Zero Hedge responds
Now We've Done It: We Pissed Off The CIA
While the collapse of public trust in the mainstream media is nothing new, with Forbes recently reporting that "Fewer Americans than ever before trust the mainstream media", it is only a much more recent phenomenon that members of the media's highest echelons - such as the NYT's Matthew Rosenberg - have started asking themselves and their (few remaining) readers the much more difficult question of why is public trust of media so low.
Joe Rogan is what he is. We in the media might want to spend more time thinking about why so many people trust him instead of us.
— Matthew Rosenberg (@AllMattNYT) January 30, 2022
Unfortunately, instead of following up with some much needed top-to-bottom cleansing and fundamental reassessment of how the MSM pursues, analyzes and reports news, the media has simply fallen back to its traditional tactic of spewing baseless hit pieces against outlets they would rather see silenced and/or censored.
Most notably in recent weeks, this has been observed vis-a-vis Joe Rogan's incredibly popular podcast which has emerged as one of the biggest competitors to traditional media.
This morning, it is Zero Hedge that has again been singled out for pursuing non-establishment groupthink.
Echoing a false allegation we have repeatedly heard before, early on Tuesday the Associated Press (of "how Associated Press cooperated with the Nazis" fame) writes that "U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday accused a conservative financial news website with a significant American readership of amplifying Kremlin propaganda and alleged five media outlets targeting Ukrainians have taken direction from Russian spies. The officials said Zero Hedge, which has 1.2 million Twitter followers, published articles created by Moscow-controlled media that were then shared by outlets and people unaware of their nexus to Russian intelligence."
Well, now we've done it - we've angered the CIA, and for what? For publishing views that challenge the conventional narrative, such as disputing that an invasion of Ukraine is actually "imminent" as the US State Department and its mainstream media conduits repeat day after day, or that the Covid virus was actually created in a Chinese lab, a view which has gained substantial prominence in recent months after it emerged that none other than the UK's Jeremy Farrar (also known as the UK's Doctor Fauci) played a pivotal role in stifling suggestions that this new virus might have come from a laboratory rather than emerged through natural zoonotic transmission from animals.
Of course, there is no actual accusation that Zero Hedge works directly with anyone tied to Russia or its intelligence apparatus - as the AP admits "officials did not say whether they thought Zero Hedge knew of any links to spy agencies and did not allege direct links between the website and Russia", which is correct because - and we will repeat this once again for the record and for all future similar hit piece attempts to smear us - this website has never worked, collaborated or cooperated with Russia, nor are there any links to spy (or any other) agencies; instead all the AP notes, citing some unnamed "intelligence official", is that the US intelligence apparatus is unhappy that among our hundreds of guest publishing contributors is a website called Strategic Culture Foundation which US intel officials "allege" take direction from the SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service.
Moar at sauce
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/now-weve-done-it-we-pissed-cia