Trump, fake news and the war on dissidents

http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2017-09-28/trump-fake-news-and-the-war-on-dissidents/
Date Written:  2017-09-28
Publisher:  Jonathan Cook Blog
Year Published:  2017
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX21433

A rebuke to a recent Guardian article titled "If mainstream news wants to win back trust, it cannot silence dissident voices", where journalist Nick Robinson claims that the left and right are the peddlers of the same "fakery" in attacking the media.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt: But this is to invert reality. It is an example of the very "fake news" Robinson claims to be worried about. Trump isn’t teaching us about "fake news". He's exploiting popular disllusionment with the corporate media - the understanding that it has a corporate agenda that benefits a tiny elite - for his own political ends.

It is not that Trump rejects that corporate agenda, as progressives do; it's that he is reckless in regard to the image carefully crafted for it by its guardians, the traditional political and media elite. He is not interested in advancing the broader interests of the corporate system, of maintaining its legitimacy; instead, he wants to advance his own personal interests within that system. He is a prime example of the self-destructiveness at the heart of neoliberal capitalism.