On 7 September 2002, U.S. President George W. Bush blatantly lied to concoct a “new report” by the IAEA about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction program, and the U.S. news-media reported the statement but hid that it was a lie.

He said (and CNN and others quoted it): “a report came out of the Atomic — the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need,” when he was asked at a press conference, “Mr. President, can you tell us what conclusive evidence of any nuclear — new evidence you have of nuclear weapons capabilities of Saddam Hussein?” Immediately, the IAEA said then that there was no such “new report,” and that the last they were able to find, there was nothing left of WMD in Iraq.

The American news-media simply ignored the IAEA’s denial, and we invaded Iraq, almost six months after that boldfaced lie, a lie the press refused to expose, at all — ever. They still haven’t exposed it, even to the present day; and instead there remains a ‘debate’ as to whether George W. Bush lied or was instead merely misled by “defective U.S. intelligence.” In this particular instance, he wasn’t even citing U.S. intelligence, but instead the IAEA, and they immediately denied it, but the press failed to report that; so, really, the President was simply lying, and the press just continue to lie by saying he had only “been misled by the CIA” (which he actually controlled; but he didn’t control the IAEA). The American press hide the fact that the American President lied his nation into invading Iraq. The press lie that it was only “bad intelligence,” no lying President.

(Because of the news-media’s ignoring the IAEA’s denial of the President’s statement, the author of the IAEA’s denial, Mark Gwozdecky, spoke three weeks later, by phone, with the only journalist who was interested, Joseph Curl of theWashington Times, who headlined on 27 September 2002, “Agency Disavows Report on Iraq Arms” — perhaps that should instead have been “President Lied About ‘Saddam’s WMD’” — and Curl quoted Gwozdecky: “There's never been a report like that [which Bush alleged] issued from this agency. … When we left in December '98 we had concluded that we had neutralized their nuclear-weapons program. We had confiscated their fissile material. We had destroyed all their key buildings and equipment.” Other news-media failed to pick up Curl’s article. And, even in that article, there was no clear statement that the President had, in fact, lied — cooked up an IAEA ‘report’ that never actually existed — and that he never corrected his false allegation; that he compounded his lie by not correcting it.)

That’s hardly the only instance where the U.S. news-media cover for the President’s lies about foreign affairs, by merely stenographically reporting what he says, while hiding the truth that his statement was a baldfaced lie. For example, how many times have you read in the newspapers, or in a magazine, or seen on TV, or heard on the radio (all of which are supposed to report these things), that in February 2014, the Obama Administration perpetrated a bloody coup d’etat that overthrew the democratically elected President of Ukraine, and replaced his government with a racist-fascist, or anti-Russian nazi, government, so that Ukraine, which had been at peace for decades, was now suddenly torn by a racist bloody civil war – a war of ethnic cleansing? Oh?

You were instead told that ‘democracy’ started (instead of ended) when Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown then, in a ‘revolution,’ not in any U.S. “coup”? (The head of Stratfor, the “private CIA” firm, even admitted to a Russian newspaper that it was “the most blatant coup in history.”The U.S. news-media refused to report that, too.) And, now, Russia and Europe are both suffering from the economic sanctions that Obama placed against Russia, when Putin did what he had to do to protect Russia from this proxy attack against his country by America’s sneaky lying President (whom the U.S. news-media don’t report to be either sneaky or lying, except that Republican ‘news’ media report Obama to be a communist Muslim Kenyan, none of which are the types of sneaky liar that he actually is).

How can a democracy function with such a news-media? It can’t. And it doesn’t. But that’s a fact America’s news-media can and do report (though little enough so that only few Americans are aware of it).

One can report in major American news-media that democracy has ended in America, but one can’t report in them that either Bush or Obama lied us into vile invasions, or that the overthrow of Yanukovych was a coup instead of a ‘revolution.’Those things aren’t allowed, except in such few honest small-audience news-media as are publishing this article — these being the few U.S. news-media that don’t rely upon, and aren’t owned by, America’s aristocrats.

To understand how America’s news is heavily censored and for what purposes, is crucial for any American who wants to understand truthfully his/her government, and to understand that government’s relationship with the American nation’s aristocracy, which aristocracy owns the news-media and finances political campaigns and thereby overwhelmingly determines which candidates (such as Bush and Obama) will have a real oportunity to win office, and which candidates simply won’t, at all.

But the real place where the rubber hits the road for aristocrats is actually international relations, because America’s aristocrats control half of the world’s international corporations, and those corporations are thoroughly dependent upon national governments. (Note: Obama is trying to make national governments dependent upon international corporations.) Furthermore, international affairs is where the various national aristocracies compete against each other, which is a game that major aristocrats especially enjoy playing — especially in the country that has the most powerful aristocracy of all.

Censorship in national news is far less than in international news. However, a political candidate’s financial support from the aristocracy will largely depend upon that candidate’s positions on foreign policy; and, so, a candidate’s positions on foreign policy will largely determine whether that candidate even gets enough campaign-funds to be politically competitive, and this will in turn affect whether or not the candidate will be able to serve in a position to shape domestic policies such as education, taxes, health care, and the construction and maintenance of highways and bridges.

Thus: the most heavily censored news-area, which is foreign policy, will, indeed, have a big impact upon determining which domestic policies get put into effect, and which don’t — but mainly in this indirect way, which few people even know about. In this important sense, international affairs determine domestic policies far more than domestic affairs affect international policies. A person who cares only about domestic affairs will thus be easily manipulated by the aristocracy, because the main determinants of domestic policy will be largely or totally ignored by that voter — the person will then be just an unaware pawn of big money, controlled by people and agendas the individual knows nothing about.

Here is a clear example of a big-name American news-medium actually applying censorship, and it pertains to CNN; the topic there is Bahrain. The reporter was driven out of CNN when she tried to report the truth. It ended her career, which, until that time, had been stellar. The reporter gets blackballed, because any news-medium which hires someone like that will lose advertisers — it’s counter-productive, no matter how good the reporter might happen to be (and she was). The major media don’t look for great reporters; they look for money — and the aristocracy have it.

Here’s an article about a ‘progressive’ news-medium that actually sells, to its advertisers, an audience of people who think of themselves as being progressive and who will inevitably become less and less so the more that these advertisers’ control over the ‘news’ which those readers encounter warps their understanding of international events. (Lots more is said about that news-medium in this background report about it here).

So: both mainstream, and ‘alternative news,’ media are selling audiences to their advertisers (which can include ‘non-profits,’ such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which buys corporate stocks that Bill and Melinda Gates want to sell and that will rise in price to the extent that such ‘charities’ are buying them). (And here is a major news-medium that’s trying to keep up the price of companies that most aristocrats right now are selling.) (After those suckers buy them, these stocks will go downhill, which is why aristocrats now want to sell them; they’re dumping them and need buyers.) People who think that news-media are selling ‘news’ instead of selling audiences (“eye-balls”), don’t understand the news-business.

News-media are selling minds; it’s a form of PR. In a capitalist economy, there is no way to avoid the news-business becoming a branch of the PR-business. The dominance of propaganda over news-reporting is inevitable in any type of economic system. That’s reality — not ‘Adam Smith.’ ‘Free-market economics’ is for fantasists; it never was real; it was and is only for cultists, never for realists. The sellers of that cult are the aristocracy. And they know that it’s false. They know it first-hand, because they control it. You can’t control it and still be ignorant that it’s a fraud. This is simple reality, to them.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.