The Great Awakening-In God We Trust
FROM MERCOLA NPR Labeled as State-Affiliated Media
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- Twitter had labeled NPR “state-affiliated media,” categorizing it similarly to Russia’s state-run RT and China’s Xinhua News Agency
- Backlash ensued, prompting Twitter to downgrade the label to the slightly less jarring “government-funded media,” alongside BBC, PBS and Voice of America
- Multiple NPR executives have a revolving door with the propaganda network in Washington
- In addition to receiving funding from the U.S. government, NPR receives significant funding from Bill Gates and other oligarchs
- NPR also appears to have a vendetta against yours truly and other vaccine safety advocates, and regularly favors propaganda over ethics and journalistic standards in its reporting
When you think about state-affiliated media, propaganda-driven outlets in Russia and China may come to mind — not familiar news outlets right here in the U.S. However, if you view National Public Radio (NPR) on Twitter, you’ll see it’s now labeled “government-funded media.”1
Initially, Twitter had labeled NPR “state-affiliated media,” categorizing it similarly to Russia’s state-run RT and China’s Xinhua News Agency.2 However, backlash ensued, prompting Twitter to downgrade the label to the slightly less jarring “government-funded media,” alongside BBC, PBS and Voice of America.3
Why NPR Was Labeled State-Affiliated
Upon the initial state-affiliated label, Twitter executive Elon Musk tweeted, “Seems accurate,”4 along with Twitter’s definition for state-affiliated media accounts:5
“State-affiliated media is defined as outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution. Accounts belonging to state-affiliated media entities, their editors-in-chief, and/or their prominent staff may be labeled. We will also add labels to Tweets that share links to state-affiliated media websites.”
NPR quickly took issue with the label, with John Lansing, NPR’s president, tweeting April 5, 2023:6
“NPR stands for freedom of speech & holding the powerful accountable. A vigorous, vibrant free press is essential to the health of our democracy … We are disturbed to see last night that Twitter has labeled NPR as ‘state-affiliated media,’ a description that, per Twitter’s own guidelines, does not apply to NPR …”
Bill Chappell, NPR reporter and producer, also responded, stating, “NPR operates independently of the U.S. government. And while federal money is important to the overall public media system, NPR gets less than 1% of its annual budget, on average, from federal sources.”7 After NPR correspondent Bobby Allyn informed Musk of this, Musk responded, “we should fix it.”8 By April 9, NPR’s “state-affiliated” label had been quietly changed to “government-funded.”9
‘NPR Absolutely Is US State Propaganda’
Not everyone disagreed with Twitter’s state-affiliated assessment for NPR, however. Writing for the Ron Paul Institute, Caitlin Johnstone pointed out that Lansing formerly served as the CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM).10
“USAGM is the U.S. government narrative management umbrella which runs overt US state propaganda outlets like Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Voice of America,” she noted, referencing a 1977 article from The New York Times,11 which describes a worldwide propaganda network built by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The CIA used the radio outlets to broadcast its messages around the world. And to this day, USAGM receives hundreds of millions in funding from the U.S. government. According to Johnstone:12
“The New York Times explicitly names Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Free Asia as part of the network constructed by the Central Intelligence Agency to circulate propaganda. As Fair.org's Bryce Greene recently noted, USAGM received $810 million in US federal funding in 2022, which is more than twice the amount RT received from Russia for its global operations in 2021.”
Further, Lansing is just one propagandist at NPR’s helm. Johnstone continues:13
“Lansing's history is not an anomaly; NPR is regularly overseen by executives who came directly from senior positions in Washington's official propaganda network. From 1998 to 2008 NPR's president was a man named Kevin Klose, who previously ran Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and then returned to that job after his decade-long NPR stint.
A man named Ken Stern became NPR's executive vice president in 1999 and was appointed CEO in 2006; prior to that he was the senior advisor to the director of the USAGM's International Broadcasting Bureau.
So it is a bit funny that John Lansing is now cited complaining about NPR being labeled "state-affiliated media" on Twitter, given that he has devoted his life to promulgating US state-affiliated media. NPR receives funding from the US government, consistently advances the information interests of the US government, and is routinely run by professional propagandists of the US government.”
It's interesting, too, that while NPR downplayed the funding it receives from the U.S. government in arguing against its state-affiliated label, it has previously stated that federal funding is essential to NPR:14,15
“Federal funding is essential to public radio's service to the American public and its continuation is critical for both stations and program producers, including NPR.
Public radio stations receive annual grants directly from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) that make up an important part of a diverse revenue mix that includes listener support, corporate sponsorship and grants. Stations, in turn, draw on this mix of public and privately sourced revenue to pay NPR and other public radio producers for their programming.
These station programming fees comprise a significant portion of NPR's largest source of revenue. The loss of federal funding would undermine the stations' ability to pay NPR for programming, thereby weakening the institution.
Elimination of federal funding would result in fewer programs, less journalism — especially local journalism — and eventually the loss of public radio stations, particularly in rural and economically distressed communities.”
Download this Article Before it Disappears
Download PDFNPR Also Receives Funding From Oligarchs
Aside from its federal ties, NPR also receives considerable funding from Bill Gates and other oligarchs. “When you live in an oligarchy like the U.S., receiving funding from oligarchs is not meaningfully distinct from receiving funding from the state,” Johnstone points out.16
Via more than 30,000 grants, Gates has contributed at least $319 million to the media, Alan MacLeod, a senior staff writer for MintPress News, revealed:17
“Recipients of this cash include many of America’s most important news outlets, including CNN, NBC, NPR, PBS and The Atlantic.
Gates also sponsors a myriad of influential foreign organizations, including the BBC, The Guardian, The Financial Times and The Daily Telegraph in the United Kingdom; prominent European newspapers such as Le Monde (France), Der Spiegel (Germany) and El País (Spain); as well as big global broadcasters like Al-Jazeera.”
Examples of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grants include $24,663,066 to NPR. As you might suspect, Gates’ donations come with strings attached, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that NPR doesn’t stray far from the official narrative on any given topic. Gates’ donations to NPR were intended to target coverage of global health and education:18
“When Gates gives money to newsrooms, it restricts how the money is used — often for topics, like global health and education, on which the foundation works — which can help elevate its agenda in the news media.
… Since 2000, the Gates Foundation has given NPR $17.5 million [now up to $24.6 million19] through 10 charitable grants — all of them earmarked for coverage of global health and education, specific issues on which Gates works …
Even when NPR publishes critical reporting on Gates, it can feel scripted. In February 2018, NPR ran a story headlined ‘Bill Gates Addresses ‘Tough Questions’ on Poverty and Power.’ The ‘tough questions’ NPR posed in this Q&A were mostly based on a list curated by Gates himself, which he previously answered in a letter posted to his foundation’s website.”
NPR Favors Propaganda Over Ethics
NPR also appears to have a vendetta against yours truly and other vaccine safety advocates. In May 2021, we received an email from Geoff Brumfiel, a senior editor and correspondent with NPR.
According to NPR, “his reporting focuses on the intersection of science and national security,”20 but as soon as I read the subject line of the email — “The business of anti-vaccine propaganda” [sp] — it was clear that the line of questioning that would follow was not journalism but rather a PR piece for the pharmaceutical industry.
Indeed, Brumfiel’s email did not disappoint, nor did his resulting article, “For Some Anti-Vaccine Advocates, Misinformation Is Part Of A Business.”21 True to form for NPR, the article presents a slanted view of vaccine safety advocates designed to disparage and discredit those who spoke out against COVID propaganda.
Conveniently, Brumfiel included only one short segment from our emailed response to his questions, but neglected to mention NPR’s tight connections with the Gates Foundation — and the hundreds of articles NPR has released that are highly favorable toward the Gates Foundation and the work it funds.22
Then, in a September 24, 2021, broadcast, NPR reporter Robin Young referred to me as “the biggest disseminator of lies about COVID” — a false statement originating with a dark money-funded organization called Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). Young then went on to claim that I started America's Frontline Doctors, an independent organization that, in reality, I am not a member of and have no affiliation with.
The hit pieces further exemplify NPR’s habit of putting propaganda ahead of ethics and even basic journalism. Facebook's vice president of content policy, Monika Bickert, issued a statement August 18, 2021, saying there is no evidence to support CCDH's claims, and that the people named by the CCDH as being responsible for the vast majority of vaccine misinformation on social media were in fact only responsible for a tiny fraction — 0.05% — of all vaccine content on Facebook.23
If she'd actually done her research, Young would have discovered that the key tenet of her broadcast was false. Instead, the piece shows that NPR’s guidelines in its Ethics Handbook — that its journalists must "Be able to identify the source of each fact" and are supposed to "explain why that person or organization is credible and authoritative" — are, in fact, just fluff.24
Controlling the Narrative Means Controlling Reality
It’s important to be knowledgeable about the alliances your media outlets have made, and where their allegiance lies, in order to see the truth. As it stands, your perception of reality is being altered by mainstream media outlets and Big Tech, which are churning out propaganda pieces and using censorship to control what you can and can’t see.
Remember the saying, “The pen is mightier than the sword”? This old adage is coming true, as whoever controls the media — and the narrative behind it — gains domination over the world. As Johnstone put it:25
“All this bickering and squabbling about whose voice should be uplifted as trustworthy and whose voice should be squelched as untrustworthy is just a manifestation of the fact that powerful people understand something most ordinary members of the public do not: that whoever controls the narrative controls the world. If you can exert control over the way people perceive reality, then you can control reality itself.
Until the public becomes more aware of this fact, our lives will be subject to the whims of oligarchs, government agencies, and mass media propagandists. Not until then will we be able to awaken from our propaganda-induced coma enough to shake off the psychological manipulations which keep us marching to the tune of oligarchy and empire, and use the power of our numbers to force the emergence of a healthy world that benefits us all.”
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Comment by carol ann parisi on April 20, 2023 at 7:51am
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April 19, 2023NPR Labeled as State-Affiliated Media
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- The Antidefamation League (ADL) was founded in 1913, with the mission of stopping “the defamation of Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment for all”
- According to the ADL, it was founded “with the clear understanding that the fight against one form of prejudice cannot succeed without battling prejudice in all forms,” and to this day, the ADL “continues to fight all forms of bias”
- The ADL has turned coattails and is now defaming and persecuting people with hate speech. It’s even attacking high-profile Jews, simply because they oppose official narratives on politics, religion, COVID, censorship and more
- April 4, 2023, the ADL published an article condemning and badmouthing 19 Substack authors, and called on Twitter to ban all Substack outlinks (external links to Substack) to prevent “hate speech”
- April 7, 2023, Twitter started blocking Substack outlinks. It’s unclear whether ADL had anything to do with it. Twitter may have retaliated against Substack for launching Substack Notes, which could become a primary competitor
In this upside-down, inside-out and backwards world we now live in, it shouldn't be a major shock when the Antidefamation League (ADL) turns coattails and starts defaming people and spewing hate speech. Still, it does make one's head spin a bit.
The ADL was founded in 1913, with the mission of stopping "the defamation of Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment for all." As stated on its website, "ADL is founded with the clear understanding that the fight against one form of prejudice cannot succeed without battling prejudice in all forms,"1 and to this day, the ADL "continues to fight all forms of bias."2
Really? Fast-forward 110 years, and the ADL is now attacking a Christian deacon for standing by his religious beliefs in two genders and the sanctity of male-female marriage, and his rejection of unfettered liberalism and pedophilia.
They're attacking doctors like me and Dr. Robert Malone for discussing things that are well within our wheelhouse, and even come down on high-profile Jews like Steve Kirsch,3 Chaya Raichik, an orthodox Jew who runs Libs of TikTok, and Jim Stewartson, whose grandparents were Ashkenazi Jews — just because they don't agree with what they're saying.
ADL Is Now a Professional Defamation League
As recently as 2021, the ADL, in its "Antisemitism Uncovered"4 report, warned that "it is our collective responsibility to recognize the patterns of hate-based prejudice, how this mindset takes root and even more so how it operates," yet it now appears completely blind to the fact that it is fueling the very same kind of hatred that it spent over a century condemning.
"While antisemitism has sometimes escalated to violent or genocidal levels, it more often appears in subtler ways, such as insensitive remarks that are brushed off, or negative stereotypes that go unchallenged.
We must never normalize even seemingly harmless forms of hate-based prejudice; this is what strengthens dangerous social attitudes, which can erode the values of even the most just society," the ADL wrote in "Antisemitism Uncovered."
Then, April 4, 2023, the ADL published an article5 condemning a long list of Substack authors in which the anonymous ADL writer breaks every one of those level-headed rules.
The article is riddled with "insensitive remarks," "negative stereotypes" and "hate-based prejudice" that risks strengthening "dangerous social attitudes." Many of the 19 authors targeted are labeled "conspiracy theorists" and peddlers of "misinformation" — all without evidence and based solely on the personal opinion of the anonymous author, who supposedly represents the ADL.
The ADL is attempting to paint particular worldviews as intolerable; certain opinions and beliefs as beyond the pale. This is a tactic of totalitarian bigots — it is the methodology of hateful fascists. ~ Father Robinson
The ADL author even rewrote a quote from British deacon Father Calvin Robinson to make it fit the ADL's biased angle.6 As noted by Robinson,7 the ADL is the one peddling hate speech here, as it paints 2,000-year-old mainstream Judeo-Christian beliefs as "extremism" and the sharing of those beliefs as "hate speech." What happened to sticking up for religious freedom and fighting all forms of bias?
"The ADL is attempting to paint particular worldviews as intolerable; certain opinions and beliefs as beyond the pale," Robinson said in a reply8 to the ADL's hit piece. "This is a tactic of totalitarian bigots — it is the methodology of hateful fascists."
Indeed, it's no wonder that the anonymous writer at the ADL's Center on Extremism didn't attach their name to it because, all of a sudden, they've made it clear that defamation and prejudice have become the cornerstone missions of the Antidefamation League. Go figure.
Granted, the ADL has, for years, defended globalists like George Soros who have been working to undermine American values by calling critique of Soros' actions "anti-Semitic hate speech." Never mind the fact that Soros, a born Jew, worked with the Nazis to capture Jews trying to escape Hungary and to confiscate Jewish property, and has publicly stated he has no regrets for doing so.9
That aside, for a century, the ADL was the leading anti-hate organization in the world, and people within the organization are now flushing that legacy down the toilet by touting fabricated narratives that half the world already recognizes as completely false. If that's not a sign that they've been infiltrated by the very enemy they've fought against, I don't know what is.
My Response to the ADL's Hit Piece
A Substack author named Christopher Brunet10 asked me to comment on the ADL's attack on Substack authors like me. Here's my reply:
"The ADL has become the DL, where they now specialize in defamation. Regarding the attack, I can't respond as the ADL doesn't specifically state any inaccurate statements, but I have been accused of spreading misinformation for being correct too soon. I clearly stated in early 2020 that this virus was engineered and leaked from the Wuhan lab.
I correctly predicted the vaccines would not prevent disease, that adverse side effects were being ignored, that masks were not effective, and that lockdowns would fail to prevent disease and only succeed in concentrating wealth and destroying lives.
The Twitter Files have clearly shown the federal agencies are weaponized and engage in both election interference domestically and internationally, as well as illegal censorship collusion with big tech.
It appears ADL is just another political pawn who is ironically discriminating and persecuting those with differing opinions. How the ADL's mission changed from stopping defamation of Jewish people and turned into a defamation specialist defending fascist narratives is beyond belief."
Download this Article Before it Disappears
Download PDFADL Partnered With PayPal to Debank Truthtellers
That ADL was casting aside its original mission became evident back in July 2021. That's when it partnered with PayPal11 to identify and then debank — strip them of their ability to conduct online financial transactions — people, companies and organizations that ADL and PayPal deemed to be funding "criminal activity" or had been identified as an "extremist group" or "hate movement" spreading racism and bigotry.
Those who lost their PayPal accounts were primarily those who publicly opposed the official COVID narrative. Remember, PayPal is the criminal organization that wanted to confiscate (steal) $2,500 from anyone's account if they found you guilty of spreading misinformation, and that was for each "offense." They had so much pushback that they had to quickly reverse the policy.
By the end of that year, the online payment processing giant had dropped multiple nonprofit organizations for the crime of spreading the word about early COVID treatment and/or calling for a stop to COVID jab mandates, including the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), the Organic Consumer's Association (OCA) and the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), the oldest and most effective vaccine safety advocacy group in the U.S.
The FLCCC's donation platform was shut down October 15, 2021. In an email to subscribers, the FLCCC commented:
"The powerful forces of Big Tech, Big Pharma, government, health authorities, and mainstream media continue to suppress us. There is nothing false in anything that we post.
This is an attack on our ability to fundraise, our free speech, and our efforts to share effective, safe COVID-19 prevention and treatment protocols to help people around the world stay out of the hospital — and to save precious lives impacted by this dangerous virus."
Similarly, after business hours on December 21, 2021, PayPal notified NVIC that it would no longer process donations from their supporters — effective immediately.
"In essence," NVIC wrote in a news release,12 "PayPal wants to control your choices and tell you which nonprofit charities you may and may not support. Pay Pal's sudden and unexplained action against our donors comes in the middle of our annual end-of-year fundraising campaign."
Did ADL Get Substack Banned From Twitter?
At the end of the ADL's April 4 hit piece against 19 specific Substack authors, the ADL basically calls on Twitter to get back to censoring:13
"Over the past few years, tweets which include external links to Substack pages, also known as outlinks, have increased demonstrably.
In 2021, the volume of Twitter mentions (including retweets) which included outlinks to Substack exceeded 6.08 million. In 2022, those mentions doubled to more than 12.6 million. In the first two months of 2023, mentions are already over 4.3 million.
This increase begs the question of whether the wealth of misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories on Substack — much of which has drawn countless paid and unpaid subscribers to the platform — violates the platform's existing content moderation policies."
It wasn't the first time ADL complained about Twitter allowing free speech on its platform. December 2, 2022, ADL published an article14 claiming "extremists" and "far-right figures" were exploiting Elon Musk's decision to reinstate previously suspended accounts.
According to ADL, that decision resulted in "an increase in antisemitic content," and they warned that the "return of extremists of all kinds to the platform has the potential to supercharge the spread of extremist content and disinformation." March 9, 2023, ADL again published an article criticizing Twitter for not enforcing its policies on anti-Semitic content.15
The April 3, 2023, article, however, did NOT focus on antisemitism. Instead, it took aim at a range of "woke" pet issues, like the inviolability of the LBGTQ+ movement, antigovernment content and people who are exposing all kinds of fraud and deception. The only thing the 19 authors really have in common is that we all oppose and poke holes in various official narratives.
And, what do you know — April 7, 2023, it seems Twitter finally responded to ADLs pleas for censorship and started blocking outlinks (external links) to Substack. As noted by Malone in an April 7 tweet:16
"There is good evidence that the Anti-defamation League put pressure on Twitter and got them to stop allowing links to the one alternative news source that is unfiltered. Both organizations should be ashamed. This is disgusting and sick. We are truly a censored nation of people."
Substack Launches Twitter Competitor
Whether Twitter relented and started censoring outlinks to Substack due to pressure from the ADL has yet to be proven. Musk has not yet explained the decision.
Brunet suggests there might be another reason at play. He suspects Musk might be "retaliating against Substack because a few days ago, Substack announced a new feature that is almost exactly like Twitter and would directly compete with Twitter."17
The feature is called Substack Notes18 and went live April 11, 2023. While Notes will have a look and feel like that of other social media feeds, the financial rewards for popular content will go to the content creators, as the Substack network runs on paid subscriptions and not ads.
Some Substack authors have already made the transition, among them investigative journalist Matt Taibbi, who also believes Twitter's decision was a retaliatory move. In an April 7 post he wrote:19
"Since being able to share my articles is a primary reason I use Twitter, I was alarmed and asked what was going on. It turns out Twitter is upset about the new Substack Notes feature, which they see as a hostile rival.
When I asked how I was supposed to market my work, I was given the option of posting my articles on Twitter instead of Substack. Not much suspense there; I'm staying at Substack …
Beginning early next week I'll be using the new Substack Notes feature (to which you'll all have access) instead of Twitter, a decision that apparently will come with a price as far as any future Twitter Files reports are concerned. It was absolutely worth it and I'll always be grateful to those who gave me the chance to work on that story, but man is this a crazy planet."
Censorship Is Your Guide to Truthful Information
In the face of continued censorship, when even the world-renowned Antidefamation League turns pro-bias and pro-defamation, what can you do?
One way to fight back against the heavy hand of censorship is to beat them at their own game: Use censorship as a cue or guide that you should delve more deeply into the topic at hand. The fact that it's being censored is a surefire sign that there is truth hidden there.
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