COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN SPUTNIK
“CNN Should Publicly
Admit Error in 'Symbol of Aleppo Suffering' Story - Moscow”
If CNN had to apologize for all of its truly lousy
reporting, that's all it would be doing.
The network, of course, has long functioned as an outlet for
CIA or Pentagon or State Department propaganda. People who are “literate” in
public affairs and unbiassed observers recognize the fact instantaneously.
But what many people, who perhaps do not pay close attention,
do not realize is that CNN's standards in its regular news reportage have
always been low to non-existent.
They not only do not check stories, they fill airtime with
ridiculous stuff that is an insult to journalism and even intelligence.
My favorite example - from years ago, since I stopped being
able to even watch the silly network - was during the Atlanta Olympic bombing
of 1996.
As readers may know, the idiots at the FBI suspected a
completely innocent man, a man who actually proved something of a minor hero,
Richard Jewell, a security guard, of being responsible. (It, in fact, later
proved to have been the work of an anti-abortion “Christian” fundamentalist
terrorist, the kind of native terror that became quite common at that time in
the United States).
CNN spent hours on this mindless story, for which there was
not a shred of evidence, reporting every rumor or suspicion and a lot of
complete nonsense.
I recall one of CNN’s "reporters" trying to ambush
Mr. Jewell for an interview once, standing outside his home, complete with
cameraman and sound equipment, until Jewell left for work.
Mr. Jewell, when he appeared, quite appropriately, just
walked to his car without a word to the reporter trying to jam a microphone
into his face, and proceeded calmly to drive away.
The CNN idea of journalism was just to have the camera focus
on his car until it disappeared. Then the embarrassed reporter made some
gestures and mumbled some rubbish into his microphone.
That was CNN’s idea of journalism, and indeed it was the
kind of stuff they have repeated countless times. The operating principle of
CNN is simply to fill airtime so that it can sell advertising. No serious
effort is made to ascertain the legitimacy of pertinence of what they fill the
airtime with.
The fact is, sadly, that there are millions of people who
will just watch a television screen for a time with “stuff going on” – almost
like young kids watching cheap cartoons on Saturday mornings - and CNN has
become a large corporation based upon that founding assumption.
Readers may enjoy:
NOTE TO READERS: The CNN story on the pitiful-looking,
dusty-faced Aleppo boy in a van has now been proved a completely staged event.
The boy has been found alive and well with family. The van incident, intended
as a propaganda effort aimed against Russia for helping destroy America's
terrorists controlling Aleppo, Syria, was staged by the White Helmets, the same
phony NGO outfit that staged and filmed a poison gas attack just before Trump
hurled a fleet of cruise missiles at Syrian forces who had nothing to do with
it. The work of the White Helmets is a very good symbol for the kind of war America
fights in Syria. A war by paid mercenary thugs who pretend to be what they are
not. The White Helmets are a branch of one of these gangs of thugs and
regularly receive substantial sums to stage video images which are promptly
shown on by outfits like CNN.
