tv Cross Talk RT August 13, 2014 5:29pm-6:00pm EDT
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he'll afridi a senior pakistani doctor to run a door to door hepatitis b. vaccination drive in an effort to collect d.n.a. they were vaccinating people and collecting d.n.a. to help find bin ladin when they got wind of that the taliban banned the polio vaccine wherry that is just another cia plot and now they're targeting and killing doctors who tried to administer vaccines in pakistan as a result according to pakistani officials there are now two hundred and fifty thousand children without their vaccines just to avoid a cia plot pakistan saw a fixed two percent increase in polio cases last year the country was on its way to eradicating polio completely until the taliban learned how the cia it used to hepatitis b. vaccine campaign to do their dirty work officials have no doubt of the direct relationship the taliban does
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a lot of terrible things but the only reason they're blocking vaccines in pakistan right now is because people in the white house just couldn't keep themselves from bragging about every detail of their getting bin ladin hollywood story as a result they are directly responsible for this new health crisis and for all those kids who are now being paralyzed by a disease they should have never known tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter at the risk. reward the what your comedy use of the comedy used to be a bare freeze to no fun to put down. but the truth. quiting into the
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next in the corporate elite and billionaire freaks while they're going. well that's what you get with my new show projected tonight. i know c.n.n. the m.s.m. b.c. fox news have taken some not slightly but the fact is i admire their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be accurate. that was funny but it's close enough for the truth of the might think. i'm good it's because one full attention and the mainstream media work side by side the joke is actually on we're going to be coming up. at our teen years we have a different approach. because the news of the world just is not this funny
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i'm not laughing dammit i'm not high. i thought. you got us into the jokes we'll handle the mayor said i've got to. hello and welcome to cross talk where all things considered i'm 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
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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 and editor of the libertarian republic to come and in paris we cross to any much shown she is a former british intelligence officer and writer all right crosstalk rules in fact 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 the apollo link 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
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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 of those shows and shake their fists at russia or. syria or the people who are writing in the year or speaking on the alternative media i wish i could say it was the latter i am fortunately i think that it's the people who are on the mainstream media who set the agenda who dominate the conversation that's a very good point i asked him i go to you in washington i suppose we do still react
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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 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. or they go to opinion blogs or people that they trust people like glenn vote 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
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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 immediately 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 destroyed their hard drives and things like that any you know what kind of environment are we living in here because you know it was just 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 and they are working
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into 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 will 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 threatens the route seventeen 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 pointing to 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 where. 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 person forty five minutes from five minutes money getting and that's i think when the the end of the credibility began now of course and as often mentioned people do go to twitter they do want to
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see what's going on on the ground and they just don't trust the corporate media because they can come ration of control of most of the corporate media now it's in the hands of a very very very small number of very powerful media companies who have courts very close to the power to govern it so there's that sort of credibility issue to georget 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 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 out of individuals certain institutions and you have to really keep your nose to the grindstone to really understand what's going on in my specialisation 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
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the truth though that's absolutely correct. there is now so much information just simply swamping the internet that it is very hard to sort it all see what is reliable the problem is that the in the you media. rely very much on the traditional media because the traditional media. were able to gather news i mean here it'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. medio 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 hard so while it's true that
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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 got 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. i'm going to acknowledge and i'll go ahead and i 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 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 to citizens without filtering it through the prism of news gathering organizations so this is sort of
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radical transparency and sure we had its problems but of course it spawned a whole new generation of leaks type sites things like globally and secured to open a whole range of other bewildering 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 are sort of one of the. sort of so it's sort of go ahead you. know i don't know it's got are sort of the whole point is you are going to go ahead i just want to talk about i 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 the people are consuming and they basically compared it to cotton candy versus broccoli limit. you look at it people will be 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
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a list of calls of cat pictures and so if we look at this from an aspersion active of corporate control versus consumption patterns you have to understand that nowadays it's the consumer that has the power in the mall and 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 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 make sure if i want to sort of you know a sort of well you could roll the what do you consider the brave new world what the consumer wants is not necessarily good for people kate george you know and that really mattered i'm sure couldn't print media on us is i'm sure it's great people
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are looking at. you know let's go with data ratification brave little. go ahead go hard now i know but that's what the consumers want to absolutely absolutely and. it works with yeah 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 show that we have an informed citizenry that can we take good sound decisions of policy i mean if you could just put pictures of kids and cats fighting dogs and little children messing around in the on the beach i made sure i mean we can you know how much can we say people short little kids to everybody i mean really are we supposed to save people from them so. els who had also go ahead. what i'm just saying you can't save people from themselves the media or the public i want what they want you have to give them what they want or you're going to be out of business george the last word before the break well no i mean i really don't think that way i really don't think we should be in the business of catering to the lowest common
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denominator because then i mean the you know let's just have it will just tabloid newspapers every well let's just have you know all you know let's have nothing but sex and scandals i mean that's all right you know i don't i'm not saying no we're going to go which they want to break this one after that short break we'll continue our discussion with on the media environment stay with us to. believe the police will. answer. it was a. very hard to take i don't want to get on here. blog have
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and i go back to you in paris it seems to me another trend here is that news outlets that claim to be jack give 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 t.v. 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 is traditionally private cellphone it's objectivity but i think it's a long gone from the u.k. media should we say yes and where it's being well known for decades that the spin and the political. slant of newspapers is always dictated by the owner by the the owner of 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
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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 the country and it's not conspiratorial to say this is being 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 is a whole battery of other laws which can be used to control and coerce the media into reporting what the government or the military or the spice 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 why can't they use their money and power to try and influence people all 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
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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 objectivity when it came to reporting i mean you're not objective when you choose what story you want to report very good choosing a story that you want to report your 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 lip. girls in our country who have said you know a.b.c. news or 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
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a farce that the liberal media in the united states has any semblance of objectivity they never have they only convince people that they were george but it seems to be because of going to become you know hey 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 despair 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 a standard narrative what is putin up to these putin want to revive the soviet
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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 their message across to the policymakers on the policy makers were listening to them the policymakers were not listening to the alternative universe in the alternative. is ok asif it seems to me in the beginning today i think ok go ahead any job in paris go ahead jump in. just just a very quick point on that for example the mainstream narrative about the need. going intervene in syria over the last few years was being pushed to go towards intervention and for example 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
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after what had happened in libya that the pressure came from below in order to stop the 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 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 to a point true 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 i was away i know all of the exotic initial are going to have to go to because of the rise of the power go
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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 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 exist you see things have changed in the last decade people like myself we now have huge audiences which we can use real drama democratic power against our legislative 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
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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 really don't think so i read it and i really don't think george. george jump in and i you know i really don't think so i think there 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 i mean i 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 it's public opinion does not change foreign policy now but the i didn't do care years ago price and i was never going to get
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a 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 presidents network presidents get authorization i get only the judiciary had already been hearing as i was going to go to paris annie and one of the interesting thing i agree with and says we have the advent of facebook and we have you tube very important twitter etc etc but one of the things the broader picture understand ok we have but very importantly it has been mentioned on this program was the illegal 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 a one. 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 the brokerage
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business model as you mention 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 they're losing their deference for authority and i think they are more willing and more able to challenge that broken off party and that's what we're seeing now one of the pushback from that in my view it's almost like the arms race between we do people trying to hold onto our rights and protest against some of these inequalities and injustices and illegal wars and then what i suppose is now the military security state gathering more power is 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
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to be domestic extremists or terrorists these are people exercising their democratic rights and so people can see this threat so people are moving and i think it's a shot in the arm for our rights here george you know they're just saying that the because of the total result of all use they're going to claim that it is those are 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. yes there were people can write their own blogs but it also means that governments can monitor exactly what everybody is up to just to go back to what point about the occupy movement i mean you'd have thought that this movement which captured people's imagination. as 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 out but you know i remember you know the strikes of
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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 . place to another copeland it in the is a sophisticated technology you need a movement you need all the organization so social media all one part of the jigsaw but they you 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 profit off. the legal.
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what's really good folks and all rob lowe and this is breaking the set filling in for abby martin so even though president obama and congressional counterparts are on vacation there's one issue that isn't taking a break the humanitarian crisis at the us mexico border secured into just released stats from homeland security the number of migrant children from central america seeking refuge in the u.s. is like nothing we've ever seen it was because while there is still a perception out there that mexican nationals are the biggest contributor to the immigration crisis that couldn't be farther from the truth so you are.
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