We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, January 5, 2019

Why One Should Distrust the News [news from media corporations]

Click here to access article by Eric Zuesse from Strategic Culture Foundation.

Zuesse starts out to report on the reporting inaccuracies of major media corporations which is well known to anyone on the left, but then reveals what I have witnessed in the past several years: that the CIA has been posting pseudo-researched articles on Wikipedia, one of the foundation sites of alternative media. 

As I understand Wikipedia's policies, anyone can do an entry if its factual material is backed by links to documentation. Zuesse confirms my suspicions that Wikipedia will accept entries if it uses documentation that are faulty--and there is now an abundance of deceptive information spread by corporate media. Knowing what I know about the CIA related to their infiltration of media corporations, I have long wondered when they would get around to posting fake or heavily biased entries on Wikipedia's website. Zuesse cites some dramatic examples of this. To be sure, the overwhelming number of entries are still based on solid research, but one must be alert to this growing trend.