The ubiquitous propagandistic tactic of fake news by omission distorts the public’s worldview just as much as it would if mass media outlets were publishing bogus stories out of whole cloth every day, only if they were doing that it would be much easier to pin them down on their lies, hold them accountable, and discredit them.

A recent FAIR article by Alan MacLeod documents how the Hong Kong demonstrations are pushed front and center in mainstream consciousness despite the fact that to this day not one protester has been killed by security forces, while far more deadly violence is being directed at huge protests in empire-aligned nations like Haiti, Chile and Ecuador which have been almost completely ignored by these same outlets.

This deliberate omission causes a distorted worldview in casual and mainstream news media consumers in which protests are only happening in nations that are outside the U.S.-centralized power alliance. We see the same kind of deliberate distortion-by-omission with the way mass media continually pushes the narrative that Donald Trump is “soft on Russia”, while remaining completely silent on the overwhelming mountain of evidence to the contrary.

The time is now for everyone with a platform to start banging the drum about the OPCW scandal, because we’re seeing more and more signs that the deluge of leaks hemorrhaging from that organization is only going to increase. Mainstream propagandists aren’t going to cover it, so if larger alternative media outlets want to avoid being lumped in with them and discredited in the same sweep it would be wise to start talking about this thing today.

It’s only going to get more and more awkward for everyone who chose to remain silent, and more and more validating for those who spoke out.

A leaked email accuses the OPCW of doctoring a report to suit the US government’s justification for its illegal bombing of Syria in April 2018. I explain the scandal mainstream media is trying to supress: pic.twitter.com/MTS4OWwqkH — Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) November 28, 2019

Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium. Follow her work on Facebook, Twitter, or her website. She has a podcast and a book “Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.”

This article was re-published with permission.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

Before commenting please read Robert Parry’s Comment Policy. Allegations unsupported by facts, gross or misleading factual errors and ad hominem attacks, and abusive or rude language toward other commenters or our writers will not be published. If your comment does not immediately appear, please be patient as it is manually reviewed. For security reasons, please refrain from inserting links in your comments, which should not be longer than 300 words.