An archivist friend once said there’s something more evil and insidious than fake news.

Fake history.

A famous speech by Assange at the Oslo Freedom Forum twelve years ago said the same.

Things went into panic mode when Elon Musk began dumping internal Twitter mail to Matt Taibbi. This prompted the clip shown at the end of the last post.

What wasn’t known at the time of Elon’s dump – but mentioned in that piece – was that a real nastypants was redacting things before they made their way to Taibbi.

Taibbi has now acknowledged this but simultaneously stated he’s turning over operations to a colleague, making people wonder if there’ll be any more to the story. So far there hasn’t been.

(What was it that supposedly springs eternal?)

So Elon’s back to work, so is Matt – and the Twitter Files?

This piece has a lot of YT clips. Most are short. One is long, a 40-minute talk followed by a 15-minute Q&A, definitely worth watching. Recommended refreshments are strong coffee and popcorn.

Sharyl in Reno

This is Sharyl Attkisson seven years ago in Reno. It’s probably the first of her clips to hit the million-view mark.

Sharyl Again

Here’s Sharyl again, back in Nevada for TED.

Color Research

Dig far enough back in time and you’ll find media manipulation isn’t new. A company called Color Research did quite a few studies back in the day, filming post-war housewives pushing their trolleys around in supermarkets, counting how many times per minute they blinked, figuring out what worked best for product packaging, whether putting goods on the top or bottom shelves affected sales, and so forth.

In a related study, an ice cream vendor, which happened to be adjacent to a popular movie house, somehow got the movie cameraman to insert a single frame of an ice cream cone into the week’s feature film. Sales at the ice cream shop went ballistic.

So media manipulation is nothing new. Subliminal techniques are over half a century old.

One may perhaps want to mention something here about Manufacturing Consent…

Sharyl at Hillsdale

Here’s Sharyl at Hillsdale only last year. This is the only lengthy clip in the lot. But it is very much worth it.

Note what’s happening to the media by this point in time. Donald Trump… Everyone loved Trump, or so said Colbert (see below). Until he said he was running for office.

Trump consulted with Jesse Ventura and Larry King before making the move. The word is Hillary told Bill to encourage Trump to run, as Hillary’s people said he’d be easiest to defeat. Assange later hypothesised that Trump won simply because Hillary’s people thought her so far out in front that they didn’t need to campaign anymore. Yet outsider Trump did win and Hillary didn’t come down to address her admirers, and the “establishment” went batshit. (See Rufus below.)

Something happened to the media. The New York Times was already down the tubes, having pimped for the 2003 Iraq invasion through Judith Miller, but the rest of them? What was it got them to shed any semblance of impartiality?

And why exactly was Trump “uniquely dangerous”? Rufus may have the answer (see below).

Will it be people like those “journalists” writing tomorrow’s history books?

Sharyl at Hillsdale. This is lengthy but extremely good.

Ivory & Kari

Both Ivory and Kari know about the fake media.

Ivory Hecker was a Fox Houston reporter sent to interview Covid hero Joseph Varon.

Ivory conducted a proper interview of Varon. He was famous for having saved so many lives. All Ivory did was ask him how he did it. And he told her that she was the first reporter (out of hundreds before her) that asked that question. It sort of makes you wonder if any of those other earlier reporters had working brain cells. (Or ethics.)

But Ivory asked the question and got her answer. Earlier he (and the FLCCC) had used hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) but now they were using Ivermectin (IVM). And as Pierre Kory would later tell a US Senate panel:

“If you take this, you will not get sick.”

Ivory submitted her report, along with film footage, to her boss at Fox Houston, who thought the story was fantastic – until she heard Fox HQ screaming down the line in New York. Abracadabra! Ivory was out of a job a day later.

Kari Lake in Arizona experienced the same thing. Kari joined news anchor John Hook to make the “Hook & Lake” show on Fox Phoenix, and ratings went ballistic, and she and John held the #1 slot for twenty-two years.

Until the pandemic came.

Kari’s never said exactly what it was that got her to quit, only that she was being given fake news to read, news she knew was a lie, and she couldn’t do it. Given that this was in 2021, given that luminaries like Steve Kirsch were doggedly following the Covid injury cases emerging in the millions, and given that Ivory revealed that the CDC paid local affiliates to speak encouragingly about vaccines everyone by now knew to be highly toxic, the odds are good that this is what put Kari over the edge.

After mulling about her next move, and talking with family and friends, Kari finally came to a decision.

Whilst Ivory stayed in broadcasting, trying to make a go of it in independent journalism, Kari came out with both six-shooters blazing.

“After all, [making Trump look bad] is the goal.”

But was Trump always so unpopular? No.

“Remember when Trump was loved by most Americans, then called a “racist” and “literally Hitler” when he became nominated??”

So what happened? Does Rufus have the answer?

He might indeed.

A few notes from the earlier Tucker clip with James Woods. For Woods mentions that Hollywood casting directors of today will check social media before hiring, and if anybody’s following him or a few others, they won’t get hired.

We know of one lovely person who had to give up her career simply because her boyfriend, trying to make it in Hollywood as a screenwriter, couldn’t be associated with a critic of the MSM and the status quo.

Something Sharyl never gets into is how photography itself can be propaganda. One story we worked on years ago went through several back-and-forths simply because the photo of the story’s antagonist was found to be too “flattering”.

Worse Than Fake News

But there’s something worse than fake news.

Fake history.

Here’s where Elon finally levels off against Wikipedia.

https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-elon-musk-slams-wikipedia-over-left-wing-bias

No, you should never cite Wikipedia as a source, said Britannica. Of course not. But what people didn’t realise at the time is what Sharyl Attkisson was later to discover and share.

How Wikipedia Works

In one particular case, we learned – unfortunately – how Wikipedia works. Not only do they have hierarchical tiers of “agenda editors”, as Sharyl calls them, some of which moonlight to create fake news and history for major bucks, but their very standards are designed to be corrupt.

Perhaps you’ve heard that WikiLeaks practiced something they called “scientific journalism”. One can painlessly concede that it works, as WikiLeaks never had to retract a single story, ever. So what is “scientific journalism” and how can it be so good, when Sharyl’s able to find hundreds of fake news stories every week?

WikiLeaks never had an agenda, beyond getting the truth out. What happened once the truth was out: that was someone else’s concern. The WikiLeaks concern was to get the truth out, no more. And they did.

WikiLeaks didn’t “interpret” news – they simply laid it bare. By providing vetted source documents. The winning assumption is that people really don’t want to see or hear some schmuck’s “interpretation” of the news, of the documents, they want to see the documents themselves, fuck you very much. And should there be any debate or contention about what the documents really say, then people can consult the original at the WikiLeaks website and decide themselves who is right and who is wrong. And WikiLeaks is out of the loop. However a controversy goes down, WikiLeaks isn’t affected. They did the right thing. They’ve never had to retract or redact.

Wikipedia, on the other hand, will not let you contribute with source documents. In Wikipedia’s vernacular, source documents are a “primary source”. Primary sources are not allowed. Wikipedia will only allow secondary sources.

What’s a “secondary source”? A secondary source is a source that cites a primary source.

But only certain secondary sources are considered “reliable” or trustworthy by Wikipedia’s editor elite. They have lists of “acceptable” and “unacceptable” “sources”. So they can play the shell game right before your eyes.

The Wikipedia model is designed to be slanted.

Perhaps some people remember Sean Hannity’s embarrassing mea culpa with Assange in London. Hannity was sent to do “exclusive” interviews for Fox. But because he’d so screwed up last time, he had to begin with an apology.

When Hannity first covered WikiLeaks, the releases were about US war crimes. So therefore WikiLeaks had to be the ENEMY, a “hostile actor”. This time, when it was about malfeasance on the part of HILLARY, WikiLeaks had to be an ALLY, a FRIEND.

How someone makes a career in journalism with an intellect like that: it’s a mystery. Unless those viewing and listening are no better endowed.

And as for how education systems have let people down: see the Rufus clip again.

Have an absolutely lovely weekend.

-RJS