Corporate Media Revives Their Parade Of War Pimps

Cable news outlets are relying on defense industry consultants and war profiteers to give their audiences information about international conflicts, and the problem has reached a peak with the conflict between Israel and Palestine. But these networks don’t ever bother to tell their viewers that they are hearing propaganda from the men who profit off the carnage. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Cable news outlets are relying on defense industry consultants and their war profiteers to give their audience information about international conflicts and the problem has reached a peak with the conflict between Israel and Palestine. But these networks don't even bother to tell their viewers that they're hearing propaganda, pure propaganda from the men who profit off the coverage and the carnage. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins joins me now to talk about what's happening. God, this is maybe the only thing that saves CNN. I mean, save 'em for a little while, as long as the war lasts. Have you ever seen such a disgusting process, though? I saw it with Ukraine. Ukraine, parade in all of these people. Make 'em sound like they have all of these qualifications, and don't tell 'em, don't tell the viewing audience that oh, by the way, this person makes $250,000 a year just sitting on the board of Boeing. That's what's happening here. No disclosure whatsoever.

Yeah. As usual, the folks at the Lever did a phenomenal job exposing this, and one of the worst offenders right now is MSNBC.

Oh, terrible.

They keep bringing on this guy Jeremy Bash. And Mr. Bash, they're like, oh, he's a foreign policy expert. Trust us, Mr. Bash, he knows everything there is about everything that's happening. Well, I'm sure he does, because Mr. Bash is actually getting a ton of money from the defense industry.

Yeah, and has been.

Right. And sits on the boards, part of these consultancy groups that are really just front groups for these massive defense contractors, because that is where all the money comes from.

Okay. So they're on the board, they're on the board for a reason. Raytheon puts 'em on the board because they know they're talking heads, and they don't mind paying them 250, $500,000 a year to be their talking heads. But by, there should be a responsibility of the network to say, look, what you're listening to could be construed as propaganda. What you're listening to by Jeremy Bash, first of all, was mostly. When he delivered what he was saying, it was nonsense. And if you followed what he was saying and followed up on what he was saying, it was pure nonsense. But the point is, MSNBC is shameless about this. They don't really care, just like Fox, just like CNN, you're seeing these people everywhere that are showing up and they're just rattling the sabers of war like they did with Ukraine. It was worse with Ukraine than it is right now. And nobody paid any attention to that.

Well, and one of the big things that is so frustrating about this is the viewers have no idea. If you're watching MSNBC or CNN and Fox News, you're probably not the kind of person that's gonna go and read this report from the Lever. So you're not gonna know that you're sitting there getting this defense industry propaganda from people who, it doesn't matter which country it is. They'll rattle the sabers against Russia, against China, against North Korea, and sure, a lot of those countries are bad. But that doesn't mean we need to go and send tanks and bombs and planes and start World War III. But that is what these people deep down want, because that's the way they make money.

Yeah. They're rewarded according to if Raytheon sells more missiles, they make more money. Look, if you think, this is not even a hidden handshake. This is go out there, Dennis Ross, ambassador ex, Dennis Ross on Meet the Press. Okay. Nobody says, well, Mr. Ross, this is some pretty strong language you're using right now. Tell us about your affiliation with WestExec. Right? Talk about that.