The CIA/MSM Contra-Cocaine Cover-up. Exclusive: With Hollywood set to release a movie about the Contra-cocaine scandal and the destruction of journalist Gary Webb, an internal CIA report has surfaced showing how the spy agency manipulated the mainstream media’s coverage to disparage Webb and contain the scandal, reports Robert Parry. By Robert Parry In 1996 – as major U.S. news outlets disparaged the Nicaraguan Contra-cocaine story and destroyed the career of investigative reporter Gary Webb for reviving it – the CIA marveled at the success of its public-relations team guiding the mainstream media’s hostility toward both the story and Webb, according to a newly released internal report.
Entitled “Managing a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story,” the six-page report describes the CIA’s damage control after Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series was published in the San Jose Mercury-News in August 1996. Journalist Gary Webb holding a copy of his Contra-cocaine article in the San Jose Mercury-News. “As an L.A. The War Photo No One Would Publish. NPR Is Laundering CIA Talking Points to Make You Scared of NSA Reporting. The new headquarters for National Public Radio (NPR) on North Capitol Street in Washington (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) On August 1, NPR’s Morning Edition broadcast a story by NPR national security reporter Dina Temple-Raston touting explosive claims from what she called “a tech firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.”
That firm, Recorded Future, worked together with “a cyber expert, Mario Vuksan, the CEO of ReversingLabs,” to produce a new report that purported to vindicate the repeated accusation from U.S. officials that “revelations from former NSA contract worker Edward Snowden harmed national security and allowed terrorists to develop their own countermeasures.” The “big data firm,” reported NPR, says that it now “has tangible evidence” proving the government’s accusations.
With this report, Temple-Raston seriously misled NPR’s millions of listeners. The connection between Recorded Future and the U.S. intelligence community is long known. Worse, Temple-Raston knows all of this. Palestine-Israel Journal: <b>The Intifada, <i>Hasbara</i> and the Media</b> Iraq and the Media. Bush speaks about Iraq invasion--Photo Credit: War Made Easy/Media Education Foundation 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. This timeline is 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. —Speaking of the need to disarm Iraq, George W.
How Roger Ailes Built the Fox News Fear Factory | Rolling Stone Politics. Nieman Watchdog > Commentary > At least 1,400 arrests for antiwar dissent, but who’s counting? Not the press. COMMENTARY | July 22, 2011 The national news media almost totally ignore homefront protests of the Afghanistan war, killer drones, torture, and more, regardless of their newsworthiness. By its lack of coverage, isn’t the press thus helping perpetuate an endless war? Part of a Nieman Watchdog series, 'Reporting the Endgame' [Also read our follow-up story in which a Washington Post editor tries to explain his paper's lack of coverage of antiwar protest: Coulda, woulda, shoulda coverage of antiwar protests.] Antiwar activists repeatedly stage dramatic acts of civil disobedience in the United States but are almost entirely ignored by mainstream print and broadcast news organizations. During the Vietnam era, press coverage of the fighting and opposition to it at home helped turn public opinion against the war.
This time around lack of homefront coverage may be helping keep military involvement continue on and on. Cenk Uygur and the ethos of corporate-owned media - Glenn Greenwald. Before being named six months ago as interim host of MSNBC’s 6:00 p.m. program, Cenk Uygur blogged at liberal sites, hosted a popular Internet and radio show aimed at a young audience (The Young Turks), and had a regular segment on Dylan Ratigan’s MSNBC show called “The Daily Rant.”
As one might expect, his style was combative, irreverent, and even at times angry, and he was often highly critical of both political parties and President Obama (though his anger at Democrats was typically due to what he perceived as excessive capitulation to the GOP). Last night, despite what The New York Times called “solid” (but not “stand-out”) ratings, it was announced that MSNBC was replacing Uygur with Rev. Al Sharpton; Uygur — in a 17-minute YouTube segment on his Young Turks show (posted below) — then announced that he had rejected MSNBC’s apparently lucrative offer to stay on in various other roles and explained what happened and why. I said on the air that most politicians are corrupt. How a clueless "terrorism expert" set media suspicion on Muslims after Oslo horror. Immediately after news of the bombing of government buildings in Norway’s capital Oslo, the Internet buzzed with speculation about who might have done it and why.
Most speculation focused on so-called Islamist militancy and Muslims. The urge to speculate after grave events is understandable, but the focus of speculation, its amplification through social media, its legitimization in mainstream media, and the privilege granted to so-called experts is a common pattern. The danger of such speculation is that it adds little knowledge but causes real harm by spreading fear and loathing of Muslims, immigrants and other vulnerable and routinely demonized populations, and whether intentional or not, assigns collective guilt to them. “Experts” who supposedly study this topic — almost always white men and very often with military or government backgrounds — direct suspicion toward Muslims by pointing to claims of responsibility on “jihadi” web sites that only they have access to.
The omnipotence of Al Qaeda and meaninglessness of "Terrorism" - Glenn Greenwald. For much of the day yesterday, the featured headline on The New York Times online front page strongly suggested that Muslims were responsible for the attacks on Oslo; that led to definitive statements on the BBC and elsewhere that Muslims were the culprits. The Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin wrote a whole column based on the assertion that Muslims were responsible, one that, as James Fallows notes, remains at the Post with no corrections or updates. The morning statement issued by President Obama — “It’s a reminder that the entire international community holds a stake in preventing this kind of terror from occurring” and “we have to work cooperatively together both on intelligence and in terms of prevention of these kinds of horrible attacks” — appeared to assume, though (to its credit) did not overtly state, that the perpetrator was an international terrorist group.
How’s that again? Are the only terrorists in the world Muslim? Armchair Generalist: Information Operations. This diary by Tirge Caps over at daily Kos caught my eye - it references an article in Parameters by Kenneth Payne , a BBC news producer, on the uses of media during wartime. It's rare enough to find a pro-military post at daily Kos (no reflection on Kos, rather his audience), and it reminded me that I really need to check out the articles in Parameters more often. Payne does a great job in outlining the very complicated relationship between the media and the military during combat operations. He notes that the international media, while acting in a noncombatant status, is hardly neutral when it comes to reporting. Events reported during conflicts, from Vietnam through current operations, have often been selectively biased toward and against the U.S. military (some might argue, more against than toward).
So the question is, should (or perhaps more appropriately, how should) the military influence the activities and output of the media? This isn't as cut and dried as one might think. The left/right litmus test for journalists doesn't work anymore. - By Jack Shafer. Whenever conservatives talk to liberals about press bias—or vice versa—they talk right past one another.
Both factions seem to work backward from their conclusions to the evidence and damn what the other side says. For a prime example, see the "Are the Media Liberal? " debate in National Review Online from last week. In it, conservative L. In his first response to Alterman, Bozell calls liberal media bias "obvious," "documented," and "proven" and cites a "national survey of the Washington-based media commissioned by the Gannett media organization" to demonstrate the press corps' essential liberality. In 1992, by 89-7 percent, [press members surveyed] voted for Bill Clinton over George Bush; that by 50-14 percent they see themselves as Democrats over Republicans; and that while 61 percent describe themselves as liberal, only two percent dare call themselves "conservative. " ... Such lopsided numbers would turn anybody's head. But the old litmus paper has lost its magic.
Conservatives outraged at Juan Williams’ NPR firing didn’t care when CNN correspondent met the same fate. “I will no longer accept interview requests from NPR as long as they are going to practice a form of censorship,” said former Arkansas governor and Fox News talk show host Mike Huckabee today. He was responding to the announcement that Fox News analyst Juan Williams had been let go from a similar role at NPR. The firing was a result of comments made by Williams on Bill O’Reilly’s show, in which he said he gets “worried” and “nervous” whenever he gets on a plane with people wearing Muslim garb. There have been hundreds of conservative bloggers and commentators who have attacked NPR in the wake of this firing, claiming political censorship and a liberal bias (the censorship issue stems from funding public radio receives from the government, though a large percentage of its revenue comes from private donors).
Bill O’Reilly accused NPR of being a “left-wing outfit that wants one opinion.” So how did conservative bloggers’ coverage of Nasr’s firing compare to Williams’? Online NewsHour: CPB Report Accuses Tomlinson of Political Meddling -- November 15, 2005. SPOKESPERSON: I want to thank especially the inspector general. JEFFREY BROWN: The release today of a report by the agency’s inspector general comes amid a tumultuous year at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. CPB is a nonprofit private organization established by Congress in 1967. It helps fund PBS and National Public Radio as well as individual programs, including the NewsHour. KENNETH TOMLINSON: Let’s call the session of CPB board of directors to order. JEFFREY BROWN: Today’s report examined actions by Kenneth Tomlinson, who served as CPB chairman until September. Tomlinson had remained on the CPB board, but resigned earlier this month after objecting to the preliminary findings of the inspector general’s report.
As chairman, he’d been vocal in alleging liberal bias in public broadcasting and helped bring a new conservative-oriented program, the Journal Editorial Report, to PBS. Last year, Tomlinson commissioned a study examining PBS and NPR programming for bias. The New York Times Torture Euphemism Generator! Bill Maher Daily Show | Maher Jon Stewart | Maher Rally to Restore Sanity. Wow. It looks like Keith Olbermann isn’t the only big liberal star to have a problem with the message espoused by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert at last week’s rally. On tonight’s Real Time, Bill Maher also had a problem with the way Stewart seemed to equate the extremes on the Left with the extremes on the Right. During an extended (and sure to be debated) New Rule, Maher argued that he didn’t “need to pretend that both sides have a point here.”
Here’s some choice quotes from Maher’s argument: “The message of the rally, as I heard it, was that, if the media stopped giving voice to the crazies on both sides, then maybe we could restore sanity. There’s been a lot of talk about how the Tea Party has been causing a rift in the Republican establishment. A Civil War between the fans of Stewart/Colbert and Maher is definitely interesting to imagine.
Check out the clip from HBO below: Rachel Maddow Clashes With Jon Stewart, Civilly, In Hour's Worth Of Interview Excerpts. EXCLUSIVE: Two Journalists Recount Their Experiences Reporting from Gaza 2 of 3. An embed's tale from the dark side | This Just In | MEDIA. MEDIAAn embed’s tale from ‘the dark side’BY DAN KENNEDY It was perhaps the most astounding media story to come out of the war in Iraq. This past Sunday, Jules Crittenden, the Boston Herald reporter embedded with the Army’s Third Infantry Division, described how he " went over to the dark side.
" While rolling through Baghdad, Crittenden called out the positions of three Iraqi soldiers aiming rocket-propelled grenades at the vulnerable, " lightly armored " vehicle he was riding in so that an American gunner could kill them. " I saw one man’s body splatter as the large caliber bullets ripped it up, " Crittenden wrote. " The man behind him appeared to be rising, and was cut down by repeated bursts.
" Crittenden then added: " Some in our profession might think that as a reporter and non-combatant, I was there only to observe. Crittenden’s pre-emptive defensiveness notwithstanding, you’d have to search high and low to find anyone willing to criticize him for what he did. :The View From Iraq is Getting Narrower Just as Things Are Getting Worse..." Media Under Fire: Reporting Conflict in Iraq. TBS 11: Media on Media. Media Bias. Courtesy: The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise & Dr. Mitchell G. Bard Myths & Facts Online: The Media MYTH “Press coverage of Israel is proportional to its importance in world affairs.” FACT It is hard to justify the amount of news coverage given to Israel based on that nation's importance in world affairs or American national interests.
How is it that a country the size of New Jersey routinely merits top billing over seemingly more newsworthy nations like Russia, Chinaa and Great Britain? Israel probably has the highest per capita fame quotient in the world. One reason Americans are so knowledgeable about Israel is the extent of coverage. MYTH “Israel receives so much attention because it is the only country in the Middle East that affects U.S. interests.” FACT The Middle East is important to the United States (and the Western world) primarily because of its oil resources. Israel is the one Middle East country where a correspondent can find a girl friend. — S. Signed Case Study. Media bias undermines truth and peace (by Ray Hanania) - Media Monitors Network (MMN) "One of the most egregious distortions is the canard that Arabs reward suicide bombers by giving their families monies.
" One of the reasons why there is no resolution to the Palestine-Israel conflict is that the media, mainly the pro-Israel American media, continues to distort facts, exaggerate stereotypes and lie. What’s new, you might ask? The American media has been doing that forever, but not as much as it does on behalf of Israel. Much of the bias comes from reporters who have a religious affinity to Israel, or reporters who simply are racist. But oftentimes, most of the bias is the result of journalistic laziness, or worse, convenient ignorance that goes hand-in-hand with the propaganda of Israel’s more extremist supporters. In fact, I heard this exaggerated lie repeated by Jack Cafferty, CNN’s capable, resident curmudgeon.
Cafferty’s whole shtick is to act and sound like an angry old man. I thought, okay, let’s find out if that is true. That’s not logic. Media Bias by Sendhil Mullainathan, Andrei Shleifer. Media Bias Kills People (by Claiborne M. Clark) - Media Monitors Network. Search: media bias. Media Ethics and Accountability in the Yahoo. Welcome to CAMERA. Media Matters for America. Center for Media and Public Affairs.