignorant base to catch up with their bold but still unrecognized brilliant leadership .......... Read more

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