American media outlets, particularly the large corporate media outlets, are microphones for niche sites broadcasting propaganda. Small-time propaganda sites are enabled to reach a much larger audience than they commanded with their original bit of propaganda, by being re-published or re-broadcast in the mainstream media.
The propaganda sites know this very well, and they care about it very much. The corporate media knows this very well also, but they don't care about it at all if it sells advertising.
We have the latest tiresome example of propaganda-rebroadcast-by-media in a story about a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. That fact alone tells you from the beginning who is responsible for this propaganda. It's not the Democratic candidate for president, that's the first clue.
The candidate is Senator Elizabeth Warren. She has told an anecdote on the campaign trail about how she lost a teaching job. She lost it when she became visibly pregnant and could no longer hide her pregnancy. When that happened, her principal told her to go.
Recall from the beginning of this story that being fired for being pregnant was and still is a common thing for employed women.
In response, someone wrote a piece on a website claiming to have accessed the school board's records that the school board actually renewed Ms. Warren's teaching contract.
The corporate media ate it up. Apparently without spending any money on reporters' salaries or on emails or telephone calls to the school board to check it out, the corporate media effectively spread this propaganda "as is," in print and online. They reprinted and republished this propaganda so much that Warren eventually had no choice but to respond to it.
Here's what happened. The school board did in fact renew Warren's teaching contract. That was before the school found out that she was pregnant. When they found out that she was pregnant, that was when they told her that she had to go, she no longer had a job. Which is what Warren said in the first place.
Being fired for being pregnant comes as no surprise to employed women in this country. Remember what I said at the beginning? The propaganda machine remembers it. Denying truth is essential to propaganda especially when you don't look too closely at it.
It is not really a wonder that things are as they are. But things like propaganda-rebroadcast-by-corporate-media are just beginning to change now, and for the better.
It's about time.
For the whole story of the latest smear, see Thomas Kaplan, Warren Details Account of Losing Teaching Job Because of a Pregnancy, NEW YORK TIMES, Wednesday, October 9, 2019, p. A20 (online here; the New York Times may charge you for online access -- they've got to get their revenue you know, but we won't charge you anything for our own article that you have just read).
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