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2/11/2018

The media's love affair with dictators (Part One)

Via- Jer's Notes

Quite a bit is being made of the media's fawning coverage of the North Korean's at the Winter Olympics in South Korea. As it should be.


A few examples to illustrate what to normal people seems to be a disconnection from reality and common sense.

CNN published an article Kim Jong Un's sister is stealing the show at the Winter Olympics  

Which begins with this laudatory bit of nonsense:

With a smile, a handshake and a warm message in South Korea's presidential guest book, Kim Yo Jong has struck a chord with the public just one day into the PyeongChang Games.  
If "diplomatic dance" were an event at the Winter Olympics, Kim Jong Un's younger sister would be favored to win gold.  
Followed by a ridiculous comparison of Kim Yo Jong who is the Minister for Propaganda and Agitation of North Korea and a full fledged member of her brother's repressive government to Ivanka Trump.

Then in a not so subtle segue comparison CNN finally reminds us of  the true nature of her brother's government. They rightly compare it to Nazi Germany brutal repressive dictatorship.  So Kim Jo Yung is to Kim Jong Yu as Ivanka Trump is to Donald Trump. Got it?

There are several examples of the media fawning over North Korean's participation at the Olympics, such as this tweet from NBC which is covering the Olympics.


North Korea has state sponsored and choreographed cheer leaders because the ordinary people of North Korea are not allowed to drive a couple hundred miles to root for their fellow countrymen.
Worse they are not even able to watch, can you say Minister of Propaganda and Agitation? Seems like some NBC personality might point this out.
There are other examples of the North Korean's obvious attempts to influence public opinion and the western media's gullible or treacherous, you decide, abetting of it.
The progressive media which predominately control media in the western world, has a long history of sympathizing with dictatorial regimes.
In the thirties the New York Times Walter Duarnty wrote glowing reports on the Stalin regime and it's institution of Soviet style dictatorship. This despite the fact that Stalin's methods intentionally starved millions of Ukrainians and stole and collectivized millions of acres of Russian owned farmland.
Mr. Duranty was so good at his propaganda that he won a Pulitzer Prize. It was not until the eighties well past the time when any reasonable and objective news organization would have recognized the absolute barbarity of Stalin and the oppressive nature of communism, that the Times finally admitted Duranty's reporting was "significantly flaw(ed)." As yet the the Pulitzer Committee another progressive minded institution has still not withdrawn the award.

But Mr Duranty was not alone in his blindness, you need only read this from the Smithsonian

"How Journalists Covered the Rise of Mussolini and Hitler

Reports on the rise of fascism in Europe were not the American media’s finest hour 
Ironically, while the media acknowledged that Fascism was a new “experiment,” papers like The New York Times commonly credited it with returning turbulent Italy to what it called “normalcy.”
Read it all 

Have things really changed? Is the reporting on North Korea from the Olympics some aberration? An attempt to stick it in the eye of Trump with his avowed opponent? If true that in itself speaks volumes. But this not just antipathy towards Trump, it is the progressive media.

Examples?

Not to pick on The New York Times, but why not, consider their headline and first paragraph of their obituary of Venezuela's socialist strongman, Hugo Chavez.
HUGO CHÁVEZ | 1954-2013 

A Polarizing Figure Who Led a Movement  

CARACAS, Venezuela — Hugo Chávez, who died on Tuesday at 58, rose from poverty in a dirt-floor adobe house to unrivaled influence in Venezuela as its president, consolidating power and wielding the country’s oil reserves as a tool for his Socialist-inspired change.
Oh they cannot get enough of that "Socialist-inspired change". However consider what Chavez's "Movement" has wrought for Venezuela. A relatively small nation with the world's largest known oil reserves which can no longer produce them and whose people are starving. A nation on the verge of collapse.

Perhaps no paragraph better explains the media's blind penchant for the idolatry of of strongmen than this one from Fidel Castro's obituary in the Washington Post -

"Fidel Castro, revolutionary leader who remade Cuba as a socialist state, dies at 90"

Mr. Castro, a romantic figure in olive-drab fatigues and combat boots, chomping monstrous cigars through a bushy black beard, became a spiritual beacon for the world’s political far left.
Does "romantic figure" and a "spiritual beacon" spring to the forefront of your thoughts when reviewing the life of Fidel Castro?

A man, like Chavez, who ruined the potential for a rich and beautiful nation? Whose brutality squashed and destroyed any chance for his people to join in the riches of global economic growth since the end of the Second World War. Worse still while living lives of opulent excess as their countrymen starve and struggle. Yes romantic indeed.

But this is who the media seems to have a soft  spot in their progressive heart for. Why?

The answer in Part two of "The media's love affair with dictators"

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