You're Being Consistently Lied To By Western Mainstream Media!
Get the truth from objective, independent news sources
When I was young, the Western mainstream media that I was introduced to was CNN, BBC, and Al-Jazeera. Now and then, my father would turn them on to listen in the background while he attended to other tasks.
I got the most exposure in my grandfather’s house, instead of my own, as I never was one to watch the news in general. He would routinely watch any one of those three channels at night and I would occasionally join him to get informed and spend time with him.
At that young age, I naturally assumed that the mainstream media were truthful and of the highest standards. I mean, they were supposed to be the most-watched channels for news and had wide international influence, after all! So why wouldn’t I trust them to give me factual, objective information?
The longest stretch when I watched such news was in the months leading up to the 2020 US election. I wanted to be up to date with the progress of the Democrat candidates as I desperately wanted Donald Trump to lose.
My main concerns were that:
He was gonna start World War III with all his irresponsible sabre-rattling and tough policies against several other nuclear powers.
His dismal handling of the pandemic whereby his lax, irresponsible policies caused the virus to widely spread, resulting in countless hospitalizations and deaths in the US. It also caused it to spread to other countries and mutate into more virulent, harmful strains.
So yeah, when Joe Biden won in November, I breathed a huge sigh of relief, thinking that he was gonna be way more diplomatic and responsible in his foreign policies and his impact on the global stage.
Boy, was I wrong, as I would eventually realize.
Becoming exposed to the truth
My introduction to more objective, independent news media came in mid-2020 when I stumbled upon Brian Berletic’s YouTube channel where he regularly analyzes the US government’s meddling in Southeast Asian countries to sabotage China’s rise as a global superpower.
I started watching his videos regularly as they were intriguing and revealed information I was unaware of. It was from his analyses, that I realized:
Just how much the Western mainstream media (both news channels and print media) lie and spread propaganda.
They’re essentially a tool for the ruling class to manipulate their citizens into supporting their greedy, destructive agendas.
The US ruling class in particular is heavily involved in instigating social unrest and coups to replace other countries’ leaders with those subservient to Western interests.
It was primarily through his videos that I became aware of the US government’s backing of the Hong Kong protests, efforts to break Taiwan away from China, and false accusations of the Uyghur genocide in Xinjiang, among others.
Presenting information based on experiences
A couple of months later, I discovered another channel called ‘Barrett’, in which an English father and son duo living in China made vlogs about their observations on the social and political aspects of Chinese society.
Watching their videos opened my eyes even further to the Western mainstream media’s lies and propaganda tactics, in this case towards the Chinese system as a whole. I learned from them as well that the Uyghur situation in Xinjiang wasn’t at all like how Western leaders and news media made it out to be.
One of their analyses that really left an impression on me was how different societies perceive concepts like freedom, democracy and human rights differently.
Many US citizens place more emphasis on having more than one political party to choose from, not being pressured to wear masks or take vaccines, being allowed to own firearms, being allowed to openly protest and challenge the government, etc.
On the other hand, many Chinese citizens may place more importance on having a decent social safety net, not living in poverty, proper treatment of the working class, being safe from crime, having low corruption in the political system, etc.
The Barretts made me realize that you just can’t 100% apply certain cultural beliefs from one part of the world to societies in other parts of the world with different cultures, historical backgrounds, and political systems.
These are some of the important factors that Western leaders and mainstream media just don’t bother taking into account whenever they label countries like China as being ‘undemocratic’, ‘not free’, or having ‘human rights’ abuses’.
My trusted news sources
Around the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, I watched insightful videos from The New Atlas that delved into the background of the problem and debunked much of the Western mainstream propaganda.
One thing I really appreciated was how he pointed out the lies and misinformation in the media’s reporting of those events and also by Western political leaders themselves.
It was at that time as well that I started following four other political analysis channels on YouTube: Alex Christoforou, The Duran, The Jimmy Dore Show, and Breakthrough News. Soon after, I completely abandoned watching Western mainstream news out of anger and disgust towards their blatant lies and misinformation.
My favourite are those first two channels, as I resonate with their reasoning and analysis the most, plus their more informal nature of analyzing and discussing makes it more engaging and easier to follow.
I like Jimmy Dore as well as there’s a lot of humour mixed in with his presentation of the news, although I may not necessarily agree 100 percent with his analysis. Overall, I genuinely trust these four sources to provide me with objective, truthful information.
In contrast, my trust in the mainstream media grew less and less the more I watched those videos, especially whenever they explicitly pointed out the lies and propaganda.
My biggest eye-opening moment
It was at that point that I starkly realized just how similar the Democrats and Republicans were in their destructive foreign policies and warmongering. I thought Biden would be way more mature and responsible than Trump and would stop with all the sabre-rattling against other global superpowers!
Well, that proved to be false after watching analyses from those independent news sources on how the Biden administration (along with other Western leaders) kept pushing for escalation against Russia via Ukraine by consistently supplying weapons and training NATO troops in Ukraine.
This behaviour has continued since the start of the war up to this point, with the Biden administration hellbent on the Ukrainians to keep fighting in their long-term goals to weaken Russia, initiate regime change in Moscow, and grab Russia’s abundant oil and gas.
I became disillusioned with the Democrats as they proved to be just as bad as the Republicans in:
Launching proxy wars
Being subservient to the military-industrial complex
War-profiteering
Their direct involvement in changing regimes in other countries
Stealing other countries’ natural resources
Consistently watching those independent, objective news sources made me realize just how evil both mainstream parties really were and that there weren’t many fundamental differences between them.
And man, was that realization fully cemented when the war in Palestine broke out last year and BOTH the Democrats and Republicans fully as well as consistently supported sending arms and money to the Israeli regime, thus directly enabling a genocide!
The mainstream media can have such devastating effects on society!
At this point, I’ve come to strongly despise the Western mainstream media as well as political leadership given the level of brainwashing and harm they’re routinely inflicting on society.
Their actions have been and continue to be highly irresponsible and despicable, considering how successfully they’ve manipulated people into supporting the ruling class's destructive geopolitical agendas around the world.
Many people passively consume the news and accept whatever is being presented as the truth. We’re conditioned to not apply rational and critical thinking whenever we consume such information. Heck, even I had the same approach all those years whenever I watched the mainstream news up until the 2020 US general election.
This makes the deliberate lying and spreading of propaganda by the Western mainstream media incredibly dangerous to any society, as we’ve seen in recent history.
For decades, Western political leaders have misused mainstream media as their mouthpiece to control the narrative and manipulate their citizens into supporting their destructive agendas and wars around the world, whether it involves, the Middle East, Latin America, Russia, or China.
Why? So that their own citizens will passively go along and not question those agendas, of which the main goals are almost always to:
Steal other countries’ natural resources.
Install leaders who are subservient to neoliberal capitalism.
Engage in war profiteering through endless wars and conflicts.
If a significant amount of people know the truth and strongly push back against the ruling class and boycott the large corporations with whom the politicians are in bed, it’ll be difficult for them to carry out their destructive plans.
It’ll be harder for political leaders to justify spending so much taxpayer money towards such endeavours, and their chances of getting re-elected will drop given the public’s anger. And that’s the last thing that they want as they’re addicted to positions of power and all the lucrative profit-making opportunities that come with it.
Hence, their disinformation and propaganda campaigns are ever-relentless, ensuring that their citizens are heavily conditioned to think in certain ways. And for the most part, they’ve been hugely successful!
This is particularly the case in the US and UK, based on many citizens’ perceptions towards Russia, Vladimir Putin, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and communism in general, among other things.
There are a lot of important backstories and information regarding these topics that the Western mainstream media conveniently leaves out whenever discussing them. And it’s all done so that people possess a narrow, biased viewpoint towards such topics, the one that their leaders specifically want them to have.
We must seriously consider foreign policies as well!
I feel really disheartened when I see so many people on these blogging platforms, and in comment sections who’ve bought into the mainstream media’s lies and propaganda on the various geopolitical conflicts around the world.
Also concerning is how some people either aren’t aware of or choose to ignore the severity of their government’s actions on the global stage when deciding which political party to vote for. Instead, they form their opinions mainly based on domestic issues and fail to accept the fact that both sides of the political divide are truly rotten and that a third party is needed.
As long as there’s still a large number of people who agree with or aren’t concerned about their ruling class's agendas and reasoning for wars, they won’t stop and the cycle of exploitation, destruction and suffering will simply continue.
People are unable to connect the dots!
I’m also incredibly frustrated at people’s inability to connect the dots when it comes to the pattern of propaganda. I can’t help but think to myself:
‘If you know your government and mainstream media lied to you about why they invaded Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s, isn’t there some part of you that questions the credibility of their claims against Russia and China and their decision to send arms and money to Ukraine and Taiwan?’
‘Isn’t there some part of you that goes: Ok, where have I seen these types of claims before? Is this history repeating itself?’
What’s more frustrating is when I see some people having awareness about one geopolitical issue, but then they believe the mainstream media when it comes to another issue. What the hell? Why can’t you see the pattern here?!
It takes such large-scale, constant cruelty to wake people up
It’s really sad and disappointing that it takes a live-streamed genocide in Palestine with so many brutal deaths to shake people awake and make them realize their leaders and media have been lying to them about their as well as Israel’s true intentions in that region, Hamas, and other important factors.
Does it really have to take so much death for people to start thinking critically and question the mainstream narrative? That does seem to be the case, unfortunately, as many people still passively consume the news.
Stop listening to the mainstream media!
At this point, the only way we’re gonna put an end to all the harmful geopolitical wars and conflicts around the world is if Western citizens unite and strongly push back against their leaders’ agendas. If not, those Western leaders are gonna willingly ignite World War III, given their insane warmongering against nuclear powers like Iran, Russia and China.
But such change can only happen if people stop getting their news and information from the mainstream media and instead seek out more objective, independent sources.
The mainstream media aren’t gonna change by themselves, given many of them are funded by the ruling class and industrial complexes that support all these geopolitical wars in the first place.
Sure, this would at first require some trial and error as not all independent sources are objective. However, it’s absolutely crucial, especially in this day and age that we actively seek out the objective truth.
Only if we’re aware of what’s actually going on can we decide what’s right or wrong, instead of what our leaders and mainstream media constantly tell us.
Copyright Raveen Jeyakumar, 2024. All rights reserved.
My sources; I’ve selected ones that are concise and give broader explanations:
On Netanyahu's Visit to Washington to Address Congress
Origins of the Ukraine-Russia war
Overview of recent political & geopolitical events
Current situation on US, Israel, & Iran
Behold the power of the technological information revolution. My journey away from the M$M started a few years before yours, but it was similar, and really took off when all these new podcasts started appearing.
Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing. So is new technology the Empire can't control.
I fully agree, Raveen. I look at the CBC online news just to see what people are absorbing, and am appalled by the amount of misinformation it spews out.
Do you know about Consortium News? I think you'd appreciate them. Also, Karl Sanchez's Substack site, Karlof1's Geopolitical Gymanasium, has translations of speeches made by world leaders from other countries particularly Russia. The perspective it provides is very interesting.