Don't Let The Liberal Media Take Us To War Again

The interesting thing about news is, aside from the interesting cast of characters that produce it and cast it outward for human consumption, is that many people tend to either believe most everything they read (or read and see and hear) or discount all of it as lies and distortions or believe only the news media reporting that dovetails with their preconceived view of the world and their political orientation.

For a conservative - particularly in the Bible Belt and down south in deep Red states - that might be believing only what Fox News claims is news and discounting most other sources - and for a liberal believing only what they read in the Huffington Post or see on some CNBC-TV programs.

But few people it seems, tend to believe that all media can be at the same time producing and disseminating the same con job -- simply mouthing the "official" line of government in reporting to the virtual exclusion of many other competing facts and/or legitimate points of view that would radically change a story's narrative and meaning.

Such as the American corporate news media's shameless and uncritical gung-ho, huckster based rah-rah reporting of the U.S. government's "party line" supporting the invasion of Iraq on the now known to be faulty and untrue premise - reached by using massaged intelligence data to support foregone conclusions of the George W. Bush administration - that Iraq was somehow behind the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks in America.

A premise which was and is untrue. America invaded a sovereign nation that had never fired a shot in anger at the U.S. - a nation full of massive oil reserves in the ground - for its own reasons.

Eight years ago FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) put together a timeline that should be mandatory reading for all Americans, "In an attempt to recall some of the worst moments in journalism, from the fall of 2002 and into the early weeks of the Iraq War."

The timeline shows that some of the worst journalism on the planet was produced by many of the most well educated, respected and experienced "journalists" in the world in many of the (presumed to be) "objective" newspapers, big TV networks and other major mainstream reporting venues.

In the lead-in to that report FAIR noted:

"It’s hardly controversial to suggest that the mainstream media’s performance in the lead-up to the Iraq War was a disaster. In retrospect, many journalists and pundits wish they had been more skeptical of the White House’s claims about Iraq, particularly its allegations about weapons of mass destruction.

At the same time, though, media apologists suggest that the press could not have done much better, since “everyone” was in agreement on the intelligence regarding Iraq’s weapons threat. This was never the case.

Critical journalists and analysts raised serious questions at the time about what the White House was saying. Often, however, their warnings were ignored by the bulk of the corporate press." 

Then there was "liberal" NPR (National Public Radio) caught being a lap dog of the CIA and, disguised as objective reporting, simply mouthing the official government line from a biased news source in a report that "seriously misled NPR’s millions of listeners," according to investigative reporters Glen Greenwald and Andrew Fishman in a report on the investigative news site The Intercept.

Again, required reading for all Americans.

And now, following the deadly terrorist attacks in France we come to another moment in history where news readers the world over may be experiencing yet another pre-Iraq invasion style government party line, corporate media reporting frenzy.

In a current story in The Intercept, reporter Glen Greenwald lays out the terrain:

"Whistleblowers are always accused of helping America’s enemies (top Nixon aides accusedDaniel Ellsberg of being a Soviet spy and causing the deaths of Americans with his leak); it’s just the tactical playbook that’s automatically used. So it’s of course unsurprising that ever since Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing enabled newspapers around the world to report on secretly implemented programs of mass surveillance, he has been accused by “officials” and their various media allies of Helping The Terrorists™.

Still, I was a bit surprised just by how quickly and blatantly — how shamelessly — some of them jumped to exploit the emotions prompted by the carnage in France to blame Snowden: doing so literally as the bodies still lay on the streets of Paris. 

At first, the tawdry exploiters were the likes of crazed ex-intelligence officials (former CIA chief James Woolsey, who once said Snowden “should be hanged by his neck until he is dead” and now has deep ties to private NSA contractors, along with Iran–obsessed Robert Baer); former Bush/Cheney apparatchiks (ex-White House spokesperson and current Fox personality Dana Perino); right-wing polemicists fired from BuzzFeed for plagiarism; and obscure Fox News comedians (Perino’s co-host). So it was worth ignoring save for the occasional Twitter retort.

But now we’ve entered the inevitable “U.S. Officials Say” stage of the “reporting” on the Paris attack — i.e., journalists mindlessly and uncritically repeat whatever U.S. officials whisper in their ear about what happened. 

So now credible news sites are regurgitating the claim that the Paris Terrorists were enabled by Snowden leaks — based on no evidence or specific proof of any kind, needless to say, but just the unverified, obviously self-serving assertions of government officials. 

But much of the U.S. media loves to repeat rather than scrutinize what government officials tell them to say. So now this accusation has become widespread and is thus worth examining with just some of the actual evidence."

Greenwald then goes into some detail to dismantle one key premise of the now fashionable corporate news media reporting on the Paris attacks, namely that prior to the Edward Snowden leaks about what the America's National Security Agency (NSA) was up to in its massive program of surveillance on U.S. citizens (as well as government leaders of our ally nations), "The Terrorists helpfully and stupidly used telephones and unencrypted emails to plot, so Western governments were able to track their plotting and disrupt at least large-scale attacks."

Greenwald points out for anyone who accepts that premise at face value: "That would come as a massive surprise to the victims of the attacks of 2002 in Bali, 2004 in Madrid, 2005 in London, 2008 in Mumbai, and April 2013 at the Boston Marathon. How did the multiple perpetrators of those well-coordinated attacks — all of which were carried out prior to Snowden’s June 2013 revelations — hide their communications from detection?"

Corporate news media, caught red-handed here with this new new government reporting line is, says Greenwald, "A glaring case where propagandists can’t keep their stories straight. The implicit premise of this accusation is that The Terrorists didn’t know to avoid telephones or how to use effective encryption until Snowden came along and told them. Yet we’ve been warned for years and years before Snowden that The Terrorists are so diabolical and sophisticated that they engage in all sorts of complex techniques to evade electronic surveillance."

He then goes into some deep detail to prove that point.

Before the reader goes too deep into buying this new, corporate news media line of reporting about the Paris attacks, read The Intercept story found here.

You'll be glad you did, this time around.

Source Fair.org