As progressive criticism of the Obama administration has intensified, the critics of the critics have stepped forward to defend the White House. Much of the case comes down to saying that Obama's lefty critics don't know how the game is played in Washington. Jonathan Chait from the New Republic had a New York Times Magazine piece this weekend (9/4/11) taking issue with Obama critics like Glenn Greenwald, accusing them of "magical thinking" about the power of the presidency. As the argument goes, Congress can stop what the White House wants to do, so you can't blame Obama for not winning [...]
Sep
06
2011
NYT's Misleading Rendition of the Reason for Rendition
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Documents discovered in Libya suggest a close relationship between the Libyan government and the CIA. The New York Times described it this way on September 3: TRIPOLI, Libya — Documents found at the abandoned office of Libya's former spymaster appear to provide new details of the close relations the Central Intelligence Agency shared with the Libyan intelligence service — most notably suggesting that the Americans sent terrorism suspects at least eight times for questioning in Libya despite that country's reputation for torture. And then today (9/6/11) the Times put it this way: The cooperation appeared to be far greater with [...]
Jun
03
2011
Politico Uses Anonymous Sources to Attack Hersh…for Using Anonymous Sources
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Seymour Hersh reports in the New Yorker (6/6/11–subscription required) that there is s virtually no evidence Iran has a nuclear weapons program, despite huge efforts on the part of the U.S. to prove otherwise. Though Hersh's findings do not contradict the past two National Intelligence Estimates, they do fly in the face of long-held official and corporate media views. Corporate media routinely treat the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program as a matter of fact. New York Times reporter Michael Gordon has done it at least twice (2/24/03, 10/19/04), in one case suggesting that a U.S.-friendly regime in Iraq might pressure [...]
Nov
19
2010
Torture and the 'Problem' With the Courts
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The civilian trial of terrorism suspect Ahmed Ghailani, who was linked to the U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, was unsatisfying to those who believe that accused terroristsshould not be tried in civilian courts. To them, the scoreboard tells the story: Ghailani was convicted on one count, and acquitted onover 280 other charges. The newspaper headlines today lay out the problem: USA Today (11/19/10): Detainee's Acquittals Spark Debate Over Civilian Trials Washington Post (11/19/10): Verdict in Terror Case a Setback for Advocates of Civilian Trials A more rational media system would discuss the verdict primarily as a resultof the [...]
Sep
10
2010
Militarization of State Dept. Stirs Little Media Interest
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When Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies appeared on FAIR's radio show CounterSpin last week, she challenged Barack Obama's assertions that U.S. combat in Iraq was ending and that the last combat brigade was leaving the country, describing the plans the U.S. actually has in store for Iraq: The policy has not changed. It is true that the number of troops are significantly lower than they were at their height of 165,000; it's now down to about 50,000. That's a good thing. Reduction in troops is a good thing. But the notion that this troop reduction somehow means [...]
Aug
12
2010
Jeffrey Goldberg Pushes for War With Iraq–er, Make That Iran
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Former Israeli soldier and current writer for the Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg has a long cover story (9/10) on the "better than 50 percent chance" that Israel will launch air strikes against Iran by next July, with the aim of taking out the alleged nuclear threat from the Islamic Republic. Based on roughly 40 interviews with American, Arab and Israeli officials–some of them anonymously–Goldberg meanders from describing the worst-case scenario for what will happen after Israel attacks Iran to relaying dubious Israeli claims about how Iran is the new Nazi Germany to an analysis of Netanyahu's relationship with his right-wing 100-year-old [...]
Jul
08
2010
What Gets You Fired From CNN
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Octavia Nasr has been a Mideast correspondent for CNN for 20 years, and was their senior editor of Mideast affairs. Until yesterday. On hearing of the death of a Hezbollah leader, she posted the following on her Twitter feed: Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot. This expression of sympathy offended some, who were outraged that a journalist would say anything likethat about anyone associated with Hezbollah. Nasr explained in a follow-up on CNN's website: I used the words "respect" and "sad" because to me, as a Middle [...]
Jun
28
2010
Journalistic Standards Plunging, Say Anonymous Name-Calling Friends
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Salon's Glenn Greenwald has an illuminating post (6/27/10) that argues that the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, with his "self-praising, desperately insecure need to tout his own wisdom, knowledge and expertise, while demeaning those who are not admitted to his Special Club…is a perfectly illustrative face of the American establishment media." Responding to Goldberg's assertion (Atlantic, 6/25/10) that the resignation of Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel after making anti-conservative comments in what he thought was a private forum reflected "a lack of adult supervision, and…the proper amount of toilet-training," Greenwald wrote: In his first post arguing that Weigel's hiring evinced the Post's [...]
Jun
15
2010
The Real Ed Henry
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NPR's Brooke Gladstone (On the Media, 6/11/10) interviewed CNN's Ed Henry about thesquirt-gun party at the vice president's mansion that Henry giddily tweeted about: BROOKE GLADSTONE: If these events don't influence coverage, why do you think the White House throws them? Do they just want to shoot you with a super-soaker? ED HENRY: Maybe they wanna actually get to know us as people sometimes. And Glenn Greenwald (Salon, 2/15/10) comments: Marc Ambinder disclosed that it was the DNC that paid for the party.But Ed Henry thinks that they do that because Rahm Emanuel and Joe Biden and the other White [...]
Feb
23
2010
To the NYT, Advocates of Killing More Civilians Are Something to Seek Out
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Salon's Glenn Greenwald has had a couple of posts (2/18/10, 2/22/10) on a New York Times op-ed (2/18/10) that urged the U.S. to not worry so much about killing civilians in Afghanistan. The piece was written by Lara M. Dadkhah, who is vaguely identified as an "intelligence analyst" and who notes that she is "employed by a defense consulting company." Greenwald's second post reports that Dadkhah actually works for Booz Hamilton, a very well-connected military and intelligence contractor. Greenwald quotes from a response that media critic Charles Kaiser got from Times op-ed editor David Shipley when he asked about Dadkhah's [...]
Jan
13
2010
Nameless Sources and the Crisis of Accountability
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Glenn Greenwald (Salon, 1/12/10) makes an excellent point about the corrosive effect of the widespread use of anonymous sourcing by the most powerful U.S. news outlets. After listing a number of false stories that got prominent coverage in U.S. media, Greenwald writes: Unjustified anonymity–especially when mindlessly repeating what shielded government sources claim in secret–is the single greatest enabler of false and deceitful"reporting."… None of the falsehoods documented here will ever lead to any accountability, because the identity of the falsehood-producers will be shielded by their loyal journalist-servants, and the journalists themselves will simply claim that they wrote what they did [...]
Sep
04
2009
Big Media Ponder Source of Right's 'Media Firestorms'
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One of the items enumerated in Glenn Greenwald's round-up of "Various Matters" for Salon (9/4/09, ad-viewing required) addresses how NBC's "Chuck Todd this week noted the series of petty scandals the right has been manufacturing and remarked: 'The ability of some conservatives to create media firestorms is still much greater than liberals these days'"–which viewpoint Greenwald calls out as really reflective of one of the more irritating media syndromes: their tendency to talk about media coverage as though they have nothing to do with it and can't exert any influence over it; media coverage is just something that happens to [...]
Aug
28
2009
'Meaningful Change' at the New Republic
Glenn Greenwald (8/27/09, ad-viewing required) of Salon's series of New Republic quotes morphing from condemning a perceived "anti-Lieberman jihad" to calling for "knocking off Democrats like Conrad and Joe Lieberman" charts the outlet's "rapid and total reversal–one effectuated without the slightest acknowledgment that it even occurred." Calling the change "just the accountability-free nature of Beltway punditry," Greenwald also spies "a more important point highlighted here": namely, it is a sign of how dysfunctional the Democratic Party is–and how meaningless is their glorious super-majority–that even the New Republic, which long prided itself on safeguarding the party from nefarious left-wing influences, is [...]
