Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

An article by the BBC on “The world’s most nutritious foods" ranks the healthfulness of foods on the basis of an article at the supposedly scientific PLOSone journal, titled "Uncovering the Nutritional Landscape of Food”. That study is based on a dataset that entirely ignores antioxidant-content of foods. Antioxidant-content has come to be recognized during recent decades as constituting perhaps the most important factor in nutrition. It’s probably even more important than vitamin-content and than mineral-content and than protein, carbohydrate, and fat content. So, the basis upon which the article’s ranking was done is the factors that were known about, in 1950, to be important, but that are now known to be far less determinative of a person’s health and longevity than are foods’ anti-oxidant contents. Neither the article nor its underlying dataset even so much as just mentions “oxidant” anywhere. The authors of the BBC and PLOSone articles and of the underlying dataset were apparently entirely ignorant of the findings in nutritional research during the past 60+ years — findings about antioxidants, which have transformed our understanding of nutrition. (Furthermore, there were many other important methodological flaws producing that PLOSone ranking, not only its ignoring antioxidants.)

This is not unusual.

(Incidentally, “ORAC Values: Antioxidant Values of Foods & Beverages" is a ranking of foods on the basis of antioxidant-contents, as measured by ORAC; and this is likely a far more accurate indicator of the relative healthfulness of foods than is the ridiculous BBC-PLOSone ranking — but far fewer people are being exposed to it.)

Here’s another example of the untrustworthiness of news-media and of other allegedly nonfiction presentations, even in many ‘scientific’ journals — but this one will be an example from what has become overwhelmingly the world’s leading encyclopedia: Wikipedia.

The CIA-edited and -written Wikipedia writes about the anti-CIA Michel Chossudovsky, by saying against his organization, the Centre for Research on Globalization, that it “promotes a variety of conspiracy theories and falsehoods.[7][19][8][20][21][22][23].” However (just to take one example there), the 22nd footnote “[22]” brings the reader to a lying 11 September 2013 article in the neoconservative The New Republic. This TNR article says against the progressive organization Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity(VIPS) that “The sources for VIPS' most sensational claims, it turns out, are Canadian eccentric Michel Chossudovsky’s conspiracy site Global Research and far-right shock-jock Alex Jones’s Infowars.” Wikipedia’s linking to that lying TNR article is part of Wikipedia’s ‘proof’ that both of those ‘conspiracy’ sites (the leftist Chossudovsky’s and the rightist Jones’s) are false (in other words: Wikipedia there is blatantly deceiving its readers, and is even assuming they’re stupid enough to believe such a ridiculous thing as that and wouldn’t even bother to check out Wikipedia's sources to find whether Wikipedia is the liar there, and not Chosudovsky’s site that is the liar). It’s also assuming that the Obama regime was truthful when saying that Bashar al-Assad was behind the 21 August 2013 sarin gas attack in Ghouta Syria. However, that second assumption is likewise demonstrably false. The TNR’s article and its allegation against Assad regarding Ghouta were, in fact, disproven, on 14 January 2014, when leading US weapons-scientists Theodore Postol and Richard Lloyd studied closely all the evidence on that event and the US Government’s evidence that Assad had been associated with causing it, and the Lloyd-Postol finding was unequivocal that “the US Government’s Interpretation of the Technical Intelligence It Gathered Prior to and After the August 21 Attack CANNOT POSSIBLY BE CORRECT.” Furthermore, Obama actually knew that he was falsifying. Seymour Hersh’s 17 April 2014 article in the London Review of Books, proved this. Obama was lying. Neither Lloyd-Postol nor Hersh is even referred to in today’s Wikipedia’s article. It still trusts Obama’s and TNR's proven lie that Assad (instead of Obama’s ‘Syrian rebels’ — a.k.a.: jihadists) had done that sarin attack. Wikipedia smears Chossudovsky with that proven lie, by simply reasserting the lie, and by assuming that Chossudovsky’s site is less trustworthy than Wikipedia (which is yet another lie). But that’s merely one of many lies that are in the Wikipedia article against Chossudovsky. No intelligent reader trusts Wikipedia — or any source (except sources that the reader has repeatedly confirmed to be true and never to have asserted falsehoods — unlike Wikipedia, which is full of distortions, cover-ups, and lies).

Intelligent skeptics dig down like this (which can be done only online, which is why print and broadcast ‘news’ is even less trustworthy than online news), and routinely find that there’s a very selective use of ‘evidence’ that’s behind most claims, and that the reality is that the ‘news’ is often false, and, worse than that, the ‘news’ is usually false for a purpose or purposes — that the ’news' is often fraudulent, that it is propaganda, PR, often even of the lying sort, instead of being honest and carefully verified research and reporting, such as it claims to be.

Usually, it’s false because the intention is to deceive, not because Wikipedia (or whatever other news-and-public-affairs medium one happens to be considering) merely goofed. As was noted here, Wikipedia is edited, and even written, by the CIA. (Remember what a “slam-dunk” about “Saddam’s WMD” they delivered to the George W. Bush regime in 2002?) Only sources that are approved by the CIA are linked to there. Some of the sources are true, but many are not. The article on Chossudovsky was done for the CIA by an asset of the CIA, about a critic of the CIA. The CIA represents America’s billionaires, and Chossudovsky doesn’t.

Extremely wealthy people buy, advertise their corporations in, and/or donate to, public-affairs media, not in order to profit from them as owners of them, so much as in order to influence public affairs by means of them. This is one of the ways in which to grab hold not only of the government, but even of the people who vote for the government and who also buy those billionaires’ corporations’ products and services.

Trust should never be given; it should only be earned. Regarding what is public, trust is earned only rarely — and is never earned when that trust is in the major ‘news’-media (all of which are owned and controlled by billionaires and centi-millionaires who actually have interests in many corporations, including some they don’t control but only serve or else invest in). The major ‘news’-media don’t always lie, but they often lie - especially about foreign affairs, which are the main focus and concern of international corporations.

For example: where do you ever see, in the major ‘news’-media in The West, such high quality news-reporting as this, at the obscure news-site 21st Century Wire, from the great investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley? What even comes close to such honesty, at CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, MSNBC, CNN, BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, The Times, New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Public Interest, National Review, Rolling Stone, Truthout, Truthdig, Alternet, Salon, etc.? Obviously, nothing, ever.

So: that’s why one should always distrust the news. The system here is designed for deceit of the public.

Here are other recent articles from me, describing other instances of this phenomenon, the routine deceiving of the public:

“Chomsky’s Unearned Prestige”

“MH17 TURNABOUT: Ukraine’s Guilt Now PROVEN. Ukraine Downed MH17 Malaysian Airliner in 2014. Conclusive Evidence Suppressed by Western Media. Blatant Misrepresentations in Sanctions on Russia.”

And here is something that brings together both Wikipedia and the MH17:

“Wikipedia As Propaganda Not History — Mh17 As An Example”