Former CNN and CBS Anchor Attkisson: "Fact-checks are... created for the purpose of distributing Narratives and Propaganda" & Bp. Barron's new "New Reign of Terror"?
Bishop Barron's 'police Catholic media' proposal shows laypeople don’t trust bishops... LifeSiteNews
Five-time Emmy Award winner, and a Radio Television Digital News Association (RTNDA) Edward R. Murrow Award recipient, Sharyl Attkisson, who was formerly an anchor for CNN and CBS News stated that "Fact-checks are... created for the purpose of distributing narratives and propaganda." Here is what Attkisson told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders:
Mr. Jekielek: What are you trying to do to me here? The whole phenomenon is strange. You’ll have these people who really aren’t qualified fact-checking people like Dr. Robert Malone, an expert in vaccine technology. It’s just kind of bizarre.
Ms. Attkisson: One has to understand, as I’ve tried to describe, that nearly every mode of information has been co-opted, if it can be co-opted, by some group. Fact-checks are no different either. They’ve been co-opted in many instances, or created for the purpose of distributing narratives and propaganda. Your common sense is accurate when it tells you that the way they chose this fact-check and how they decided to word it so they could say this thing is not true. At its heart the fact is really true, but the message they’re trying to send is that you shouldn’t believe it.
Your common sense is right. That has been created as part of a propaganda effort by somebody, somewhere, as part of a narrative to distribute to the public. So virtually every piece of information that can be co-opted has been, whether it’s Wikipedia online, fact-checkers, the news, or Snopes. A lot of people used to go to Snopes and say, “This is a place I can find the truth.”
They may not understand that even Snopes in many instances has been co-opted. I look at healthfeedback.org, which is a fake science group that’s used by Facebook and other Big Tech companies to debunk scientific things that are often actually true, and keep them where they’ll get pulled off your feed. Someone may be pulled off of social media on the basis of these fake fact-checkers, these people who call themselves scientists saying something is or isn’t correct. This is all part of a very well-funded, well-organized landscape that dictates and slants the information they want us to have.
Mr. Jekielek: You mentioned that in 2015, 2016 there was a stranged turning point. That’s what I remember as well. I was watching these very common narratives emerge among many corporate media, where everyone was speaking in unison. It reminded me of the kind of media activity in Communist China, where Xinhua news agency tells everyone the correct talking points. Some people told me, “Oh, this has existed before. “ But something changed then. What was it that changed?
Ms. Attkisson: There has long been an effort, of course, to shape information. And the push-me, pull-you in the media today hopefully has been news reporters trying to push back against organized efforts to make sure some information doesn’t get out. I did notice. I would say in the early 2000’s that instead of just trying to shape the information—it was a surprise to me as I covered pharmaceutical industry stories, which I was assigned to do at CBS news, along with many people in the media—the pushback came to be more about keeping a story from airing or keeping a study from being reported on the news, not just giving the other side, not just making sure it was accurately reported. These efforts by these large global PR firms that have been hired by the pharmaceutical industry, and by government partners that work with the pharmaceutical industry kept the story from being reported at all. Now, that’s pretty common.
But at the time I remember thinking, “Who doesn’t want the information out there at all?” It really took off in a big way, instead of in a more subtle way, in the 2015, 2016 time period with Donald Trump perceived as a unique danger by both Democrats and Republicans. By that, I really mean by the interests that support and pay for them to be in office and make certain decisions.
Because Donald Trump was outside both the Democrat and Republican establishment. I’m not saying he doesn’t have his own interests and his own strings he would try to pull. But he did not exist as a phenomenon, as a political figure, as a result of decades of hand-washing and money being paid through these organized pipelines in the political parties. So there were really strong vested interests that did not want to see a Donald Trump in office—a wild card as I called him— who would do things outside the money interests, be it Democrat or Republican.
They organized a media campaign and exploited the changes that were happening over the prior decade or two, where the media was becoming more conflicted and less apt to independently report what was going on. This all dovetailed together to create this crazy information landscape we have today where journalists don’t even really think they’re journalists. They are writers that are seeking to amplify whatever establishment scientists or establishment politicians want them to say, uncritically, and oftentimes at the expense of accuracy.
They are just blurting out what they’re told to distribute to the public. They’re acting more as propagandists than journalists and reporters. Yes, I do think it started in that time period. There was a well-funded effort that I’ve tracked in my books that shows how Big Tech was brought into it with a lobby campaign by some important propagandists that work behind the scenes. They met with Facebook and said, “You have to start censoring and fact-checking information.” At the time, that meant a certain kind of political information. That’s how it all got started.
If I may amplify on that just a bit. I say when people watch from the outside and something doesn’t make sense to them, you should listen to your cognitive dissonance. In the 2015 time period, and in 2016 when all of this was changing, I remember hearing a speech given by President Obama at Carnegie Mellon in September of 2016. He said something like somebody needs to step in and curate information in this wild, wild West media landscape. And I remember thinking that was such a strange thing to say, because there was no big movement among the public where people needed to have their information curated, where someone needed to step in and tell them what to think and curate what was online.
After that, to a man, if you looked at the media day after day, there were headlines about fake news and curation and what should and shouldn’t be reported. I worked backward and found that just a couple of weeks before President Obama’s speech, there was a nonprofit called First Draft that introduced—it was the first time I could document it—the notion of fake news in its modern context and how it had to be controlled. And I’m thinking, “That’s kind of interesting, who is First Draft?”
So I look up their tax records, which had not all been filed yet, and it’s a fairly new nonprofit. And I called them. Because when you follow the money, you find a lot of answers. I said, “Who funds you?” First Draft said that they started near the beginning of the election cycle in 2015, and that they were funded by Google. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, at the time was led by Eric Schmidt, who was a top Hillary Clinton donor and who was an activist working on her presidential campaign.
Is it a coincidence that a political activist, right ahead of the presidential campaign, starts a nonprofit that picks up the notion of fake news? If you looked at the nonprofit’s website, when they said fake news, they entirely meant conservative-based fake news. In their viewpoint, there was no liberal version of fake news.
Then within a matter of weeks, President Obama gives this speech, and the media takes off and runs with it. Interestingly, what happened with Donald Trump being the wild card that he is, every time they accused him or his side of fake news, he grabbed the ball and threw it back at them and said, “You’re fake news.” So their idea of fake news was made-up stories on conservative sites that they said that were harmful and not true.
Trump’s idea of fake news was, “You guys are making mistakes or errors that aren’t true, and that are biased. That’s what I call fake news.” And being the master marketer that he is, within a pretty short period of time, he had co-opted the phrase so successfully that by January of 2017 after he was elected, The Washington Post, who had been on the bandwagon about cracking down on fake news, suddenly published an editorial that said, “We have to get rid of this term fake news.” Because now it had become something that President Trump had used successfully. Today if you ask most people, they think Trump came up with that phrase. It’s actually well-documented to be an invention of political activists on the Left during the time period that I described. [https://www.theepochtimes.com/sharyl-attkisson-how-propagandists-co-opted-fact-checkers-and-the-press-to-control-the-information-landscape_4221537.html]
The Cal-Catholic News website asked "why would a Catholic fact-checking venture focus exclusively on Covid vaccines?":
The CFC coalition was founded by Aleteia, “a worldwide Catholic information network in seven languages,” and I.Media, “a news agency that specializes in information from the Vatican.” Both are respected media outlets, with a history of solid reporting. They are joined by several other prominent Catholic media partners from around the world; American readers will readily recognize the name of Our Sunday Visitor among them.
Now you might ask: With so much misinformation about the Catholic faith in circulation, why would a Catholic fact-checking venture focus exclusively on Covid vaccines? Part of the answer to that question no doubt lies in genuine conviction that the Covid epidemic trumps all other concerns, and vaccination is the only effective response. The editorial board of Our Sunday Visitor is on record as saying: “Today’s truth is simple: The COVID-19 vaccine is a gift.”
But another reason for the exclusive focus on vaccination is, beyond question, the source of funding for this initiative. CFC has joined in an international campaign driven by such formidable secular powers as Google, the Gates Foundation, and the Open Society Foundation of George Soros.
A one-sided presentation
In introducing its services, CFC promises: “The members of the platform do not offer polarized information for or against the different vaccines.” That is simply not true. The site offers a steady diet of support for vaccines, with never a nod to the public-health experts who question the effectiveness and/or the safety of the vaccination campaign. CFC “experts” patiently explain why there is no plausible moral objection to the Covid vaccines; the site provides no room for the moral theologians who disagree. [https://www.cal-catholic.com/who-will-filter-your-catholic-news/]
Finally, does Bishop Robert Barron want to start a "New Reign of Terror" against non-heretical Catholic media?
Bishop Robert Barron like Semi-Arians who supported the Arian heretics
uses ambiguity and Catholic sounding "language" as a cloak for his "real
sentiment" of promoting a soft "reign of terror" on those who reject
the heretical Francis creed of Communion for adulterers and other
errors.
[Click here to read the Francis Creed: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/01/are-1p5-and-where-peter-is-going-to.html?m=1]
Barron is calling for the predator Theodore McCarrick
created pro-gay American bishops to police non-heretical Catholics on
social media. This policing call appears to want to mirror the Arian
"reign of terror" on Catholics in the early Church.
F.A. Forbes
in his book "St. Athanasius" on the Arian crisis wrote how the Arians
and their allies the Semi-Arians policed Catholics in the early Church:
"[A] new reign of terror began, in which all who refused to accept the Arian creed were treated as criminals."
Now, it appears that Barron wants a "new reign of terror, in which all
who refused to accept the" Francis creed of Communion for adulterers and
the death penalty being "inadmissible" are "treated as criminals" in
the McCarrick American Church
Barron cloaks this "sentiment" like the Semi-Arians in Catholic sounding "language" and "eloquent ambiguity."
The Francis teaching that the death penalty is "inadmissible" is
contrary to Scriptures and the irreformable teachings of the Catholic
Church's ordinary Magisterium is called by Barron "eloquent ambiguity."
In the time of the Arian crisis those with forked tongues who spoke of
"eloquent ambiguity" like this bishop were called Semi-Arians or
semi-heretics.
St. Athanasius said Semi-Arians, that is
semi-heretics, were accomplices and Arians in disguise trying to promote
"the Arian madness" through ambiguous statements designed to have "an
orthodox and a heretical interpretation."
(The Great Athanasius, page 136 and Bad Shepherds, page 27)
Athanasius said:
"They disguise their real sentiment, and then make use of the language
of Scripture... as a bait for the ignorant, that they may inveigle them
into their own wickedness."
(The Great Athanasius: An Introduction into his Life and Works, page 136)
Early Church expert Rod Bennett writing of the Arian crisis said:
"[T]he number of episcopal sees that can be shown to have remained in
orthodox [Catholic] hands throughout the crisis can be counted on the
fingers of one hand."
Bad Shepherds, page 29)
As far as I
can see in our world today it is very much like the time of the Arian
crisis. We only have one bishop who is Athanasius-like: Bishop René
Gracida.
Can I ask all The Catholic Monitor readers to pray for a specific intention?
I contacted a good well known priest who says he knows a Cardinal who
is supportive of Bishop Gracida's efforts to have cardinals investigate
the validity of Benedict XVI's resignation and the conclave that elected
Francis.
The priest told me by email that he forwarded my email to the Cardinal.
Can you pray that this Cardinal be given the grace to join Bishop Gracida in calling for an investigation?
Pray an Our Father now for that Cardinal to receive the grace to become
another Athanasius with Bishop Gracida. Please keep this intention in
your prayers at Masses and in your rosaries.
Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis's Amoris Laetitia.