[3]Painting by Anthony Freda: www.AnthonyFreda.com [4]
If you've been paying attention, you know that the American media act as presstitutes for rich and powerful Americans [5].
But it turns out that the American media will turn "tricks" for foreign johns as well ...
Specifically, three time Emmy award winning reporter Amber Lyon was until very recently a respected CNN reporter:
Lyon was fired from CNN after she refused to stop reporting on her first-hand experience of the systematic torture and murder of peaceful protesters by the government of Bahrain.
Lyon's special report on Bahrain was scheduled to run on both CNN's U.S. and international networks, but was pulled after only a limited showing due to pressure from the Bahrainis and their lobbyists.
[6]
At the same time that Lyon was risking her life to do on-the-ground reporting in Bahrain, another CNN journalist was filming a paid propaganda piece on how the Bahraini leaders are a bunch of friendly pro-democracy reformers.
That's right ... the Bahraini government paid CNN to do what was literally an infomercial for that brutal regime and pretend it was real journalism.
Lyon says that China and many other foreign, authoritarian regimes also pay CNN and other mainstream networks to run flattering propaganda pieces.
We are grateful for Ms. Lyon's exposé of this revolting practice ... especially because real reporting is treated as terrorism [7] by the American government.