Russ Baker Talks Media Manipulation, Russiagate, and More

The post Russ Baker Talks Media Manipulation, Russiagate, and More appeared first on WhoWhatWhy.

WhoWhatWhy founder and editor-in-chief Russ Baker recently sat down for a wide-ranging interview with Tom Haugh and Kathy Dervin from “Stocks and Jocks” on 670AM radio in Chicago.

Baker talks about why the mainstream media is so unwilling to dig deeper, and how the American public has been subtly conditioned not to question orthodoxies or to seek deeper truths about society’s ills. He breaks down how the vested interests of the wealthy and powerful influence the news cycle and can direct our attention to certain matters — and away from others.

The conversation also covers the Russiagate scandal, and WhoWhatWhy’s in-depth reporting on how money and various players from the former Soviet Union came to exert influence over Trump and his company. Baker also talks about where the scandal may go next.

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Full Text Transcript:

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Kathy:

We’ve got back by popular demand Russ Baker, the Editor in Chief of the website WhoWhatWhy.org.

The hurricanes knocked it off the front pages but Russ is here to put Russia Gate back on the front page. Welcome back to the show, Russ.

Russ Baker:

Thank you, always glad to do it.

Kathy:

You reprised the story on your website on the anniversary of the University of Texas Massacre in 1966, in the wake of that Las Vegas story?

Tom:

I read that. What’s it? The two days, the 50th year anniversary is the year that people can carry concealed weapons on campus? Isn’t that special? That’s unbelievable.

Kathy:

It was August 1st 2016. Welcome to Texas.

Tom:

Welcome to Texas.

Kathy:

We haven’t talked about Russia Gate in a while Russ and we were hoping you could tell us things like: Who is Michael Cohen? Who is Felix Sater? Why do we care about them?

Russ Baker:

If I may, I’d just like to tie together a bunch of themes here. As you’ve mentioned, I am the Founder and Editor in Chief of the news website called WhoWhatWhy.org. We’re a non-profit organization and we don’t accept any advertising and the reason we’re structured that way is because we want to do a kind of journalism that I personally felt I couldn’t always do when I was working at some of the larger establishment entities.

I hope you don’t mind if I just frame this, I think it would be interesting for listeners as we get into the particular issues we’ll talk about. Everybody talks about fake news and of course, there really is a problem with fake news and growing evidence that the Russians have sort of mastered the ability to manipulate large sectors of our population into believing things that simply are not true. That is a very real issue that at WhoWhatWhy, we’re greatly concerned about. But we’re also concerned about another kind of fake news and that’s the fake news that comes out of the establishment. It’s a different kind of fake news, it’s much more subtle.

For example, you’ll see about a week ago we did a piece by James Galbraith – the son of John F. Kennedy’s advisor, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith – and he writes about how the Vietnam war, that Kennedy actually was trying to get out of Vietnam when he was killed, and this story has been suppressed by the traditional media. Now PBS has a very interesting documentary series about the history of Vietnam. It’s all well and good but it leaves out this absolutely critical point.

There are a lot of things going on where we’re not really understanding the full context of what is happening and I think that applies to some of the things that you just mentioned. I think it applies to Russia Gate and I’m happy to talk about that, I think It applies to things that are going on under the Trump administration, I think it applies to U.S. foreign policy, I think it applies to almost everything and I know that your show focuses a lot on helping people manage their money and make good, sound investment. And of course, to really be a smart investor you have to be well informed and you have to understand what’s really going on.

I think we’re in a crisis right now because we’re not sure what’s real and we’re not sure what actually is going on. I think that’s the subtext behind all of these stories so if we talk about the shootings in Las Vegas, and that’s such an astonishing story. Are we ever going to find out what really made this man go off the rails like that? I’m going to say no because at WhoWhatWhy we talk about the fact that in case, after case, after case, we don’t seem to ever get the real story. We get some kind of a superficial treatment and you mentioned the shooting long ago in Texas. A man climbed a tower at the University of Texas In Austin, with a rifle and he began just picking off random people.

That story is just almost completely forgotten and now Texas allows a concealed carry. Practically any nut can carry a gun and not just carry a gun, they can carry them on some of the college campuses there. You’ve just got to think about the insanity of where we’re headed. All of these stories, moving over to Russia gate-

Tom:

Russ, may I interrupt you for a second? By the way, I love the theme here. My question is, was it six months ago … You’ll know this, I don’t. Britain came out with a huge review. No, it was late. It was supposed to have been done a couple of years ago or whatever, of their involvement in Iraq and It was a scathing indictment of their people and ours. Brits have maybe been around longer, I’m not saying they’re perfect. They’re not.

Some of these countries seem a little more, shall we say, introspective, retrospective at things like this. Forgetting all the bad stuff, forgetting all the stupid stuff we did in Vietnam, maybe figuring out who the hell killed Kennedy, who knows about that one. Why do we just keep moving forward with these wounds open? It seems like it’s our culture to just keep walking forward, cover it up and keep going. Why is that? Are we going to grow out of it some day or, what’s the deal?   

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