The journalist/author says an Obama-era echo chamber of media, think tanks, and experts is spreading disinformation about the ongoing conflict.
Inaccurate media reporting has fueled the flames of division over the Israel-Hamas War amid confusion about an explosion at a Gaza City hospital.
After U.S. officials backed Israel’s assertion of innocence in the blast, major news outlets that relied on Hamas’s version of events—like the New York Times—have been forced to issue corrections, albeit quietly and begrudgingly.
Those waiting for a heartfelt apology may be disappointed, as according to investigative journalist and author Lee Smith, the media has for years been complicit in a propaganda machine designed to “disorient and demoralize” the American public.
“For most people, actually, on the right, their first exposure to real disinformation, real information operations has been watching what’s going on in the Middle East since the beginning of the 21st Century,” Mr. Smith said on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” on Oct. 20.
From the war in Iraq to the 2006 Lebanon War and now the Israel-Hamas War, Mr. Smith noted that information warfare has been a key tactic utilized by militant regimes in the Middle East to break down support for their enemies.
However, he contended that it was the Obama administration that purposefully created a media echo chamber to sell its nuclear deal with Iran to a dubious American public. And that communications infrastructure, he charged, is now being used to spread disinformation about the Israel-Hamas War.
Echoes of the Past
Mr. Smith noted that when the Obama administration struck its controversial deal with Iran in 2015, most Americans were against it.
“We know that they took our diplomats hostage in 1979,” he said. “We know that they killed Americans in Iraq. We know that they killed Americans in Lebanon back in 1982, and they’re responsible for almost all of the American deaths in Iraq. … So, most Americans are looking at this, the Iran deal, saying, ‘This looks nuts.’
