Interestingly, that Los Angeles Times update makes no concession of regret about the clear deficiencies of Professor Zimdars' list, which continued to circulate via other news outlets and social media until currently. For this column, I contacted her for comment. She responded that the Los Angeles Times sought out her and her list after it became popular on the web. She said the list is a work in progress that has been reposted. As of this writing, it showed the same problems cited above from the original published in November.
Similarly, the Washington Post published an editor's note also recognizing the controversy regarding its above-cited news article by reporter Craig Timberg on Nov. 24 that listed supposedly fake or disreputable news sites. The editor's note said:
The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda.
A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot's list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group's methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot's findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post's story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list.
In sum, these major news organizations took scant responsibility after publishing warning lists that smeared independent competition -- including political opinion sites and hard-hitting investigative sites probing major stories -- by lumping them together with out-and-out scam sites.
The New York Times Touts Snopes As Fact-Checker, Ignores Snopes Scandal
One of the ways mainstream news organizations reveal their bias is by harping on the government funding for some news outlets and sources while ignoring similar or even vastly greater government funding outlets, personnel and sources favored by news managers. Thus most major Western news organizations avoid sending war correspondents to the long-running war in Syria or quoting the government (cited as "the regime" on rare occasions when it is quoted).
Instead, even our most prestigious newspapers rely heavily on the so-called "White Helmets" (typically described as a humanitarian team of rescue workers in rebel-held Syrian locales) and the "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" (a one-man operation based in the U.K.countryside by a rebel sympathizer who has not been in Syria for more than a decade).
Both the White Helmets (How a Syrian White Helmets Leader Played Western Media by Dr. Gareth Porter), and the "Observatory" have been reported as funded by Western intelligence as part of the covert operation to fund rebels long enough to overthrow Syria's "regime." But that kind of information is rarely disclosed by the mainstream. Instead, Western audiences read and see year upon year of spin, such as a CBS 60 Minutes episode Dec. 18, Syria's White Helmets: "Hope in a hopeless place, extolling the White Helmets as heroes saving bombing victims in Aleppo.
This is not to argue that such groups as the White Helmets do nothing good because of the source of their funding, only that the mainstream news organizations that extol them tend to ignore completely questions about their funding, mission and obvious participation in propaganda efforts that the news organizations are eager to advance for the ultimate objective of continuing the war and overthrowing the government.
You can see for yourself via a link to the CBS broadcast of Syria's White Helmets by the "60 Minutes" team led by correspondent Scott Pelley.
The issue of government funding is important in part because it is frequently used as a way to disparage competing news outlets that receive such funding. Mainstream media opposed to the Trump administration thus reported breathlessly that his incoming aide Michael Flynn received a payment for appearing on RT television. One can rest assured that whatever trivial honorarium was involved is nothing compared to the kind of money bestowed on retired generals elsewhere, including on boards of defense contractors.
By contrast, the pervasive system of pass-through organizations designed to obscure U.S. government funding of news organizations is seldom mentioned, much less explored. Independent writers, however, have disclosed vast sums laundered through innocuous-sounding foundations, think tanks, and government proprietaries and front companies.
Victoria Nuland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union, even boasted in late 2013 at the National Press Club that the United States had spent $5 billion to create the conditions necessary to overthrow the pro-Russian government in the Ukraine. That spending (largely obscured by laundering through "democracy-building" groups) led to a government overthrow and Nuland's scandalous intercepted phone call when she was caught conspiring with the U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt who should lead Ukraine after its revolution, as reported in U.S. diplomat apologizes for profane remarks on E.U. in leaked phone call.
This preamble leads to the bizarre situation in December whereby two separate New York Times reporters quoted Snopes.com, a prominent California fact-checking service without reporting that it had been itself accused of scandalous activity by the editor's ex-wife and co-founder.
The more in-depth of the Times stories on Dec. 26 quoting Snopes co-founder David Mikkelson was For Fact-Checking Website Snopes, a Bigger Role Brings More Attacks. Reporter David Streitfeld began:
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