good to my patients. i will not give deadly doses to anybody. or advise others to do so. i will never do harm to the. doctors of the docs on tape. this is what we do we kill people and break things. we can see something is simple as people playing a soccer game we can see individual players and if you see the ball. you can almost see his facial expression you can see is a mouth open and crying out. maybe cursed. or maybe he asked. for forgiveness for. there must be near certainty that no civilians will be killed

or in. the face it. is a. hello and welcome to cross talk where all things are considered on peter lavelle since the end of the cold war the media environment has transformed almost beyond recognition today there is a global battle for hearts and minds and the west mainstream media is losing that war.

to cross-talk alternative in mass media i'm joined by my guest george samuel in new york he is a senior research fellow at london metropolitan university and author of the new book obama's for peace nato's humanitarian war on yugoslavia in washington we have asked in peterson he is the c.e.o. of stone gate an editor of the libertarian republican come and in paris we cross to any much shown she is a former british intelligence officer and writer all right crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it george if i go to you first here in new york we're calling this program hearts and minds and when i watch the state department briefings with jen psaki i have to wonder if the mainstream narrative is really losing this battle to make people believe in the elite of today. well it's very hard to say it's. the mainstream media is obviously taken

a palm aling through the emergence of new media. it's certainly taken a pummeling through the emergence of new outlets such as the however i do think that the mainstream media do have very powerful legs. i can watch the sunday morning talk shows and i see the same faces the same cries american action american bombing american intervention and the alternative media then. shows up a few hours later with very appropriate denunciations criticisms. ridicule but what really counts the people who come out on all those shows and shake their fists at russia. syria or the people writing in the year or speaking on the alternative media i wish i could say it was the latter i'm fortunate. they i think that it's leave people who are on the mainstream

media who set the agenda who dominates the conversation that's a very good point i see them go to you in washington i suppose we do still react to myself in alternative media still do react to what the mainstream dictates as the narrative we do and we don't you know it's interesting that you bring this topic up peter because just this week variety magazine published an article about the diminished credibility of the night time news anchor if you remember during the vietnam war walter cronkite had a great impact on the united states with his reporting on the vietnam war and right now over at a.b.c. news it's george stephanopoulos there good morning america host that really has the most credibility over there people now don't look at the mainstream media as their main source of information anymore now people go to get breaking news to social media outlets or they go to opinion blogs or people that they trust people like glenn beck for example or people go and read my blog because they're looking for an

alternative viewpoint to the mainstream media narrative i feel as if we're in right now sort of the change time the change over a period from the credibility of the mainstream media being the only outlet for resourceful reporting where people are looking for people who are more attached to news stories as they happen on the ground why would i want to read what george stephanopoulos has to say in new york city about the situation in ukraine when i can go and i can read newspaper reports and blogs and mediately from the situations as they're happening on the ground or i can subscribe to the twitter account of a reporter that's going on the ground i sort of feel as if right now is the time when the mainstream media is having a big changeover and that's why they're having a loss of revenue that's why they're having to close down bureaus that's why c.n.n. is having to change their reporting style so i feel like right now is a good time for freedom of press and for freedom of expression despite some of the crackdowns by intelligence agencies on newspapers like the guardian for printing the snowden leaks if you remember when they destroy their hard drives and things like that. any you know what kind of environment are we living in here because you

know acid which is right the loss of revenue the loss of audiences but i would say the loss of credibility as well. i agree with all those points they are working on to a very can dismiss model from the twenty twentieth century and we have new generations growing up the digital natives who get all their information over the internet so they're all model is no longer feasible charging for news is no longer feasible but yes i think credibility is the key problem here and this really started the rot set in in the run up to the war against iraq in two thousand and three where all our corporate media rushed to support the invasion they repeated the lies and the fake intelligence pumped into the mainstream news by our intelligence agencies and that has been found to be absolute fabrication and yet for example in the u.k. on the very eve of the debate in the houses of parliament about whether to go to war this was the process that happened where the lies were fed into the mainstream media we had screaming headlines saying things like britain forty five minutes from

doom forty five minutes mother get it and that's i think when the the end of the credibility began of course as often mentioned you know people do go to twitter they do want to see what's going on on the ground and they just don't trust the corporate media particular because conglomeration of control of most of the corporate media now is in the hands of a very very very small number of very powerful media companies who have courts very close to the seats of power to govern it so there's that sort of credibility issue to george i sometimes think this is the age of disbelief because it's really interesting is that we have so many outlets available to us now more than we could have imagined twenty years ago but me you myself as a journalist i have to spend a lot of time to get the right frame story here because i know what. political opinion certain blogs of individuals certain institutions and you have to really keep your nose to the grindstone to really understand what's going on with my specialization is the part of the world that i live in and i it's

a lot of work you know antiwar dot com is a really good source but it's still a lot harder than i think most people think if you want to find out what's. called the truth. no that's absolutely correct. there is now so much information just simply swamping the internet that it is very hard to sift through it all see what is reliable the problem is that the new media. rely very much on the traditional media because the traditional media. were able to gather news i.d.'s very expensive to run a bureau it's very expensive to have reporters all over the world so what goes on in the alternative media the very social media is essential. transmission of stories that have been gathered in the traditional media

so it's not like the new media are actually doing a lot of news gathering themselves because it's very hot here and so while it's true that the traditional media are losing revenue and they're doing worse but in many ways that isn't a good thing because it means that they're even less able to run the bureaus to run the reporters to do the news gathering and they get more and more reliant on the same wire services and almost same reporters and so much of what happens is gathered in the traditional media is sounds exactly the same because it's all coming from the same sources so what we have in the social media. a regulation of go ahead anyway we want to jump in go ahead please do and i mean i take the point you're just making but i think he's missing there is a sort of elephant in the room about the new media here at the moment and that is the model that is that started out with wiki leaks where they did produce the news stories because they they got the information wrong and they could put the

information out directly to the people who needed to read it i need assistance without filtering it through the prism of news gathering organizations so this is a radical transparency and should. we can use that has its problems but of course it spawned a whole new generation of leaks type sites things like global security to open a whole range of other building leaks and i think this is this is the new model of media this is the alternative media and that's why the old model i think it's just playing catch up now on scene one of the. sun so i thought i had you. know i don't know it's good also that's the whole point is you are going to go ahead i just want to talk about i just want to talk about consumption patterns here you know the atlantic published an article that's week that took a look at the analytics for what kind of news and journalism that people are consuming and they basically compared it to cotton candy versus broccoli and then if you look at it people will do it when they're polled like al-jazeera did a poll saying what kind of news and journalism do people want and they found that

most people are liars they'll say i want good hard hitting news and journalism but what they really want if you watch their consumption patterns is buzz feed like a list of polls of cat pictures and so if we look at this from a honest person active of corporate control versus consumption patterns you have to understand that nowadays it's the consumer that has the power in the in the media market and the consumer is deciding by by their clicks exactly what kind of journalism happens around the world so i don't really see any more of a sort of overarching conspiracy by corporate media elites of controlling of the narrative where it's really just a matter of the revenue it's where is the money going i actually just created a brand new website that's aimed at that cotton candy market and it's called liberty viral dot com and we don't do any real hard journalism other than to sort of rehash of the argument that have already been made we make buzz feed stylistical and i mean it explodes consumers want this kind of media and so i'm a curious. sort of what you think the role of the what the consumer the brave new

world what the consumer wants is not necessarily good for people kate george you know and that matter of print media that's is i'm sure it's great people are looking at. you know let's go with beta route if you. it's a brave little leader go ahead george and i know that's where the consumers want the i salute absolutely i think it was yes but the whole point is that you know where in the news media business and we are trying to create an informed public we are trying to ensure that that we have an informed citizenry that can we take good sound decisions of policy i mean if you would you just put pictures of kids and cats fighting dogs and little children messing around in the on the beach i mean sure i mean we can you know we have how much can we say people turn themselves in to everybody i mean i really are we supposed to save people from themselves to do that also go ahead. well i'm just saying you can't save people from themselves the media the public i would say one you have to give them what they want or you're

going to be out of business george last word before the break well no i mean i really don't think that we i really don't think we should be in the business of catering to the lowest common denominator because then i mean the you know let's just have a little just tabloid newspapers everywhere let's just have you know all you know let's have nothing but sex and scandals i mean that's already i don't know you know saying no where will you go that was doing great design after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the media environment stay with us to. leave the place with.

i'm abby martin the stories we cover here you're not going to hear any right other big story extra headlines same time there's a reason they don't want to do not all about me that are important and telling the truth is that we should be completely outraged now let's break the set.

on america and the financial world. to see these developments cannot stop in a city that is only taking on the demand for credit. and life there are now about. economic ups and downs in the final. day of the deal and the rest. will be every week call her. one of the wonderful camarena like. the face of your life you know.

a pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i'm sure led. me to. welcome back to cross talk we're all things are considered i'm peter lavelle we're discussing mainstream and alternative media. and i might go back to you in paris it seems to me another trend here is that news

outlets that claim to be objective are being more and more often punished by the consumer because i think most people believe that this whole theory of objectivity is really gone that's why they go to fox and i'll even admit that's why they come to our team. they want they want something much more edgy ok beyond cats and dogs and going to the beach but this objectivity thing i think is it's a car wreck now it doesn't work anymore that's why c.n.n. is being punished so much. well i know that the american press has traditionally prided itself on its objectivity but i think that the long gone from the u.k. media should we say yes and where it's been well known for decades that the spin and the political slant of newspapers is always dictated by the owner by the. outlet so for example. and his news international group running newspapers like the sun and the old news of the world could legitimately say that he could actually pick governments because by throwing the weight of his media outlets behind chosen

politicians he could sway the voters and i think this is very dangerous path to go down for democracy where these relatively anonymous corporate parent can have such an impact on the democratic direction of a country and it's not conspiratorial to say this it's been laid bare through the phone hacking scandal in the u.k. the degree of interconnectivity between top politicians and between media barons so this goes on time and time again plus of course there's a whole battery of other laws which can be used to control and coerce the media into a portion of what the government or the military or the spies want them to report up to an include in secrecy i just. asked in washington go ahead media barons have free speech true i mean come on use their money and power to try and influence people or they're doing is engaging in free speech that's what the media is you talk about you use the word control and certainly i agree with many of your points but you know free speech doesn't exert control people still have the option to choose what sort of media they consume and again rupert murdoch certainly

is a free citizen and gets to decide what he wants to print publish and people get to choose what they consume so i don't really like the idea that people get to say oh well you are controlling the media because no one really has a monopoly on the media you know russia today exists fox news exists and i never really believed in the concept of object. maybe when it came to reporting i mean you're not objective when you choose what story you want to report vary by choosing a story that you want to report your that you're deciding what the narrative is going to be for the day and i think that this whole idea that there was never any sort of objectivity has sort of been like a wall over there are over the eyes the conservatives have never in the united states have never made any bones about the fact that they are not being objective they're biased but they're fair and the reality is that this is the liberals in our country who have said you know a.b.c. news all were objective in the media the republican party just came out with an announcement in the last month saying that they are going to start picking and choosing which debates which networks are going to be allowed in the whole presidential debates because they know that it's a farce that the liberal media in the united states has any semblance of

objectivity they never have they only convinced people that they were george but it seems to be because of what i've become you know hey i'm any because of what any did say and what austin said one of the things that i think that's happening and i find it bothersome in some ways is that we have parallel universes you could have murdoch in his little universe there and then you have people people on twitter on facebook and they're getting more and more divorced and then i think this could be very dangerous because people feel a sense of just not being enfranchise in society they have their own small communities believe me i know that from facebook personally. yes that's exactly right and so what we now have is these news new news shows in which a standard narrative is presented i mean most recently we had the standard narrative of russia and the ukraine and the standard narrative what is putin up today's putin want to revive the soviet empire and that's the standard narrative now of course if

you don't want to hear that and if you want to hear a much much better and a much more balanced account of what was going on in the ukraine there were other sources however what was important was what was happening in those mainstream outlets because they were shaping policy they were the. ones that were getting the message across to the policymakers on the policy makers were listening to them the policy makers were not listening to the alternative universe or the alternative outputs are so it seems to me they're beginning to go i think ok going to any job in paris. now is just just a very quick point on that for example although the mainstream narrative about the need to intervene in syria over the last few years was being pushed to go towards intervention and for example the u.k. politicians were keen to follow that narrative however there was so much distrust in the mainstream media is next with around syria after what happened in iraq and after what had happened in libya that the pressure came from below in order to stop

cameron from actually going in intervening so it can you know that this distrust. between the consumers of the media and the mainstream media is growing and i think it is beginning to influence some of the political decisions are soon. going to head with a degree there because george well i'll just say that i think that the issue of the pressure from below is yes it's up there for untrue but there was pressure from below before the invasion of iraq i mean there was an enormous amount of number of protests throughout the world millions of people demonstrated on the eve of the iraq invasion it didn't make one bit of difference syria there was a there was a vote in parliament and there was a change we don't know the exact mechanics of why obama backed away the last minute but obama was clearly planning on bombing i mean we were hours away on. the exotic initial are you going to have a pretty good because of the rise of the power go ahead of it and i know why obama

backed away it was because he had he had no support from either the republican party or the democratic party because the difference between the war in iraq and the war in syria is that they anti-war activists didn't have a half a million to a million fans on facebook back in two thousand and one because the social media power didn't. you see things have changed in the last decade people like myself we now have huge audiences which we can use real democrat democratic power against our legislators our elected officials when you talk about democracy i mean social media is the real democracy now if there is a new initiative that's going on such as the push for a war in syria people like myself an antiwar dot com can go out and we can now tap our wide array of resources that we have in order to put pressure on our legislators and the pressure from the american public came in the form of democracy it came in the form of electronic mails and that came in the form of social media i mean no one wants to have a negative social media campaign aimed at them and no one even knew what that was

back during the war in iraq but now nobody wants their facebook page assaulted by you know the tea party anymore so i think that things have really changed in the last decade and how you know i read anything so i read it and i really don't think george just. george jump in and i you know i really don't think so i think that was a clear case that the ground fell from under the feet oh i i'm under the there was a great deal of collapse in the government's case i mean it was clear that he didn't hersh has written about this extensively the intelligence agencies had pulled the rug from under obama's feet he really didn't have any backing for his claims and obama was looking for a way out and president putin provided him with a way out obama doesn't care and the good ministration doesn't care about people on facebook of public opinion public opinion does not change foreign policy now but the idea of machines do care is a good price and i was never going to get to an authorization of military force the president was never going to get an authorization of military force from this

congress because the elected officials our country our our presidents name our president will never get all the rights that you and i did only to the judiciary had already begun as i was going to go to paris annie oakley and one of the interesting thing i agree with and says we have the advent. facebook and we have you tube very important twitter etc etc but one of the things the broader picture understand. very importantly it has been mentioned on this program was the war in two thousand and three against iraq in the subsequent occupation which is disastrous but we also have the financial crisis of two thousand and eight two thousand and nine which i think got a lot of people looked at the establishment in the media if they were betrayed by that the one percent were saved and bailed out within a matter of months everybody else was left in the gutter and i think when we get these new tools again going back to my analogy of parallel universes in the

brokerage business model as you mentioned but we are going in different directions here there is an empowerment from below i don't know if it's ever ever works out very well in the end but people do feel empowered. and they are beginning to yes people are finding their individual voices and they're losing their deference through authority and i think they're more willing and more able to challenge that broken party and that's what we're seeing now one of the pushback from that in my view it's almost like an arms race between we the people trying to hold onto our rights and protest against some of these inequalities in injustices and illegal wars and then what is now the military security state gathering more powers that they can watch us and survey us and push back against our fight for our freedoms more effectively as we saw when they crushed occupy in two thousand and eleven and . just started putting c.c.t.v. cameras up all over the place to spy on them where they were putting people in prison just for being demonstrations on the streets where they deemed occupy london to be domestic extremist terrorists these are people exercising their democratic

rights and so people can see this threat so people are mobilizing and i think it's a shot in the arm for our rights here george you know they're saying that the because of the total result of all used against those tyrants ok we're almost out of time here george i always thought the others. yes but if you think they claim that it's a sense they're looking for terrorists but no they're not they're looking at people like us on this program to make sure we stay in line. so that that's exactly right i mean that's the point about the internet is just that yes i mean there was it has people can now write their own blogs but it also means that governments can monitor exactly what everybody is up to just to go back to what annie's point about the occupy movement i mean you'd have thought that this movement which captured people's imaginations now with all the social media occupy should have had a huge impact i mean you know because you can do so many more things now with the social media than you could a few years ago and yet it was a repressed and it also fizzled else you know i remember you know the strikes of

the mind of strikes of the one nine hundred seventy s. in britain it was just one guy with a payphone and yet they were able to mobilize the masses of people moving from one . plant to another copeland it in the is a sophisticated technology you need a movement you need all the organization so social media are one part of the jigsaw but they know by itself is just not going to do all that mud ok on that point thank you very much fascinating program many thanks and i guess in new york washington and paris and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember prosper. leave the room.

for revolution to go straight from being a violent side of the existing order to be a well run democracy is impossible it just won't happen because the acts of the revolution so far there are all. after shocks a so grave that there is a period of chaos. as a new physician i swear to abide by the hippocratic oath. to the best of my ability and judgment. i will prescribe for the good of my patients. i will not give deadly doses to anybody. or advise others to do so. i will never do harm to any where.

doctors of the dogs are on onto. this is what we do we kill people and break things. we can see something if simple as people playing a soccer game you can see individual players and if you see the ball. i can almost see his facial expression you can see is a mouth open and crying out. maybe cursed us or maybe even asked. for forgiveness for. there must be near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured.

coming up on our t.v. the private security firm blackwater is once again at the center of controversy a new report reveals that a top manager threatened the life of a government investigator in iraq the latest on this scandal just ahead. and the iraq crisis expands with an announcement from isis militants the jihad us group has declared the establishment of a new islamic state extending from syria to iraq more on this development coming up . and eastern ukraine continues to experience balance of violence a russian camera man was fatally shot while riding with a bus pass as a journalist in leathers of ukraine.