In and interview on MSNBC, The New Yorker’s Steve Coll suggests Mark Zuckerberg’s “profound” support of free speech is problematic: “Those of us in journalism have to come to terms with the fact that free speech, a principle that we hold sacred, is being weaponized against the principles of journalism.”
Coll is also the dean of journalism at Columbia University. Columbia is a primary pipeline to all the major news outlets and papers.
The Dean of Journalism at one of journalism’s paramount institutions of education is essentially saying that criticism of the media is a violation of the First Amendment. Let that sink in.
It should be noted, this is the media that promoted a false narrative of Russian Collusion, yet universally ignored and suppressed and sought to confuse the Hunter Biden, China influence story.
“Those of us in journalism have to come to terms with the fact that free speech, a principle that we hold sacred, is being weaponized against the principles of journalism?”
Does anybody seriously have any kind of clue as to what this dude is on about there with this gibberish that “free speech is being weaponized against the principles of journalism?”
Where the word “weaponized” means “adapted for use as a weapon,” that is just plain stupid hysteria and hype on his part, nonsense, pure piffle, and it don’t mean doodly-squat that he is the dean of journalism at Columbia University, because that doesn’t make him either intelligent or right, especially in the field of journalism today, which is the peddling of pure BULL****.
And we should consider that before he got to here, on July 23, 2007, Coll was named as the next director of the New America Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C.
According to Wikipedia, New America, formerly the New America Foundation, is a think tank that focuses on a range of public policy issues, including national security studies, technology, asset building, health, gender, energy, education, and the economy.
However, while the organization describes itself as “non-partisan”, its policy views have been characterized as centrist, liberal or left-leaning, and the New America Foundation has been criticized for its perceived close ties with Google, including its decision to fire an employee who criticized Google
as a monopoly.
So much for free speech here in Numerka!
As to its history, mission and funding, New America was founded in 1999 by Ted Halstead, Sherle Schwenninger, Michael Lind, and Walter Russell Mead as a non-profit, public policy institute whose stated mission is to “invest in new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States”.
Ted Halstead (July 25, 1968 – September 2, 2020) was an American author, policy entrepreneur, and public speaker who has founded four non-profit think tanks and advocacy organizations: the Climate Leadership Council, Americans for Carbon Dividends, New America, and Redefining Progress, so he certainly had an agenda of his own, as did Michael Lind.
And then we have Walter Russell Mead (born June 12, 1952), who is an American academic – the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College and he taught American foreign policy at Yale University.
What makes him interesting is that as an active faculty member at Bard’s campus in Annandale and its New York-based Globalization and International Affairs Program, he teaches on American foreign policy and Anglo-American grand strategy, including curriculum addressing Sun Tzu and Clausewitz.
Why he is interesting becomes apparent when one googles either “Sun Tzu on propaganda” or “Clausewitz on propaganda.”
He who controls communications controls minds.
He who controls communications absolutely controls minds absolutely.
Hence the reasons why our modern media is being created by, or bought up by those that want absolute power. The only surprise to me is that some people don’t realize it or question the dribble they re being fed in so many ways.
“Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness.”
“Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness.”
“Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.”
– Sun Tzu
Commonly defined as “a systematic action exerted on opinion to make it accept certain ideas or doctrines” (Larousse), propaganda was theorized by members of the military (Clausewitz), and sketched out in practice during nineteenth century conflicts.
It became an integral part of military strategy at the end of The Great War, and was expanded during World War Two to constitute a (psychological) weapon in its own right.
During the Cold War, the USSR and the United States confronted one another on terrain that was as much ideological and mediatized as it was military.
Propaganda then became a “second front,” according to the historian John McArthur, who evoked the case of the Gulf War (1991).
At first geographically limited to the front, propaganda later became a major aspect of combat, one that had no spatial limits and that could target a predefined public.
It represents a genuine front itself.
– From Propaganda at the Front to a Propaganda Front
Maude WILLIAMS
Digital Encyclopedia of European History
Hence the reasons why our modern media is being created by, or bought up by those that want absolute power. The only surprise to me is that some people don’t realize it or question the dribble they re being fed in so many ways.