Media insiders admit journalists are 'clueless' and easily misled by utterly false narratives... This is what happens when the press refuse to ask questions

Sunday, May 15, 2016 by: Daniel Barker
Tags: White House, Iran narrative, mainstream media

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(NaturalNews) Today's journalists are "clueless" and susceptible to "ventriloquizing" tactics, according to Obama administration insiders who routinely spoon-feed strategic – and often fictional – narratives to the press.

A recent New York Times Magazine profile of President Obama's "foreign-policy guru," Ben Rhodes, reveals details of the administration's sophisticated media manipulation tactics, which are largely orchestrated by Rhodes – a once-aspiring fiction writer responsible for selling the White House agenda to the press and public.

The Times piece, entitled "The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama's Foreign-Policy Guru," outlines the career of deputy national security adviser Rhodes, but it also includes comments by a number of other administration officials who admitted to having taken full advantage of journalists who "literally know nothing."

Iran deal narrative was 'largely manufactured'

For example, the administration's "Orwellian public relations strategy" – as Breitbart put it – was completely successful in creating and controlling the narrative regarding the Iran deal.

From the Times:

"The way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal presented ... was largely manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal. Even where the particulars of that story are true, the implications that readers and viewers are encouraged to take away from those particulars are often misleading or false."

Quotes from Rhodes and other administration officials reveal a low opinion of contemporary journalists, most of whom are viewed as being uninformed puppets who are easily manipulated.

Rhodes describes a "sea change" in journalism:

"All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus. Now they don't. They call us to explain to them what's happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That's a sea change. They literally know nothing."

Obama troubleshooter and senior director at the National Security Council, Rob Malley, detailed how the administration deployed foreign policy "experts," who infiltrated think tanks and social media platforms during the period leading up to the Iran deal.

The administration's shills were successful in influencing "hundreds of often-clueless reporters."

"We created an echo chamber," Malley said. "They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say."

The White House even has direct access to journalists willing to parrot anything the administration feeds them.

Tanya Somanader, director of digital response for the White House Office of Digital Strategy, admitted that the administration had at least two high-level journalists whom it could rely on for faithfully conveying the narrative.

"For those in need of more traditional-seeming forms of validation, handpicked Beltway insiders like Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic and Laura Rozen of Al-Monitor helped retail the administration's narrative. 'Laura Rozen was my RSS feed,' Somanader offered. 'She would just find everything and retweet it.'"

The demise of mainstream political journalism

Traditional journalism has gone the way of the dinosaur, according to David Samuels, author of the Times piece :

"It is hard for many to absorb the true magnitude of the change in the news business — 40 percent of newspaper-industry professionals have lost their jobs over the past decade — in part because readers can absorb all the news they want from social-media platforms like Facebook, which are valued in the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars and pay nothing for the 'content' they provide to their readers."

Mainstream political journalism is dead, leaving alternative media to fill the vacuum. As John Adams wrote: "The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state."

Alternative media now carries the torch of press liberty, while mass media news outlets continue to lose their last vestiges of credibility.

Sources:

NYTimes.com

Breitbart.com