Eric Zuesse

On July 1st, CNN reported that “President Barack Obama’s top aides, including David Axelrod, communicated with Hillary Clinton at her private email address while she was secretary of state,” and that, “Obama officials – including Axelrod – had said they were unaware Clinton was using a personal email address.” CNN provided no linked source for their allegation that Axelrod didn’t know (nor juxtaposed his statement which contradicted it); however, what CNN said there was indeed accurate, so far as it went, as one can tell simply by clicking onto this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucRdR1Rlo4E

That video, dated June 17th, shows Axelrod’s response after Obama’s former Chief of Staff Bill Daley had said that he had “had no idea” that Secretary of State Clinton was using a private email for her State Department business. Axelrod said (1:07): “I confess, … I was the senior advisor; I didn’t know.” He was then asked “If you did find out when you were there, …?” and he promptly replied, “I might have asked a few questions about this.”

So: He had outright lied when he said “I didn’t know.” He did know. CNN refused to point this lying out. Not only that, but though CNN’s report did mention this video (which was from MSNBC), they provided no link to it (such as I just did), and therefore they offered no way that CNN’s audience could come to know that Axelrod had, in fact, lied about this matter.

The present report, “CNN: Obama White House Lied ‘We Didn’t Know About Hillary’s Private Email’,” is thus not about what CNN said to its audience; it is instead about the reality that CNN was actually hiding from its audience, except for from those who (like the present reporter) would devote the effort and time to dig further in order to find out what the real story was, behind the mush that CNN reported to its audience.

The major news story here turned out to be “CNN: Obama White House Lied ‘We Didn’t Know About Hillary’s Private Email’,” and was not really CNN’s headlined ‘news’ report, which was: “Clinton emails: Obama aides knew of private address.”

This fact, of CNN’s hiding the Obama Administration’s lies on this matter, indicates that CNN is covering for the White House, more than actually covering the White House. CNN is actually a propaganda agency, not a news agency. It hides the incriminating evidence, instead of exposing it (as I just did here). So, yet another headline for the present news report could be: “CNN Protects the Obama White House.” That’s another important truth from this same information. And it, too, is an important thing for CNN’s audience to know about CNN.

So, perhaps the best headline for this article would be: “CNN Hides Obama Administration Lie.” But regardless, you now know the most important things which CNN reported, and you also know what CNN was covering up there – and what its cover-up says about CNN.

In order to be fully informative, I should also state that I had voted for Obama as the lesser of two evils, both times when he was running; I am definitely not a Republican, and I make a clear distinction between Republican attacks against Obama from his right (which are lies and distortions about him), versus progressive attacks against Obama from his left (which are true statements about his real conservatism – such as about his remarkable mendacity, basic to all conservatives and to conservatism itself).

Around 60% of Americans are to Obama’s left, but around 70% of oligarchs are to his right. Any ‘democracy’ that offers as its realistic electoral ‘choices’ only candidates like that, who are agents for the aristocracy, constitutes itself an oligarchy, no authentic democracy at all, because all of the realistic choices are oligarchic; none is authentically democratic.

The U.S. is therefore no longer a democracy, and it has the press (such as CNN) that one expects in such a place. The press, in any dictatorship, ‘report’ that the government represents the public. The U.S. is just another dictatorship, so it ‘reports’ that it’s not.

But that’s not part of this news story; it is instead the story’s context.

———-

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, and of Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.