[zonbron]

Extra:


Obama & Merkel:


Germany: Did Obama just comment on RT-US StateDept spat?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgYMTIwRwpY

“In an age where there is so much active misinformation, and it's packaged very well and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television, where some overzealousness on the part of a US official is equated with constant and severe repression elsewhere,” Obama said, seemingly referring to the rant the US State Department spokesperson unleashed at RT’s correspondent.

Brian Becker of the anti-war ANSWER Coalition believes that by openly stating that State Department will not treat RT on par with “so-called free press,” Kirby said out loud what has long been the common attitude to alternative media in Washington.

“In fact, there’s a war going on, a war against any alternative media, in this case, the Russian media, because it’s effective and because millions of Americans are depending on it because they are sick and tired of the corporate-owned media,” Becker said.

“There is war with RT, there’s a war with Sputnik, there’s a war with Ruptly, not because it ‘weaponized’ information, but because it really is an alternative media source,” he added.

While Kirby advocated unequal treatment of RT’s correspondent and other journalists by saying that RT is not an independent news source because it receives funding from the Russian state, Becker argues that the US media living off big corporate money can in no way be considered “independent.”

“If you look at CNN, or MSNBC, or the Washington Post, or the New York Times or any of the independently – that is, corporate-owned – media in the United States they are all in echo chamber of US propaganda and that’s completely outrageous,” Becker said. He added that State Department does not expect challenging questions from US media outlets and that is why it mistook RT’s inquiry for “interference and disruption technique.”

“The Russian journalists, unlike most of the American journalists, actually ask for evidence,” Becker said.