News outlets didn’t make a mistake. They knowingly aired disinformation and peddled fake news, writes Jonathan Cook.
Sky Sports News gallery in London, 2010. (Dan, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)
By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan-Cook.net
The media’s role in peddling disinformation over last week’s violence in Amsterdam just keeps getting darker.
Owen Jones has interviewed a Dutch woman who shot the footage used by major outlets — from Sky News and the BBC to The Guardian and New York Times — to suggest that locals in Amsterdam carried out “antisemitic attacks” on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans.
In fact, as she has noted on social media, her footage shows the exact reverse: Israeli fans attacking local Dutch residents.
As I noted in my article yesterday, despite her efforts to get these outlets to correct their mistake and issue apologies, none has done so, apart from a German news programme, Taggeschau.
Jones’ interview offers insights as to why.
We know that an early report from the scene by a Sky News’ reporter was one of the only ones to correctly describe the video as showing Israeli hooliganism, not anti-Semitism.
But Sky quickly took down that report, saying it wasn’t “balanced”. The channel then heavily re-edited the segment and issued a new version that presented the footage — quite wrongly — as evidence of Dutch locals attacking Israeli fans.
That was crucial to shoring up the false “antisemitism” and “pogrom” narratives spread by Western politicians and the establishment media.
Here’s where it gets even more disturbing. The Dutch photographer interviewed by Jones says she was interviewed by Sky News about her footage before the second, re-edited report was aired.
It has now been more than 4 days since I complained to Sky News, and to their reporter Alice Porter, about the misuse of my footage of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans in Amsterdam on November 7.
They have not even had the courtesy to reply.
Shameful. @SkyNews @AlicePorterTV
— iAnnet ? (@iAnnetnl) November 14, 2024
In other words, not only was Sky’s reporter correct in her first account of the events in Amsterdam, but Sky’s news editors back in London knew exactly what the footage showed too – because the Dutch woman who filmed it had told them.
And yet Sky’s news team still edited a truthful news report to make it untruthful.
The only conclusion one can draw is that they did so to mislead their audience. They didn’t make a mistake. They didn’t act out of ignorance. They knowingly aired disinformation. They intentionally peddled fake news.
EXPOSED: What REALLY Happened in Amsterdam @pularjshttps://t.co/r0k7DDJJAh
— Double Down News (@DoubleDownNews) November 14, 2024
That’s something very hard for most of us to accept. It requires a troubling recalibration, a shift of perspective, if we are to understand the world we live in. But doing that is the only way to make sense of some of the most significant events that have unfolded over the past two decades.
Remember the lies we were sold by the Western establishment media about “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq to justify a U.S.-U.K. invasion and get western troops into a key oil-rich Middle Eastern state in gross violation of international law?
Remember the years of evidence-free claims from the entire British establishment media about the most prominent anti-racist politician of his generation, Jeremy Corbyn, who suddenly was outed as an unhinged antisemite the moment he became leader of the Labour Party? Corbyn also just happened to be the first democratic socialist to head the party in 40 years.
Remember the entire Western media establishment telling us that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was completely “unprovoked” — memory-holing years of warnings from leading Western foreign policy advisers and analysts that the West was playing with fire: that NATO’s relentless military advance towards Russia’s borders; its meddling to overthrow in 2014 a Ukrainian government sympathetic to Moscow; and Washington’s tearing up of nuclear arms treaties with Russia leaving the latter exposed to NATO’s expansion to its borders would inevitably trigger a backlash — and Ukraine would be its epicentre?
Remember the entire Western media insisting that Israel’s slaughter and maiming of many tens of thousands of children in Gaza, the systematic bombing of the enclave’s hospitals, and the mass starvation of the 2.3 million people there was not textbook genocide? Rather, it was “self-defence”. It was a legitimate war against Hamas.
Keir Starmer declared Israel is not committing genocide.
Here is slapped down by a legal expert who actually knows what he’s talking about https://t.co/WXw6kWZuPj
— Owen Jones (@owenjonesjourno) November 14, 2024
None of those things should have sounded like they made any sense at the time.
And if they did, we should have noticed that the media’s presentation of the “facts” just happened to coincide precisely with Washington’s interests to prop up its most important client state in the oil-rich Middle East and isolate its one potential military rival, Russia, as part of a strategic policy of “global full-spectrum dominance” — or, expressed another way, its project to be the world’s sole imperial power, to run the planet like some untouchable godfather.
The problem wasn’t, as you feared, you. You weren’t going mad. Your suspicions were justified. You were being lied to. The media was gaslighting you.
The challenge is to find a way to liberate other minds still desperately clinging to a comforting illusion: that the establishment media can be trusted, that it is free, honest and moral.
Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years. He returned to the U.K. in 2021. He is the author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict: Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006), Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). If you appreciate his articles, please consider offering your financial support.
This article is from the author’s blog, Jonathan Cook.net.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
It’s even more astonishing when you consider that the EU boasts about being a leader in combating misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information (hxxps://www.coe.int/en/web/campaign-free-to-speak-safe-to-learn/dealing-with-propaganda-misinformation-and-fake-news), yet notable media outlets across Europe are actively misleading the public.
Take the Swiss outlet 20 Minuten, for instance; it blatantly engages in propaganda, relying often on Ukrinform (in the past using even Azov intel)—an unreliable source—while publishing unverifiable data.
Just today, they ran an article claiming that Kiev still controls 1,000 km² in Kursk, which is laughably exaggerated, even by pro-Ukraine standards that suggest only 500-600 km² under Ukrainian control. When I pointed out this error in a comment, they deleted it without hesitation. What can be done against such blatant media manipulation and censuring?
We’re contemplating legal action against these Swiss journalists…
Without laws to hold media accountable for their propaganda and misinformation—stripping people of their right to know the truth—this will continue unabated.
PS: love the new editing option
Why are we afraid to name the people who are doing the editing… It would seem to me that we need to publicly identify who is actually making the decisions to alter the truth of what we are seeing. Imagine the uproar if the world knew who the editors were at sky news that changed that report from M s Potter…. we need a Wikieaks A WikiLeaks on who is initiating the commands Internally at sky news, Fox News, the BBC and all the major US networks is whats needed…
Isn’t lying what Zionism has become all about??? With so many guilty by association?
Here’s something interesting – nothing less than a climbdown by Amsterdam’s mayor.
“Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema has stated that she will no longer use the term “pogrom” when discussing the violence surrounding the Ajax-Maccabi Tel Aviv football match earlier this month, explaining that the word has been politicized and turned into propaganda.
In an interview for Nieuwsuur on Sunday evening, Halsema admitted that she should have highlighted the disruptions caused by Maccabi supporters before and after the Europa League game in Amsterdam. It was later revealed that 10 Maccabi fans were arrested that evening, with several others listed as wanted by the police.
“What I wanted to emphasize was the sadness and fear experienced by Jewish Amsterdammers,” Halsema said. “But I have to say that in the following days, I saw how the word pogrom became politicized, to the level of propaganda.
“The Israeli government spoke of a ‘Palestinian pogrom on the streets of Amsterdam’ and in The Hague the words were used to discriminate against Moroccan Amsterdammers, Muslims. That is not what I meant or what I wanted.”
hxxps://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/amsterdam-mayor-denounces-use-of–pogrom–as-propaganda
Will this be reported in the MSM ? Place your bets…
The bigger lie is that Israel is in Gaza because of a Hamas incursion into Israel.
When chimpanzees see monkeys between them and fruit trees they want, they attack the monkeys. When Israel sees Palestinians between them and gas wells in the Med sea they attack the Palestinians. Yes, a chimpanzee and an Israeli are at the same level of civilization and Israelis think of other humans as no more than monkeys.
This explain everything
1.ISRAËLISCHE HOOLIGANS ZETTEN AMSTERDAM OP ZIJN KOP (ENG SUB) BENDER…..hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySHIOYyJ95A&t=173s
2. Was Amsterdam a Mossad Operation? “Hamas is hiding in Amsterdam” MIKE WHITNEY • NOVEMBER 10, 2024 …hxxps://www.unz.com/mwhitney/was-amsterdam-a-mossad-operation/
What I find most disturbing is how the liberals cling to believing the corrupt corporate media. Ever since November 2016, they have fallen in love with the national security state and its media prostitutes. They were so desperate to believe any bad thing about Trump, they were completely hoodwinked about US foreign policy under corporate control. Now they are all in on the whole mis/disinformation nonsense about any unofficial news source that doesn’t repeat the official narrative. They are a huge obstacle to building a large mass movement against official US policy and corporate media. How do we snap them out of it?
In both liberal and conservative camps there are those who are purely tribal and only care about their side having power over the other side. No integrity or principles
It seems that to work for any of the Zionist media companies, one has to be a Zionist whore and basically be willing to lie for them on a regular basis. Which, of course, is antithetical to journalism. Therefore they are not “journalists” but simple propagandists.
We understand the false means to an end. It is a giant power grab.
The real question/problem is, “How did a group of people attain, and now, maintain such control over the western media?”
Only then can this travesty be held in check. Otherwise, we the people will be doomed to a land of dim and ineffectual.
The MSM outlets are all owned by billionaires and they (the billionaires) control the messaging to their own ends.
In France the media are still largely state-owned (though that is rapidly changing as the neoliberal juggernaut progresses). Yet here too there was never any doubt expressed in the media that there were “antisemitic attacks” in Amsterdam. How the media – and the leaders of most EU countries – receive their cues from the US/NATO permanent state is a mystery I hope to see elucidated one day.
Clearly, for many decades, very wealthy people (now many of them billionaires) control our “new media”. The Corporate-Owned-News (CON) has been a reliable source of mis- and dis-information for most of my lifetime (maybe it’s time to revisit the JFK assassination?). Until the majority of the US public realizes they can’t trust the CON, we will have great difficulty agreeing on any basic facts. Time to stop listening to the CON.
@john moffet
as to reliable sources of dis-/misinformation:
if i ‘m not mistaken, former CIA director william casey stated,
in 1981: “we’ll know our disinformation program is complete
when everything the american public believes is false.”
as to revisiting JFK’s assassination:
could not kamala harris have re-opened sirhan sirhan’s case
and refused to do so? [i might be wrong on that detail – but
many people have been fighting for years to re-open the case.]
A very important article, which, of course, will not make it into the New York Times, etc. Al Jazeera has, in my opinion, pretty balanced news about the slaughter in Gaza, but how many people in the West have access to, or are aware of it? If more people in the U.S. could understand the genocide taking place there on a daily basis, perhaps it would have been THE prominent issue in the past election, and not the economy (which is not to say economic issues are not important). A country that can ignore genocide, streamed live, has lost its soul. But I genuinely believe that if people could have been witness to the daily massacres, fully enabled by our government, it would have become a major campaign issue, and not shuttled to the background. The major media outlets have this blood on their hands, and it is a mystery how they can live with themselves.
@NevilShute
indeed a mystery how they can live with themselves
given that so many of their colleagues are being quite
deliberately killed – to keep their mouths shut and to
deprive the public of pictures and information which
would surely make them demand an end to all wars,
unless the public, too, has become numb to suffering
that has taken on unfathomably unbearable, inhumane
dimensions, not just in palestine …
Seems like deliberate collusion between mainstream media outlets and Western governments in a propaganda push to support Israel’s genocidal actions. This is mainstream media today and now it is falling fast (it failed, against all expectations, to deliver the election for the Democratic elite). All it is good for now is propaganda. I have learned by experience that every time we read or listen to something in the MSM, we know less than before we read or heard it. In other words, the MSM is deliberately and with malice aforethought trying to mislead us to our own detriment. What to do with a malign entity like that..?
Remember also the claim that Russia was violating the INF missile treaty signed in 1987.
It was never explained that that treaty only applied to land deployments. And so, Russia could deploy a missile at sea if it wanted to without violating any treaty.
The media coverage also ignored the fact that those advising Trump to leave the treaty, most notably John Bolton, had along record of hostility to it and probably never supported it in the first place.