Monetizing Human Suffering/Rights in Africa Using Western Press-titute Media

Al Mariam’s Commentaries  / October 1, 2022

“If it bleeds, it leads to fame, fortune and power.” Alemayehu G. Mariam

Nima Elbagir: African Queen of Fake News

Nima Elbagir of CNN fake news was jubilant over her Emmy award for reporting on “exposing the hallmarks of a genocide.”

Elbagir tweeted:

Elbagir could not care less about Tigray survivors, victims and their families.

She only cares about monetizing their stories for fame, fortune and power.

Ha, Ha!

I had Elbagir pegged on Day 1, and called her out.

Using Western press-titute media for fame, fortune, power and defense 0f terrorism

There is a lot of money and fame to be made merchandizing the suffering and misfortunes of Africans.

Sensationalizing the news sells more advertising. “If it bleeds, it leads.”

CNN caters to bleeding heart armchair liberals who pontificate about all of the things that are wrong in the world but will not do a doggone thing to improve them.

These armchair liberals need constant reminders that the world is a nasty place and only they can fix it.

They feed on negativity and need a source that can constantly concoct real or imaginary problems for them.

They say it is easier to catch flies with honey than vinegar. But if you want to sell to armchair liberals, you have to show them and tell them about mangled dead bodies floating down the river.

For CNN, more misery means mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money!

Right now, CNN is losing mo’ and mo’ money.

On August 2, 2022, the NY Times reported:

CNN is on a pace to drop below $1 billion in profit for the first time in years, according to people familiar with its operations, amid steep declines in TV viewership.

For CNN, in the memorable words of Coolio (R.I.P), “It’s all about money, ain’t a damn thing funny.”

CNN literally wrote the book on merchandizing misery.

Even the Washington Post ws forced to take special note:

Welcome to the new CNN, where journalists and anchors, traditionally restricted by industry-wide standards of impartiality, have been given the green light under network President Jeff Zucker to say what they actually want to say — even if it strikes some as opinionated.

Back in the day, CNN proclaimed it followed standards of Journalistic Integrity:

Whether on television or online, our journalists abide by high standards of ethics and strive to adhere to stringent standards of journalistic integrity. We expect our reporters, producers and writers to be fair honest and to confirm the facts before online articles or TV segments are released to the and public. We firmly believe in a free and independent press. A fundamental principle of journalism at our networks is the ability of reporters, producers, TV crews, and filmmakers to seek out and report the facts and tell stories without interference from governments or other external influences.

In June 2022, CNN boss Chris Licht messaged his employees they will have to cut back on the use of sensationalized “breaking news” because “we are truth-tellers, focused on informing, not alarming our viewers.”

CNN as the den of “truth tellers” is the understatement of the century.

CNN is indeed the citadel of fake news.

CNN has made fake news a journalistic faux art.

This art of shameless manipulation and disinformation to influence global policy using fake and manufactured news has been studied by scholars as the “CNN effect.”

Piers Robinson in his incisive analysis, “The CNN effect: Can the News Media Drive Foreign Policy?,” shows how CNN and the Western press-titute media in general operate in global agenda-setting, promoting or impeding implementation of their preferred policy goals, influencing and shaping the policy decision-making process and broadly deploying smear, fear and uncertainty tactics and campaigns to create alarm and panic to shape public opinion to pressure formulation and implementation of their preferred government policy.

Robinson argues the CNN effect thrives by

focusing instantaneous and ongoing media coverage on a particular conflict, international incident, or diplomatic initiative, the news cycle effectively demands political attention, as governing politicians attempt to demonstrate that they are ‘on top of’ current issues.

Ethiopia was the original guinea pig for the CNN effect.

The Ethiopian famine of 1984 was the testing ground for the Western press-titute media CNN effect:

“Within humanitarian circles there was also a good deal of debate about the apparent power of the news media to cause intervention. Indeed, ever since the 1984 Ethiopian famine, there had been much discussion about the purported impact which the media had had upon crises in the Third World.” (Robinson)

From the Ethiopian famine, CNN and the Western press-titute media drew the lesson that the news media was capable of driving policy to the point of “humanitarian intervention” (military intervention in the name of preventing “genocide,” etc.).

Over the past four decades, CNN BBC, NY Times, Bloomberg, Washington Post, CBS, NBC, NPR, etc. have been driving aggressive US policy throughout the world including the Gulf War, Somalia and the former Eastern bloc countries.

Their approach is one and the same.

They fill the airwaves and newsprint with sensational and graphic portrayal of human tragedy and suffering, insist Western leaders have a moral responsibility to act, exaggerate the diplomatic evasions of those leaders in failing to act and force them to act in order to avoid the backlash of public opinion.

The CNN effect is all about the use of selective presentation of faux facts (fake/manufactured facts) in emotive and graphic terms to pressure politicians to “do something”, often means humanitarian military intervention.

Their aim is to frame issues to pull the heart strings of Western societies and manufacture consent for war, intervention, sanctions and other forms of aggression oftentimes on non-Western societies.

Elbagir, CNN- The Most Trusted Name in Fake News and Caca Network News

Nima Elbagir’s fake news stories on Ethiopia are classic “CNN effect” propaganda efforts to push the Biden administration into taking sanctions and in the long-term humanitarian intervention in Ethiopia.

Over the past couple of years, I have written various commentaries on the CNN effect in Ethiopia.

In my September 13, 2021 commentary, “Fight Back CNN’s (CRAP/CACA NEWS NETWORK) Lies, amend Lies and Disinformation,” I showed how Nima Elbagir and Co. used sensationalized reporting with graphic images to achieve the CNN effect.

In one of her sensationally titled fake stories, “Men are marched out of prison camps. Then corpses float down the river,” Elbagir wrote:

As the river’s path narrows, the drifting bodies become wedged on the silty clay bank and their forms appear more clearly; men, women, teenagers and even children… The marks of torture are easily visible on some, their arms held tightly behind their backs. The evidence indicates the dead are Tigrayans. Witnesses on the ground say the bodies tell a dark story of mass detentions and mass executions across the border in Humera, a town in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.

Elbagir did not try to balance the story by including facts the terrorist TPLF had indeed staged the entire river scene with corpses for international propaganda purposes to show the Ethiopian government is committing “genocide.”

In another report, Elbagir wrote:

Ethiopia’s government has used the country’s flagship commercial airline to shuttle weapons to and from neighboring Eritrea during the civil war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, a CNN investigation has found… Experts said the flights would constitute a violation of international aviation law, which forbids the smuggling of arms for military use on civil aircraft.

The fact of the matter is that Elbagir did not attempt to inform the reader use of civilian aircraft for military purposes is permitted by the 1944 Convention on Civil Aviation.

In August 2021, the US government ordered civilian airlines to transport fully armed US personnel evacuate Afghanistan under the Civil Reserve Air Fleet program.

For revitalizing and reinvigorating the “CNN effect”, Elbagir was given the Emmy.

Nima Elbagir, the Queen of Fake News is preceded by Samantha Power, the Queen of Beggars

Arguably, the greatest monetizer of human suffering for fame, fortune and power is the current USAID boss and Queen of Beggars, Samantha Power.

Power was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for her book, “A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.”

Power purportedly examines U.S. foreign policy toward genocide in the 20th century.

She indicts US administrations for failing to prevent “genocides” in the world.

Power claims the US failed time and again to respond to genocides by downplaying the severity of the atrocities or pleading ignorance after it was too late.

Power wrote in Problem From Hell:

The United States had never in its history intervened to stop genocide and had in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred… People have explained U.S. failures to respond to specific genocides by claiming that the United States didn’t know what was happening, that it knew but didn’t care, or that regardless of what it knew, there was nothing useful to be done. I have found that in fact U.S. policymakers knew a great deal about the crimes being perpetrated. Some Americans cared and fought for action, making considerable personal and professional sacrifices. And the United States did have countless opportunities to mitigate and prevent slaughter. But time and again, decent men and women chose to look away. We have all been bystanders to genocide. The crucial question is why.

Power found fame, fortune and power by selling her book from hell.

From 2009 to 2013, Power served on the National Security Council staff as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights.

In 1999, Power became founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School.

From 2013 to 2017, Power served as Obama-Biden’s US Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

Obama called Power, “one of our foremost thinkers on foreign policy.”

Forbes magazine called Power, “the moral compass of American diplomacy”  and “a powerful crusader for U.S foreign policy as well as human rights and democracy” when it named her one of the “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.”

Power, like Elbagir, was a “journalist,” (or as I would prefer to call both of them journaLIEsts)  and reported Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe.

In June 2022, Power gave a “major foreign policy address” around the theme of “revolution of dignity.”

I bet my bottom dollar that Power in that speech was angling for Antony Blinken’s job after he is put out to pasture following the 2022 midterm elections.

There it is: Fame, Fortune and Power. (Pun intended.)

If it bleeds, it leads to fame, fortune and power.

There is gold in them thar hills of African suffering, death and destruction.

Elbagir’s and Power’s guiding principle is, “If it bleeds, it leads to fame, fortune and power.

I understand Sister Samantha. I really do.

She does not want to acknowledge it but she is driven mad by white supremacy Messianic complex.

Just like Rudyard Kipling was tormented by “White Man’s Burden”, so is Samantha Power tormented by “White Woman’s Burden.”

As a white supremacist colonial journalist, Kipling believed it was the White Man’s Burden and divinely ordained duty to save the damned and wretched “half devil, half child” colonial savages from themselves, their savage wars and famine.

So it is for Samantha Power.

Take up the White Woman’s burden —
The savage wars of peace —
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hope to nought.

So,  Samantha Power sheds crocodile tears for the slothful, heathen half devil, half child starving Ethiopians!

I also understand Sister Nima Elbagir.

Pamela Newkirk has explained the torture of black journalists in the white media in her book, “Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media.”

Former Wall Street journal legal correspondent Arthur S. Hayes explained that he felt pressured to change the way he thought and wrote:

In order to succeed, you have to adopt that voice and that voice, in my analysis, tends to be the voice of an affluent white male.

In Elbagir’s case, in order for her to succeed in the fake news world of CNN and aspire to receive a fake Emmy award, she had to become that voice, and that voice in her reporting on Ethiopia was the voice of the rich white liberal elites of America.

The rest of us they consider suckers and fools, we should heed the words of Malcom X:

The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and the guilty innocent., and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses. The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make the criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and the loving the people who are doing the oppressing.

Don’t let fake news control your minds.

Fight the CNN Effect.