Vice News
| Warmongering agenda, with skateboards |
https://www.vice.com/en us/news 
Started: 2013
Founders: Suroosh Alvi, Shane Smith, Gavin McInnes
Constitutes: corporate media
Vice News (stylized as VICE News) is Vice Media's current affairs channel, producing daily documentary essays and video through its website and YouTube channel. It promotes itself on its coverage of "under-reported stories".[1]
Owned by among others Rupert Murdoch and George Soros, it closely follows the corporate media agenda in all major issues, but does so with a youthful style, hence the frequent use of accoutrements such as hipster clothes, punk bands, skateboards and tattoos. The channel has been used to create youth support for foreign interventions in places such as Venezuela, Syria, Libya and the Ukraine, and other oligarch agendas.
Contents
Corporate Overview
Vice News was created in December 2013 and is based in New York City, though it has bureaus worldwide.
In mid-August 2013, Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox invested US$70 million in the parent company, Vice Media Group LLC, resulting in a 5 percent stake. In 2014, Vice Media launched its news channel, Vice News, which almost immediately gained global attention for its coverage of protests and conflict in Ukraine and Venezuela.
In November 2014, Vice News launched its French-language version.
On 3 May 2019, Vice Media announced that it raised $250 million in debt from George Soros and other investors[3]
The Vice News YouTube page has 6.02 million subscribers as well as more than 1.8 billion views in total[4]. In August 2014, was described by The Guardian as one of the fastest growing channels on YouTube.[5]
"Vice's brand image marketing as an edgy, hip outlet have helped drive its popularity with young people", says media critic Charles Johnson. "Mainstream media is not trusted by a lot of people, and rightly so, so they [Vice] step in and fill in", he says. "People see a sense of fun behind it. Jon Stewart is very popular, but he's an entertainer. Vice is something similar."[6]
| CIA Stories: Death Squads in Afghanistan by Empire Files - a short documentary which details war crimes and death squads in Afghanistan. The video takes snippets from a Vice interview with Robert Grenier[7] (former CIA station chief for Afghanistan and Pakistan). Looking at known atrocities and comparing that to the talking points and conduct in the conversation with Grenier (and other videos from Vice), it becomes clear that Vice covers for American fascism. |
Owners
- Shane Smith (20% in 2017)[8]
- The Walt Disney Company (16% in 2019)[9]
- A&E Networks (10% in 2014)[10]
- TPG Capital (44% in 2017)[11]
- Soros Fund Management (10% in 2019)[12]
- James Murdoch (minority stake)[13]
Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012
- Full article:
Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012
- Full article:
The Smith-Mundt Act originally did prohibit the use of propaganda, produced for foreign audiences, to be directed at domestic audiences in the United States. With the passing of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2013 this was changed; originally justified with the explanation that it would help to inform expat communities in the US.[14] Robbie Martin noted that after the ban was lifted, the use of foreign news sources funded by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) did spike on Vice; many narratives friendly to the US government position first appear at media organizations overseen by the BBG before they become part of mainstream media reporting.[15]
Video editing
Vice does edit interviews to better fit their narrative. In the Russian Roulette series, in the interview with Russel Bentley, they cut the recording to leave part of the answer out and switch to a different angle to make that less obvious when Bentley reminds the interviewer (Simon Ostrovsky) that there are Nazis in Ukraine, when Ostrovsky pretends that he has seen none.[16]
'Doing Your Own Research' Leads to Believing Conspiracies
A December 2023 article explained of "science" had found the answer to why "'do your own research' is a slogan for conspiracy theorists of all stripes". Chirag Shah, a professor of information science at the University of Washington, explained how "The four most dangerous words are 'do your own research'. It seems counterintuitive because I’m an educator and we encourage students to do this. The problem is people don’t know how to do this." Shah also said that it’s the responsibility of tech companies like Google to "offer tools to help people parse fact from fiction". [17]
Another "expert" quoted in the article, Kevin Aslett, added that more resources need to be pumped into fact-checking organizations so they can at least start to fill the data void that exists.[17]
Quotes by Vice News
| Page | Quote | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Black site | “A small group of people in Johnston County NC are investigating their state’s role in the CIA's torture and rendition program. Last fall, they had a series of public hearings on the subject and on May 7th they're planning to meet with their commissioners in an effort to compel their county's very conservative board of commissioners to issue a ban on the use of public resources for rendition or torture, and to publicly acknowledge what they found: that a CIA contractor called Aero operating out of the local county airport, handled some 80% of rendition flights between September 2001 and March 2004.” | 2018 | |
| Netherlands/Deep state | “The Netherlands has a long history with cocaine. In the early 1900s, the Dutch East India Company – having exploited and enslaved millions of people – began growing coca in its colonies in Indonesia. There was even a cocaine factory in Amsterdam, which supplied marching powder to all sides in World War One. When international treaties finally put a halt to the Dutch’s rampant coke dealing, Rotterdam emerged as a key import site for the illicit trade of the drug from South America.” | 2020 | Vice News |
Employees on Wikispooks
| Employee | Job | Appointed | End | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ben Judah | Producer and Presenter | April 2014 | October 2017 | |
| Jason Leopold | Journalist | 2014 | 2017 | |
| Alyssa Mastromonaco | Chief operating officer | January 2015 | 2018 | Former Obama White House Deputy Chief of Staff |
Rating
References
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20140703231911/https://news.vice.com/about
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDbSvEZka6GGiTxrkmiU5FIZIe7vjWbUi
- ↑ https://media.thinknum.com/articles/vice-goes-on-hiring-spree-with-250-million-debt-infusion/
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/c/VICENews/about
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/aug/23/vice-news-younger-viewers-bbc-channel-4-youtube-social-media
- ↑ http://globaljournalist.org/2014/09/despite-controversies-vice-news-thrives-young-audience/
- ↑ How the CIA Waged War in Afghanistan
- ↑ https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2017/06/20/vice-medias-shane-smith-is-now-a-billionaire/#319f88e5611b
- ↑ https://www.thewaltdisneycompany.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/2018-Annual-Report.pdf
- ↑ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/a-e-networks-buying-minority-729183
- ↑ https://www.wsj.com/articles/vice-media-secures-450-million-investment-from-private-equity-firm-tpg-1497882405
- ↑ https://media.thinknum.com/articles/vice-goes-on-hiring-spree-with-250-million-debt-infusion/
- ↑ https://www.ft.com/content/fe1e2c6c-eb91-11e9-a240-3b065ef5fc55
- ↑ https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/
- ↑ https://www.mintpressnews.com/planting-stories-in-the-press-lifting-of-us-propaganda-ban-gives-new-meaning-to-old-song/237493/
- ↑ Meet the Texan Fighting for the DPR: Russian Roulette (Dispatch 107) (April 23, 2015) Relevant part starting at 02:00, the cut is after Bentley says: "but they are there man, and you know they are there".
- ↑ a b https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7bjpm/scientists-explain-why-doing-your-own-research-leads-to-buying-conspiracies
