Historian and author Dr. Gerald Horne told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Tuesday that the decline of mainstream Western media was accelerated by the press' narratives on the conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine.
“I think that an astute historian would point out that the Ukraine crisis helped to trigger or helped to accelerate the continuing decline of the news media,” Horne said, adding that the media crisis was “accelerated on October 7, 2023, because it’s no secret that the Zionist lobby has a stranglehold over a good deal of the US media.”
Horne also noted the US media coverage of the death of Alexey Navalny, particularly its lack of coverage of his documented Islamophobia. “We want to get an account of what happened when we pick up a newspaper or tune into CNN, but instead we oftentimes just get the current line of the neocons, or the neoliberals,” he explained, adding that there is “no guarantee” that CNN will be around by the end of the decade.
The crisis goes beyond just the media, Horne argued, saying it is a crisis of “the entire capital system” and is part of “the inevitable demise of capitalism.”
“You see a similar crisis unfolding in Europe,” Horne said. “The party of [German] Chancellor [Olaf] Scholz is on the ropes because he has led his country into an abyss [by going] along with the Ukrainian caper and misadventures. His prospects for electoral success going forward are slim and none.”
But it's not only Scholz who's headed down a troubled political future, Horne said, pointing out that French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak are in similar positions.
“All in all, it’s not a good look or good prognosis for the North Atlantic countries,” he concluded.