Storyful – Niche Propagandists Work Full-Time Distorting Syria Conflict

Image (top, right): A screenshot of Storyful’s website as of March 23, 2013. Storyful is a niche propaganda organization which supplies the Western media monopolies with filtered, prepackaged biased accounts of world events – including of the ongoing Syria crisis (archived here). It boasts that it’s content, trawled from across the Internet’s various social media platforms, is cited 10’s of thousands of times across the Western media.

Listed under “who we work with,” are the same notorious corporate-financier propagandists who have mislead and distorted public perception for decades, including: The New York Times, ABC (Australia), France24, ABC News (US), The Economist, Reuters, and Bloomberg. Also listed are open conspirators working with the US State Department since at least 2008 to exploit emerging social media platforms to sell the West’s corporate-financier geopolitical aspirations, including Google and YouTube.

But how do we know Storyful is specifically helping the same Western media houses that insidiously sold us the Iraq War, to now sell the West’s narrative versus Syria? Storyful itself admits as much in an entire page(archived here) dedicated to its work on trawling for activist propaganda regarding Syria.

Image: Taken from “Storyful’s” “Ongoing Syria Coverage page, it represents a biased, one-sided collection of “activist” accusations, videos, and photographs meant to portray the Syrian conflict as per the West’s established narrative. While “Storyful” claims to be a “news agency,” it clearly is disinterested in balanced coverage, and exposes itself as a niche propaganda outfit. 

Titled, “Ongoing Syria Coverage,” Storyful admits:

Storyful has validated and published close to 3,000 Syria-related items since the beginning of the conflict there in March 2011. Our team follows emerging events, but also monitors the nuanced ebb and flow of the conflict.

In July and August alone, Storyful sourced footage was broadcast more than 14,000 times by news organisations around the world.While Storyful’s “case study” regarding Syria is brief, every single example is drawn from woefully unreliable “activist” accounts. There are no stories regarding atrocities and abuse carried out by the so-called opposition. Surely, if “Storyful” was a genuine “news agency” as it claims to be, it would have provided balanced coverage of the events in Syria. However, it is as much a “news agency” as the BBC is, who is habitually caught fabricating stories, using faked/inappropriate photography in its coverage, and taking cash to skew its so-called “documentaries.”

It is abundantly clear that what the Western media has been telling us regarding Syria for the past 2 years has been a lie. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the so-called “pro-democracy” movement is nothing more than a reignited Muslim Brotherhood terror campaign, involving everyone from Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists on the streets, to card-carrying Muslim Brotherhood members leading the West’s various contrived opposition fronts. There is now little doubt of the validity regarding Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s 9 page New Yorker report in 2007 that foreshadowed what was described then as a Western conspiracy to overthrow the governments of Iran and Syria with sectarian extremists with direct ties to Al Qaeda.

Similar reports from as far back as 2007, including the Wall Street Journal’s “”To Check Syria, U.S. Explores Bond With Muslim Brothers” likewise contradict fully the narrative put forth by the West’s media monopolies, with the help of niche propagandists like “Storyful.” Worse yet, are reports like those out of the Fortune 500 funded and chaired Brookings Institution like 2009’s “Which Path to Persia?” which meticulously documents plans to use subversion, faux-democracy movements, and even arming and funding listed-terrorist organizations like Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) to overthrow the nation of Iran. In fact, Brookings prescribed in 2009 that MEK be “de-listed” first before being used against Iran – advice that would eventually be acted upon in 2012,when indeed, MEK was de-listed. 

Image: Gavin Sherian of Storyful’s response to a torrent of evidence contradicting his and his organization’s misrepresentation of the conflict in Syria. From Sherian’s cackling unprofessional behavior, to the clearly biased nature of Storyful’s own “Ongoing Syria Coverage” page, it is clear that Storyful is yet another tentacle sprouting forth from Wall Street and London’s corporate-media machine. 

This torrent of evidence has in fact been addressed by “Storyful’s” director, Ireland-based Gavin Sheridan with the one-worded response, “lol.” One should not expect more from a man who makes his living supplying content to notoriously deceitful media organizations who have habitually lied to the public for decades. What is more important is that people realize that social media has become a new and important platform that the corporate-financier interests seek to monopolize, just as they have printed and broadcasted media.

Organizations like “Storyful” seek to cash in on this desire, and fill a niche within the intricate web of propaganda and lies industrialists and financiers have built up throughout modern history. It is important to expose and understand what “Storyful’s” role is, and that other organizations are most likely hiding with them in the dank corners of Wall Street and London’s expansive media machine.