“Bottom line, every large mainstream news source is in the business of disinformation. That’s the heavy freight they transport, every day. Stories with no context. Outright lies. Omission of vital data. Claims of ‘overwhelming consensus’ on issues where no such consensus exists. Internal censorship of their own budding investigations into high-level crimes. Disguised partisan opinions. Utter reliance on ‘experts’ as sources, who deliver official propaganda as if it were fact. They manufacture reality for governments, corporations, and other controllers of society. And yet… many of these outlets are drowning in red ink. They’re going broke. The ‘greatest news outlet in the world’, the New York Times, keeps refinancing its debt to stay afloat. The powers-that-be must rescue mainstream media, in order to keep broadcasting their false pictures of reality. Who will step up to the plate? Perhaps some social-media Godzilla with CIA connections…” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)
From softonic.com, November 15, 2013: “Reddit is only used by 3% of Americans, so it’s right near the bottom of the table. Facebook is the winner, with 64% of the population using the site, and 30% of those users getting news from it.” (emphasis added) (See also this journalism.org article: “News Use Across Social Media Platforms”.)
If those stunning statistics don’t give you pause for thought, consider this: worldwide, 1.25 billion people use FB’s mobile platform.
And now, FB has plunged into the news business, with a program called Instant Articles.
The basic set-up: mainstream media outlets put their news stories on Facebook’s platform…and by that simple transfer, more than a billion FB users will see those stories, absorb them, believe them, accept them. It’s a lifeline for traditional media companies hemorrhaging viewers and readers.
The New York Times and BuzzFeed have already signed up. Soon to follow: The National Geographic, NBC News, BBC News, the Guardian, the Atlantic, Spiegel, Bild. More will come on board.