Dateline: 2.26.18—
Patrice Greanville
In one of the most abominable exhibitions in the history of pseudo journalism in the service of imperial goals, 60 Minutes, the crown jewel in the CBS News stable, an outfit that decades ago still bore a mild resemblance to a real news organisation....disgraced itself further last night. The CBS network aired a 60 minutes episode alarmingly entitled A Crime Against Humanity. And what followed was a manipulative recitation of a long and spurious indictment against the Syrian government, all carefully couched in the theatrics of high drama.
In a just and honorable world this would have been an expose of crimes long committed by the US and its allies, with impunity I must add, for at least the past 70 years, but no, this was precisely the opposite, an effort to justify further criminality by the American empire against Syria, a nation it has literally destroyed with enormous loss of life, personal and public property, and the smashing of a precious culture, the cradle and patrimony of humanity, all under false pretexts, all this horror while also triggering a tidal wave of desperate refugees that now, also flowing from a broken Libya, threatens to destabilise the social fabric of the empire's own abjectly corrupt allies in Western Europe.
Those who know the truth about what transpires in Syria, unfortunately a painfully minuscule minority in the West, thanks, again, to the pervasive and sanctimonious propaganda ministry, must have found Scott Pelley's delivery particularly objectionable, repulsive in fact, an attempt at tugging the hearts of the viewers via cheap melodramatic tricks. This was not so much news but theater, bad, malicious, and malignant theater. Pelley, the ambitious boy from Texas, like most who reach the visible pinnacle of American media, is a fiercely competitive careerist who is either a completely brainwashed ignorant fool or a witting accomplice to high crimes. In both cases, as reality gets trounced, humanity loses.
In keeping with his unspoken mandate, folks like Pelley routinely savage people like Putin or Assad or Chavez (of late Maduro), or Rouhani or Khamenei, not to mention the longstanding whipping boy, the leader du jour in North Korea. While it can always be argued that such leaders are not perfect—and who is in the mess that Western elites have turned the world is—they still represent a substantively healthier and more honorable path for humanity, its best options out of the lethal deadend where Washington cliques are taking it. At the same time, with the same zeal they attack, these disinformers worship and prop up false idols, from treacherous, corrupt and insane warmongering politicians and the usual coterie of putative experts, to religious charlatans like Billy Graham.
The aim of programs of this sort, which incidentally have innumerable equivalents in other channels, albeit perhaps less exalted, is to prepare the US public for more savage attacks on Syria to dislodge Pres. Assad from power—the object all along of this supposedly humanitarian intervention by the US—the actual creator of the latest human rights tragedy in the Middle East. Hypocrisy does not come much more revolting than this.
Mauled priorities
[dropcap]B[/dropcap]ut there's more. While the corporate "news" media —consistent with its Orwellian mission—systematically averts its eyes from all the causes of contemporary sickness and suffering in the world, with the inevitable proliferation of high crimes and festering social, political, and ecological problems, thereby systematically eliminating context, it lavishes attention on trivialities, blatantly upending crucial priorities. In that manner, humanity is deprived of proper orientation. The only area where the corporate media exert constant and abundant pressure is on promoting and defending the domestic and international agendas of the global ruling class, the absurdly puny minority of morally rotten billionaires whose headquarters these days and for the last seven decades since the close of WW2 has been Washington DC.The upshot of this massive alteration of reality is an angry, frustrated, profoundly disinformed and confused public, and, for the time being, passive and acquiescent in the imperialist goals chosen by the US ruling class and its accomplices around the world, the most prominent being, as usual, Britain, France, Germany, and Israel, with other players such as the NATO pack, Japan, and the Gulf despots filling ancillary roles.
This shameless Orwellian plot manages to sail on despite the multitude of contradictions thrown up every day by logic and reality, both of which, of course, the gargantuan Western propaganda machinery is designed to completely disarm, and normally does, with stunning efficiency. Dripping irony, what eventually emerges is a shock and an insult to decency and common sense. Not that any of this appalling ugliness should trouble the squalid sensibilities of the ruling cliques, as grand cognitive dissonance is probably the first qualification to penetrate the corridors of power. As one of our readers recently put it, commenting on Jay Janson's indictment of our foreign policy set forth in World Sees Florida’s 17 as a Tiny Backfire! Invading Armed Americans Kill Millions of Kids, despite some inroads by citizens' media, from the standpoint of the greedy, warmaking ultrawealthy, the media has done a terrific job. The chief impostures still hold:
It is a rather stunning tribute to the efficacy of both propaganda and willful ignorance that Americans stand out as the most brutally violent peoples on the entire planet post-WWII. Yet in defiance of all historical reality most Americans think of themselves and their nation as forces not for inhumane mayhem, but for good. Americans quite gladly embrace the absolute delusion that they are "exceptional" and "indispensable" to the rest of humanity and proper functioning of planet earth. (gbossa_25/ 2.25.18)
As pampered agents for a criminal and shamelessly hypocritical plutocratic mafia, this is the horrid situation that 60 Minutes' Scott Pelley and his disgusting ilk labor to produce every day. The latest example, culminating a media campaign to again tighten the imperial noose around a bleeding and exhausted but still standing Syria used all the malicious arguments and underhanded tricks for which US propaganda is deservedly regarded as wicked and sociopathic around the world. May it serve as evidence for the Nuremberg-type trials that humanity should one day hold, bringing these people and their employers to justice, as accomplices or examples of the great crimes of the 20th and 21st century, and possibly beyond, if it survives the rule of the democratic impostors at the helm of the most dangerous empire the world has ever seen.
CBS and the US oligarchy, speaking through its puppet, Pelley, would have us believe that Syria, the victim of a brutal and warrantless assault, is the guilty party in this tragedy. However, in classical Orwellian fashion that is not the case, but exactly the opposite. It is Pelley and CBS and the governments and ruling elites they shill for that are truly to blame. It is they and none other who are guilty of a crime against humanity.
—PG
Warning: Everything below this line is included here for the record and has been produced by the CBS Corporation.
60 Minutes(subtitles caption) - A Crime Against Humanity
If you have young children watching right now, usually that's a good thing, but this story is not for them. The pictures you are about to see are agonizing. This will be hard to watch, but it should be seen.
What a chemical attack in Syria looks like
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has used internationally banned chemical weapons nearly 200 times throughout the civil war threatening his regime. Now, rare footage shows just how brutal those attacks are
This past week Syrian President Bashar al-Assad unleashed one of his heaviest bombardments on civilians in a struggle to end the civil war that threatened his family's dynastic dictatorship. Assad has committed just about every war crime under international law. His worst atrocities involve banned chemical weapons. This is the story of one of those massacres. It is hard to watch, and it is not for small children, but it is important to see because chemical assaults have now become routine in Syria with nearly 200 over seven years. This past November, Syria's ally, Russia, shut down the United Nations investigation into who is responsible. But our investigation continues. We have found a number of witnesses to a nerve gas attack that happened on April 4th, 2017. We'll begin with video that has not been seen until tonight.
"Some people were fainting completely unconscious. There were cases of trembling and convulsions, foam coming out of the respiratory tract and mouth. Some people appeared to be already dead."
The images were shot by a Syrian Civil Defense volunteer. So many victims fell at once, first responders used fire hoses to wash them. There was a chance, a small one, that stripping contaminated clothes and dowsing the skin might save a life. These are the people of a small farming town called Khan Shaykhun. They fell after a warplane dropped a bomb nearby. They're civilians. There's no military target here. But the village does lie in territory held by rebels fighting against the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad.
What is striking is the number of children. Inhaling just a hint of the gas overwhelmed their nervous systems. All of their nerves fired at the same time, muscles seized, and paralyzed lungs left their last breath stuck in their throats.
The civil defense worker with the camera is repeating the name of the village—Khan Shaykhun, Khan Shaykhun—as though he feared the atrocity itself might be washed away and forgotten.
Edmond Mulet: Very early in the morning, between 6:30 and 7:00 in the morning on the 4th of April-airplanes were flying around and over Khan Shaykhun.
Edmond Mulet led the investigation of chemical attacks in Syria for the United Nations and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
Edmond Mulet: We have these airplanes flying; these bombed launched. More than, 100 people were killed. More than 200 people were affected, mainly children and women
The emergency response was coordinated by the famed White Helmets, civil defense volunteers, supervised by Mustafa al-Haj Yousef.
Mustafa al-Haj Yousef: Some people were fainting completely unconscious. There were cases of trembling and convulsions, foam coming out of the respiratory tract and mouth. Some people appeared to be already dead.
He counted the bodies of more than 30 children.
Mustafa al-Haj Yousef: There were young children. I was treating them, but it was already over. The doctor who was with us there said: 'Leave them, they're dead.' Young children, three months, four months, five months, some two years old.
The day before the attack, warplanes bombed local hospitals, ensuring a longer trip to medical care. White Helmet volunteers loaded those still gasping onto a truck -- with 30 miles to go to reach one of the nearest surviving hospitals, where Dr. Abdulhai Tennari was working.
Dr. Abdulhai Tennari: There were patients who had lost consciousness. Patients suffering from shortness of breath. People were doing CPR. There were many children, women, the elderly. Every age. From the very first minute, we were positive that the gas that was used was sarin.
Sarin nerve gas was invented in a Nazi program. In 1997, sarin and other chemical weapons were banned by international law.
Scott Pelley: Tell me about some of the patients from that day that are still in your mind.
Dr. Abdulhai Tennari: The case that affected me the most was one where there were two girls who were five and six years old. They seemed to be sisters. They were brought to the hospital and I started doing CPR right away, but it was clear that the two girls had died hours ago.
Dr. Mamoun Morad speaks with correspondent Scott Pelley
Dr. Mamoun Morad told us:
Dr. Mamoun Morad: A boy arrived gasping for breath, with foam coming out of his mouth and with pinpoint pupils. We washed the boy. We washed and we washed and we washed. We gave him what treatment we could, and tried to resuscitate him but he didn't make it.
Scott Pelley: Weren't you concerned about being exposed yourself?
Dr. Mamoun Morad: The situation is more desperate than I can describe. There are no words. It was like Judgment Day, the Apocalypse. You just can't even describe the scene, can't even begin to scratch the surface of explaining what happened. We didn't have any protective equipment for gas.
Scott Pelley: You're feeling the effects of this even now?
Dr. Mamoun Morad: Yes. My voice. Do you hear my voice?
The Khan Shaykhun attack drew immediate retaliation from the Trump administration, which fired 59 cruise missiles into a Syrian airbase. But only hours later, according to doctors and witnesses, the Syrian dictatorship dropped another banned chemical weapon, a chlorine bomb. The worst of the chemical attacks came in 2013, when 1,400 civilians were killed by sarin near Damascus. In response, the U.S. and Russia pressed Syria to hand over its chemical weapons. 1,400 tons of poisons were destroyed. So the attack on Khan Shaykhun should not have been possible. The head of the U.N. investigation, Edmond Mulet, told us the Syrians had an explanation.
Edmond Mulet: The Syrians have been claiming since the very beginning that this incident in Khan Shaykhun was staged. It was something that was created by the opposition, by the rebels, by the terrorists in order to blame the Syrian government. They claimed that the bomb that created the crater was an IED, an improvised explosive device, that was placed on the surface of the-- of the road-- of the asphalt that morning, that IED contained sarin and that's how it was released, but it did not come from an aerial bomb.
Evidence at Khan Shaykhun was gathered by the White Helmets. Chemical attacks have become so common that advanced equipment and training are being provided by an international charity called Mayday Rescue.
Mohammad Kayal: We collected samples from the body of the missile, and a soil sample. We also took a sample from the clothes of the affected, as well as animal samples, a cat, a pigeon. We took hair as well.
And, the samples were all positive for sarin.
Scott Pelley: Why was it so important to you to document what happened in the village?
Mohammad Kayal: Our job is to be humanitarians. The goal of the strike was to target civilians. It didn't target fighters on the front. We must document a chemical strike such as this one, so we can show the entire world.
We spoke to the U.N.'s Edmond Mulet about three hours before he lost his job. Russia, the Syrian dictatorship's chief ally, ended Mulet's investigation with a veto in the security council. Russia called his investigation's results "very disappointing."
Scott Pelley: Who's using the sarin?
Edmond Mulet: Only the Syrian government.
Scott Pelley: How do you know that?
Edmond Mulet: Well, the investigations we have conducted have proven that the sarin that has been used in Syria has come from the original stockpile that was produced and created and distilled by the Syrian government some years ago. We have been able to determine and compare what had been used in the field recently in Syria with the original stockpile, and they matched completely.
Scott Pelley: Does anyone else in that theatre of war possess sarin gas, to your knowledge?
Edmond Mulet: No. No, nobody else. Because it's so difficult to produce, you need very sophisticated and big laboratories to do that. The manipulation of the sarin is extremely complicated. It's extremely volatile. One single drop here right now would be killing everybody in this studio immediately. So, it's not anybody that can do that.
One question not answered by the U.N. investigation was 'why.' Why resort to a war crime? To find out we traveled into the province where Khan Shaykhun is located. Idlib province, largely controlled by an Islamist extremist group, Hai'yat Tahrir al-Sham.
Here we found the dictatorship had used conventional bombs against hospitals and schools, in addition to the nerve gas in the neighborhoods.
So what's the point of using the world's most grotesque weapon on civilians, on children? This is a refugee camp in rebel-occupied territory inside Syria and there are hundreds of them, they dot the landscape. Millions of Syrians have been forced from their homes. The Assad dictatorship is essentially clearing out any part of the country that it cannot control. Bombing the hospitals kills the here and now. Bombing the schools kills the future and dropping sarin suffocates whatever might have been left of hope.
Refugee Camp
We found Abu Hassan in a refugee camp with his family, at least what remained of his family. He lost two adult sons and a grandson in the gas at Khan Shaykhun.
Abu Hassan: My son, they brought him to a hospital in Turkey and he died. His brother, who came to rescue us, well he got dizzy, collapsed and he died. My grandson also died.
His wife, Um Hassan told us:
Um Hassan: My sons were young and these are their children. What was the fault of these children to live without a father? What was their fault?
Scott Pelley: How do you explain this to these children?
Um Hassan: What can we tell them? This one was injured with us. I told [one] your father is dead. He said: "Don't tell me dad is dead! Don't say that dad is dead!" But, what can we tell them, how can they understand? We have a neighbor, poor woman, her children, her grandchildren. All 12 in the house died, not a single one lived, not a single one.
Edmond Mulet: This is a crime against humanity using chemical weapons. if we allow this to happen in Syria, this might happen somewhere else and if impunity prevails and people can carry out doing these things without any consequences, this might give ideas to others and I've said this to the Russians. This will happen in many of your own Republics in the future if you don't help to put an end to this right now.
But, impunity does prevail. Bashar al-Assad will soon win the war. He may remain president or step down in the course of negotiations, but, either way, victors never face judgment. Still, even without a war crimes trial, the evidence will remain indelible.
Produced by Nicole Young and Katie Kerbstat.
-
Correspondent, "60 Minutes"
FEATURED COMMENT
"Western corporate and government mainstream presstitute media disgrace themselves, even by their own abysmal standards, when they conduct a sustained campaign of heart-rending outraged mourning over the dead children in Ghouta (Syria) but have, or had, scarcely a word to say about the dead children in Mosul (Iraq), Yemen, Gaza (Palestine) or Tripolis (Libya), who died under Western-led or -supported bombing campaigns in far greater numbers. This is the purest, most cynical, most corrupt, most despicable imperial instrumentalization of the helplessness of suffering peoples. There would be no war in Syria if not for US-CIA-Saudi support for islamist fighters, mostly from outside of Syria ... begun under "Obama the Benevolent" (CJ Hopkins) and Hillary Clinton.."
—Gregory Barrett
(Note: Greg Barrett is contributing editor to TGP and a political essayist published in many leading left publications.)
CAUSATION: Who should be held responsible?
Abetting wars of aggression is a capital crime under Nuremberg and international statutes. We hanged media magnates who worked in Nazi propaganda campaigns.
Those directly responsible for the on-screen disinformers at CBS, and therefore for this show in particular as part of a deliberate campaign to defame the Syrian government and meet the requirements for aggression by the US military, are clearly guilty of some of the most serious crimes in the judicial lexicon.
In fairness we are mostly using the CBS p.r. hacks' own material, laudatory of the subjects as we could expect, to describe their connection with CBS. And, granted, CBS is a huge commercial bureaucracy, and the responsibility for this or any other program is probably shared by many individuals, nonetheless, as Chomsky pointed out in one of his more lucid moments, all corporations are "tyrannies", and tyrannies, like armies, have a clear vertical chain of command.
SUMNER REDSTONE: Corporate attorney, media baron.
LESLIE MOONVES: Corporate honcho, onetime aspiring actor
JEFF FAGER: Corporate honcho, news executive, Executive Producer of 60 Minutes
Chairman Emeritus
Sumner M. Redstone is Chairman Emeritus of the CBS Corporation and Viacom. He served as Executive Chairman of CBS and Viacom until February 2016. He assumed his roles as Executive Chairman of both companies after the separation of Viacom into two publicly traded companies, which occurred in January 2006. Mr. Redstone is the controlling shareholder of both companies.
Prior to that, Mr. Redstone had served as Chairman of the Board of Viacom since June 1987 and Chief Executive Officer of Viacom since January 1996. He became Chairman of the Board of Viacom when National Amusements, Inc. acquired a controlling interest in the New York-based company. Mr. Redstone has been Chairman of the Board of National Amusements since 1986, and Chief Executive Officer of National Amusements since July 1967. He was President of National Amusements from July 1967 to December 1999. Viacom’s operations consist of MTV Networks, BET Networks and Paramount Pictures, and include such well-known global brands as MTV, VH1, CMT, Logo, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Nick Jr., TeenNick, Comedy Central, Spike TV, TV Land, BET, Rock Band, AddictingGames, Atom, Neopets, and Shockwave.
Mr. Redstone has played a significant role in the affairs of the entertainment and communications industries. He is a member of the Advisory Council for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Foundation and is on the Board of Trustees for The Paley Center for Media. He also served as Chairman of the Board of the National Association of Theatre Owners, and currently is a member of the Executive Committee of that organization. Before that, he was President of the Theatre Owners of America.
Mr. Redstone enjoys and takes pride in teaching college students, and has been a frequent lecturer at universities including Harvard Law School, Boston University Law School and Brandeis University. While serving as a Law Clerk in the Court of Appeals, Mr. Redstone taught at the University of San Francisco. In 1982, he joined the faculty of the Boston University Law School, where he created one of the nation’s first courses in entertainment law. In May 1994, Mr. Redstone received an honorary Doctor of Laws from Boston University. In 2006, Mr. Redstone also received an honorary degree from George Washington University.
Mr. Redstone devotes a large portion of his time and energy to civic and community affairs. In 2007, the Sumner M. Redstone Foundation announced charitable grants of more than $105 million to fund research and patient care advancements at FasterCures/The Center for Accelerating Medical Solutions, the Cedars-Sinai Prostate Cancer Center, Massachusetts General Hospital and to the Cambodian Children’s Fund. He is a member of the Board of Overseers of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and currently serves as Honorary Chairman of the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation. He is a member of the Corporation of the Massachusetts General Hospital and is on the Board of Overseers of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He is a member of the Executive Board of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston. Mr. Redstone has served as the Chairman of the Jimmy Fund (Children’s Cancer Research Foundation), and was a member of the Corporation of the New England Medical Center. He is a former Chairman of the Metropolitan Division of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies.
Source: About CBS
A less obsequious entry is provided by the Wikipedia page on this character:
Sumner Murray Redstone (born Sumner Murray Rothstein; May 27, 1923) is an American businessman and media magnate. He is the majority owner and chairman of the board of the National Amusements theater chain. Through National Amusements, Redstone and his family are majority owners of CBS Corporation and Viacom (itself the parent company of Viacom Media Networks, BET Networks, and the film studio Paramount Pictures). According to Forbes, as of September 2015, he was worth US$5 billion.[1]
Redstone was formerly the executive chairman of both CBS and Viacom. In February 2016, at age 92, Redstone resigned both chairmanships following a court-ordered examination by a geriatric psychiatrist. He was ultimately succeeded by Leslie Moonves at CBS and Philippe Daumanat Viacom, where he currently serves as chairman emeritus. (Source: Wikipedia, Sumner Redstone)
Chairman and CEO, CBS Corporation
Leslie Moonves is Chairman and CEO of CBS Corporation. In this role, he serves as the Chairman of the Board of Directors and oversees all operations of the Company, including the CBS Television Network, Showtime Networks, The CW (a joint venture between CBS Corporation and Warner Bros. Entertainment), CBS Television Studios, CBS Studios International, CBS Television Distribution, CBS Interactive, CBS Films, CBS Television Stations and Simon & Schuster.
Moonves came to CBS in 1995 as President of CBS Entertainment, after serving as President of Warner Bros. Television, where his team developed hit shows like “Friends” and “ER.” Once at CBS, Moonves and his team took the Network from last to first place in the ratings, launching hit shows like “Everybody Loves Raymond,” SURVIVOR and “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.” Moonves was promoted to President and CEO of CBS Television in 1998 and became Chairman in 2003. He was later named co-President and co-Chief operating officer of Viacom and Chairman of CBS in 2004, overseeing domestic and international broadcast television operations as well as its radio division and outdoor advertising operations. In 2006, when Viacom split its businesses into two publicly traded companies, Moonves was named President and CEO of the newly formed CBS Corporation, which has since been one of the best-performing companies in media.
Under Moonves’s direction, the CBS Television Network has been #1 in viewers for 14 of the last 15 years, and currently has television’s #1 drama, NCIS; television’s #1 comedy, THE BIG BANG THEORY; television’s #1 news program, 60 MINUTES; as well as time period-leading shows on virtually every night of the week. At the same time, the Company’s premium cable service, Showtime Networks, has generated millions of new subscribers on the heels of its successful owned series, such as RAY DONOVAN, BILLIONS, “Dexter” and THE AFFAIR, as well as the critically acclaimed, Emmy- and Golden Globe Award-winning series HOMELAND.
The Company’s push to sell its shows around the world has made international distribution sales a significant revenue source, with CBS content licensed to more than 200 markets in more than 30 languages across multiple media platforms. That emphasis on exploiting content has also enabled CBS to strike lucrative, multi-year deals with the industry’s biggest online distributors, including Netflix and Amazon.
(SOURCE: About CBS)
Again, the Wikipedia's entry on Moonves is a bit more informative:
Leslie Moonves
Leslie Roy Moonves
October 6, 1949
New York City, New York, U.S.
Residence: Beverly Hills, California
Salary: $66.9 million (2013) (includes other compensation)[1]
Leslie Roy "Les" Moonves (/ˈmuːnvɛz/; born October 6, 1949) is Chairman of the Board, President, and Chief Executive Officer of CBS Corporation.[4][5]
Moonves served as Co-President and Co-Chief Operating Officer of Viacom, Inc., the predecessor to CBS Corporation, from 2004 until the company split on December 31, 2005. Prior to that, he had a series of executive positions at CBS, since July 1995.[4] He has been a Director at ZeniMax Media since 1999.[4] He became Chairman of CBS in February 2016.[6][7][8] Leslie Moonves also studied acting at The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City.
Moonves was born to a Jewish family[9][10] in New York City, the son of Josephine (Schleifer) and Herman Moonves,[11][12] and grew up in Valley Stream, New York. His mother was a nurse.[13] He has one brother, entertainment attorney Jonathan Moonves. In his sophomore year he switched his major from pre-med to Spanish and acted in a few plays; following graduation in 1971 he moved to Manhattan to pursue a career as an actor, but after he played a few "forgettable" TV roles he decided to pursue the business side of television instead.[15]
Moonves had upper management experience early in his business career. He was in charge of first-run syndication and pay/cable programming at 20th Century Fox Television. Also at 20th Century Fox Television he was vice president of movies and mini-series. Other positions included vice president of Development at Saul Ilson Productions (in association with Columbia Pictures Television) and development executive for Catalina Productions.[16]
Moonves joined Lorimar Television in 1985 as executive in charge of its movies and mini-series, and in 1988, became head of creative affairs. From 1990 to 1993, he was president at Lorimar.[17] In July 1993, he became president/CEO of Warner Bros. Television, when Warner Bros. and Lorimar Television combined operations. In this phase of his career, he green-lightedthe hit shows Friends and ER, among many others.[15]
CBS
He joined CBS in July 1995 as president of CBS Entertainment.[18] From April 1998 until 2003, he was president and chief executive officer at CBS Television, then was promoted to chairmanand CEO of CBS in 2003. In 2003, CBS became America's most watched television network.[citation needed]
Among the shows that gave CBS a new lease on life were the CSI franchise and Survivor. CBS had six of the ten most-watched primetime shows in the final quarter of 2005: CSI, Without a Trace, CSI: Miami, Survivor: Guatemala, NCIS, and Cold Case.[15]
In February 2005, Moonves was identified as the executive directly responsible for ordering the cancellation of UPN's Star Trek: Enterprise and the ending of the 18-year revival of the Star Trek television franchise.[19] In January 2006, Moonves helped make the deal that brought together CBS-owned UPN with The WB to form the CW Network.
Moonves was considered the second most highly paid director for 2012 and 2013: he received $58.8 million[20] and $65.4 million.[21]
Jeff Fager
Jeff Fager(born December 10, 1954) is the former Chairman of CBS News and the current Executive Producer of 60 Minutes, the hour-long CBS news magazine created in 1968.
Fager was born to an Episcopalian family,[1] the son of Margaret (nee Bulkley) and Dr. Charles A. Fager.[2][3] He graduated from Colgate University in 1977. As a teen, he spent some of his years in the Town of Wellesley and graduated from Wellesley High School in the class of 1973. He began his career in broadcast news in Boston and joined CBS News in 1982 from San Francisco, California station, KPIX-TV, where he was a broadcast producer.
Fager then became an Executive Producer of The CBS Evening News and held senior and field producer positions for that broadcast and other CBS News entities, including 60 Minutes; he soon became an Executive Producer of 60 Minutes II. In June 2004, he assumed the position of Executive Producer of 60 Minutes.[4]
In February 2011, it was announced that Jeff Fager would lead the news division of CBS as Chairman of CBS News, a newly created position. In tandem with the newly appointed president David Rhodes, Fager would head CBS News while continuing to executive produce 60 Minutes.[5]
Since stepping in as Chairman of CBS News, Fager has vowed to "restore CBS News to where it should be, where it needs to be," using the original reporting and storytelling of 60 Minutes as a benchmark for its other flagship news programs.[6]
SOURCE: Wikipedia, Jeff Fager
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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The desperate nature of today’s war propaganda, Russiagate included, suggests that our psychopathic Western elites know the game is ending and their rule of the planet more than tenuous. They loudly scream “FIRE!” everyday, but the population seems more focused on managing to feed itself than joining the chorus in support of the latest “no fly zone” or humanitarian bombing campaign. The question is whether the war criminals at the top will take all life on earth with them on their exist, rather than allow a transition to a more cooperative egalitarian and sustainable world.
I hope you are right – but even my better informed friends here in Oregon drive me to despair. This fraction of my friends may not endorse the bloody oil wars, but they remain caught up in the two party charade – believing that since we are continually faced with a choice between god awful and truly dreadful candidates, we should accept it as a citizen’s responsibility to choose the “lesser of two evils”. I refuse to believe that the agenda of either of the 2 “legitimate” parties is any different from the other – so I can’t do more… Read more »
Good comment! My concern is that while all this outrageous propaganda noise is defeaning every day, and while people have learned to pay little attention to it, the RESIDUE is one in which these bastards obtain their pound of flesh, so to speak, that is inject a narrative which at least secures passivity in the masses for any crime they wish to commit. They create an atmosphere of hysterical denunciations that make the know-little know-nothing average Joe just throw his arms in the air and consent to these ghastly atrocities. Distractions by the public due to football or the rat… Read more »
I would like to think I am an “activist reader” – but I have occasionally tried to speak truth about the many murderous crimes of US imperialism to those among my friends and acquaintances who are assured that the US is never in the wrong . – From my experience, I have to admit that my voice doesn’t seem to amount to a whisper when it comes to the power of the main stream media’s megaphone. These days, I most often want to remove myself from political discussions, because my opinion seems to be such a minority one. Even those… Read more »
I feel your frustration, Kathleen, and, for what it’s worth, you are not alone. The weight of the brainwash, and the power of the ubiquitous megaphone, often manifesting itself in political conformity, produces the results you so accurately describe. The hardest thing is to get ANY of these supposedly uber empathetic people to read or listen to anything outside, let alone against their received “wisdom” from the hypocritical poison peddlers in the liberal/Democratic camp, who have by far the largest media gallery here (US) and overseas. It’s a myth and always has been that the rightwingers have the largest megaphone… Read more »
Our colleague John R. Hall has sent the following message. We post it here manually due to active hacking attempts on this site through the last 24 hours. “Brilliant article, Patrice! Empire’s Misinformation Machine is enough to give me a stroke, so I no longer torture myself with the likes of Pelley and 60 Minutes. I’m convinced that fewer than one thousandth of one percent of Americans have the slightest cue what’s going on in Syria and wherever else The Exceptional USA meddles, manipulates, or creates mayhem. Good thing you don’t have a captive audience like Pelley. We’re coming up… Read more »