Media Bias/Fact Check: Part of a Larger Operation to Destroy Alternative Media

Kurt Nimmo

While doing research for a Newsbud video, I came across the Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC) website. This is one of a growing number of “fact checking” websites designed to discredit news websites not following official narratives closely enough. 

Here’s what the site has to say about Newsbud and my participation:

Newsbud (NB) is a right wing, conspiracy and anti-government site founded by, among others, Kurt Nimmo, the former lead editor and writer for Infowars. What sets NB apart from other sites of this type is that the stories are, for the most part, well written and contain numerous sources. The bias of the writing is also more subtle than sites such as Infowars, but just as prevalent. Both as an overtone to all the stories as well as the sometimes questionable sources and / or the conclusions drawn from the source material. Additionally, many of their sources are other NB stories, or work the author and editors have done elsewhere.

MBFC imparts misinformation in the first sentence. If it had done appropriate research, its ideologically driven checkers would have discovered Newsbud was established by Sibel Edmonds. I was invited to participate after the website was established and I am not a founder, as MBFC claims. 

This error—more accurately described as shoddy and careless research—reveals the liberal bias of the site and its proprietor, Dave Van Zandt. 

MBFC’s methodology is admittedly “subjective,” but this is not an issue for those working to destroy alternative media. In fact, it appears such subjectivity and bias are considered a plus in the effort the block sites deemed “dangerous,” as the performance artist Alex Jones and his website Infowars (which I indeed edited for eight years, almost exclusively focusing on geopolitics, neocon wars, and the surveillance-police state). 

From Wikipedia, which MBFC has elevated as a fount of truth and unbiased information (see Wikipedia Is More Biased Than Britannica, but Don’t Blame the Crowd), we discover Dave Van Zandt’s project serves as a touchstone for AI “solutions” to “disinformation,” that is information that does not conform to the various mythologies and half-truths put out by the propaganda media at the behest of a corporate state.

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“The Russians are Still Coming” “Without RussiaGate”: The “Fake News” Witch-hunt against the Independent Media

Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research

From one day to the next,  following the release of the Mueller report, the shaky RussiaGate consensus created by the corporate media has collapsed.  

What the Mueller investigation contends is that there is no proof that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 presidential elections. 

The demise of the RussiaGate narrative, however, does not mean that the Trump administration will renew its relations with the Kremlin. “The Russians are still coming”… without RussiaGate. Russia is still portrayed as a threat to America’s National Security. 

In this regard, the objective of the Neocons has been achieved. The Trump administration, with its hawk team of  advisers including Pompeo and Bolton, not to mention Gina Haspel at the CIA, is towing the line. 

Corporate and Political Rivalries

The RussiaGate narrative was required to sustain the multibillion dollar contracts in favor of the military industrial complex including the 1.2 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program.

What was at stake in 2016 were fundamental rivalries within the US establishment marked by the clash between competing corporate (and political) factions, each of which was intent upon exerting control over the incoming US presidency.

In this regard,  Trump was not entirely in the pocket of the lobby groups. He was not a groomed politician. As a member of the business establishment, he had his own corporate sponsors and fund raisers. His stated foreign policy agenda including his “commitment” to revise Washington’s relationship with Moscow did not fully conform with the interests of the defence contractors.

Prior to the elections, a smear campaign was launched by the media on behalf of the  “Clinton faction”. At the height of the election campaign Trump was portrayed by the US media as  “an agent” of the Kremlin, a modern Manchurian candidate.  Barely a month before the November 8 2016 elections, former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leo Panetta  intimated that Trump represented a threat to National Security. The Atlantic (October 8, 2016),  described Trump is a “Modern Manchurian Candidate”. 

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