Friday, February 8, 2013

Media's Sandy Hook Agenda

There is a disturbing pattern of media and social network censorship centered around the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown Connecticut.  As a writer and a strong advocate for the journalist in our country and the absolute right of the press and free speech, I wanted to immediately run to the aid of my comrades in the light of the massive amount of conspiracy theories that have erupted from the incident.  Most of those could have been avoided by good journalism.  However, when I began to contact people and visited the Sandy Hook area myself, I began to see patterns of behavior in the media that leave me without surprise that the theories have sprouted.

However, the most damning indictment against the media has been the from two media sources...Facebook and CNN.

Early in the beginning groundswell of the hoax theories, mostly centered around the viral video on YouTube, people began to comment on their Facebook pages.  Those who were in support or at least questioned the account were subject to suspension or expulsion from the social network.  While I am not the greatest advocate of his work, Alex Jones' of Info Wars.com had his account suspended for 24 hours as well as the MotherEarth.com for advocating a pro-gun position.  In addition, celebrities who tweeted or commented on Facebook in anyway about Sandy Hook that was outside the official account have faced furious backlash from the public and had to back down from their positions to protect their positions, including a major league baseball player and a female UFC fighter.  This is a small sampling of names of accounts suspended provided by Infowars.com...

Kurt Nimmo (account suspended)
Aaron Dykes (account inactive)
Amber Lyon (account suspended)
Brandon J. Raub (account inactive)
Michael F Rivero (account inactive)
Anthony J Hilder (account inactive)
William Lewis (account inactive)
Richard Gage (account inactive)
William Rodriguez (account inactive)
Infowar Artist (account inactive)
We are Change (account inactive)
Wacboston At Twitter (account inactive)
Michael Murphy Tmp (account inactive)
Robert M Bowman (account inactive)
Peter Dale Scott (account inactive)
Jason Infowars (account inactive)
Mike Skuthan (account inactive)
Packy Savvenas (account inactive)
Sean Wright (account inactive)
Katherine Albrect (account inactive)
 
These people saw this on their Facebook page....
 
 
 
This has since prompted me to continue to research more closely, talking with some of my former associates in the press and in the literary community.  I have not been encouraged by what I have discovered.  There was a pattern of non-response that is uncustomary, even at the smallest level of media, where repeated requests by a writer friend of mine of the Newtown Bee have been ignored.
 
Most suspicious though has been CNN's almost epic vendetta to defend itself about its coverage of the Sandy Hook incident and its liberal position on gun control since the event started.  During the 9/11 crisis, conspiracy theorists were marginalized but generally never made it into mainstream media, even when coming from credible, established journalists like Theirry Messant.  However, CNN's reaction to the Sandy Hook Hoax video has been veritably titanic compared to its responses to 9/11 "truthers". 
 
Anderson Cooper is on the front line of the counter-assault against the Sandy Hook Conspiracists.  First, shortly after the shootings, Cooper called to task the Florida Atlantic professor (who taught a class on conspiracy theory at the school) for questioning the official account.  Frequently, since then he has devoted several segments of his show to the subject. 
 
Then things got a little more interesting when an interview with a Sandy Hook victim's relative was discovered to probably be a green screen interview that was staged and not filmed in Newtown.  The fodder for this was the numerous green screen fake interviews that CNN has been caught doing before during the Gulf War, setting the clear precedent.  In the video which was immediately removed from the CNN archive, Cooper turns his head to his guest and as he does, his nose dissappears from the picture, a frequent hazard of quickly edited or non-edited green screen use (see any of a number of similar weatherman instances on line).
 
One can question these things without espousing a conspiracy theory.  This is simply abberant behavior for an impartial, fact-based media.
 
Another anomaly to compare with the 9/11 reactions was the fact that Google is replete with debunking sites when one googles anything about "Sandy Hook Hoax" or "Sandy Hook Conspiracy".  There are two fold reasons for this, I believe.  One is that the media, having learned the lesson of failing to manage the internet when they had a message to espouse in regards to conspiracy theories such as 9/11, the death of Bin Laden, or Aurora Co., made a point of making sure that debunking sites on Google were prominent, outnumbering conspiracy sites listed almost 2 to 1, though there are veritably thousands of well hit sites that question the account.  Instead sites like Salon.com and other debunking sites have been listed alongside the scandalous Hoax video on YouTube.  Additionally, the media has made a point of strong comments about debunking the theories, something that didn't happen during the 9/11 until Popular Mechanics published its questionable book on the matter.
 
The bottom line is that the media's behavior is the best gasoline for the fire of conspiracy theory in the case of Sandy Hook.  As an aged scholar, I am not one to be swayed by the winds of fringe thinking.  However, when a abberant pattern of behavior starts to develop, it is time to pay attention less to what happened and more to the why.

1 comment:

  1. Being the first to comment, I am thrilled that someone like you is taking the time to peer through the magnifying glass and try to understand just what the heck is going on, from everything I have studied, I believe this was a staged, fake event, just Google some of the names...nothing, it's like they don't exist outside of the media reports, and Gene Rosen walking around in circles with hundreds of others at the fire house....I'd laugh if this wasn't so sinister.

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