WASHINGTON, April 18. /ITAR-TASS/. As the post-coup regime in Ukraine sends troops and paramilitaries to crack down on ethnic Russian protesters in the east, the US news media continues to feed the American public a steady dose of anti-Russian propaganda, often wrapped in accusations of "Russian propaganda", writes Robert Parry, Consortium News founder and editor in chief. The well-known investigative reporter worked with The Associated Press and Newsweek and has awards, including the George Polk Award conferred in recognition of special achievements in journalism. He founded the Consortium US-based independent news service in 1995.

"Indeed, in my four-plus decades in journalism, I have never seen a more thoroughly biased and misleading performance by the major US news media. Even during the days of Ronald Reagan - when much of the government’s modern propaganda structure was created - there was more independence in major news outlets. There were media stampedes off the reality cliff during George H.W. Bush’s Persian Gulf War and George W. Bush’s Iraq War, both of which were marked by demonstrably false claims that were readily swallowed by the big US news outlets.

But there is something utterly Orwellian in the current coverage of the Ukraine crisis, including accusing others of “propaganda” when their accounts - though surely not perfect - are much more honest and more accurate than what the US press corps has been producing.

There’s also the added risk that this latest failure by the US press corps is occurring on the border of Russia, a nuclear-armed state that - along with the United States - could exterminate all life on the planet. The biased US news coverage is now feeding into political demands to send US military aid to Ukraine’s coup regime.

The casualness of this propaganda - as it spreads across the US media spectrum from Fox News to MSNBC, from the Washington Post to the New York Times - is not just wretched journalism but it is reckless malfeasance jeopardizing the lives of many Ukrainians and the future of the planet," the journalist notes.