Are Elections outcome decided by the press? Most people polled Say Media, Not Russians, Tilting the Election

Most voters aren’t buying the story that the Russians are trying to manipulate the election for Donald Trump but think the U.S. media is trying to swing things for Hillary Clinton.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 56% of Likely U.S. Voters believe it’s more likely that many in the media are working to get Clinton elected president. Just 26% disagree and say it’s more likely that the Russian government is working to get Trump elected. Eighteen percent (18%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Ninety-one percent (91%) of voters supporting Trump think it’s more likely that most in the media are trying to help Clinton. Only 20% of Clinton supporters agree; 56% of her voters believe it’s more likely the Russians are trying to help Trump. But one-in-four Clinton voters (24%) aren’t sure which is more likely.

Fifty-four percent (54%) of all voters think the United States’ worsening relationship with Russia is bad for America.

Only 12% think it’s good for this country, while 20% say it will have no impact. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided. These findings are unchanged from June of last year when both President Obama and then-Republican front-runner Jeb Bush were pushing for tougher sanctions against Russia over the continuing political crisis in Ukraine.

WikiLeaks disclosures in recent days have highlighted the close working relationship between the Clinton campaign and journalists at several major news organizations including the New York Times and CNN.

Democrats say the Russians are behind the WikiLeaks releases; WikiLeaks says that isn’t true. Fifty percent (50%) of voters said in July that they expected most reporters to help Clinton.  Just 11% thought they were more likely to help Trump.

Read more: Most Say Media, Not Russians, Tilting the Election - Rasmussen Reports™

Media: Rigging the Coverage of Syria – by Gareth Porter

The Press: Rigging the Coverage
 - what you see is not what you get

Coverage of the breakdown of the partial ceasefire in Syria illustrated the main way corporate news media distort public understanding of a major foreign policy story. The problem is not that the key events in the story are entirely unreported, but that they were downplayed and quickly forgotten in the media’s embrace of themes with which they were more comfortable.

In this case, the one key event was the major offensive launched in early April by Al Nusra Front — the Al Qaeda franchise in Syria — alongside U.S.-backed armed opposition groups. This offensive was mentioned in at least two “quality” U.S. newspapers. Their readers, however, would not have read that it was that offensive that broke the back of the partial ceasefire.

On the contrary, they would have gotten the clear impression from following the major newspapers’ coverage that systematic violations by the Assad government doomed the ceasefire from the beginning.

Corporate media heralded the ceasefire agreement when it was negotiated by the United States and Russia in February, with the Los Angeles Times (2/3/16) calling it “the most determined diplomatic push to date aimed at ending the nation’s almost five-year conflict.” The “partial cessation of hostilities” was to apply between the Syrian regime and the non-jihadist forces, but not to the regime’s war with Nusra and with ISIS.

The clear implication was that the U.S.-supported non-jihadist opposition forces would have to separate themselves from Nusra, or else they would be legitimate targets for airstrikes.
But the relationship between the CIA-backed armed opposition to Assad and the jihadist Nusra Front was an issue that major U.S. newspapers had already found very difficult to cover (FAIR.org, 3/21/16).
U.S. Syria policy has been dependent on the military potential of the Nusra Front (and its close ally, Ahrar al Sham) for leverage on the Syrian regime, since the “moderate” opposition was unable to operate in northwest Syria without jihadist support.

This central element in U.S. Syria policy, which both the government and the media were unwilling to acknowledge, was a central obstacle to accurate coverage of what happened to the Syrian ceasefire.

This problem began shaping the story as soon as the ceasefire agreement was announced. On Feb. 23, New York Times correspondent Neil MacFarquhar wrote a news analysis on the wider tensions between the Obama administration and Russia that pointed to “a gaping loophole” in the Syria ceasefire agreement: the fact that “it permits attacks against the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate, to continue.”

MacFarquhar asserted that exempting Nusra from the ceasefire “could work in Moscow’s favor, since many of the anti-Assad groups aligned with the United States fight alongside the Nusra Front.” That meant that Russia could “continue to strike United States-backed rebel groups without fear … of Washington’s doing anything to stop them,” he wrote.

On the same day, Adam Entous of the Wall Street Journal reported that Obama’s “top military and intelligence advisers don’t believe Russia will abide by a just-announced ceasefire in Syria and want to ready plans to increase pressure on Moscow by expanding covert support to rebels fighting the Russia-backed Assad regime.”

For two of the country’s most prominent newspapers, it was thus clear that the primary context of the Syria ceasefire was not its impact on Syria’s population, but how it affected the rivalry between powerful national security officials and Russia.

Note EU-Digest: not only the Syria news is rigged by the media, but also most of the news, depending on who pays the salaries of the journalists writing the story, and the policies of the corporate media conglomerate they work for .

Read more: Rigging the Coverage of Syria – Consortium