[rad-green] Journalist: Newsweek Suppressed OPCW Scandal And Threatened Me With Legal Action

*https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/08/journalist-newsweek-suppressed-opcw-scandal-and-threatened-me-with-legal-action/
<https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/08/journalist-newsweek-suppressed-opcw-scandal-and-threatened-me-with-legal-action/>*

*Consortium News          December 8, 2019*

Journalist: Newsweek Suppressed OPCW Scandal And Threatened Me With Legal
Action
*A Newsweek journalist
<https://www.newsweek.com/authors/tareq-haddad?page=1> has resigned after
the publication reportedly suppressed his story about the ever-growing OPCW
scandal, the revelation of immensely significant
<https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/hugely-important-opcw-scandal-keeps-unfolding-heres-why-no-ones-talking-about-it>
plot
holes in the establishment Syria narrative.*

*By Caitlin Johnstone* <https://consortiumnews.com/tag/caitlin-johnstone/>
*CaitlinJohnstone.com <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/>*

“Yesterday I resigned from *Newsweek* after my attempts to publish
newsworthy revelations about the leaked OPCW letter
<https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/27/narrative-managers-faceplant-in-opcw-scandal-spin-job/>
 were refused for no valid reason,” journalist Tareq Haddad reported Sunday via
Twitter <https://twitter.com/Tareq_Haddad/status/1203274308811993088?s=20>.

“I have collected evidence of how they suppressed the story in addition to
evidence from another case where info inconvenient to U.S. government was
removed, though it was factually correct,” Haddad said. “I plan on
publishing these details in full shortly. However, after asking my editors
for comment, as is journalistic practice, I received an email reminding me
of confidentiality clauses in my contract. I.e. I was threatened with legal
action.”

Haddad added
<https://twitter.com/Tareq_Haddad/status/1203278342688038912?s=20> that he
is now seeking legal advice and looking into the possibility of
whistleblower protections for himself, and said at the very least he will
publish the information he has while omitting anything that could subject
him to legal retaliation from his former employer.

“I could have kept silent and kept my job, but I would not have been able
to continue with a clean conscience,” Haddad said
<https://twitter.com/Tareq_Haddad/status/1203296443378929664?s=20>. “I will
have some instability now but the truth is more important.”

This is the first direct insider report we’re getting on the mass media’s
conspiracy of silence on the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons scandal [of covering up evidence that there was no chemical weapons
attack in Douma, Syria] that I wrote about just the other day
<https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fake-news-omission-mass-medias-cowardly-distortion-tool>
. In how many other newsrooms is this exact same sort of suppression
happening, including threats of legal action, to journalists who *don’t* have
the courage or ability to leave and speak out? There is no logical reason
to assume that Haddad is the only one encountering such roadblocks from
mass media editors; he’s just the only one going public about it.

*Newsweek* has long been a reliable guard dog and attack dog for the
US-centralized empire, with examples of stories that its editors *did* permit
to go to print including an article <http://archive.is/ym3mU> by an actual,
current military intelligence officer
<https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/newsweek-employed-spy-explains-to-us-why-assange-should-be-prosecuted-4cb319533633>
 explaining why U.S. prosecution of Julian Assange is a good thing,
fawning puff
pieces on the White Helmets <http://newsweekme.com/white-helmets/>,
and despicable
smear jobs on Tulsi Gabbard
<https://www.newsweek.com/why-do-steve-bannon-and-david-duke-democrat-tulsi-gabbard-so-much-stephen-1359488>
.

The outlet will occasionally print oppositional-looking articles like this
one by Ian Wilkie questioning the establishment Syria narrative
<https://www.newsweek.com/now-mattis-admits-there-was-no-evidence-assad-using-poison-gas-his-people-801542>,
but not without immediately turning around and publishing an attack on
Wilkie’s piece
<https://www.newsweek.com/what-truth-about-chemical-attacks-syrian-civilians-805264>
by
Eliot Higgins, a former Atlantic Council Senior Fellow
<https://web.archive.org/web/20160222070801/http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/experts/list/eliot-higgins>
 who is the cofounder of the NED-funded imperial narrative management firm
<https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/27/narrative-managers-faceplant-in-opcw-scandal-spin-job/>
Bellingcat. *Newsweek* also recently published an article
<https://www.newsweek.com/tucker-carlson-claims-theres-no-evidence-assad-was-behind-deadly-chemical-attack-syria-that-it-1474278>
attacking
Tucker Carlson for publicizing the OPCW scandal, basing its criticisms on a
bogus Bellingcat article I debunked shortly after its publication
<https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/narrative-managers-faceplant-in-hilarious-opcw-scandal-spin-job-6710730cda01?postPublishedType=repub>
.

The ubiquitous propagandistic tactic of fake news by omission distorts the
public’s worldview just as much as it would if mass media outlets were
publishing bogus stories out of whole cloth every day, only if they were
doing that it would be much easier to pin them down on their lies, hold
them accountable, and discredit them.

A recent FAIR article
<https://fair.org/home/with-people-in-the-streets-worldwide-media-focus-uniquely-on-hong-kong/>
by
Alan MacLeod documents how the Hong Kong demonstrations are pushed front
and center in mainstream consciousness despite the fact that to this day
not one protester has been killed by security forces, while far more deadly
violence is being directed at huge protests in empire-aligned nations like
Haiti, Chile and Ecuador which have been almost completely ignored by these
same outlets.

This deliberate omission causes a distorted worldview in casual and
mainstream news media consumers in which protests are only happening in
nations that are outside the U.S.-centralized power alliance
<https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/us-foreign-policy-is-a-war-on-disobedience-ae4e7e75ce02>.
We see the same kind of deliberate distortion-by-omission with the way mass
media continually pushes
<https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/17/politics/trump-soft-on-russia/index.html>
 the narrative <https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1202824504982028289> that
Donald Trump is “soft on Russia”, while remaining completely silent on
the overwhelming
mountain of evidence to the contrary
<https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/19/25-times-trump-has-been-dangerously-hawkish-on-russia/>
.

The time is now for everyone with a platform to start banging the drum
about the OPCW scandal, because we’re seeing more and more signs that the
deluge of leaks hemorrhaging from that organization is only going to
increase. Mainstream propagandists aren’t going to cover it, so if larger
alternative media outlets want to avoid being lumped in with them and
discredited in the same sweep it would be wise to start talking about this
thing today.

It’s only going to get more and more awkward for everyone who chose to
remain silent, and more and more validating for those who spoke out.

*Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who
publishes regularly **at Medium* <https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone>*. Follow
her work on **Facebook* <https://www.facebook.com/CaitlinAJohnstone/>*, *
*Twitter* <https://twitter.com/caitoz>*, or her **website*
<http://caitlinjohnstone.com/>*. **She has a **podcast*
<https://soundcloud.com/going_rogue>* and a book **“**Woke: A Field Guide
for Utopia Preppers*
<https://www.amazon.com/Woke-Field-Guide-Utopia-Preppers/dp/064823455X/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8>
*.”*

-- 

--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sid-l" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected].
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sid-l/CACKppcxRg4cqM_HX5ReFikJ-eu9RH9Xjqg%3D7VBHGSYKaC34cOA%40mail.gmail.com.

---
To unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]>
List help: <https://riseup.net/lists>