Category Archives: Media watch

Bill Moyers: Obama’s Latest Assault on Democracy – Undermining Net Neutrality

Net neutrality is on its way to being executed by the likes of Comcast and Verizon. That will mean the death of the Internet as we know it.

NY Teachers’ Retirement Fund Exhibits Stockholm Syndrome, Rejects Reuters Private Equity FOIA Out of Fear of Annoying Private Equity Funds

It is hard to grasp how successful the private equity industry has been in brainwashing investors to keep information secret.

Bill Black: GAO and Wall Street Journal Whitewash Huge Criminal Bank Frauds

Every day brings multiple new scandals. At least they used to be scandals. Now they’re simply news items strained of ethical content by business journalists who see no evil, hear no evil, and speak not about evil.

CalPERS Told Obvious Big Lies in Its Response to Our Private Equity Investigation

Since readers have taken interest in the details of our ongoing litigation with the giant California public pension fund, CalPERS, I thought I’d tie off a thread from earlier in the month. By way of background, last September, we filed a Public Records Act request (California’s version of FOIA) for private equity return data that […]

Ukraine: Is Obama Channeling Cheney?

In this Real News Network report, Michael Hudson discusses the news blackout in the US as far as critical developments in the Ukraine are concerned, and how the distortions and gaps in reporting exceed those in the runup to the Iraq War.

Joe Firestone: Is the MSM Blackout on Inequality, Plutocracy, and Oligarchy Ending?

Yves here. Although I like this piece, I believe Joe is not cynical enough about MSNBC, which has become a messaging apparatus of the Democratic party. The reason that MSNBC is now talking about inequality is Obama is pushing for a minimum wage increase, so wealth and income disparity are no longer verboten topics

New York Times Column Strikes Back, Obliquely, at Our CalPERS Private Equity Data Suit

When I went to my inbox at the start of my day, one of the noteworthy e-mails in my inbox had the subject line: “NYT Column about You.”

CalPERS Tries Ineffective Mudslinging in Response to Our Ongoing Private Equity Investigation

Yesterday I learned that a press release that the California Public Employees’ Retirement Systems issued last Friday about our suit against the giant public pension fund. It’s quite a remarkable document, and not in a good way.

Cokie Roberts Picked a Fight With Alan Grayson on the TransPacific Partnership. Guess Who Won?

I’m clearly too feral to have the proper responses, but I’ve long considered Cokie Roberts to be too lightweight to be worth paying attention to. But since lightweight goes over well in many parts of America, Cokie still has a large following. And it’s separately worth paying attention to a fight she picked over Obama’s stalled trade deal, the TransPacific Partnership. The fact that people with popular followings are still defending it says the Administration remains keen to revive it, so opponents need to guard against becoming too complacent.

Journalist Schools BBC on Russian Intervention in Crimea

A fellow blogger with substantial experience in Europe sent this BBC footage, which I believe readers will find instructive.

Murdoch’s Other Hacking Scandal: A Review of “Murdoch’s Pirates” by Neil Chenoweth

Back in the late 1980’s, Rupert Murdoch’s latest fiendish plan for world media domination (there’s a new one every decade or so) centred on pay TV. But as the 1990s rolled in, the media baron focused on a new world to conquer: crypto.

Ilargi: Big Oil and Gas Wars

We live in a world built on such an overkill of 24/7 propaganda and misinformation that some of it easily slips by. Especially when the topic is the Ukraine.

Reuters Writes About Our Suit Against CalPERS to Obtain Private Equity Data

We were surprised and pleased when a reporter from the Reuters publication peHUB, Chris Witkowsky, contacted us a couple of days ago about the suit we had filed against CalPERS, the California Public Employees Retirement Systems, over their refusal to provide us with information they had given to three Oxford academics who had used that data as the basis for a recently-published paper.

Ilargi: The Hubris Circus

Yves here. The writing is delicious. But one thing that is frustrating (and of course quite deliberate) in reading the Western media account of the standoff in Ukraine is that they airbrush out how the West stoked this conflict and can hardly be surprised that Putin finally felt compelled to respond.