What looks, acts and smells like a Global News Cartel and just got hit by an Antitrust lawsuit…

By Jo Nova

What if the news media formed a global monopoly to control the news?

Media pollution

Imagine if the media and tech giants of the world banded together behind-the-scenes to rule certain stories were “misinformation” and all their agencies thus reported the same “news”?

That’s what the Trusted News Initiative aimed to do — decide what ideas were and were not allowed to be discussed.

It’s like “free speech” but without the free part.

Not only could the media bury things but they could get away with it if no upstart competitor could red-pill their audience.

It would be the death of the Free Press

In a world like that the people would be ruled mostly by whomever it was that decided what was “misinformation”. Those controllers would be the defacto Ministry of Truth.

We all saw it happen over the last three years, so it’s good to put a name on the beast, but even better, Robert F Kennedy is suing them for anti-trust violation.

The Trusted News Initiative is everything journalists should hate. It’s basically there to “protect” voters from hearing about things like the Hunter-Biden Laptop, good climate news and bad vaccine reactions. TNI practically told us that in 2020:

The Trusted News Initiative (TNI) was set up last year [2019, just in time, eh?] to protect audiences and users from disinformation, particularly around moments of jeopardy, such as elections.

Nearly everyone’s on board:

Core partners in the TNI are: AP, AFP, BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Financial Times, Information Futures Lab, Google/YouTube, The Hindu, The Nation Media Group, Meta [Facebook], Microsoft, Reuters, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Twitter, The Washington Post, Kompass – Indonesia, Dawn – Pakistan, Indian Express – India, NDTV – India, ABC – Australia, SBS – Australia, NHK – Japan.

Which is a handy list of “where not to get your news”.

It’s a news cartel begging to be busted

Media Bias, voting behaviour of journalists.Tony Thomas at Quadrant not only alerted me to the TNI but also to the news that a lawsuit has been filed in the US for damages and to break it up:

…on January 10 President John Kennedy’s nephew, Robert F Kennedy Jr,  in a Texas District Court launched an anti-trust lawsuit for treble damages from TNI’s biggest news providers, namely the BBC, Washington Post, and global news syndicators Reuters and Associated Press. He wants TNI disbanded as an unlawful cartel. He cites the BBC because of its TNI lead role and US commercial operations involving millions of users.[1] The Kennedy lawsuit is here.[2] His brief says “It is also an action to defend the freedom of speech and of the press.”

This is rather like the Big Money Cartel of bankers and asset managers like BlackRock who are now facing anti-trust legal action all of their own.

The suit names the BBC because they were “the leaders” in at the start. But Thomas points out that the consequences are uncertain for the ABC, SBS and others. Though they are not named in the suit, they can still be liable:

The suit says,

Each participant in an antitrust conspiracy is jointly and severally liable for all the damages (including treble damages and attorneys’ fees) caused by the conspiracy, and the victims of an unlawful antitrust conspiracy are not required to sue all participants therein. (My emphasis, p93).

Thomas sent questions to the ABC and SBS in Australia asking them if they are involved in the lawsuit; whether they had advised their Minister about the potential legal exposure, and for details of how they had been implementing TNI policies. None have so far replied.

Perhaps it’s time for an FOI?

By the way, this is an actual BBC header, not a satirical dig.

BBC Beyond Fake News, misinformation. MEdia.

The only thing “beyond” fake news  is 100% managed propaganda.

By combining the major news and social media outlets, little competitors could be crushed

Even the media outlets that are not members of TNI would get this message — stray from the line and Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter (pre Elon Musk) will hurt you:

Robert  Kennedy’s own newsletters had 680,000 followers before being de-platformed, censored and shadow-banned by Google/YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook/Instagram. His writ says BBC’s Jessica Cecil, TNI’s head in 2020-21, took evident pride in the assertion that the TNI’s suppression of others’ online reporting did not “in any way muzzl[e] our own journalism”. He adds, “It was apparently of no consequence that the TNI muzzles other news publishers’ journalism.” (p44). Cecil spoke of TNI’s “clear expectations” for members to “choke off” alleged online misinformation. This incidentally prevents any one member gaining traffic by publishing “prohibited reporting” the others have binned.

Kennedy says TNI’s Big Tech members collectively have a gatekeeping power over at least 90 per cent of online news traffic. De-platforming a small news publisher typically costs at least 90 per cent of its traffic. Even well-known major online news publishers can lose up to 50 per cent of their traffic from a  seemingly minor change to Google’s search algorithms.  Smaller online news publishers have been destroyed completely when shadow-banned, throttled, de-monetized, or de-platformed.

The real free press are the bloggers now

The big threat to the legacy media and corruptocrats everywhere was the rise of the independent bloggers and influencers who could easily outscore the boring media bloc that repeated the same tedious lies. Ten years ago an army of blogs like this were growing every year and getting front page in many searches:

Kennedy’s lawsuit, less kindly, claims TNI’s commercial goal is to deplatform and crush  the myriad of upstart online publishers who are contradicting the official lines and reducing trust in big media, along with its ad revenues.  The legacy, high-cost media are smarting over competition from bloggers in the shift to digital publishing, with 85 per cent of Americans now getting their news online. US newspapers’ ad revenue between 2000 and 2020 plummeted from $US48.7 billion to only $US9.6 billion, Kennedy says (p28).

A further motive for the TNI censorship, Kennedy says, is to placate governments that are threatening adverse new regulations, potentially costing Big Pharma billions in fines, liabilities and lost revenue. US conservative pundit Tucker Carlson has satirised the Big Media censorship as: “We have a monopoly on telling lies. No one else can talk.”

In a free market for news, the same players compete with each other to get to the truth the fastest. In the TNI cartel, all the decisions about what “the truth is” are played out behind closed doors. The ABC News Director Justin Stevens claims the TNI is just a system of “fast alerts” about disinformation and “information sharing” about things like “how audiences react to disinformation”. But in a free market all that happens all the time. Stupid ideas get crushed by great responses. That’s how it works.

The best answers win in the court of public opinion. It’s democratic, people vote with their remotes, their wallets and on their ballots. TNI wants to hide that debate, take it away from the people, and put it in the hands of The Ministry of Truth.

Nice racket you have there

Read it all at Quadrant — as Tony Thomas tells it, it’s a profit making cartel. The Kennedy suit explains how the TNI members were promoting vaccines while silencing all the cheaper medicines. And Big Pharma was sending money back to TNI members in advertising.  The conflicts of interest are brazen — the President of Reuters News, James C Smith, sits on the board of Pfizer. When someone pointed this out on Linked In they were banned for life.  See how this works?

Why is a single dollar of our tax money supporting a news service that doesn’t know what journalism is? If cartels like this are not exactly the kind of thing we pay the ABC to expose, why pay them at all?

9.9 out of 10 based on 158 ratings

91 comments to What looks, acts and smells like a Global News Cartel and just got hit by an Antitrust lawsuit…

  • #
    Penguinite

    The free press/speech has been usurped by several WEF conglomerates working in unison with big tech and governments! Shutting down internet bloggers etc is their final nail in our verbal coffins!

    640

  • #
    David Maddison

    Jo’s blog is one of the few Australian examples of a free press and free speech in Australia.

    950

  • #

    It is a major reason why I started my Forum was to post a lot of alternative news and climate stuff some that is very sobering with a resident PHD holder in the science field helping me and even posted a few from here as well because it is a free place and worthy to spread around heck I am going to post this right now.

    Might add a blog eventually but I am more of a forum person because of how it is set up.

    360

  • #
    el+gordo

    ‘Why not hear from the other side, they ask, from those who don’t believe in climate change?

    ‘The answer is simple. Because the overwhelming majority of scientists (99.9% of them, according to this paper) are in agreement about the key facts of climate change: that it is real, that it is already happening, and that it is being driven by mankind.’ (BBC)

    We can safely say that is a warm bias.

    561

    • #
      another ian

      As a cartoon says

      “You get 99.9% agreement when you don’t publish anything that disagrees”

      521

      • #
        Lawrie

        Or you are Robert Mugabe and have put your opposition in jail or in the ground. Saddam Hussein also used to win 99% of the vote. These scientists remind me of unionists having a vote on strike action; they look to see how Fred is voting then follow suit. No free thinkers allowed but plenty of help to arrive at “the right” answer.

        210

    • #
      Phillip Bratby

      I always assume the truth to be the opposite of what the BBC says. When I check elsewhere, my assumption is invariably correct.

      250

  • #
    David Maddison

    I have rarely, if ever, seen a conservative or other rational thinker call for censorship of others with alternate opinions to them, but Leftoids do it all the time.

    E.g. Leftoids can and do post on this blog, but most of the conservatives/rational thinkers on this blog have experience of their opinions being censored on Leftoid sites.

    Leftoids are terrified of alternative opinions.

    It even applies to Leftoid-controlled “science” whereby they claim there is such a thing as “settled science” and therefore all other hypotheses or interpretations are invalid. They also think scientific fact is decided by “consensus” and alternate opinions must be repressed.

    The repression of non-Leftoid opinions has resulted in massive economic damage to Western countries due to the anthropogenic global warming fraud and massive loss of life due to repression of alternative evidence-based ideas of covid treatments, in particular the safe anti-virals (or even vitamin D supplementation for that matter). Censorship kills!

    It also contributed to Biden being “elected” because many voters would not have voted for him had they known about the Hunter laptop affair. Of course, questioning possible election fraud was censored as well, including censorship of President Trump himself.

    Reference:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11529381/Hunter-Bidens-laptop-Voters-lacked-critical-information-2020-election-survey-shows.html

    EXCLUSIVE: If only we’d known: three quarters of survey respondents say voters lacked ‘critical’ information about Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 elections, and half would have voted differently

    By James Reinl, Social Affairs Correspondent, For
    18:17 12 Dec 2022, updated 13:19 19 Dec 2022

    592

  • #
    Murray Shaw

    So the head of Reuters sits on the Pfizer Board………how is this allowed to happen and was there ever a disclaimer from Reuters of this blatant conflict of interest.

    Lodging this claim in Texas will keep it away from the DC Swamp.

    Will have to read Quadrant now also!

    530

  • #
    GlenM

    I read the Quadrant article(subscription and urge others) and to have it reposted here is great. I suspect that in Australia,unlike the US that most people gain their news from the mainstream or from FB or Twitterland. The great questions of what do we know, how do we know and how can we know remain distant, especially in times of corrupted information posing as truth. Demonise the real truth. Years ago listening to BBC world service and ABC seemed uncomplicated, but even that was monolithic and tendentious. In the meantime I’ll go for the most liberty and freedom I can get.

    450

    • #
      Tony Thomass

      Just to clarify a slight ambiguity, all such on-line articles on quadrant.org.au are free to read without subscription. Subscription applies to the monthly print Quadrant magazine.
      Also, the ABC’s PR Nick Keys has emailed me that for some reason he and his co-PR Sally Jackson never received the emailed queries I sent him. I’ve added a note to the piece,
      “These e-glitches do happen.”

      230

  • #
    Broadie

    How do you know the narrative is the approved missive?

    Next to speaker is the person signing the message.

    How big is the hearing impaired audience for a Politician’s word salad on the response to a pandemic or natural disaster and of that audience who could comprehend the hand signals regarding those technical topics and locations.

    Any hearing impaired person could simply use sub titles or message to text technology at any rate.

    The whole charade must have some purpose. Maybe it is to let the sheep know when to bleat?

    I am still giggling after watching Queensland Premier Bligh talking about the defence force assets and flood relief in Chinchilla.

    120

    • #
      el+gordo

      ‘How do you know the narrative is the approved missive?’

      Its a bit of a fog, Aunty has to come clean, eliminate bias on climate change and gain a sense of balance.

      Excerpt from the ABC’s Editorial Policy 7.4.1: ‘where topical and factual content deals with a matter of contention or public debate, a diversity of principal relevant perspectives should be demonstrated across a network or platform in an appropriate timeframe.’

      280

  • #
    David Maddison

    While conservatives and fellow rational thinkers try to correctly use language, the Left are masters of its misuse, and changing the meaning of words.

    Those who control the language control the ideas.

    Hence the use of Newspeak in the totalitarian superstate portrayed in Nineteen Eighty Four. Words defining certain non-approved ideas were even removed from the language so the ideas couldn’t be expressed.

    However, two important contributions from our side, conservatives and fellow rational thinkers, which unlike Leftist words and phrases are accurately descriptive, articulate what is happening and were introduced by President Trump are “fake news” and “the swamp”. These turned out to be surprisingly important ideas for the pro-freedom, pro-reason community.

    Related article:

    https://thefederalist.com/2018/05/01/lefts-war-words-manipulates-mind/
    How The Left’s War On Words Manipulates Your Mind
    BY: BENJAMIN R. DIERKER
    MAY 01, 2018

    261

    • #
      Lawrie

      For me the most abused word is “indigenous” meaning Aboriginal. Those born in Australia are by definition indigenous and thus I have no problem with every Australian ticking the box and thereby watering down what it means to be “indigenous”. Since Aborigines are called indigenous then indigenous Australians are allowed to identify as Aborigine; simples.

      171

  • #
    Adellad

    I am a daily viewer of Tucker Carlson who raises all issues we see on this blog (including TNI) in a humorous, incisive and clever way. Of necessity in a 40 minute show with such broad coverage there is little depth, nonetheless he must provide a very sharp pain to the Ministry of Truth purveyors in DC, Brussels and elsewhere. The day he is pulled from Fox – possibly when Rupert Murdoch dies – is the day it shall become obvious “they” are winning completely.

    501

    • #
      another ian

      Likely if Fox pulls him that someone else will come up in support I’d guess.

      Doesn’t he operate his own studio now that he’s retreated from DC to the wilds?

      120

    • #
      Penguinite

      Dare I say, #Me Too, without living in fear of nocturnal door knock? TCTN is a great show but I wonder how long he will be allowed to continue before his Lefty owners say enough. They must be shit scared he will continue his anti-Biden crusade elsewhere!

      220

  • #
    Neville

    I hope the Republicans in the USA will try to expose the big guy and his stupid son and then try to expose more of the big pharma corruption and fraud over the last 3 years.
    Of course they must also allow an honest and open debate about the so called Climate Change lunacy and the obscene trillions $ wasted over the last 30 years on their delusional nonsense.
    And if they don’t we will know they’re also following and supporting big pharma and the MSM liars and con merchants.

    310

    • #
      Adellad

      Only a few Republicans (Gaetz, Hawley, Jordan etc) are truly independent of the DC Swamp – the 20 or so that stood in the way of McCarthy until concessions were made recently. This was evident in the 2016 Primaries when Trump won as a total outsider – and was never forgiven by the swamp powers within the GOP – the likes of Mitch McConnell for example.

      310

  • #
    Simon Thompson M.B. B.S. (Hons)

    Disinformation is thrown around with an authoritarian air. I reckon it is better thought of as Dysinformation (as in Dysentry)- it is uncomfortable or painful. The beautiful lie rather than the ugly truth. I noticed RT was not on the TNI list. Not that I believe everything RT says, but it offers a counterbalance to what is bleated out by the TNI. This is critically important – I noticed how there was a pivot from Covid to Ukraine. There was also a pivot away from daily Covid stats after the Queen passed. Remember, before mRNA/DNA vector Jabs (9/4/2021) there were an average of 7.1 cases a day reported in Australia. Since the Jabs there has been an average of 6917 cases a day. 64 000 000 Jab question – how is this called a “Vaccine” when case rates increase a thousand fold? Oh, and lets look at Covid mortality – before 9/4/2021 – an average of 2 (TWO) deaths a day. After mRNA/DNA vector Jabs there has been 28 deaths per day- a FOURTEEN fold increase. I define a “Vaccine” as something that decreases those rates. In short the Media, the Government, the medical establishment are all complicit in the greatest yarn ever spun in Australia.

    552

    • #
      Ross

      Definitely the pivot to the Ukraine war was very suspicious about 1 year ago. This week there is that crazy Chinese spy balloon and you wonder if that’s hiding something as well.

      131

      • #
        KP

        “This week there is that crazy Chinese spy balloon”

        I reckon its a small blip, but the American’s war in Ukraine is heading for its final stage. The next big psy-op will turn up this year, most people reckon its China.

        81

    • #
      Gary S

      There is no misinformation or disinformation, only information. It falls to the individual to accept or dismiss.

      63

      • #
        Skepticynic

        There is no misinformation or disinformation, only information

        There is no misinformation or disinformation

        Aren’t we allowed to categorise information?

        By your logic there are no dogs, cats, or right whales, only mammals.

        If you treat all information as merely information then you’re part of the problem, and with that philosophy you can say whatever you want and pretend to absolve yourself from any responsibility and accountability for lies, rumours or other garbage intended to mislead the listener or reader.

        Noise is not information. Gaslighting is not information.

        Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information

        Disinformation is deliberately deceptive.

        Totally made-up news articles, factoids, spurious correlations, fabricated or deceptive statistics, doctored images and videos, false information propagated via the various media, scam advertisements, the list goes on.

        It’s like Caveat Emptor, ultimately it’s up to the individual to accept or dismiss, but if you use that as a justification to lie cheat and steal then you’re still the arsehole and misinformation and disinformation will never equate to sound reliable factual information.

        20

        • #
          Gary S

          ‘Aren’t we allowed to categorise information?’
          Jesus, pal, that is the point I was making – everybody is free to process or ‘categorise’ information as they see fit. You strike me as someone who may be intolerant of the views of others if they don’t ‘categorise’ their information the same way as you do. Ad arbitrium.

          10

    • #
  • #
    David Maddison

    With the Left mostly controlling the Internet content PLUS infrastructure, ultimately, our only hope might be Elon Musk and Starlink. He will be able to deliver a free, uncensored Internet feed, directly to you via Starlink satellites, about 4000 already in orbit, possibly about another 40,000 to come.

    260

  • #
    another ian

    FWIW

    Some words on “reliable information”

    “Lose-Lose”

    https://kunstler.com/clusterf*-nation/lose-lose/

    Simon Thompson – Chiefio keeps a watch on RT. Says they have detectable bias on things Russian but are pretty good for “rest of the world”.

    Today’s Covid and Coffee notes the news pivot in the US using the Chinese balloon as a distraction from the latest Project Veritas on “vaccines” and women’s reproductive health

    161

  • #
    Greg in NZ

    The majority of NZ media rags signed up to the Ministry of Truth’s disinformation gang as part of their financial bail-out, c/- WEF disciple Jab-Sin-Duh, subsequent to the Covert Crockdown 2020. Thanks to Jo & her commenters, I’ve managed to keep a well-balanced window on the world, along with a healthy sense of scepticism and humour in this EON (Error Of Newspeak).

    While up north here we’ve had humid wet weather, down south has been in the lee of the Southern Alps, hence warm dry sunshine thanks to the foehn wind. Christchurch has had 3 days of 32 C, oh joy! like it was when my mum was a little girl growing up there in the 1930/40s. Today the TNI gang are calling it a ‘heatwave’ … sadly the pfizzerd proles will believe this unscientific nonsense.

    BTW it’s ceased raining here and the sun is out: glorious Sun-Day! 🌞

    330

    • #
      David Maddison

      I wonder Greg, how long before your thought controllers in NZ start blocking Internet access to free speech sites such as this one or Musk’s Twitter?

      Because, in NZ, Government is your “single source of truth” as Jab-Sin-Duh explains: https://youtu.be/ENEUktOrQV8

      All other sources of information are invalid.

      Hipkins is faithfully taking over Jab-Sin-Duh’s role. Even though people thought he might be different, he is the same or worse. The same situation we had in Australia when Morrison took over from Turnbull. No different.

      290

      • #
        KP

        In Australia they censor whatever sites they want to, and as far as I know they don’t publish a list telling you what you can’t view. I expect this list will get expanded indefinitely and go completely un-commented-on by the mainstream media.

        90

    • #
      Penguinite

      NZ Rags are all Murdoch owned. Not dissimilar to Australia!

      112

      • #
        Mike Jonas

        SMH: “There is only one other commercial news organisation that has scale comparable to News Corp in Australia – Nine Entertainment Co, the owner of this masthead. [..] National broadcaster the ABC is the third major player through television, radio and the nation’s most visited website. Like News Corp and Nine, it has a footprint that gives it the ability to communicate with the majority of the population daily.“. So in Australia News Corp is closer to half than to “all”. And as the SMH points out, “Before the internet, moguls such as Rupert Murdoch dominated the media landscape. Today it’s very different. Social media sites such as Facebook and tech giants such as Google have changed the way consumers read news, and the internet has allowed people to access articles from international news outlets. This has meant that traditional media such as newspapers don’t hold the same kind of influence they once did, because there is so much choice for readers.“.

        60

    • #
      el+gordo

      The NZ Herald has a story on the current marine heatwave and AGW isn’t mentioned, but alluded to with the ‘off the scale comment’. That means it must be unprecedented.

      https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/southern-ocean-warming-caused-by-extreme-marine-heatwaves-off-the-scale/RCSCX3MBJNGONAEMM43XOYJ34I/

      The reporter would like to attach the marine heatwave to global warming, caused by humanity, but it appears to be of natural origin.

      61

  • #
    Dave in the States

    I assume most are aware that Newsmax was recently deplatformed by a cell phone network and a satelite TV provider, despite being number 3 in ratings. Meanwhile, these outfits still carry 17 other left leaning propaganda mills.

    220

  • #
    ExWarmist

    Unfettered competition leads to monopoly (creating incumbent elites) which then leads to the destruction of competition to maintain their economic/political supremacy.

    A free market requires an independent umpire to maintain a competitive field.

    Finding an independent umpire is the difficult trick.

    111

    • #
      David Maddison

      Unfettered competition leads to monopoly

      That is not true in a real free market, of which we have few examples at present.

      In those rare instances where a product or service is extremely rare and therefore there is little or no competition, the threat of competition if the price becomes too high regulates the price.

      101

      • #

        Unfettered competition leads to a monopoly in a world where the price of the most important variable — the price of money itself — is set by government fiat.

        When currencies are bureaucratically “managed” and interest rates are held too low for too long, loans are too easy and larger groups can do infinite takeovers and mergers of smaller ones. Thus do big fish end up being monopoly fish.

        210

      • #
        KP

        Very true DM, there is almost nothing left untouched by the dead hand of Govt regulation.

        Monopolies arise when Govts use regulations to limit the introduction of new players. I’ve been involved in meetings where the incumbents make new rules to put to Ministers to entrench their positions and make entering the market as difficult and as expensive as possible.

        Govt Ministers and mandarins don’t get rich by working hard!

        The really laughable irony is having Govts sign “Free Trade Agreements” with other countries, when they shoulldn’t be allowed anywhere near trade at all!

        81

  • #
    Kim

    My approach is let them pour millions into their enterprises as long as it’s not public money and let them go broke. Go Woke -> Go Broke. Likewise with globalism, totalitarianism etc. We’re in the 2nd Reformation the legacy media are the scriptoriums, the Internet are the printing presses.

    190

    • #
      Honk R Smith

      You are right
      Only the first was long and messy.
      After things settled down a bit, oh say, mid to late 20th century, I fear that we became comfortable in a false sense that humanity had evolved in a positive direction..
      You know, the Age of Aquarius.
      I think our invitation to join the Federation of Planets will be delayed by another 4 or 5 hundred years.
      Unless it turns out the Borg birth planet is Earth.
      Climate Change phobia, Trump Derangement Syndrome, and COVID hysteria, seem to indicate some sort of centralized hive mind.
      TNI may have a Queen.

      120

  • #
    David Maddison

    What was the remuneration of James C. Smith, President and Chief Executive Officer of Thomson Reuters for sitting on the Pfizer board?

    https://www.salary.com/research/executive-compensation/james-c-smith-board-member-of-pfizer-inc

    As a member of Board of Directors at PFIZER INC, James C. Smith made $365,000 in total compensation. Of this total $172,500 was received as fees earned or paid in cash, $0 was received as non-stock incentive plan compensation, $0 was received as change in pension value and nonqualified deferred compensation earnings, $0 was received as options, $192,500 was awarded as stock and $0 came from other types of compensation. This information is according to proxy statements filed for the 2021 fiscal year.

    Oh, did I forget to mention he is also part of the World Economic Forum?

    https://www.weforum.org/agenda/authors/jim-smith

    280

    • #
      Custer Van Cleef

      Another director on Pfizer’s board is Scott Gottlieb — formerly employed at the FDA.

      I guess Pfizer were rather pleased by Gottlieb’s efforts to ‘regulate’ their industry … and clearly, others are meant to get the same message.

      This is an ethical minefield … There should be a ban on this … i.e. NO ONE can leave their job as a regulator and GO TO WORK for the industry they used to regulate (at least for 10 years anyway).

      170

  • #
    Penguinite

    All true but as David Maddison opines @ 07:54 “Those who control the language control the ideas.” and TNI controls the mass media

    150

  • #
    Dennis

    Several years ago I read that George Soros was a major shareholder in global media businesses, he had at the time recently purchased shares in Channel 9 Australia and that business later took over Fairfax Group of newspapers.

    And that his organisations had arms like an octopus into many areas of influence, for example the activist organisation GetUp Australia was established via The Australian Workers Union when Bill Shorten was a senior executive there and was later appointed to the GetUp Board of Directors. It was modelled on overseas political activist groups associated with Mr Soros.

    Read the book The Electronic Whorehouse written by journalist Paul Sheehan (Australian) and discover the truth about media including advertising presented as news items, but far worse examples of manipulation.

    190

    • #
      Ross

      For me that manipulation now extends to all the government advertising on the commercial networks. The advertising $ from the likes of the Vic govt must be huge. So much so that those media are reluctant to criticise governments and leaders like Daniel Andrews. During COVID the advertising went off the scale. There was barely an ad break on commercial radio without a Vic Govt ad advising about testing, stay at home, masking, vaccination etc. The freeway had the overheads signs proclaiming “stay home if sick”. Then you would pull into a service station for fuel, coffee etc and those large roll down signs were advising testing etc for COVID. It was brainwashing on a major government scale. 1984 big time. Most of which was a waste of money anyway.

      160

      • #
        Dennis

        I understand that Vic Gov (Labor) have Australia’s biggest media management department and funded by taxpayers, they employ journalists and various other professionals such as pollsters and psychologists and have a small army of internet trolls who are kept informed and/or given instructions by email regularly, and they can ask questions of course about how to reply to a political opponent.

        Before the 1970s Cabinet Ministers including Premier/Prime Minister had a “Press Secretary” attached to their office to advise the Minister, the NSW Wran Labor Government merged the Press Secretaries into one media department and added to the employee numbers and areas of expertise. The departments monitor television and radio, print media and anywhere else political conversations take place. When a Labor red flag comment is detected an employee phones talkback or provides a Media Release to counter the red flag situation.

        media statements are written so that lazy journalists can more or less copy the words and hand them in as their own work.

        In other words, we the general public are being manipulated and are fed political propaganda, and this applies to all sides of politics.

        120

  • #
    Jim Veenbaas

    Minor point. Can we please stop calling it the legacy media or corporate media. A more accurate term is regime media – for all the obvious reasons.

    291

    • #
      another ian

      Maybe shorten that to “regimedia”?

      40

    • #
      Ross

      I personally like “lame stream media”.

      120

    • #
      Vene

      Few years ago here in Finland J. Hankamäki (philosopher) published a study about a state of media. Why it has decayed over the years and become a lap dog of government and influental people. In that study he created a new term for modern day journalism, ‘Pedagogical journalism’.

      After the publication journalists went immediately crazy. They were furious. How can a philosopher judge us? When you see news clips from Middle-East with burning flags, imagine people in these clips were journalists. Such was the outrage.

      A study and a book was already printed, but you can’t find a copy of it anywhere. No one dared to sell it. You can read it freely in the net, but only in Finnish.

      A reaction by journalists proved many points of the study. ‘Se koira älähtää johon kalikka kalahtaa’ —> (from en.wiktionary) Verbatim translation: “the dog yelps to whom the stick clanks onto”

      90

  • #
    STJOHNOFGRAFTON

    Trusted News Initiative. What an interesting apellation. The two words: Trusted News conveys the moral attribute of consistency in truth telling. Adding the word Initiative introduces an important, but rubbery, action variable which means that truth telling will only be consistent when it suits Trusted News Initiative core partners such as the BBC, Facebook, ABC and SBS agenda initiatives of brainwashing.

    200

    • #
      • #
        Tony Thomass

        NYT is not on the BBC’s official list of members, which I cite in the article.
        An equivalent point is that the ABC is not on the official list of members of the Covering Climate Now coalition, but given the ABC’s climate coverage, it might as well be.

        120

        • #

          But the BBC page on the TNI definitely lists both the ABC and SBS as being involved.
          https://www.bbc.com/beyondfakenews/trusted-news-initiative/about-us/

          And on July 13th the EBU published a discussion of a sub-wing of the TNI which shows that the NY Times is very much a “leader” and also that “elections” are the main concern. It’s all a power grab.

          At the summit, the TNI also agreed to engage with new verification technology, called ‘Project Origin’, led by a coalition of the BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, Microsoft and The New York Times.

          ‘Project Origin’ is a new approach to combating disinformation by detecting the manipulation of content and authenticating the content source.

          Whilst brand marks, styles, and other traditional indicators of trust continue to be critical, they are no longer enough to ensure content legitimacy. Altered or synthetic material can at times appear to come from reputable journalistic sources and this can make false or misleading material look credible.

          Project Origin attaches a digital watermark to media originating from an authentic content creator, a watermark that degrades when content has been manipulated. Audiences will see a small colour indicator along with a message on the content or in the browser. This is to ensure audiences know the content, such as video, was actually produced by its purported source, and has not been manipulated for other purposes.

          90

    • #
      Destroyer D69

      “Trusted News Initiative” Aus legislation for a “Trusted Digital Identity” Seems to be a common thread here!!!

      60

  • #
    STJOHNOFGRAFTON

    Another site that won’t subscribe to Global News Cartel’s Trusted News Initiative:https://newspunch.com/ Featuring an interesting article on Britain’s Chief Oncologist: ‘Turbo-Cancers Appearing After Vaccine Boosters’ This article also contains a video entitled:Eugenics Drugs Found In Covid Jabs:https://newspunch.com/britains-chief-oncologist-turbo-cancers-appearing-after-vaccine-boosters/

    100

  • #
    John R T

    Also – The Epoch Times: on-line AND long-form!

    61

  • #
    Ross

    Trusted News Initiative, World Economic Forum – they all have the same ” ring” about them, dont they? Sound really benign, until you take a closer look. Basically, just globalisation by stealth.

    180

  • #
    Spitfire

    I live in Japan, and remember that as the scamdemic was unfolding in March and April 2020, NHK, which is a signed-up TNI member, was hard at work pushing the “new normal” (新生活 (shin-seikatsu, new lifestyle/new normal) narrative. This got my spidey sense tingling that we’d be in this for the long haul. You don’t go to the effort of repeating the message ad nauseam unless you want to condition the public to accept that things will be different from now on, like it or not.

    From then on, I was a skeptic, and so resisted tremendous pressure to get the jabs, as did my wife and her parents, and some of her parents’ friends in the medical community (surprisingly enough). One of those doctors pointed us to a place we could get Ivermectin if we needed it, but it was only being given for symptomatic people, no as a preventive measure due to short supply. Unfortunately my family in Australia were on board with the narrative and didn’t want to know about information that deviated from what they saw in the papers and evening news… My Dad has somewhat come around, but Mum isn’t interested in changing her mind, and Brother went along with the flow because he wanted to travel and not make waves.

    240

  • #
    Kim

    Life and all That

    That the world has moved forward massively in the last few hundred years is without a doubt. That the prime factor in that movement forward has been The Enlightenment, particularly the Anglo Democratic Capitalism version of The Enlightenment is also without a doubt.

    Just over 5 centuries ago the world was top down feudal then the 1st Reformation came along empowering the bottom up and bringing with it Democratic Capitalism. This empowered and protected the creation and growth of capital by those at the bottom of the pyramid and started inverting the pyramid.

    Going back 2000 years Christianity was created and thrived. The principles of Christianity are the opposite of those imposed by the elites – the feudal rulers – onto the lower layers of the pyramid. As such they empower and threaten the feudal rulers. During this time the Roman Empire was the extant hegemony in Christian areas. 3 centuries later it was dying the death of feudal empires – destroying itself from within. The emperor of that time – Emperor Constantine – decided to combine the feudal Roman Empire with the thriving Christian religion to form the Catholic Church. This was a marriage of convenience where the feudal Roman Empire survived and Christianity was no longer persecuted.

    The arrival of the 1st Reformation with the invention of the printing press meant that the production and dissemination of knowledge was largely separated from the Catholic Church and wide and open discussion was greatly enable. There being a resulting loss of feudal power from the top of the pyramid and with a corresponding powering of the bottom of the pyramid. Over the next few centuries the pyramid became inverted and with much success. This being due to the principles of The Enlightenment of Democratic Capitalism of Common Law. Common Law and property rights came from the Magna Carta.

    In the mid 19th century the Feudalists decided that they had to reinvent feudalism and they came up with socialism – essentially an academised form of feudalism. Socialism has 2 main forms – Communism, on the left, and Fascism, on the right. Both are very similar to each other.

    In order for the feudal lord to have power he has to have something that the masses want that he can control and hand out. With socialism it’s a matter of “invent and problem and create a solution”. It’s in this way that the feudal lord keeps the pyramid upright. And it’s this way a dark age is created.

    Ultimately that control is via wealth. Money is not wealth – it is just a means of transacting and it has no inherent value. Capital is wealth. Capital has many forms including human capital – education, skills, individual culture and history, social capital – community, shared culture and history, society capital – infrastructure, governmental systems, law and order, economies, financial capital – property and investment ownership.

    What the aim of the Feudalists is for them to accumulate as much wealth as possible and to deprive the lower levels of as much wealth as possible and to make them as dependent as possible hence be controllable.

    Control is about a number of things including controlling a potential threat – putting people into boxes and keeping them in those boxes. Democratic Capitalism showed how important diversity is – it’s a vital part of evolution that powered all the growth. As such these days with Wokism there are multiple boxes. It is also controlling the capital.

    Under Communism the state owns the business. Under Fascism the business own the state.

    Under Communism ownership and hence control of the capital is by the state. Whomever controls the state owns and controls and benefits from the capital owned by the state. This is no different that billionaires putting their wealth into foundations that are controlled by their descendants.

    Under Fascism the businesses – particularly big businesses – own the capital and operate as an oligarchy.

    Ethno Fascism is a particularly nasty form of Fascism where a form of control based on racism is used. This was used by the National Socialists in 1930s and 1940s Germany with devastating results. WWII was a fight against Fascism particularly against Ethno Fascism. It was a fight that Communism survived.

    Where you have Communism up against Fascism they beget each other – each is a reaction to the other. Wokism is Ethno Fascism (from the Corporatism – those who pay the bills) on top of Soviet era Communism (courtesy of KGB infiltration of the West).

    What is happening is a shell game – a bait and switch. The public are being offered solutions to largely non existent problems in exchange for them handing over their capital. The game that was operating for thousands of years in the past is still going on. A wolf in sheep’s clothing is still a wolf. Everything that is going on in society is to that end – the transfer of wealth \ of capital. Once they have lost their capital they will find it very hard to get it back.

    [Email coming. We rarely publish comments this long. Short comments get approved faster. – Jo.]

    162

    • #
      Mike Jonas

      Good description, but I would say: Communism, on the left, and Fascism, on the left. Under Communism the state owns the business. Under Fascism the state controls the business. The competition between communism and fascism isn’t of opposites, it is simply a power struggle between the strongest parties.

      150

      • #
        KP

        ..and that’s why politics is not a straight line between Left and Right, its a triangle with freedom at the top and tyranny along that Left/Right bottom line.

        Parties in power these days would struggle to get off that bottom line, they have been sinking downwards for decades.

        40

    • #
      Kalm Keith

      Thanks Kim, interesting and very readable.

      60

  • #
    UK-Weather Lass

    The truth is where you find it and not where someone tells you you will find it. Since, at the very least, there are at least two ways to find the truth the BBC should be keen to trust its followers to hear every side of a story before a mind is made up.

    The BBC now acts the bigot it accuses others of being. It was wrong on SARS-CoV-2. It was, and still is, wrong on climate change causes and mitigation. The BBC is no longer to be trusted with anything. The sad thing is, however, that TNI has a stranglehold on most outlets in the UK. It is tough to get the whole story unless you know where to look and censorship of potential truth happens all the time. The public – it seems – can no longer be trusted to handle stuff and because they are dumbed down they know no better and don’t know how to fight back and say we have a god given right to know all aspects of the truth and not just the views YOU bigots think are right.

    80

  • #
    Jim

    Interesting article. But off on one point. Liberal. Name a truly liberal news group. They are all led by conservative leaders. Highly educated conservative leaders are not liberals, do not espouse liberal ideas,or pay liberal salaries. But do create shadow blocks to throw things at, an example, balloons.

    21

  • #
    Gadjo Dilo

    Ha ha, yes, that is indeed a handy list of where not to get your news from these days! Robert F. Kennedy appears to be a man whose time has truly come. He will surely be aware of the risks, seeing as, you know, and one wishes him all the best.

    40

  • #
    Gadjo Dilo

    Ha ha, yes, that is indeed a handy list of where not to get your news from these days! Robert F. Kennedy appears to be a man whose time has truly come. He will surely be aware of the risks, seeing as, you know, and one wishes him all the best..

    20

  • #
    Gee Aye

    I thought there were no more sharks left to jump. Good to see they are not extinct.

    21

  • #
    Jill

    TNI appeared i think around late 2020 but took a long time to emerge in media.
    Tony Thomas’ article was excellent but a pity it took so long to be written.

    10

  • #
  • #

    […] What looks, acts and smells like a Global News Cartel and just got hit by an Antitrust lawsuit&#8230… […]

    10

  • #
    Steve

    I’d like to see Ita Buttrose and David Anderson facing questions in a court of law relating to anti-trust case.

    10