newsarticles.media: Media Manipulation News

Jeffrey Epstein's 4chan Plan

The three million Epstein files recently released by the Department of Justice (DOJ) recast Jeffrey Epstein as more than a criminal sex trafficker, an intelligence asset, or a professional blackmailer. The files also suggest he had a role to play in the creation of today's online far-right politics. "Brexit, just the beginning," he wrote to Palantir founder ... Peter Thiel in 2016, celebrating the onset of "tribalism" and the unraveling of globalisation. Epstein appeared to view right-wing populism as an opportunity – and to understand very early how the internet could be used to accelerate it. Rather than simply watching this new ecosystem emerge, however, he seems to have played a part in its formation. In October 2011, Jeffrey Epstein met with the creator of the anonymous message board 4chan. His conversation with Christopher "moot" Poole took place just days before the fateful relaunch of 4chan's influential far-right imageboard, /pol/ (shorthand for "Politically Incorrect"). That board in particular, and the site more broadly, would come to serve as a breeding ground for the far-right's online activism. In an email to Epstein, the late sex-trafficker's associate and former Bill Gates advisor Boris Nikolic (who introduced Poole and Epstein) cites a Washington Post article from 2010. It describes 4chan as a "hive mind" with a unique power to ... create "mass disruptions." Epstein did not lose sight of 4chan. He tried repeatedly to pin Poole down for further meetings in 2012.

Note: QAnon originally launched on 4chan's /pol/ board in October 2017. Don't miss part one and part two of our investigations into the Epstein files so far. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on media manipulation and Jeffrey Epstein's criminal enterprise.

Universities Can't Pursue Truth Without Viewpoint Diversity

The truth-seeking function of universities does not work properly without the presence of diverse viewpoints. This is especially true when it comes to contested social and political questions. Taboos, blind spots, groupthink and the politicization of scientific standards haven't just made academic research narrower and worse, these trends have alienated the general public and reduced public confidence in higher education ... across the ideological spectrum. Unsurprisingly, the increasing ideological conformity of the professoriate is reflected in the decreasing range of ideas that students encounter in the classroom. A recent national study shows a narrow range of perspectives included on undergraduate syllabi on such controversial topics as the conflict between Israel and Palestine, racial bias in the criminal justice system, and abortion. Professional training does not make professors immune to ordinary human biases. Today's cohort of scholarly experts remains vulnerable to the same "tyranny of public opinion" and "uncritical and intemperate partisanship" that the founders of the American Association of University Professors in 1915 warned academia to resist. This means that today's arguments about viewpoint diversity must be considered and judged in their historical and political contexts. [Academic disciplines] have lost a healthy amount of internal contestation, or have turned self-selection and self-governance into ideological capture.

Note: From gender medicine research, the psychology field, social justice movements, to Middle East politics, a recent study tracking 1 million people revealed that two-thirds of us are afraid to say what we believe in public, while other studies reveal a significant decline in people's motivation to share views that are unique or controversial. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in science.

Jeffrey Epstein's digital cleanup crew

Jeffrey Epstein appears to have been googling himself regularly. We see Epstein shoot off emails to associates, complaining that his digital footprint includes factual information about his crimes. Epstein regularly directed his gripes at Al Seckel, a fixer type who appears over and over in Epstein files and promises to bury news articles and other content that mentions his abuse. SEO consultants, contacts in the sciences, and even unrelated acquaintances helped to obscure Epstein's past. In October 2010, Seckel laid out an overview of the group's plan of attack to defend Epstein's reputation online. The situation, as Seckel described it, was that a search surfaced "over 75+ pages of derogatory material," and that someone would be "very hard pressed to find any â€positive' references." To "balance the only one-sided negative opinion that has been spread over a wide birth on the Internet," Seckel said, the team would need to flood the zone with content they can control, specifically pointing to spinning up websites with original content related to Epstein's connections to science and charities. A "Phillipine Crew" ... would spread flattering links around the web, and other tasks. Part of how Google decides which pages to rank highly in search results is by looking at whether other sites link to a page; Epstein's camp appears to have been trying to push down negative search results by securing valuable links from outside entities.

Note: Another email shows Al Seckel reporting to Jeffrey Epstein that they have successfully manipulated Google search results to bury negative news articles about Epstein, making it difficult to find information about him, even when searching terms like "pedophile." Read our latest in-depth Epstein files investigation, titled "Beyond Sex Trafficking–Zorro Ranch and a Darker Scientific Agenda." For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's crime ring and Big Tech.

Epstein met with 4chan's founder just as the site's infamous political thread began

In October 2011, years after Epstein pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct with a minor, an adviser to Bill Gates named Boris Nikolic emailed Epstein about wanting to introduce him to a "cool guy." The message included a link to the Wikipedia page for 4chan founder Christopher Poole (who also goes by "moot"). Poole oversaw the platform until 2015. Four days later, Epstein responded to Nikolic about his meeting with Poole to say, "i liked mmot slot. i drove him home, he is very bright." The timing of the introduction is interesting. The same month that Nikolic introduced Epstein to Poole, 4chan launched a politically oriented forum called /pol/, which became popular with right-wing extremists. The site eventually became a cesspool of far-right extremism, violent rhetoric and propaganda, and incubated the pro-Trump conspiracy theory known as QAnon. Four days after Epstein met with Poole, Nikolic emailed Epstein again with a comment on 4chan's potential. "This article describes why I find moot interesting. The potential for manipulation is huge," Nikolic wrote, linking to a Washington Post article that discussed how 4chan had been used to foment bigotry, launch cyberattacks and fuel a "hive mind" mentality. Poole's name appears in Epstein emails later as well, including the next month, when Poole coordinates with one of Epstein's subordinates about meeting up in New York. "Chris, Jeffrey has also said to feel free to bring anyone you think is clever!" the email reads.

Note: QAnon originally launched on 4chan's /pol/ board in October 2017. Read our latest in-depth Epstein files investigation, titled "Beyond Sex Trafficking–Zorro Ranch and a Darker Scientific Agenda," which investigates Epstein's deep ties to the scientific elite and their active exploration of eugenics, designer babies, human cloning, social engineering, and other human experimentation practices. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's crime ring and Big Tech.

Longevity guru Peter Attia keeps CBS News role despite showing up in Epstein files

CBS News has no plans to drop health guru Peter Attia from his contributor role after his emails to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein surfaced last week. Attia was among the 19 contributors named by CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss when she addressed staff about her future plans for the network on Jan. 28. Two days later, Attia showed up in the latest batch of files on Epstein. A Stanford-trained physician who has gained prominence for his expertise in longevity medicine, Attia had a number of email exchanges with Epstein, including a crude discussion about female genitalia. Another message showed Attia expressing dismay that he could not discuss Epstein's activities. "You [know] the biggest problem with becoming friends with you? The life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can't tell a soul...," Attia wrote. Conduct such as Attia's association with Epstein would typically be grounds for a network news organization to cut ties with an individual, especially one who is not a full-time employee. Contributors are usually paid by the appearance. But Weiss is said to be opposed to cutting Attia, according to two people familiar with her thinking. As founder of the digital news site the Free Press and as an opinion writer, Weiss spoke out against so-called cancel culture and does not want to be seen as reacting to the Epstein frenzy. Insiders say even if CBS News' ties to Attia are not publicly severed, it's unlikely he will be seen on the air.

Note: Don't miss Part 1 and Part 2 of our in-depth investigative series on this massive elite crime ring now coming to light in the documents being made public. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's trafficking ring.

The Seven Richest Billionaires Are All Media Barons

Trump loyalist and CIA contractor Larry Ellison's purchase of CNN appears imminent, and marks the latest venture into media for the world's second-richest individual. The world's seven richest individuals are all now powerful media barons, controlling what the world sees, reads, and hears, marking a new chapter in oligarchical control over society and striking another blow at a free, independent press and diversity of opinion. In September, President Trump signed an executive order approving a proposal to force through the sale of social media platform TikTok to an American consortium led by Ellison-owned tech company, Oracle. Under the planned arrangement, Oracle will oversee the platform's security and operations, giving the world's second-richest man effective control over the platform that more than 60% of Americans under thirty years of age use for news and entertainment. No other period in history has seen such a rapid and overwhelming buy up of our means of communications by the billionaire class – a fact that raises tough questions about freedom of speech and diversity of opinion. Today, the world's seven richest individuals are all major media barons, giving them extraordinary control over our media and public square, allowing them to set agendas, and suppress forms of speech they do not approve of. This includes criticisms of them and their holdings, the economic system we live under, and the actions of ... governments.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial inequality and media manipulation.

I Founded Wikipedia. Here's How to Fix It.

Wikipedia was founded on an idealistic mission to provide all the world's information for free–and to do so democratically. But, as we've reported before in these pages, the site has been hijacked by ideologues. One of the site's founders, Larry Sanger ... has been a vocal critic of what the site he built has become. At present, Wikipedians offer their own well-managed, curated perspective on global opinion. But any opinion outside of that perspective is an unwelcome "minority or fringe view"–as global opinion usually is. They will be silenced, should they have the audacity to speak for themselves. To better record the chorus of worldwide voices, Wikipedia should permit multiple, competing articles per topic, written within explicitly declared frameworks, each aiming at neutrality within its own framework. Wikipedia's editorial work is self-managed by a group of volunteers. But things are not as democratic as they seem. There are 62 accounts with the most authority, who have the ability to install and remove administrators or check the IP addresses of problem users. But only 14.5 percent of these accounts reveal a full, real name. The vast majority of Wikipedia's top editorial leadership is anonymous. These accounts are the people who are ultimately responsible for Wikipedia's content. There is no legitimate, well-established way to ratify significant reforms. There have been few, if any, significant changes since 2006. Wikipedia needs an editorial legislature chosen by fair elections.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and media manipulation.

Wikipedia co-creator Larry Sanger reveals how the CIA secretly hijacked entries to re-write history

Larry Sanger appeared on Tucker Carlson's podcast to claim Wikipedia had lost its way and began censoring accounts which held right-wing or conservative views. 'There is a whole army of administrators - hundreds of them - who are constantly blocking people that they have ideological disagreements with,' he said. Sometime between 2006 and 2007, he began asking questions about intelligence agencies interfering with the entries. 'Virgil Griffith did Master's research,' he revealed, speaking of the American programmer who served a five year prison sentence for North Korea with evading sanctions. 'He came up with a tool called Wiki Scanner that enabled people to look up the IP addresses of people who had done edits and like, who had edited which articles. And so they were able to find a whole bunch of edits coming from Langley.' Langley is often a term used to describe the CIA, the unincorporated community of Langley in Virginia, where the headquarters is based. 'A large part of the remit of intelligence today is to manipulate public opinion in various ways,' Sanger said. 'Wikipedia is like just a gold mine for the intelligence agencies of the world because it's like a one stop shop. You can just like type in the things that you want people to believe.' Carlson had claimed Wikipedia has become 'a weapon of ideological, theological war, used to destroy its enemies.' Sanger said he first recognized and began to describe Wikipedia as 'propoganda' in 2020.

Note: Read more about how the CIA, FBI, and the Pentagon secretly edited entries in Wikipedia, including removing references to CIA illegal rendition and torture, downplaying US involvement in Iraqi civilian deaths, and rewriting the definition of "terrorism" to expand its political use. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and intelligence agency corruption.

It Was Worse Than We Thought

A long-suppressed oversight report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) concluded that the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), which claimed Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump, had been manipulated under the direction of then-CIA Director John Brennan. The HPSCI report revealed that Brennan created a special Fusion Cell, excluded independent reviewers, and used a tightly controlled team of hand-picked CIA analysts to reverse what the underlying intelligence actually said. According to a CIA whistleblower who co-authored the ICA, Brennan put the team "under duress" to reach a conclusion that Putin supported Trump. The evidence did not show that the Russians favored Trump. According to someone close to the report, the raw intelligence showed that Russian officials saw Hillary Clinton as "more stable and more manageable" – and thus preferable to Trump. But Brennan's hand-picked team reversed that. Meanwhile, those responsible have faced no consequences. There was a time when if you abused your power in office, whether or not it rose to the level of a crime, you were exiled from D.C. Instead, Comey gets a teaching job in ethics, and Clapper and Brennan get TV contracts. The picture is less incomplete and, finally, clear. The Intelligence Community did not merely misread Russian intentions. It reversed its own analysts. It misled Congress.

Note: The security firm CrowdStrike was hired to investigate the alleged Russian hack of DNC servers in 2016 and found no proof that any emails from the system had been exfiltrated. All they found was inconclusive circumstantial evidence, which was presented as proof in media to the public. This deflected from the DNC and Clinton campaign's sabotage of Bernie Sanders and the damaging content of leaked DNC emails. In 2022, the DNC and Clinton campaign were fined by the FEC for obscuring their role in funding the debunked Steele dossier. Clinton also personally approved sharing another unverified claim with the press that alleged a secret Trump-Russia server connection, which helped trigger an FBI investigation later found to be baseless. Why are we not connecting the dots?

The CIA Built Hundreds of Covert Websites. Here's What They Were Hiding

Beginning in 2004, the CIA established a vast network of at least 885 websites, ranging from Johnny Carson and Star Wars fan pages to online message boards about Rastafari. Spanning 29 languages and targeting at least 36 countries directly, these websites were aimed not only at adversaries such as China, Venezuela, and Russia, but also at allied nations ... showing that the United States treats its friends much like its foes. These websites served as cover for informants, offering some level of plausible deniability if casually examined. Few of these pages provided any unique content and simply rehosted news and blogs from elsewhere. Informants in enemy nations, such as Venezuela, used sites like Noticias-Caracas and El Correo De Noticias to communicate with Langley, while Russian moles used My Online Game Source and TodaysNewsAndWeather-Ru.com, and other similar platforms. In 2010, USAID–a CIA front organization–secretly created the Cuban social media app, Zunzuneo. While the 885 fake websites were not established to influence public opinion, today, the U.S. government sponsors thousands of journalists worldwide for precisely this purpose. The Trump administration's decision to pause funding to USAID inadvertently exposed a network of more than 6,200 reporters working at nearly 1,000 news outlets or journalism organizations who were all quietly paid to promote pro-U.S. messaging in their countries. Facebook has hired dozens of former CIA officials to run its most sensitive operations. As the platform's senior misinformation manager, [Aaron Berman] ultimately has the final say over what content is promoted and what is demoted or deleted from Facebook. Until 2019, Berman was a high-ranking CIA officer, responsible for writing the president's daily security brief.

Note: Dozens of former CIA agents hold top jobs at Google. Learn more about the CIA's longstanding propaganda network in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation.

How the Secret Algorithms Behind Social Media Actually Work

A series of corporate leaks over the past few years provides a remarkable window in the hidden engines powering social media. In January 2021, a few Facebook employees posted an article on the company's engineering blog purporting to explain the news feed algorithm that determines which of the countless posts available each user will see and the order in which they will see them. Eight months later ... a Facebook product manager turned whistleblower snuck over ten thousand pages of documents and internal messages out of Facebook headquarters. She leaked these to a handful of media outlets. Internal studies documented Instagram's harmful impact on the mental health of vulnerable teen girls. A secret whitelist program exempted VIP users from the moderation system the rest of us face. It turns out Facebook engineers have assigned a point value to each type of engagement users can perform on a post (liking, commenting, resharing, etc.). For each post you could be shown, these point values are multiplied by the probability that the algorithm thinks you'll perform that form of engagement. These multiplied pairs of numbers are added up, and the total is the post's personalized score for you. Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter all run on essentially the same simple math formula. Once we start clicking the social media equivalent of junk food, we're going to be served up a lot more of it–which makes it harder to resist. It's a vicious cycle

Note: Read our latest Substack focused on a social media platform that is harnessing technology as a listening tool for the radical purpose of bringing people together across differences. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and media manipulation.

'Selling anger': How cable news profits from outrage

It's no secret that cable news networks have partisan reputations. But new research shows the divide extends beyond which party a network appears to support. Over the past decade, these networks have increasingly focused on criticizing the opposing political party, a tactic researchers say is less about informing viewers and more about "selling anger." "These networks are more interested in talking about the opposing political party rather than their own candidates. This was not the case 15, 20 years ago," said Diego Garcia, the ... co-author of the working paper. The findings show that politics dominates cable news, accounting for about 60% of all named individuals mentioned–rising to over 75% during election years. But more revealing is who gets talked about: MSNBC spends more time discussing Republicans than Democrats, while Fox News focuses more heavily on Democrats. In 2024, Fox covered Democrats 60% of the time, with MSNBC showing the reverse. Garcia speculates that cable networks began to test different kinds of content when social media became widespread in the mid-2010s, and discovered that outrage boosts viewership. "I think Fox was the first one to figure this out, and they started pushing this negative rhetoric in their news," he said. "They're actually now the No. 1 cable news channel in the U.S. by far." Fox News now commands over 60% of the cable news audience–a dramatic jump from a more evenly split landscape a decade ago.

Note: Watch our 31-min video titled, "How to Transform Media Polarization, One Echo Chamber At A Time." For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on media manipulation.

Obama admin assessed Russia played no role in 2016 election result, declassified docs show

The Obama administration knew before and after the 2016 election that Russia did not affect the vote's outcome through cyberattacks. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard made public more than 100 pages of emails, memos and other records cataloguing what she called Obama officials' "conspiracy to subvert President Trump's 2016 victory." Both before and after Democrat Hillary Clinton's loss, the US Intelligence Community assessed that Russia played no significant role influencing the election. Among the documents was a Sept. 12, 2016, Intelligence Community Assessment that determined "foreign adversaries do not have and will probably not obtain the capabilities to successfully execute widespread and undetected cyber attacks" on election infrastructure. On Dec. 7, 2016, then-DNI James Clapper's office also concluded: "We have no evidence of cyber manipulation of election infrastructure intended to alter results." But those findings were suppressed after the FBI ... said it was going to "dissent" from the draft's conclusions "based on some new guidance." Clapper then spearheaded an alternative intelligence report claiming the Kremlin orchestrated hackings of Democratic National Committee emails ... and intervened in the presidential contest in favor of Trump. [Obama] ordered a new intelligence assessment from the CIA, FBI, NSA and DHS ... which ended up including the since-debunked dossier produced by former MI6 spy Christopher Steele.

CIA Contradicts Obama Officials' Sworn Denials About Russiagate Report

New evidence suggests that some of the highest-ranking officials in the Obama-era CIA and FBI perjured themselves regarding their claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin helped Donald Trump secure his victory in 2016. A newly released CIA review challenges their sworn denials to Congress that the Steele dossier – a discredited set of allegations about Trump funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign – was used as the basis for the years-long Russiagate probe that hamstrung President Trump's first term. The eight-page review conducted by career CIA analysts found the dossier did, in fact, worm its way into the text of the highly classified report known as an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) to buttress the thinly sourced, yet inflammatory allegation that "Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances." Former CIA Director John Brennan, for one, insisted in his sworn May 2017 testimony before Congress that the Steele dossier was not "in any way" used as a basis for the so-called ICA completed in late December 2016. Likewise, then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper said in an official January 2017 statement that "we did not rely upon [the dossier] in any way for our conclusions." The CIA review shows that the unverified and now-debunked dossier was used as support for the intelligence analysis, not just as a sidebar as Obama officials have maintained.

Uri Berliner: What Congress Should Ask NPR's Chief

It's been about 10 months since I wrote an essay for The Free Press in which I lamented, much more in sorrow than in anger, that NPR, my journalistic home for 25 years, had lost the trust of a large segment of the country. Public radio news had devolved into a doctrinaire source of what I called "one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies." In 2020 alone, we dismissed the very possibility of a Covid lab leak in China, and our then–managing editor refused even to cover Hunter Biden's laptop, calling it "not really" a story. Now the crisis is at hand. Republicans control Congress and the White House, and they seem serious about what had previously been ritualistic GOP threats to cut public media. Katherine Maher, the NPR CEO ... has been called before the House Subcommittee on Delivery on Government Efficiency. The immediate past CEO of NPR, the late John Lansing, declared diversity, equity, and inclusion "the North Star" of the organization. In 2021, I found 87 registered Democrats among NPR editorial staff residing in D.C., where the network is headquartered. There were zero Republicans. Is NPR doing anything to address this seeming lack of viewpoint diversity, such as hiring journalists from conservative media, recruiting military veterans, or seeking candidates who attended religious colleges and state universities?

Note: Read more about the major problems Uri Berliner encountered at NPR. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation.

Metadata Shows the FBI's â€Raw' Jeffrey Epstein Prison Video Was Likely Modified

The United States Department of Justice this week released nearly 11 hours of what it described as "full raw" surveillance footage from a camera positioned near Jeffrey Epstein's prison cell the night before he was found dead. The release was intended to address conspiracy theories about Epstein's apparent suicide in federal custody. But instead of putting those suspicions to rest, it may fuel them further. Metadata embedded in the video ... shows that rather than being a direct export from the prison's surveillance system, the footage was modified. Hany Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley whose research focuses on digital forensics and misinformation, reviewed the metadata at WIRED's request. Farid is a recognized expert in the analysis of digital images. He has testified in numerous court cases involving digital evidence. "If a lawyer brought me this file and asked if it was suitable for court, I'd say no. Go back to the source. Do it right," Farid says. "Do a direct export from the original system–no monkey business." The footage confirms that from the time Epstein was locked in his cell at approximately 8 pm on August 9, 2019. However, the recording includes a notable gap: Approximately one minute of footage is missing, from 11:58:58 pm to 12:00:00 am. The video resumes immediately afterward. It looks suspicious–but not as suspicious as the DOJ refusing to answer basic questions about it.

Note: Followup reporting by Wired indicated that almost 3 minutes were cut before this footage was released. Internal US Bureau of Prison (BOP) documents suggest a possible cover-up, while a 60 Minutes 2020 investigation uncovered compelling evidence that challenges the official suicide ruling in Jeffrey Epstein's death–including suspicious neck fractures, missing surveillance footage, and a series of unexplained security failures. Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations.

Is Hollywood inspired by the CIA, or the other way around?

There's a revolving door of talent between the country's premiere intelligence agency and its entertainment industry, with inspiration and influence often working both ways. The agency is targeting professionals at the intersection of arts and technology for recruitment ... and continues to cooperate with entertainment giants to inspire the next generation of creative spies. Creative minds in Hollywood and the entertainment industry have long had a role at the Central Intelligence Agency, devising clever solutions to its most vexing problems, such as perfecting the art of disguise. In the 1950s, a magician from New York named John Mulholland was secretly contracted with the agency to write a manual for Cold War spies on trickery and deception. These days, the officers said, creative skills are more valuable than ever. "You're only limited by your own imagination – don't self-censor your ideas," said Janelle, a CIA public affairs officer. "We're always looking for partners." Some of the CIA's most iconic missions – at least the declassified ones – document the agency's rich history with Hollywood, including Canadian Caper, when CIA operatives disguised themselves as a film crew to rescue six American diplomats in Tehran during the Iran hostage crisis, an operation moviegoers will recognize as the plot of "Argo." CIA analysts have also been known to leave the agency for opportunities in the entertainment industry, writing books and scripts drawing from their experiences.

Note: Learn more about the CIA's longstanding propaganda network in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. The US Department of Defense has had a hand in more than 800 top Hollywood films. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and intelligence agency corruption.

Blinken Ordered the Hit. Big Tech Carried It Out. African Stream Is Dead

On Tuesday, July 1, 2025, African Stream published its final video, a defiant farewell message. With that, the once-thriving pan-African media outlet confirmed it was shutting down for good. Not because it broke the law. Not because it spread disinformation or incited violence. But because it told the wrong story, one that challenged U.S. power in Africa and resonated too deeply with Black audiences around the world. In September, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made the call and announced an all-out war against the organization, claiming, without evidence, that it was a Russian front group. Within hours, big social media platforms jumped into action. Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok all deleted African Stream's accounts, while Twitter demonetized the organization. The company's founder and CEO, Ahmed Kaballo ... told us that, with just one statement, Washington was able to destroy their entire operation, stating: "We are shutting down because the business has become untenable. After we got attacked by Antony Blinken, we really tried to continue, but without a platform on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and being demonetized on X, it just meant the ability to generate income became damn near impossible." Washington both funds thousands of journalists around the planet to produce pro-U.S. propaganda, and, through its close connections to Silicon Valley, has the power to destroy those that do not toe the line.

Note: Learn more about the CIA's longstanding propaganda network in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship.

"Defend or be damned" – How a US company uses government funds to suppress pesticide opposition around the world

Financed partly with US taxpayers dollars, [a] firm in Missouri called v-Fluence [was] founded by former Monsanto executive Jay Byrne. [v-Fluence] established a "private social network" to counter resistance to pesticides and genetically modified (GM) crops. A profile of former New York Times food writer Mark Bittman ... includes a description of where he lives, details of two marriages and personal hobbies, and an extensive Criticisms section. Bittman said that it was a "terrible thing," for taxpayer dollars to be used to help a PR agency "work against sincere, legitimate, and scientific efforts to do agriculture better." Syngenta signed a contract with v-Fluence in 2002 to help the company deal with negative information coming to light about its paraquat herbicides. v-Fluence went on to help Syngenta create false or misleading online content that was "Paraquat-friendly," used search engine optimization to suppress negative information about paraquat in Internet searches and investigated the social media pages of victims who reported injuries to Syngenta's crisis hotline. Syngenta's internal research found adverse effects of paraquat on brain tissue decades ago but the company withheld that information from regulators, instead working to discredit independent science linking the chemical to brain disease and developing a "SWAT team" to counter critics. In its response to those stories, Syngenta asserted that no "peer-reviewed scientific publication has established a causal connection between paraquat and Parkinson's disease."

Note: Read more about how v-Fluence was used to censor the web and silence dissenting voices. "Trust the science" sounds noble–until you realize that even top editors of world-renowned journals have warned that much of published medical research is unreliable, distorted by fraud, corporate influence, and conflicts of interest.

For Tech Whistleblowers, There's Safety in Numbers

Amber Scorah knows only too well that powerful stories can change society–and that powerful organizations will try to undermine those who tell them. While working at a media outlet that connects whistleblowers with journalists, she noticed parallels in the coercive tactics used by groups trying to suppress information. "There is a sort of playbook that powerful entities seem to use over and over again," she says. "You expose something about the powerful, they try to discredit you, people in your community may ostracize you." In September 2024, Scorah cofounded Psst, a nonprofit that helps people in the tech industry or the government share information of public interest with extra protections–with lots of options for specifying how the information gets used and how anonymous a person stays. Psst's main offering is a "digital safe"–which users access through an anonymous end-to-end encrypted text box hosted on Psst.org, where they can enter a description of their concerns. What makes Psst unique is something it calls its "information escrow" system–users have the option to keep their submission private until someone else shares similar concerns about the same company or organization. Combining reports from multiple sources defends against some of the isolating effects of whistleblowing and makes it harder for companies to write off a story as the grievance of a disgruntled employee, says Psst cofounder Jennifer Gibson.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and media manipulation.

Is Your Favorite Influencer's Opinion Bought and Sold?

More than 500 social media creators were part of a covert electioneering effort by Democratic donors to shape the presidential election in favor of Kamala Harris. Payments went to party members with online followings but also to non-political influencers – people known for comedy posts, travel vlogs or cooking YouTubes – in exchange for "positive, specific pro-Kamala content" meant to create the appearance of a groundswell of support. Meanwhile, a similar pay-to-post effort among conservative influencers publicly unraveled. The goal was to publish messages in opposition to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s push to remove sugary soda beverages from eligible SNAP food stamp benefits. Influencers were allegedly offered money to denounce soda restrictions as "an overreach that unfairly targets consumer choice" and encouraged to post pictures of President Trump enjoying Coca-Cola products. In both schemes, on the left and the right, those creating the content made little to no effort to disclose that payments could be involved. For ordinary users stumbling on the posts and videos, what they saw would have seemed entirely organic. If genuine public sentiment becomes indistinguishable from manufactured opinion, we lose our collective ability to recognize the truth and make informed decisions. The entire social media landscape [is] vulnerable to hidden manipulation, where money from interest groups or corporations or even rich individuals can silently shape what appears to be authentic discourse. Transparency in political influencing requires regulatory action.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation.

New FBI chat logs reveal extraordinary â€gag order' senior leadership used to shut down any Hunter Biden laptop discussion

New chat logs released by the House Judiciary Committee this week show the extraordinary lengths the FBI went to behind the scenes to shut down any discussion of Hunter Biden's laptop in October 2020 after the New York Post broke the story. The conversations, withheld by the FBI under Director Chris Wray, show that senior leadership issued an internal "gag order" on the laptop. The FBI had been in possession of the abandoned MacBook Pro for 10 months by that stage, after computer repair shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac handed it over. The FBI's forensic analysts quickly determined the laptop belonged to Hunter, had not been tampered with or altered in any way, and was suitable to be used in court. Yet the chat logs show that senior FBI officials instructed agents to say "No comment" when asked about the laptop during regular meetings with social media companies before the 2020 election. The FBI had spent weeks warning Facebook and Twitter about election interference in the form of Russian disinformation and had told Twitter to be on guard for a "hack and leak" operation "likely" involving Hunter Biden. In other words, the FBI "prebunked" The Post's story so that the social media companies immediately censored it. The FBI knew The Post had received a hard-drive copy of the laptop from Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani because it had a covert surveillance warrant on the former mayor's iCloud.

Note: It took more than a year for New York Times and Washington Post to finally admit that the laptop was genuine. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and intelligence agency corruption.

â€A case study in groupthink': were liberals wrong about the pandemic?

In their peer-reviewed book, In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us, [left-leaning political scientists] Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee argue that public health authorities, the mainstream media, and progressive elites often pushed pandemic measures without weighing their costs and benefits, and ostracized people who expressed good-faith disagreement. The book grew out of research Macedo was doing on the ways progressive discourse gets handicapped by a refusal to engage with conservative or outside arguments. "Covid is an amazing case study in groupthink and the effects of partisan bias," he said. At times, scientific and health authorities acted less like neutral experts and more like self-interested actors, engaging in PR efforts to downplay uncertainty, missteps or conflicts of interest. Reports by Johns Hopkins (2019), the World Health Organization (2019), the state of Illinois (2014) and the British government (2011) had all expressed ambivalence or caution about the kind of quarantine measures that were soon taken. The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security hosted a wargaming exercise in October 2019, shortly before the pandemic began, to simulate a deadly coronavirus pandemic; the findings explicitly urged that "[t]ravel and trade â€¦ be maintained even in the face of a pandemic." A WHO paper in 2019 said that some measures – such as border closures and contact tracing – were "not recommended in any circumstances". "In inflation-adjusted terms," Macedo and Lee write, "the United States spent more on pandemic aid in 2020 than it spent on the 2009 stimulus package and the New Deal combined." The economic strain on poor and minority Americans was particularly severe. Teachers' unions ... painted school re-openings as "rooted in sexism, racism, and misogyny" ... despite the fact that minority and poor students were most disadvantaged by remote learning.

Note: Pandemic policies led to one of the greatest wealth transfers in history. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID corruption and media manipulation.

Catherine Herridge: Protecting Sources Is a Hill Worth Dying On

Forcing a journalist to disclose confidential sources will have a crippling effect on effective investigative journalism in this country. The First Amendment provides protections for the press because an informed electorate is essential for robust debate and a strong democracy. But what happens when you find yourself dragged into a lawsuit, ordered to divulge your sources, and held in contempt when you refuse? It is relatively uncommon for a court or the government to try to force a reporter to divulge sources. But it does happen, and when it does, it has a chilling effect on sources, reporters, and journalism itself. Sources wonder if they can trust a journalist who promises confidentiality, while journalists become less willing to offer that promise. It damages the ability of the press to root out wrongdoing. There is some good news, though. Congress appears poised to make it far more difficult for journalists to be compelled to divulge their sources. In January, in a rare display of bipartisanship, the House unanimously passed the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act, or the PRESS Act. The bill, which is now awaiting action in the Senate, would mandate the disclosure of sources only in a limited number of cases. It would also bar the government from surveilling journalists. A recent letter from a coalition of more than 130 civil liberties and journalism organizations ... called the legislation "a rare chance to strengthen freedom of the press."

Note: The above was written by former CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge, who was fired after reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal–after which CBS seized her confidential reporting files. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and media manipulation.

How the U.S. Government Controls Ukrainian Media

An independent Ukrainian journalist named Ostap Stakhiv was livestreaming a call with Vasyl Pleskach, a man claiming he was being illegally detained by Ukraine's infamous military conscription unit, the TCC. The agency has been accused of kidnapping men from the street and forcing them to the front lines. In the middle of the interview, Stakhiv called the police to see if they would free Pleskach. Just then, with the police still on the line, a burly figure entered Vasyl's frame, walked over to Pleskach, and struck him hard in the face. "They're beating him right now," Stakhiv told the police. "People are watching it live. Go to my YouTube channel and see it for yourself." None of Ukraine's media outlets covered the beating, but about a month later, a Ukrainian media outlet, Babel, ran an article about Stakhiv. Its headline? "Ostap Stakhiv–a Failed Politician and Antivaxxer–Created a Vast Anti-Conscription Network." Other Ukrainian outlets ... chimed in with similar stories–some even containing identical phrasing. Nine out of 10 media outlets in Ukraine "survive thanks to grants" from the West. The primary funder of these outlets is an NGO called Internews. And where does Internews get its money? Primarily from USAID, to the tune of $473 million since 2008. There's no doubt that USAID's media program in Ukraine has done some good. But critics charge that the money comes with strings. It is one thing for a country to pass laws that restrict speech in times of war. It is quite another when "independent" media outlets ... engage in that same censorship, and orchestrate smear campaigns against journalists who report on abuses. One of the most blatant abuses, which has been going on since 2023, is the military recruiter practice of snatching men from the streets, breaking into apartments, and even torturing men who have refused to join the military. Dozens of videos documenting these abuses have been widely shared on social media.

Note: Read about the Chilean-American war commentator who died in prison under brutal circumstances after being smeared as a pro-Russian propagandist because he challenged the official narrative about the war in Ukraine. For more, watch world-renowned economist and public policy analyst Jeffrey Sach's powerful address at the EU Parliament about the deeper history of US and NATO involvement with Ukraine.

USAID Falls, Exposing a Giant Network of US-Funded â€Independent' Media

The Trump administration's decision to pause USAID funding has plunged hundreds of so-called "independent media" outlets into crisis, thereby exposing a worldwide network of thousands of journalists, all working to promote U.S. interests in their home countries. USAID spends over a quarter of a billion dollars yearly training and funding a vast, sprawling network of more than 6,200 reporters at nearly 1,000 news outlets. Oksana Romanyuk, the Director of Ukraine's Institute for Mass Information, revealed that almost 90% of the country's media are bankrolled by USAID, including many that have no other source of funding. [Independent media is] defined as any media outlet, no matter how big an empire it is, that is not owned or funded by the state. Some USAID-backed journalists candidly admit that their funding dictates ... what stories they do and do not cover. Leila Bicakcic, CEO of Center for Investigative Reporting (a USAID-supported Bosnian organization), admitted, on camera, that "If you are funded by the U.S. government, there are certain topics that you would simply not go after, because the U.S. government has its interests that are above all others." While the press may be lamenting the demise of USAID-backed media, many heads of state are not. "Take your money with you," said Colombian President Gustavo Petro, "it's poison." Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador, shared a rare moment of agreement with Petro. "Most governments don't want USAID funds flowing into their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up," he wrote, explaining that: "At best, maybe 10% of the money reaches real projects that help people in need (there are such cases), but the rest is used to fuel dissent, finance protests, and undermine administrations that refuse to align with the globalist agenda."

Note: The New York Times reported in 2014 that USAID was used as a front for CIA regime change operations all over the world, and played a central role in overseeing the trillion-dollar failure of the war and reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. USAID has a long history of child sex abuse cover-ups, fraud allegations, indictments, and inadvertently funding terrorists.

Sen. Joni Ernst warns of â€willful sabotage' at USAID, cites millions in funding for Wuhan lab, terrorists and more

The embattled US Agency for International Development has engaged in "willful sabotage of congressional oversight" over recent years while doling out taxpayer dollars to groups that overbilled the US and possibly gave funds to terrorists, Sen. Joni Ernst alleged. [Ernst] listed a slew of examples on social media this week on why "USAID is one of the worst offenders of waste in Washington." This includes $2 million in funding related to Moroccan pottery classes, some $2 million backing trips to Lebanon, over $1 million to fund research in the Wuhan lab, $20 million to make a Sesame Street in Iraq and $9 million in humanitarian aid that "ended up in the hands of violent terrorists." The White House has similarly outlined "waste and abuse" in USAID as the Trump administration eyes a dramatic overhaul of the agency. In a Wednesday letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Ernst ... cited her concerns about wasteful spending and recounted obstruction she faced from USAID. In one example she highlighted, an inspector general discovered that Chemonics, a USAID contractor, overbilled the feds by "as much as $270 million through fiscal year 2019" and was caught "possibly offering kickbacks to terrorist groups." Chemonics had been heavily involved in a $9.5 billion USAID initiative to beef up global health supply chains, which ultimately ended in dozens of arrests and indictments over the resale of agency-funded products on the black market.

Note: USAID may have funded the creation of COVID-19 and has funneled billions into Ukraine. Could it be that this organization is a front for an intelligence agency?

USAID Funded Censorship, Smears of Americans

Viral social media claims from last night regarding USAID and Politico ... suggested that ongoing spending cuts at USAID, the foreign aid agency, were shutting down domestic media outlets supposedly dependent on government money. There is no evidence that the freeze in USAID funding had any impact on Politico payroll. That said, USAID does separately fund various questionable news operations. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a major investigative news outlet responsible for the Panama Papers and other blockbuster news series, relies heavily on State Department and USAID funding. Officials have used their leverage over OCCRP to influence editorial and personnel decisions at the outlet. USAID money flows to contractors operating news outlets worldwide, such as Pact, Inc. and the East West Management Institute. Yesterday, I wrote about USAID contractor Internews, which operates and funds several Ukrainian news outlets, many of which have called for censoring pro-peace American journalists and activists over false allegations that they are Russian agents. Most insidiously, these Ukrainian outlets act as independent fact-checkers, providing outsourced content moderation services to Meta and TikTok. In other words, these outlets operate as convenient third parties for the U.S. government to censor dissident voices in ways it could not do directly.

Note: USAID may have funded the creation of COVID-19 and has funneled billions into Ukraine. Could it be that this organization is a front for an intelligence agency? For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship.

Why Elites Love Identity Politics

"If we broke up the big banks tomorrow, would that end racism? Would that end sexism?" This quote from one of [Hilary Clinton's] campaign rallies has an unusual durability. The Democratic Party's answer to Bernie Sanders's propagation of economic justice and economic issues was to smear him as somebody who ignored the plight of what they love to call – their new term – "marginalized groups," which is people of color, women, trans people, all matters dealing with sexuality. [Hilary Clinton's] victory over Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary reshaped center-left politics for a decade and established identity politics as a standard tool in the Democratic Party belt. For basically a decade ... you couldn't even criticize [identity politics] without being smeared as a racist, a sexist, whatever term would work to instantly discredit any criticism while shutting down any critical thought of what that criticism represented. There's a huge rise in the number of black elected officials, mayors, congressmen, etc. [They] no longer have any reason to cater to working-class blacks because workers are politically disorganized. The political officials end up captured by the same corporate forces as the white politicians – but they get to have the corner on race talk. To deal with the quality of life and life chances of the vast majority of racial minorities, you have to go beyond disparities and look at the actual availability of social goods, not the current distribution of different races. Identity politics promotes strategies and policies that primarily address the interests of elites rather than the vast majority of working Americans. As long as the American political system is run on money, the basic direction of both parties is going to be set by big money. The way out is not by confining ourselves to increasing representation and combating discrimination, but rather by addressing the quality of the jobs and the availability of basic goods.

Note: Watch an excellent interview of journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon discussing how journalism has shifted from being a working class trade that held the powerful accountable to an elite industry that serves the upper class. She articulates that mainstream news has abandoned and divided the working class by creating a culture war around identity and race. Elites shaping the news industry benefit from this political polarization, which hides the tragic reality of income inequality that affect all races across political lines.

You can finally press â€reset' on your Instagram feed. Here's why you should.

Instagram has released a long-promised "reset" button to U.S. users that clears the algorithms it uses to recommend you photos and videos. TikTok offers a reset button, too. And with a little bit more effort, you can also force YouTube to start fresh with how it recommends what videos to play next. It means you now have the power to say goodbye to endless recycled dance moves, polarizing Trump posts, extreme fitness challenges, dramatic pet voice-overs, fruit-cutting tutorials, face-altering filters or whatever other else has taken over your feed like a zombie. I know some people love what their apps show them. But the reality is, none of us are really in charge of our social media experience anymore. Instead of just friends, family and the people you choose to follow, nowadays your feed or For You Page is filled with recommended content you never asked for, selected by artificial-intelligence algorithms. Their goal is to keep you hooked, often by showing you things you find outrageous or titillating – not joyful or calming. And we know from Meta whistleblower Frances Haugen and others that outrage algorithms can take a particular toll on young people. That's one reason they're offering a reset now: because they're under pressure to give teens and families more control. So how does the algorithm go awry? It tries to get to know you by tracking every little thing you do. They're even analyzing your "dwell time," when you unconsciously scroll more slowly.

Note: Read about the developer who got permanently banned from Meta for developing a tool called "Unfollow Everything" that lets users, well, unfollow everything and restart their feeds fresh. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and media manipulation.