‘US media keep repeating Washington’s sourceless & twisted mantras’

The US mainstream media is acting as a loudspeaker for the State Department, voicing baseless political statements set to manufacture a negative image of Russia and its fight against Islamic State in Syria, political analyst Daniel Patrick Welch told RT.

RT:  The latest CNN report is quoting sources and unnamed officials when it is saying that Russia is going to supposedly retaliate somehow against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) for the plane crash that occurred in Egypt. Do we actually have any hard evidence of that?

Daniel Patrick Welch: No. What is amazing is that I watched the two segments – the CNN segment and the [video] from ISIS – and I could not decide which was more ghoulish and more threatening.

The CNN coverage was so horrific. It is incredible that these highly paid anchor people and spokesmen act as outlets for State Department’s talking points. They have no grasps of the facts, they are completely ignorant to what is going in the country and what the geopolitical implications are. It is just shocking.

And then they just say: ‘If it turns out to have been this, then it will have been these people.’ When you can’t even logically connect those dots. It is an amazing thing to watch.

But it is all about blaming Russia or trying to make Russia look bad. So sources really don’t matter. You can leave them unnamed. It is the best way to do it.

RT:  We’ve got US Defense Secretary Ash Carter as a source in that report, but all the rest of the officials are unnamed. Why is everyone unnamed and why there is such a pattern in this reporting?

DPW: Because it is a fraud, it is complete and utter fabrication. And it did not quote Ash Carter, it was: ‘sources citing concerns all the way up the chain, all the way to Ash Carter.’ The US corporate media is complicit in this sourceless non-story. This is journalism of the yellowest and lousiest variety. All of the US outlets do exactly the same thing: keep naming unnamed sources, keep repeating a mantra as if it’s true, and therefore it will become true.

READ MORE: ‘Are you really journalists?’ Moscow slams Reuters for biased bombshell on Syria

Now another thing, which is astounding, they are still forcing this narrative, which is so twisted: ‘Assad has basically no political support within the country,’ which is a farce; ‘Russia is not serious about fighting ISIS,’ which is exactly the opposite of the truth – the US is not serious about fighting ISIS.

And they keep repeating these, which are just political statements from Washington. They are not reporting at all. They are not doing any work. I would love to get paid for doing that amount of non-work in a day. It is amazing.

RT:  What is really the aim of this CNN report? What is it trying to achieve.

DPW: Well what you see is the repetition of the mantra that ‘Russia is going to have to pay. Russia cannot be credited with any success ever. It cannot be allowed to seep into the political conscientiousness of the people at home watching that Russia did something correct and that Russia is doing the right thing. This is payback. Russia is going to retaliate.’

Retaliate for what?! Russia has bombed hundreds of ISIS targets and other terrorist targets in Syria. It has completely been above board about it. It showed videos of these strikes. It has been completely transparent. So the fact that they would ‘retaliate,’ or would now ‘join the coalition’ – you heard one of the so-called security analysts say, is completely fraudulent. It is like watching something from bizarro world. It is very strange to watch.