Sunday, Glenn Greenwald wrote a great article on the media's reaction to the Rolling Stone article by Michael Hastings that reported on Lt. Gen. William Caldwell use of military trained "psy-ops" on visiting US Senators amongst others. Needless to say the United States media is fearless in its unrelenting fawning of powerful government officials and the military. First he summarized the media's reaction to Hastings previous revelations on the impiousness of Gen. Stanley McChrystal:
The New York Times' John Burns fretted that the article "has impacted, and will impact so adversely, on what had been pretty good military/media relations" and accused Hastings of violating "a kind of trust" which war reporters "build up" with war Generals; Politico observed that a "beat reporter" -- unlike the freelancing Hastings -- "would not risk burning bridges by publishing many of McChrystal’s remarks"; and an obviously angry Lara Logan of CBS News strongly insinuated (with no evidence) that Hastings had lied about whether the comments were on-the-record and then infamously sneered: "Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has."
Our media, was shocked, that a journalist actually reported what a source said, instead of coddling withing the cult of secrecy that surrounds people like McChrystal and Caldwell. So it should come as no surprise that when Hastings, once again, revealed blatant malfeasance at the highest levels of government that our media rushed to attack the credibility of Hastings and his sources:
Ever since publication of this new article, military-subservient "reporters" have disseminated personal attacks on Hastings and his journalism as well as on Holmes and his claims, all while inexcusably granting anonymity to the military leaders launching those attacks and uncritically repeating them. As usual, anyone who makes powerful government or military leaders look bad -- by reporting the truth -- becomes the target of character assassination, and the weapon of choice are the loyal, vapid media stars who will uncritically repeat whatever powerful officials say all while shielding them from accountability through the use of anonymity.
Here, for instance, is what Norah O'Donnell said on MSNBC when reporting on the controversy with Tamron Hall:
O'DONNELL: I have been talking to a number of sources today who have said one, that any report coming from The Rolling Stone and this author Michael Hastings, who also "went after" another general, Stanley McCrystal, should be met with a healthy dose of skepticism. The title of this, Tamron, is "Another Runaway General": remember that Michael Hastings already brought down another General, Stanley McCrystal. . . . I can tell you that there are a number of people in the military and the Defense Department who are not happy with The Rolling Stone because of what happened earlier with General Stanley McCrystal.
HALL: They can't be happy with it, but if it's what happened, the person is reporting it and it's factual, then that's what they have to deal with. You're not always happy with the truth.
O'DONNELL: That's true, but remember that they, they still question a lot of the previous article even though that brought down General Stanley McCrystal.
Who is it who says that "any report coming from The Rolling Stone and this author Michael Hastings . . . should be met with a healthy dose of skepticism," and what's the basis for that accusation? Who knows? O'Donnell just mindlessly passes on the smear, protecting the identity of the accusers while failing to identify a single specific reason why Hastings' journalism should be called into question. She's simply acting as dutiful, protective spokesperson-stenographer for military leaders...
Of course O'Donell is hardly the only "journalist" rushing to the military's defense:
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal's Pentagon reporter Julian Barnes has now written two separate articles which do virtually nothing other than mindlessly amplify the military's attacks on Lt. Col. Holmes and Hastings' story based exclusively on military officials to whom he grants anonymity...
In other words, military officials want to impugn Holmes and Hastings, but are afraid to attach their names to their claims and thus be accountable for them -- exactly the way these officials seek to influence the Afghanistan war debate with covert propaganda, all without any accountability. So they instruct their media servants to disseminate their message anonymously, uncritically, and without a shred of accountability, and "journalists" like O'Donnell and Barnes then snap into line and comply...
That's what our establishment media outlets largely are for: to disseminate and amplify the messages of our most powerful political, military and financial factions without any accountability.
And in their rush to be accepted into the circles of power "journalists" have completely reversed the purpose of anonymity:
Anonymity does have a valid purpose in journalism: its legitimate purpose is to protect the vulnerable and powerless when they expose wrongdoing by those who wield power. But most establishment journalists have completely reversed that, so that anonymity is used to protect those with the most power: to enable them to make all sorts of public claims and launch all kinds of attacks on critics without being accountable. When anonymity is used for those purposes, it is inherently and incomparably corrupt (that, of course, is the dynamic that led to public acceptance of patently false claims justifying the Iraq War). But this perversion of anonymity from what it was supposed to be (a means of holding the powerful accountable) into a power-shielding weapon is simply a microcosm of the broader reversal by establishment journalists of the old dictate to "afflict the powerful and comfort the powerless." Most establishment journalists -- by definition -- do exactly the opposite, and their eagerness to indiscriminately grant anonymity to the nation's most powerful officials is simply one manifestation of that power-serving mindset.
Greenwald also gives yet another recent example of the
New York Times willingness not only to hide information at the Government's behest, but to also disseminate information in their reports that they know to be false:
Brisbane defends the compliance by the NYT (and several other American media outlets) with the U.S. Government's request that they conceal from their readers the fact that Raymond Davis -- the American at the center of the conflict between Pakistan and the U.S. whom President Obama deceitfully hailed as "our diplomat in Pakistan" -- actually works for the CIA and, before that, for Blackwater. As I documented, what made this act so appalling was that the paper did not merely conceal information, but affirmatively provided "reporting" that it knew to be misleading, if not outright false.
Greenwald appeared on Cenk Uygur's show to "discuss the anonymous attacks on Hastings and Lt. Col. Holmes and how it relates to how it relates to the broader attacks on whistleblowers and WikiLeaks":
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Here's Jon Stewart's criticism on the reaction to Hastings original Rolling Stone piece:
Then today Greenwald published yet another article on the media's rush to discredit Wikileaks and Julian Assange despite the flimsiest of evidence (and indeed complete lack there of), no doubt pleasing to the powerful interests Wikileaks has upset. Greenwald notes that while the New York Times refused to call the harsh interrogation techniques implemented by the United States "torture", they show no hesitation in smearing Assange:
Earlier today, Ian Hislop, editor of a magazine called Private Eye, published a lengthy article recounting what he claims are anti-Jewish remarks made to him by Julian Assange in a private telephone call (meaning a call in which only Hislop and Assange participated). Hislop claims that Assange complained that an earlier Private Eye story about a Holocaust-denying, Russian WikiLeaks volunteer was part of an anti-Wikileaks conspiracy orchestrated by several Jewish editors and reporters at The Guardian, with whom Assange has been feuding.
Assange vehemently denies the story as asserted by Hislop -- both its particulars and its general claims. WikiLeaks, on its Twitter feed, quoted Assange as stating that "Hislop has distorted, invented or misremembered almost every significant claim and phrase"; that the "'Jewish conspiracy' [claim] is false, in spirit and in word. It is serious and upsetting"; and that "we treasure our strong Jewish support and staff, just as we treasure the support from pan-Arab democracy activists and others who share our hope for a just world."
So let's survey what we have: Ian Hislop is making uncorroborated assertions about his conversation with Assange, while Assange is vehemently denying his claims. Despite this he-said/he-said conflict -- which no known evidence can remotely resolve -- this is how The New York Times presented the story to its readers in its headline today:
But The New York Times also has no idea whether Assange said any of this, yet they categorically announce in their headline -- as though it's a proven fact -- that Assange "Complain[ed] of a Jewish Smear Campaign." Whether that actually happened is very much in dispute, and -- unlike the "torture" controversy, where it was established by decades of case law and the U.S.'s own pronouncements that Bush officials authorized torture -- the NYT has no basis whatsoever for resolving this dispute in favor of the accuser. While the body of the article does note Assange's denial, the whole story is told from the perspective of Hislop, and the headline constitutes a baseless NYT endorsement of his version.
Really illuminating articles, and I suggest you read them in full to better understand the barrage of government propaganda that passes for news these days. Bank of America never needed to hire HBGary, the media is happy to do the discrediting of Wikileaks for free, angered that their pandering to power is only cementing their irrelevancy to those actually interested in knowing what's happening in the world.