The Washington Post is a propaganda operation run by the US State Department and the Pentagon, an American writer and political commentator says. RNA - “It's not It's not the legitimate journalism operation. And the same goes for the New York Times, and Wall Street Journal, and CNN and all the rest of them,” Stephen Lendman told Press TV in a phone interview on Saturday.
Lendman made the remarks after the Washington Post published fake news about Iran’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, claiming that Iran has dug mass "burial pits" for victims of the disease and was covering the true number of deaths.
As countries across the world grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, Iran’s struggle to contain the disease has attracted more than usual attention from mainstream American media outlets.
Despite numerous statements from World Health Organization officials praising Iran’s efforts against the epidemic, certain outlets have focused on erringly similar themes regarding Iran, that the country is mishandling the outbreak and that it’s “putting other countries at risk”.
“The reports consist of state approved propaganda. In other words, they run their stories by the State Department, the Pentagon, how they do it, maybe informally or formally or whatever, but they publish nothing that US agencies would not want to be shown in print, or broadcast on air, either on television or radio,” he added.
“The Washington Post is one of the worst. It's owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon infamy. And he has something like $600 million CIA contract; meaning he basically is a CIA agent, call him a business agent,” he stated.
“So I call the Washington Post neocon-CIA-linked or a CIA-house organ, which is exactly what it is. Well, they’ve got a story about Iran building very mass burial pits and to bury people from the coronavirus illness,” he said.
“Whatever the US media, the Washington Post or anyone else in the US accused Iran, or Russia or Syria, or any other country on the US target list for regime change, whatever they accuse these countries on anything, there's never any evidence cited backing their claims. Why? Because no evidence exists,” he pointed out.
“There's no evidence of massive burial pits in Iran. I don't know of any mass burial pits anywhere, certainly not in Iran. And Iran has been hit hard by the coronavirus crisis. But it has not reached the stage where there are thousands dying every single day. I think the numbers are something like 500. Maybe a little bit more than that. I mean, people die all the time and countries from all kinds of reasons, most of them natural reasons. Are there burial pits in these countries to get rid of corpses? Of course not,” he observed.
“The Washington Post is a big lie. It's got other stories on Iran today. And I think in recent issues, also big lies, big lies about Syria, big lies about Russia, big lies about all countries that are on the US enemy list,” the analyst noted.