{"id":234730,"date":"2016-03-29T16:51:55","date_gmt":"2016-03-29T16:51:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=234730"},"modified":"2016-03-29T16:51:55","modified_gmt":"2016-03-29T16:51:55","slug":"obamas-fakery-news-medias-suckery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/obamas-fakery-news-medias-suckery\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama’s Fakery, ‘News’ Media’s Suckery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

How can it be that the same news-medium that reported, on 22 April 2015, that the Obama Administration allows countries it signs trade-pacts with to murder their trade-union organizers and insists upon continuing to permit those murders, has now also reported on 24 March 2016,\u00a0“The Obama Administration Just Took A Huge Step On Worker\u00a0Safety:\u00a0It\u2019s known as the silica rule, and it\u2019s a big frigging deal\u201d<\/span><\/a>?\u00a0This new Obama-Administration \u2018rule\u2019 won\u2019t even be enforceable, but that \u2018news\u2019 medium failed to notice that this \u2018big frigging deal\u2019 is actually only a con by Obama \u2014 nothing more than empty words and promises, nothing at all that\u2019s likely to be enforceable (because bigger actions by him, which they had reported earlier, are intended to make any such new rule virtually unenforceable<\/i>).<\/span><\/p>\n

On 22 April 2015, Michael McAuliff, Huffington Post\u2019s Senior Congressional Reporter and one of the best journalists covering that beat, headlined,\u00a0“AFL-CIO\u2019s Trumka: USTR Told Us\u00a0Murder Isn\u2019t A Violation Under U.S.\u00a0Trade Deals,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and reported that Obama\u2019s U.S. Trade Representative, Obama\u2019s own longtime friend Michael Froman, refused to treat the murder of trade-union organizers in foreign countries as being unfair to American workers who in America\u2019s \u2018trade\u2019 pacts are wage-competing against third-world workers whose trade-union organizers are freely murdered \u2014 as hundreds of these labor-organizers have, in fact, been.<\/span><\/p>\n

The AFL-CIO documented that, under\u00a0CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement in 2005,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0there have been several murders of trade-union organizers in Guatemala during the Obama Administration, and Obama\u2019s Trade Representative said that this isn\u2019t relevant to compliance with any U.S. trade agreement with any country, not CAFTA, not NAFTA, and wouldn\u2019t be under TPP, TTIP, TISA, or any other. He said it\u2019s not relevant to any \u2018Free Trade Agreement\u2019. McAuliff reported, in his article: \u201cThea Lee, the AFL-CIO deputy chief of staff, told HuffPost that USTR officials said in at least two\u00a0meetings where she was present that killing and brutalizing organizers would not be considered\u00a0interfering with labor rights under the terms of the trade measures. One instance involved talks last year about killings in Guatemala, where the AFL-CIO has been seeking redress for labor violations for six years. Another came just\u00a0a few months ago in talks about a three-year-old case involving Honduras, Lee\u00a0said. \u2018To substantiate our case we documented five or six murders of Guatemalan trade\u00a0unionists that the government had failed to effectively investigate or prosecute,\u2019\u00a0Lee said. \u2018The USTR told us that the murders of trade unionists or violence against\u00a0trade unionists was not a violation of the labor chapter because it was a rule of law\u00a0problem.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Similarly, on 24 September 2013, HuffPo\u2019s Kate Sheppard, a Senior Reporter on environmental matters, bannered,\u00a0“Michael Froman, Top U.S. Trade\u00a0Official, Sides With Tar Sands\u00a0Advocates In EU Negotiations,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and she reported that, “Refiners in the U.S. have expressed concern that [the EU\u2019s] assigning higher [CO2-processing] values to tar sands oil [than to regular oil] would\u00a0limit their ability to export the product to the EU. While most tar sands oil\u00a0comes from Canada,\u00a0much of it is\u00a0processed in U.S. refineries,\u201d and Froman was pressing the EU to weaken their anti-global-warming rules so that in TTIP, the EU wouldn\u2019t be permitted to \u2018discriminate\u2019 against higher-CO2-producing tar-sands-derived oil. Of course, under 2016-election-year pressure, Obama ultimately disallowed construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline for bringing tar-sands-oil from Canada to the Texas coast for shipment to Europe; but, actually, he really wanted to allow the XL to be built, and he was pressuring Europe to accept the oil into their market \u2014 the world\u2019s largest energy-market. On that issue, too, he was working behind-the-scenes (via his Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry<\/span><\/a>, and his Trade Representative Froman) to produce faked Environmental Impact Statements favoring XL<\/span><\/a>, and also to force Europe to accept tar-sands oil which would be carried by that Pipeline, even while he was publicly mouthing anti-global-warming statements.<\/span><\/p>\n

So: Huffington Post, which reported the truth that Obama wants American workers to be wage-competing against third-world labor where union organizers are routinely murdered in order to keep wages down, and which also reported the truth that Obama\u2019s mouthings against global warming are purely pretense from him, nonetheless allows sucker-reporters on its staff to advertise for Obama such propaganda, as, from Dave Jamieson, their Labor Reporter:\u00a0“The Obama Administration Just Took A Huge Step On Worker\u00a0Safety:\u00a0It\u2019s known as the silica rule, and it\u2019s a big frigging deal\u201d<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Under TPP and TTIP \u2014 these two mega \u2018trade\u2019 deals that are intended by Obama to be his biggest legacy achievements if he can get them into law \u2014 a prosecution of any foreign corporation (that\u2019s based in another of the signatory countries) for violating this \u2018rule\u2019, can spark from that corporation a lawsuit against the U.S. for \u2018infringing on the corporation\u2019s right to profit.\u2019 A panel of three private \u2018arbitrators\u2019 will hear the case and issue a ruling, which won\u2019t be able to be appealed in any nation\u2019s courts<\/span><\/a> \u2014 it will be final, and the laws of no nation can be appealed to to reverse it. U.S. taxpayers would then be forced to reimburse the corporation for any \u2018losses\u2019 that allegedly result from America\u2019s having enforced this new rule. How likely is it that a rule which is stiffer than existed when the trade-agreement was written, will then be enforced?<\/span><\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s push to strengthen the grip of international corporations and to make supreme stockholders\u2019 \u2018rights,\u2019 above and beyond the merely national rights of mere voters and citizens and taxpayers of any signatory country, is tragically real; his mere rhetoric and even \u2018regulations\u2019 against such things, is tragically fake.<\/span><\/p>\n

Are American news-media suckers for allowing such deception to be reported without simultaneously reporting the ugly reality \u2014 without demanding every<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>reporter always<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>to make note of the fakery, and never merely<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>to report the fake \u2019news\u2019 without noting that<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>it\u2019s a fake \u2014 so that readers can get an understanding of the reality, not merely of the surface?<\/span><\/p>\n

After all: a President who is so determined to give international corporations what they want as to treat the murder of union-organizers in a \u2018free-trade-area\u2019 country as being irrelevant<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>to that country\u2019s \u2018free trade\u2019 with the U.S., and to try to force Europe to lower its anti-global-warming standards so as to promote the sale of the world\u2019s dirtiest oil \u2014 and at the same time to mouth his own opposition<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>to those very same things \u2014 shouldn\u2019t ever be allowed to present his mere lies and deceptions, without in the same report, indicating also the ugly reality that they\u2019re contradicting<\/i>. (Instead of reporting that ugly reality, this PR-piece simply ignores it and the contradiction \u2014 makes no mention of it.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Honest news-reporting in the U.S. shouldn\u2019t depend only upon the mere quirk that a few of a news-medium\u2019s reporters (such as McAuliff and Sheppard) are competent; what\u2019s required is management-level competence, which entails demanding of each and every<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>news-report, and every<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>news-reporter on their staff, to report reality, and never only<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>to report the mere surface of what\u2019s actually fakery.<\/span><\/p>\n

The problems in American journalism are at the very top. And this is a major reason why so many American voters are so deceived, and so confused. They get too much mere propaganda, and thus they really have no reason to trust any \u2018news\u2019 report (except perhaps the few news-reports that \u2014 like the present one \u2014 provide links to the evidence behind all key allegations and so invite<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>any skeptical reader to check out its sources, the deeper<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>level of that report).<\/span><\/p>\n

On 28 September 2015, Gallup headlined, \u201cAmericans’ Trust in Media Remains at Historical Low,\u201d<\/span><\/a> and the problem there isn\u2019t<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>the distrust; it\u2019s that the distrust is warranted. <\/span><\/p>\n

And the real<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>rot in America\u2019s \u2018news\u2019media is at the top. That\u2019s where this distrust has its source.<\/span><\/a> It can\u2019t reasonably be blamed on sloppy or gullible reporters. After all: they didn\u2019t hire themselves. (And, sometimes, the best reporters get fired for being too good<\/span><\/a>. To be a good journalist in America \u2014 as in most countries \u2014 requires courage: it\u2019s dangerous to a reporter\u2019s career.)<\/span><\/p>\n

With such rot at the top, voters make their electoral decisions more on the basis of misinformation and outright propaganda, than on the basis of authentic and honestly reported news. Whether that type of press produces a democraciy is doubtful: the evidence says that it doesn\u2019t<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org How can it be that the same news-medium that reported, on 22 April 2015, that the Obama Administration allows countries it signs trade-pacts with to murder their trade-union organizers and insists upon continuing to permit those murders, has now also reported on 24 March 2016,\u00a0“The Obama Administration Just Took […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":234731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[115,30,15417,535,698,753,524,49,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-234730","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-corporate-state","11":"tag-global-news","12":"tag-hillary-clinton","13":"tag-police-state","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-usa-news","16":"tag-warfare","17":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}