Co-dependency in a nutshell

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Trump and the Press

He's still whining about the New York Times.

Trump on Monday met with top executives and news anchors and hosts from major television networks.

In its coverage of that meeting, the Times said Trump “let them have it.”

He had planned to next meet with editors and reporters at the Times, which he frequently criticized during the campaign and after winning the election.

The newspaper announced earlier this month that it added 41,000 new subscriptions in the week after the election.

  The Hill

Such a nasty newspaper.

And not just the New York Times.

A glittering array of media stars and network executives made pilgrimage on Monday to the 25th floor of Trump Tower to meet with the president-elect. They all agreed that the discussions would be “off-the-record”: meaning they would conceal from their viewers what they discussed. Shortly after the meeting ended, several of the stars violated the agreement they made, running to The New York Post and David Remnick of the New Yorker to whine about Trump’s mean behavior. “The participants all shook Trump’s hand at the start of the session and congratulated him,” Remnick reported, “but things went south from there.”

[...]

To begin with, why would journalistic organizations agree to keep their meeting with Donald Trump off-the-record? If you’re a journalist, what is the point of speaking with a powerful politician if you agree in advance that it’s all going to be kept secret?

  Glenn Greenwald

Ummmm...to get privileged access?

Whether or not it actually is collusion, whether or not it actually is subservient ring-kissing in exchange for access, it certainly appears to be that.

[...]

[N]obody really believes that a discussion that takes place in a room filled with a couple dozen TV stars and their media bosses is going to be kept private, so the “off-the-record” agreement does not actually foster candor. It’s instead designed to achieve nothing other than creating a cozy atmosphere where [...] media stars get to feel like they’re colleagues and friends with the President rather than his adversaries.

[...]

[A]s was completely predictable, some of the TV stars immediately breached the off-the-record commitment they made – not by bravely reporting what occurred but by slinking around in the dark to anonymously whisper and gossip about what Trump said to them.

[...]

At least two of them ran to David Remnick to whine about how mean and critical Trump was. Remnick himself was outraged on their behalf, and conveyed this pitifully amusing anecdote:

[...] The television people thought that they were being summoned to ask questions; Trump has not held a press conference since late July. Instead, they were subjected to a stream of insults and complaints—and not everyone absorbed it with pleasure.

“I have to tell you, I am emotionally fucking pissed,” another participant said. “How can this not influence coverage? [...] After the meeting today, though—and I am being human with you here—I think, Fuck him! I know I am being emotional about it. And I know I will get over it in a couple of days after Thanksgiving. But I really am offended. This was unprecedented. Outrageous!”

"And I know I will get over it in a couple of days after Thanksgiving." And dutifully drop knee to the Fuhrer.

“I know I will get over it in a couple of days after Thanksgiving.” We believe you.

[...]

Rather than doing their jobs and being adversarial to Trump, rather than responding to this sort of bullying with some dignity and return aggression, it is a very good bet that they will respond with greater submission (the way they all stayed passively in their assigned press pens during Trump rallies).

[...]

[I]f they really believed “that they were being summoned to ask questions,” a form of a press conference, then what remote justification is there for keeping it a secret?

[...]

Donald Trump hates the U.S. media, as does the overwhelming majority of Americans. Even though every pampered star in that room is paid many millions of dollar a year and is flattered on a daily basis by teams of underlings, they are not actually entitled to respect and admiration, especially not from the powerful politicians they cover. [...] Who cares if Trump is nice to Wolf Blitzer and Phil Griffin?

[...]

Remnick writes that “Trump whined” in the meeting and showed how “vain” he is. That may be true, but the same is true of his anonymous friends for whose petty grievances he is crusading. There is much oppression in the world and many serious concerns as Trump heads to the Oval Office; how Trump speaks to Chuck Todd and Jeff Zucker is not on that list.

He's going to have a lot of papers to sue.

UPDATE:

“We will cover him fairly and aggressively, and we will not let his criticism of us sway us or keep us from doing what we have to do,” says Dean Baquet of the New York Times. “In my mind our mission is clearer than it’s ever been: we have to cover the giant story of this extraordinary White House, which is going to change American politics and policy for years to come, as aggressively, truthfully and honestly as we can.”

  Guardian

And no Trump voter will be reading you.

UPDATE: NYPost article with quotes.

Rewriting History

FAIR has noted before how America’s well-documented clandestine activities in Syria have been routinely ignored when the corporate media discuss the Obama administration’s “hands-off” approach to the four-and-a-half-year-long conflict. This past week, two pieces—one in the New York Times detailing the “finger pointing” over Obama’s “failed” Syria policy, and a Vox “explainer” of the Syrian civil war—did one better: They didn’t just omit the fact that the CIA has been arming, training and funding rebels since 2012, they heavily implied they had never done so.

[...]

Reuters and the Washington Post’s reports on the US’s Syrian strategy revamp, while they didn’t fudge history as bad as the Times and Vox, also ignored any attempts by the CIA to back Syrian opposition rebels. This crucial piece of history is routinely omitted from mainstream public discourse.

[...]

By whitewashing the West’s clandestine involvement in Syria, the media not only portrays Russia as the sole contributor to hostilities, it absolves Europe and the United States of their own guilt in helping create a refugee crisis and fuel a civil war that has devastated so many for so long.

[...]

How can the public have an honest conversation about what the US should or shouldn’t do in Syria next when the most respected newspaper in the US can’t honestly acknowledge what we have done thus far?

  Adam Johnson

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

NBC Shills for Israel

NBC host David Gregory was forced to issue a correction at the end of his weekly Meet the Press program on Sunday after a United Nations official confronted him for using a unconfirmed Israeli video that allegedly showed Hamas shooting rockets from a UN school

[...]

“The Israeli government has released videotape within the past hour, it was posted on YouTube, NBC News hasn’t independently verified,” Gregory explained to [UN Relief & Works Agency spokesperson Chris] Gunness. “The Israelis say — and I realize that you cannot see this video, our audience can, and I’m going to describe it to you — that purports to show rockets being fired from a UN school.”

[...]

“Look, to be fair to me, to bring me on a live program and expect me to comment live on air on pictures I haven’ actually seen, I think anyone looking at this program would agree that’s really unfair,” Gunness insisted. “I mean, if I can see it, I’ll happily comment on it.”

At the conclusion of the program, Gregory said that the United Nations had “confirmed that the video does not show rockets being fired from a UN-administrated school in Gaza.”

“So this is a back and forth that we are not able to settle at this point,” Gregory said.

  RT

So we’ll leave you believing that it COULD be what Israel says it is, and that the UN is aiding and abetting the firing of rockets on Israel.

What Luck!

That chemical weapons attack in Syria and the cyber attack as well, coming along when they did, gives us some other news focus than the NSA spying. Wasn't that lucky timing? I mean, all this time that the Syrian conflict has been dragging on with conventional tools.

Defining Away the Problem

About Obama's kill list:  You can't kill civilians with drones if there are no civilians.

The Colbert Report
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A new report from a team of British and Pakistani journalists finds one U.S. drone strike occurs every four days in Pakistan. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan have killed as many as 775 civilians, including 168 children, since 2004. The report also challenges a recent claim by President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, that no civilians have been killed in the drone attacks for nearly a year. According to the Bureau’s researchers, at least 45 civilians were killed in 10 U.S. attacks during the last year.

  Democracy Now

Early this morning, the U.S. fired a missile from a drone in northwest Pakistan — its first since the NYT story – and killed two people.

[...]

Chris Woods, Senior Reporter with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which has done sterling work in documenting drone attacks in Pakistan, emails today to say this:

Today’s strike is far from clear right now: maybe one – or two events. May also involve civilian deaths (Dawn reports that the motorbike was accidentally hit). . . .

There’s also an obverse to this coin. As well as reporting all those killed as “militants”, the mainstream US media is consistently failing to report when civilians are credibly reported killed, even as media internationally do so.

Excepting today, civilians have only been reported killed twice in Pakistan in 2012, from 17 attacks (February 9 and May 24). On both occasions civilian deaths were reported by major international agencies (Reuters, AP etc), and picked up worldwide (eg BBC, Jerusalem Post…) But not within the US. I can find no reference to civilian casualties in any mainstream US publication on either occasion (for the May 24 attack most also censored out the fact that a mosque was hit.)

So the US mainstream media is not only classing all victims – regardless of known status – as “militants.” It is actively censoring out actual reports of civilian deaths.

  Glenn Greenwald

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

We Know Who You're Talking To

As a national security representative told Lucy Dalglish, director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, “We’re not going to subpoena reporters in the future. We don’t need to. We know who you’re talking to” . . . .

  Miami Herald

We know.  We're collecting data, we're listening to your conversations.  We're reading your emails.

Obama took office pledging tolerance and even support for whistleblowers, but instead is prosecuting them with a zeal that’s historically unprecedented. His Justice Department has conducted six prosecutions over leaks of classified information to reporters. Five involve the Espionage Act, a powerful law that had previously been used only four times since it was enacted in 1917 to prosecute spies.

Some spies. We’re no longer in the era of Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen or Kim Philby, infamous Cold War turncoats.

Instead, there’s Thomas Drake, a career official of the National Security Agency, who faced 35 years in prison for telling a Baltimore Sun reporter about what The New York Times called “a potential billion-dollar computer boondoggle.” At stake was bureaucratic embarrassment, not national security. (The case against Drake collapsed last summer.)

Then there’s Shamai Leibowitz, a translator for the FBI, who believed he had intercepted evidence of illegal influence-peddling by the Israeli embassy. When his boss wouldn’t act, he leaked transcripts to a blogger. He got 20 months.

Ex-CIA agent John Kiriakou was indicted in January for allegedly identifying a Guantánamo interrogator (who was not working undercover;) Stephen Kim, a State Department analyst, allegedly told a reporter for Fox News — wait for it — that the U.S. was worried North Korea might respond to new U.N. sanctions by testing another A-bomb; and Jeffrey Sterling, who allegedly disclosed a botched CIA operation in Iran that was described in a 2006 book by a Times reporter.

And there’s the biggest case, the court martial of Bradley Manning, the Army private accused of engineering the mammoth dumps of U.S. military and diplomatic data that Wikileaks, the online whistleblower network, turned over to leading newspapers in 2010 and 2011.

[...]

If the news media publish sensitive information, fully believing it ought to be made public, how can they stand by without protest when the government punishes the people who furnished it?

[It is] just as necessary for a government to shield its own actions from any transparency and scrutiny as it is to know everything which citizens are doing and saying. That’s the one-way mirror which all authoritarian regimes attempt to construct: those in power know everything about the conduct of those who are ruled, while those who are ruled know nothing about the conduct of those in power. That’s what keeps the power dynamic so imbalanced in one direction.

  Glenn Greenwald

Oh, Gee; I Missed It

The debut of Julian Assange’s television show on Kremlin-created RT a couple weeks ago produced some debate over state-controlled propaganda. This is why I found all the hand-wringing in the American media over his show to be so disingenuous. If an American media figure wants to rail about state-subservient media propaganda, they don’t need to look to all the way to Moscow to find it.

[...]

[L]ast night’s one-hour melodramatic extravaganza hosted by NBC News anchor Brian Williams [the bin Laden show ] — “Inside the Situation Room” — was hagiography in its purest, most propagandistic, and most subservient form.

[...]

In essence, the entire show was devoted to uncritical veneration of our national political and military leaders. It was as vapid as it was propagandistic; as Josh Gerstein wrote: “Much of the program was devoted to the thoughts and feelings of the senior officials involved and to such details as Biden clutching his Rosary ring as the raid unfolded and the sourcing of the food consumed by officials on that fateful day.” We got to hear about how the President’s daughters reacted upon hearing of bin Laden’s death, and how very difficult it was for him to attend the White House Correspondents’ dinner that evening.

[...]

There was no dissent, no critical scrutiny of claims, no raising of difficult questions, no facts revealed.

[...]

Whatever one’s position is on the killing of Osama bin Laden — and I’ve always argued that there is a range of reasonable views — there are many journalistically important questions and significant disparities that still need serious examination (with all due respect (i.e., none) to John Kerry’s dictate that we all “shut up and move on”).

[...]

[D]ue to multiple conflicting White House claims [there are] numerous unanswered questions about what really happened on the raid.

There’s also the question of why Obama aides like John Brennan spouted outright falsehoods to the world on key questions (such as whether bin Laden was armed or used his wife as a “human shield” and whether there was a “shootout” in the house). There are conflicting claims about whether a full video recording of the raid exists. There’s the contradictory administration behavior of resisting lawsuits seeking any disclosure about the raid on secrecy grounds while simultaneously boasting publicly about the details of the raid for political gain. And there’s the question of whether previous American statements — and the principles of Nuremberg — would have made it better (or even legally necessary) to apprehend bin Laden for trial; whether doing so was reasonably possible; and whether that was permitted by the mission plan.

  Glenn Greenwald

Yo, Glen. Who cares? We killed that sonofabitch bin Laden. He-Man Obama is a great warrior chief. Now shut up and move on.

America's Watchdog Press

This weekend, the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner was held, and it is [...] the purest expression of the total blending of political power, media subservience, and vapid celebrity in one toxic, repulsive, and destructive package. It’s imperial rot — the Versailles virus — in its most virulent form.

[...]

[It is the culmination of media personalities (especially like those at MSNBC)] praising the President and attacking his political opponents and [then being] amply rewarded with all sorts of “exclusive” interviews with White House officials and Obama campaign aides, which are exactly as hard-hitting and adversarial as you’d expect. This dog-training treatment of media figures was just as prevalent — and just as effective — during the Bush years (although, as someone with many dogs, I can honestly say that actual dogs are much more difficult to train than these journalists, who just need one or two biscuit crumbs in exchange for life-long devotion and obedience).

[...]

It’s what David Halberstam meant when he spoke to Columbia Journalism School students less than a year before his death in 2007 and said: “By and large, the more famous you are, the less of a journalist you are.” [...] One could similarly say: the more the White House chooses you for all sorts of rewards, invitations, access and favors, and the more praise it lavishes on you, the less of a journalist and the more of a state propagandist you are.

[...]

When I first began writing about politics, I mistakenly thought that the bias of the Bush-worshipping establishment media was a pro-GOP bias. It isn’t (and it’s obviously not a “liberal bias”). That’s not how they function. They aren’t nearly so substantive as to be driven by any sort of belief or ideology or anything like that. Their religion is the worship of political power and authority (or, as Jay Rosen says, their religion is the Church of the Savvy). Royal court courtiers have long competed with one another to curry favor with the King and his minions in exchange for official favor, and this is just that dynamic. Political power is what can give them their treats — their “exclusive” interviews and getting tapped on their grateful heads to get secret documents and invited to White House functions and being allowed into the sacred Situation Room – so it’s what they revere and serve.

  Glenn Greenwald

It's how they make their money.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's Sunday - and Easter

Charlie Pierce yesterday took exception to the major TV media lineup for Easter (today).

If this is the way you're going to handle religion, kids, why even try? This could have been a real donnybrook. Instead, as we tote up the scorecard, we find that, in its Paschal gatherings, our elite political media could find no room for Catholic liberals, no room for anyone who might inconvenience the Catholic hierarchy, no dissenting voices on gay issues, or on the hundreds of issues surrounding the Church's finagling with the rights of women. (Atheists? Please, stop, you're killing me.) But they can find room for a birther Mormon, the Thomas Kinkade of evangelical preachers, Timothy Dolan's prancing ego, and Ralph Fcking Reed.

Jesus wept.

And with damn good reason.

  Charles Pierce

Ralph Reed? I thought he had pretty much been disgraced and discredited. Although that almost seems impossible in our political culture – unless you get caught involved in a sex scandal.

Cleaver will also stop by CNN's "State of the Union," joining the Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody and Christian Coalition founder Ralph Reed for a roundtable discussion of religion and politics.

See, CNN, Ralph Reed is not a religious figure, unless you happen to go to confession every weekend in Indian casinos. His entire involvement in politics has been as a vandal and a shameless charlatan. Here he is in an e-mail from 1998, discussing his missionary work among native Americans.

"Hey, now that I'm done with electoral politics, I need to start humping in corporate accounts! I'm counting on you to help me with some contacts." -Ralph Reed to Jack Abramoff, via email, November 12, 1998

The only thing he knows about religion is that it's a good place to look for suckers, and the only thing he knows about politics is that the suckers can make you rich. He also likes to butch it up by talking about "body bags," as though he were some sort of tough guy, instead of an aluminum-siding salesman with a Bible in one hand, and Jack Abramoff's dick in the other.

Oh! Sorry. It's Sunday. And Easter. (That COULD have been a sex scandal.)

Enemy of the State

Or...Surpassing George W - Part Whatever.

“The government does not pursue every leak,” said Mark Corallo, who served as the Justice Department’s spokesman in Mr. Bush’s administration. “On balance, it is more important that the media have the ability to report. It’s important to our democracy.”

That does not seem to be the view of the Obama administration, which has brought more prosecutions against current or former government officials for providing classified information to the media than every previous administration combined.

[...]

MR. ASHCROFT authorized a single subpoena for reporters’ testimony or records in his four years in office, Mr. Corallo said. He would not say so, but that subpoena was probably the one that troubled Judge Sack in 2006. The reporters lost. In a dissent, Judge Sack said he feared for the future.

[...]

Consider the most recent prosecution, of John C. Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. agent who is said to have disclosed classified information to journalists in 2008 about the capture and interrogation of an operative of Al Qaeda.

[...]

The criminal complaint in the case says it is based largely on “e-mails recovered from search warrants served on two e-mail accounts associated with Kiriakou.”

Mr. Aftergood said the complaint provided both vivid glimpses of interactions between reporters and sources and proof of a new era in surveillance.

“The Kiriakou complaint is astonishing,” he said, “because you see the government delving into the innards of the news production process.”

[...]

In a second case, against Jeffrey A. Sterling, a former C.I.A. officer accused of providing classified information to another Times reporter, James Risen, for a 2006 book, the government has been more aggressive, insisting that Mr. Risen must testify.

[...]

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, [...] described a conference in June organized by the Aspen Institute that brought together lawyers, journalists and intelligence officials to talk about government secrecy. The ground rules, she said, were that the identities of those involved were to be kept confidential, but what was said could be reported.

“I was told in a rather cocky manner” by a national security representative [...]: “We don’t need to ask who you’re talking to. We know.”

The solution for reporters, Ms. Dalglish said, is to adopt Mr. Woodward’s methods from the 1970s. “For God’s sake, get off of e-mail,” she said. “Get off of your cellphone. Watch your credit cards. Watch your plane tickets. These guys in the N.S.A. know everything.”

Mr. Corallo, the former Justice Department spokesman, provided corresponding advice to government officials. “Don’t be stupid and use e-mail,” he said. “You have to meet a reporter face to face, hand him an envelope and walk away quickly.”

  NYT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Definition of Insanity

I used to find somewhat baffling this bizarre aspect of American public opinion: time and again, Americans support whatever new war of aggression their government proposes, then come to regret that support and decide the war was a “mistake,” only to demonstrate that they learned no lessons from their “mistake” by eagerly supporting whatever the next proposed war is. Thus did the widespread belief that Vietnam was a “mistake” have no impact on their support for the attack on Iraq, and now — with some polls showing Americans, before their government even proposes it, preliminarily willing to cheer on an attack on Iran — it is clear they have learned nothing from their acknowledged “mistake” in supporting the attack on Iraq. Most Americans continue with this strange mindset: we realize we were wrong to support those past wars you gave us, but we stand ready and eager to support this next one!

[...]

The only thing unusual here is that, with Iran, the American media actually seems out in front of the U.S. Government in the propaganda effort rather than in their normal position of submissively marching behind.

  Glenn Greenwald

They got tired of being number 2, or they're vying for the position of teacher's pet.

Read the whole article for all the latest in the Iran hysteria, the upshot of which is that we (US of Israel) constantly rattle our sabers over Iran while imposing harsh sanctions on its people and then crow about the possibility of an Iranian response to our actions, which would then of course require us to (oh so reluctantly and after much “diplomacy”) go to war against them.

And for more of the same, Justin Raimondo has a post up about an Armed Forces Journal article by Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis (Truth, lies and Afghanistan: How military leaders have let us down ) debunking the Pentagon's lies and laying much of the blame on the US media's embeddedness with the US military. I'm assuming Davis is retiring.

If Americans were able to compare the public statements many of our leaders have made with classified data, this credibility gulf would be immediately observable. Naturally, I am not authorized to divulge classified material to the public. But I am legally able to share it with members of Congress. I have accordingly provided a much fuller accounting in a classified report to several members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, senators and House members.

And good luck with THAT.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Raw Story Is Now Completely Under

They have been succumbing to mainstream flaws for quite a while, but I think they're there now. At least judging from this Raw Story headline's wild understatement vis-a-vis the picture.

Indeed.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Framing the Issue

There may be some subtle message here

AP informs us that Iran has built an unmanned aircraft with a range "far enough to reach Israel," but is curiously silent on whether it can also reach Kyrgyzstan, Cyprus or India.

  Distant Ocean

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Unrest in Russia

Vladimir Putin is set to face the biggest show of opposition yet to his strongman rule with tens of thousands of Russians promising to take to the streets on Saturday in a popular wave of discontent unseen since he came to power 12 years ago.

  UK Guardian

So all this unrest just came out of the blue. Those Arabs really started something, didn’t they? I’m having a sneaking suspicion that our news people have been lying their asses off for a very long time. And one of those lies was how popular Mr. Putin was. Oh wait, we used to like him when W looked into his eyes and saw a beautiful soul, so the news was different then.

Or more likely, they never bothered to actually investigate. They just looked at Russian news services which raved about Putin’s popularity. And manliness.

Okay, both reasons.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.