The Great Supply Chain Crisis 2021: Hype vs Reality

TV & Murdoch News Sensationalized the Great Supply Chain Crisis of 2021 - Telling us for Months on End No Pumpkins for Halloween, No Turkeys for Thanksgiving, No Trees for Christmas & No Cream Cheese in NYC

But How Much of that Hyping was a Murdoch Inspired Perspective in Pursuit of Political Profit & Fear Mongering Ratings at the Expense of Reporting What's Really Happening?

January 3, 2022 / NYC Neighborhoods / NYC Things To Do Events / News Analysis & Opinion / Gotham Buzz NYC.

The closer I pay attention to what's happening in our mass media, the more concerned I get. Nearly half of our daily nationally branded news media is controlled by one man, Australian born billionaire Rupert Murdoch - who strikes me as either a sociopath or psychopath. Based on the seven years I've been covering Murdoch, it appears as if he doesn't care about anything other than enriching and empowering himself, even at 90 years of age [his mother lived to 103 so he's likely going to be with us for a while].

 

What Those Who Know Murdoch Say About Him

In Australia - where Murdoch has been operating all his life - former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd described,

"Murdoch's media empire as a cancer on democracy".

And in Britain, a Parliamentary Report stated that,

[Murdoch] "was not a fit person" to exercise stewardship of a major international company].

Keith Rupert Murdoch, controls the Wall St. Journal, Fox News, the NY Post, Harper Collins Publishing, MarketWatch, Barrons - and along with two of Fox News largest shareholders - Murdoch appears to have a controlling interest in Disney / ABC by virtue of what seems his proximity to their relatively new CEO. Murdoch's influence appears to be manifesting itself in personnel moves being made since he became one of their largest shareholders in March of 2019. The personnel moves are in their news and related programming areas, and ultimately impact what ABC News presents to the public. I just witnessed one of many subtle changes on Sunday, while watching This Week with George Stephanopolous. I'll say more about this at the end of this report.

Fox News Lyin' Laura Ingraham, earned that moniker, as you can see in the image above. Fox News has repeatedly used misleading photos and images to lend deceptive and misleading support to their news accounts, which appear designed to influence the unaware and low information voters, in order to get them to vote for billionaire Murdoch's favored pols and against the very government officials who are trying to help the manipulated victims.

• CLICK here for the rest of the story about mass media's ratings-driven hype, and media manufactured distortions about the global supply chain disruptions.

How did you Survive the Great Supply Chain Crisis of 2021?

Starting sometime this summer we have been hearing incessant chatter on TV news, and this includes all the national TV news networks, that there was a supply chain crisis. We were told most predominantly on Fox News that was going to steal away Christmas. No American was going to be able to purchase the things they wanted for themselves or their children for Christmas. And they seemed to imply that the economy would fail because retailers wouldn't have anything to sell. According to Fox and the Wall St Journal, which together promoted Nirvana - aka "the Trump Economy" - we were headed into Doomsday - "the Biden Economy".

They warned us that our American way of life will soon be lost because of Biden and those left wing radical Democrats. While most of the non-Murdoch nationally branded mass media didn't repeat all of the deceptions of the Murdoch mass media, they failed MISERABLY, to put the rating-driven, hyped, fear mongering reality distortion of Murdoch's Fox News and other Murdoch mass media outlets in context. This involves doing their own homework, and not copying someone else's work like they too often seem to do. In broadcast news this means the other networks should NOT be repeating storylines originating at organizations controlled by a billionaire propagandist who has a reputation for distorting the truth to win elections for the pols who will give him what he wants out of the public purse and domain.

I grew up in a three generation newspaper household. At one point I was working on a story about which both my parents challenged me. Frustrated, I asked them, then what is the role of media. They told me, "to inform". That it's the role of the media to help educate their audience, to help them understand what is going on, by putting things in context. Thus, in the supply chain crisis it seemed like the network TV media weren't doing enough to inform the American public about what was being done to correct the real supply chain problems [not the b.s. about pumpkins, turkeys, Christmas trees and cream cheese], and to help people more fully understand what was happening, and how things would likely play out, in a manner similar to what anchormen like Walter Cronkite did back in the day.

In the graphics above, the Wall St. Journal shows just how far they have deviated from objective reporting, by seeking to manipulate their readers' views of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas staples by attributing what turned out to be honest-to-goodness FAKE NEWS. Generally speaking the holidays of 2021 and the staples that accompany them were about in as abundance as in other years. Ask yourself - could you not find a pumpkin for Halloween, a turkey for Thanksgiving or a tree for Christmas?

 

So, it's January 2022, Christmas is Over & ...

Magically ... the Supply Chain Doomsday Hype Disappears

Leading up to Halloween there was a Murdoch Fox News implied Biden pumpkin shortage. Leading up to Thanksgiving there was a Murdoch NY Post implied Biden turkey shortage. And leading up to Christmas there was a Biden evergreen shortage. Fox News snake oil salespeople 'Lyin' Laura Ingraham, 'Hyperventillating" Hannity and the Baby Faced Tucker Carlson all hyped the shortages, induced people to buy early and pay more and ... lo and behold there weren't any shortages, and in fact based on my anecdotal observations, actually an overstock as quite a number of people actually believed those reports, bought early and paid more which left a significant supply of unused turkeys and trees when the holidays finally passed.

In the graphic at right you can see how the backlog at the Port of Los Angeles fell from its heights in mid October 2021, to more manageable levels by the end of the year. And while the backlog persists, good old fashioned Yankee ingenuity is addressing the problem. The doomsday hype has disappeared, and the remnants of the problem are also expected to disappear - more or less - by mid 2022.

But CoVid impacts on labor and Climate Change disruptions on natural products are likely to persist in disrupting commerce in ways we didn't consider prepandemic, so we're living in a new normal - but the doomsday hype was, for my money, done not to inform, but to alarm audiences so they would tune back into the TV news to follow the fictious fear mongering. Beware the tale of the 90 year old Boy Who Called Wolf.

 

Did you Hear of, or Experience, any Extraordinary Holiday Supply Chain Shortages?

I venture to guess what your answer is to the question in the headline above ... NO.

So think about that. Don't let them off the hook. TV News provided bad information. Expand your patronage of other information sources.

No, we haven't heard a thing about supply chain shortages since the holidays hit, because there likely weren't any. At least none that were highly unusual. This excludes the anomaly, because every year some hot toy or game console experiences a run / out of stock because of incredibly high demand.

I'm pretty sure that the photo at right was taken during the pandemic, not this fall. It's another example of how Murdoch mass media uses its influence to deceive voters about what is what and who is who, so Murdoch can continue to enrich and empower himself at the public expense. Murdoch has long denied this charge, but the 'circumstantial evidence' seems incontrovertible.

 

Perception Versus Reality

Fox, WSJ, NY Post & Increasingly ABC vs NBC, CBS, NPR, NYT & Washington Post

The Cliff Notes Version of the Real Supply Chain Shortage

This is not to deny that there weren't supply chain shortage issues that emerged as we began to come out of the pandemic. The most notable was the backlog in shipping at our western ports, most notably Long Beach and Los Angeles where about 40% of imports arrive.

I'll give you the Cliff Notes on America's Supply Chain Crisis of 2021. American purchases of goods rose in 2020 because of excess cash available to American households because Americans weren't spending on travel, liesure, dining and the like. So that money went into making life at home during lockdown better, by purchasing all kinds of goods. Many of those goods come from China, India and other Asian nations, so a backlog built up at our western ports. There were other things driving this, like labor shortages due to the pandemic, and other natural goods shortages due to climate change, but the primary disruption was at those two California ports which saw a jump of 18% in the goods coming through those two ports in 2021 which were already operating at a high capacity, given their labor, space and transportation configurations.

President Biden got involved in helping sort through the supply chain crisis, as things were building up, which was right around the time the Afghanistan withdrawal was peaking. The first thing he did is change the port operating hours from closed weekends and nights, to open 24/7 like the rest of the world. The next thing he did was threaten transporters with a fee for not moving containers through the port in a timely fashion. The threat alone reduced the time by about 40%, so it remained a threat - I think even to this day since it had done it's job which was to get transporters moving their wares out of the port.

Another improvement was to leverage technology for queuing up the ships, by having them log into a system to mark their place in line to enter the port, while showing their position. In this manner ships which once raced across the Pacific only to wait in line, could now mark a spot and not waste fuel racing across the Pacific only to wait in line.

There was also a shortage of warehouse space for incoming goods and empty containers. This was partially solved by making short term investments in nearby warehouse rentals, but there's ongoing work to do. And then lastly, a shortage of port laborers and truck drivers to move all the goods through the port and into the nation, which is still being worked on.

Biden isn't God. He's not the King. He's not the Dictator like Putin and Xi Jinping. He's the President. And so far, Murdoch's constant mass media attacks aside, he seems like a very competent one. But Biden is being hammered daily, by Murdoch's overwhelming share of nationally branded daily news media in this country, so that come 2024 another Murdoch puppet can be installed. The installation of Murdoch promoted and influenced puppets has largely been the case in both Australia and Britain for decades.

In the two graphics above, you can see how Murdoch's mass media outlets [NY Post] are trying to tie inflation to the supply chain crisis - both of which they are laying at the feet of President Biden. Given Murdoch controls an overwhelming share [in multiple categories approaching half] of the nationally branded daily news media, his hyping inflation - like his hyping the 'stop the steal' and 'rigged voting machines' - might be, in part, responsible for it.

 

Post Holiday Fear Mongering, the WSJ Reports Supply Chain Crisis is Nearly Over

By the New Year, the billionaire's propaganda machine had done it's work. They had imprinted upon the American public the impression of a failed economy, failed supply chain - and by implication a failed Biden Administration. The Wall St Journal pronounces the patient, meaning the American supply chain and economy, in relatively good condition, and the American supply chain and economy should be back to normal in the next three to six months - in spite of Omicron.

In the graphic at right, you can see how Murdoch - like Goebbels and Hitler - uses b.s. culture wars to manipulate unsuspecting Americans to fight against their own interests, because Murdoch's mendacious minions have convinced their veiwers to believe what they see and hear on the Murdoch propaganda machine - which often enough is far, far away from the truth. As you can see, the Independent, a British newspaper, calls out Murdoch's Fox News for using the culture wars to manipulate their audiences' perspective on events, in order to influence voting outcomes at the polls that favor the propagandist billionaire's interests - NOT the interests of the people whose views of events that they are manipulating.

 

Murdoch Media Corruption in NYC - Apparent Quid Pro Quos with Rudy Giuliani?

Americans see and hear this information on multiple Murdoch news outlets and thus believe that if so many outlets and pundits are saying the same thing - it must be true.

What members of these audiences fail to recognize, is that Murdoch controls so many of the media outlets, and he pays the pundits who he reportedly fires if they don't put out the sorts of narratives that reflect what Murdoch wants his audiences to believe - regardless of the truth.

Murdoch also pressures the pols he promotes, like Rudy Giuliani, to achieve his same ends. The pols get plenty of free publicity, book deals, media jobs and what not and Murdoch appears to be given access to take from the public purse and domain whatever he wants that can be spun with multi-media optics.

Giuliani illegally provided Murdoch with the use of the NYC public access channel in the 1990's, while Murdoch was in a dispute with Time Warner Cable in NYC. Reportedly, after a judge struck down Giuliani's patronage, Giuliani then threatened to revoke Time Warner's cable franchise in NYC which would have disrupted a pending merger of Time Warner and Turner Cable in the city (also required city approval). Murdoch's company also was given NYC police protection during a labor dispute, and a $20 million tax break when it moved its headquarters into Midtown in the 1990's shortly after Giuliani took office.

Giuliani on the other hand, received the endorsement and editorial support of Murdoch's NY Post, along with favorable coverage by Fox News during his administration and campaigns. According to a study done by University of Southern California researchers, there was not a single negative editorial attacking Rudy Giuliani during his entire eight years in office. And to sweeten things even further, Murdoch gave Giuliani's wife, Donna Hanover, a job at a salary triple to quadruple what she last made in a similar position. This new position also enabled her to obtain access to other opportunities to make additional income by leveraging her new position at Fox TV.

Joseph Goebbels and Adolph Hitler were the first to use mass media to manipulate entire societies by using the technology of their day - which encompassed newspapers, radio and film - coupled with sophisticated use of manipulative psychology. Murdoch has finessed the deceptive dark arts and made far more clever use of it. But the colossal destruction, that the inherent evil and deceit that propaganda wreaks on civil society, is the same. The only question is how far will it go before civil society breaks down.

This is the question we face in the new year and in our time.

 

Murdoch's Disinformation News Rooms have Succeeded in Doing Their Work

But here's how propaganda works. Murdoch's mass media has left this imprint in tens of millions of Americans' minds that will lie dormant there until Murdoch's mendacious minions - like hypnotists - ask the patient to recall their deceptions about the supply chain, the failed economy and by implication the failed Biden presidency, as if these deceptions by Murdoch's mass media were real. This enables the Murdoch propaganda machine to leverage its planted perceptions, deceptions, misconceptions going forward. And because unsuspecting Americans hear and see this information on multiple [unknown to them - Murdoch controlled] branded sources - they believe it. This is what Goebbels and Hitler did in Germany in the 1920's, 1930's & 1940's.

As Goebbels and Hitler used to like to say, "If you repeat a lie often enough, it will be believed."

The Wall St Journal didn't just deliver the news, they also delivered propagandistic distortions, labels and emotional angst with that news. As did other Murdoch news outlets like Fox and the NY Post as you can see by some of the images included with this report. Murdoch's Fox News, WSJ, NY Post and increasingly ABC News appear to have been used the supply chain disruption to fuel angst leading into the holidays, hype fear of inflation and undermine President Biden because Biden won't cave into billionaire Rupert Murdoch's wishes - so Murdoch mass media attack him EVERY DAY. That's not delivering the news, that's delivering Goebbels' Nazi style propaganda.

 

A Post Truth World is a Pre Fascism World

Dishonest Murdoch Media Distortions Appear Designed to Deceive Murdoch Media Audiences, so They Will Make Decisions Using Murdoch's Distorted and Deceptive Propaganda Machine Information - which is Falsified like the Image Above

Murdoch Media, oftentimes Hypes Freedom & Yet the Hypocrites are Stealing Americans' Freedom to Make Their Own Choices, by Stacking the Deck using Dishonest, Deceptive Information which Favors Murdoch's Interests - Not Those of his Audiences

In the graphic above right, you can see a photo from the pandemic used this year to bash Biden regarding the supply chain problems in the country. A PolitiFact report on October 22, 2021 shows the above AP photo which they tracked and noted as follows,

"... Bath tissue shelves were empty at a Hy-Vee supermarket in Omaha, Neb., on March 15, 2020. Fox News aired the same photo during an Oct. 19, 2021, segment and represented it as though it were a current image. (AP) ..."

Timothy Snyder, a professor of History at Yale, discusses the importance of truth to maintaining an honest conversation in our democracy, and wrote in the book that,

" ... Post-truth is pre-fascism [and] ... To abandon facts is to abandon freedom..."

This is because if you let people lie to you and deceive you - they are taking away your right to make up your own mind. They are taking away your FREEDOM OF CHOICE.

Murdoch does this far, far, far too often.

He did it with the voting machines, for which he's now being sued.

 

Murdoch is One of the Largest Shareholders of Disney / ABC & He Seems to be Infecting ABC News Programs via Personnel Changes

And this is where I return to ABC News and This Week with George Stephanopolous. On Sunday, January 2, 2022 Stephanopolous took a look at the Capitol Riot or Insurrection on This Week which is an ABC Sunday news program. Prior to the discussion, they aired a prepared video which showed some footage of the insurrection and also of the hearings currently underway in Congress in the Capitol. In those hearings Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney talked about how Trump knew what was going on by virtue of electonic media messages sent to Trump's by his family and the propagandists on Fox News.

And just as the Wall Street Journal continued propopagandistic publication of the Afghan Withdrawal video for over three months after it happened [see November 2021 Thanksgiving OpEd] - ABC News OMITTED the fact that a number of high profile FOX NEWS people were some of the people involved in telling Trump to do something to stop the attempted coup on January 6, 2021. That, my friends, is slick propaganda, and likely done by an unaware George Stephanopolous. That they can slide this by Stephanopolous, shows that he's either already compromised, or that TV newspeople like him are more clueless about what's happening in this nation, than we'd like to think. But the on air folks sure do dress well, and they are good at enunciating all of their syllables.

In the graphic at right, the Baby Faced Tucker Carlson twists and turns the truth upside down, in very slick manipulative pieces that omit key facts, rearrange the chronology of video, twist a selective use of the facts into a truth bending kaleidoscope, that turns the truth upside down, and sends his audience off all fired up, on an emotional bender, determined to work hard against the very pols who are working in their interest - but not in the interests of multi-millionaire Carlson, nor his billionaire boss, Rupert Murdoch. By the way the U.S. economy is expected to have grown between 5% - 6% in 2021, versus a decline of 3.4% in 2020 [Trump's last year in office].

 

Murdoch Appears to use the Wall St Journal & ABC News for Mass Manipulation

See report we did on September 7, 2021 about a Wall St Journal report about the Biden led American withdrawal from Afghanistan and how the WSJ seemed to act as a propaganda outlet in covering that story by setting a disinformative narrative, and how many of the other very lazy national broadcast outlets again, failed MISERABLY, to carve out their own narrative and put the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in context for their audiences. Also see a November 24, 2021 Thanksgiving OpEd we did showing how the WSJ ran a video on the front page of their website from August through November of Biden's worst day in office, as if it were that day. This is incredibly dishonest, especially for a newspaper with such wide readership and once of some renown.

I suggest that readers switch to Bloomberg, or the Financial Times or some other financial information source other than the Wall St. Journal for their financial information, as Murdoch's minions at that outlet appear to be increasingly using their platform to disinform the public to meet their billionaire boss's political, profit and power accumulation objectives. Or, if not a complete switch away from the WSJ, then at the very least, be sure to use other - non Murdoch information outlets.

It's worth mentioning that Murdoch controls a near monopoly share of traditional media in Australia, and an overwhelming share of media in Britain, so if you think you're getting your information from an objective or reliable source out of Australia or Britain, think again. Go to Google / MSN / Wikipedia to find out who owns / controls the media outlets you use, so you understand who is providing you with your information. These days, far too many once respected brands, are increasingly being acquired by very wealthy individuals or investment funds, and they likely didn't buy them to pursue excellence in journalism.

May I suggest that one of your new year resolutions be to continually seek out news sources that are reliable, analytical and research-driven in order to stay informed?

The graphics at right should be easy to recall, while at the same time falling flat on their faces with respect to ringing true. Most of the graphics included in this report, are from or about Murdoch controlled media, including Fox News, the NY Post and the Wall St Journal.

With so many different brands and pundits all saying nearly the exact same thing, one must ask themselves whether it is true, or the work of dictator-like billionaire Rupert Murdoch and his American news branded propaganda.

 

New Year Resolutions for Journalists & Media Professionals & Government Officials

And my new year resolution suggestion to the non-Murdoch nationally branded daily news media, is to wake up and start doing your jobs, which is to do your own research and carve out your own narratives - not parrot what Murdoch's overwhelming share of nationally branded daily news outlets are saying.

Sometimes, the late night comedy talk show hosts [Stephen Colbert on CBS, Jimmy Kimmel on ABC (beware insidious Murdoch influenced changes) and Seth Meyers on NBC] do a better job of explaining what's going on in this nation, than the TV networks nightly news does. Unfortunately, just as was done in Australia and in Britain over the past five to six decades, non-Murdoch journalists are ignoring the 800 lb. gorilla in the room who (in Australia and Britain) now eats their lunch daily and leaving only the crumbs behind.

How any journalist [and for that matter non-Murdoch pols] can talk about almost any large national issue, or significant national government official, without talking about the incredible influence and manipulated perceptions wielded by Murdoch's overwhelming share of American mass media on voters' perception of such, is beyond me. And real journalists would help their audiences connect the dots of Murdoch's mass media manipulation machine, by properly labeling them Murdoch's Fox News, Murdoch's NY Post, Murdoch's Wall St. Journal and Murdoch's ABC News, so that when the viewing public is ingesting Murdoch's manipulated news accounts, at least they'll have some chance over time to begin to realize that these disseminated narratives and propagandistic perceptions, are all emanating from the same source. And lastly, quit using a sledge hammer, when a scalpel is needed. By this I mean, quit saying that what Murdoch is saying is the 'conservative press', because in doing so you're empowering him. Call it what it is - the Murdoch press, because he's not necessarily conservative, on most days it seems he would easily trade ideology for the things he wants from the pols he promotes to government positions.

Have a Happy New Year.