[toeslist] The merger of journalists and government officials
Riaz K Tayob
nn_greenwald/index.html> Tuesday, Dec 28, 2010 05:29 ET The merger
of journalists and government officials By Glenn
Greenwald<http://www.salon.com/author/glenn_greenwald/index.html>
*
[cid:part2.01020...@gmail.com] CNN
(updated below)
The video of the CNN debate I did last night about WikiLeaks with
former Bush Homeland Security Adviser (and CNN contributor) Fran
Townsend and CNN anchor Jessica Yellin is posted below. The way it
proceeded was quite instructive to me and I want to make four
observations about the discussion:
(1) Over the last month, I've done many television and radio segments
about WikiLeaks and what always strikes me is how indistinguishable
-- identical -- are the political figures and the journalists.
There's just no difference in how they think, what their values and
priorities are, how completely they've ingested and how eagerly
they recite the same anti-WikiLeaks, "Assange = Saddam" script. So
absolute is the WikiLeaks-is-Evil bipartisan orthodoxy among the
Beltway political and media class (forever cemented by the joint
Biden/McConnell decree that Assange is a "high-tech Terrorist,")
that you're viewed as being from another planet if you don't spout
it. It's the equivalent of questioning Saddam's WMD stockpile in
early 2003.
It's not news that establishment journalists identify with, are
merged into, serve as spokespeople for, the political class: that's
what makes them establishment journalists. But even knowing that,
it's just amazing, to me at least, how so many of these "debates"
I've done involving one anti-WikiLeaks political figure and one
ostensibly "neutral" journalist -- on
MSNBC<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDVmUk9CvRY> with The Washington
Post's Jonathan Capehart and former GOP Congresswoman Susan Molinari,
on
NPR<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/08/wikileaks>
with The New York Times' John Burns and former Clinton State
Department official James Rubin, and last night on CNN with Yellin
and Townsend -- entail no daylight at all between the "journalists"
and the political figures. They don't even bother any longer with
the pretense that they're distinct or play different assigned roles.
I'm not complaining here -- Yellin was perfectly fair and gave me
ample time -- but merely observing how inseparable are most American
journalists from the political officials they "cover."
(2) From the start of the WikiLeaks controversy, the most striking
aspect for
me<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/11/30/wikileaks>
has been that the ones who are leading the crusade against the
transparency brought about by WikiLeaks -- the ones most enraged
about the leaks and the subversion of government secrecy -- have
been . . . America's intrepid Watchdog journalists. What illustrates
how warped our political and media culture is as potently as that?
It just never seems to dawn on them -- even when you explain it --
that the transparency and undermining of the secrecy regime against
which they are angrily railing is supposed to be . . . what they
do.
What an astounding feat to train a nation's journalist class to
despise above all else those who shine a light on what the most
powerful factions do in the dark and who expose their corruption
and
deceit<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/24/wikileaks
/index.html>, and to have journalists -- of all people -- lead the
way in calling for the head of anyone who exposes the secrets of
the powerful. Most ruling classes -- from all eras and all cultures
-- could only fantasize about having a journalist class that thinks
that way, but most political leaders would have to dismiss that
fantasy as too extreme, too implausible, to pursue.
After all, how could you ever get journalists -- of all people --
to loathe those who bring about transparency and disclosure of
secrets? But, with a few noble
exceptions<http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/25/1988286/wikileaks-how-us-tri
ed-to-stop.html>, that's exactly the journalist class we have.
There will always be a soft spot in my heart for Jessica Yellin
because of that time when she unwittingly (though still bravely)
admitted on air
that<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2008/05/29/yellin/prin
t.html> -- when she worked at MSNBC -- NBC's corporate executives
constantly pressured the network's journalists to make their reporting
favorable to George Bush and the Iraq War (I say "unwittingly"
because she quickly walked back that
confession<http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/05/29/tv-news-under-the-microscope
/> after I and others wrote about it and a controversy ensued).
But, as Yellin herself revealed in that moment of rare TV self-exposure,
that's the government-subservient corporate culture in which these
journalists are trained and molded.
(3) It's extraordinary how -- even a full month into the uproar
over the diplomatic cable release -- extreme misinformation still
pervades these discussions, usually without challenge. It's
understandable that on the first day or in the first week of a
controversy, there would be some confusion; but a full month into
it, the most basic facts are still being wildly distorted.
Thus, there was Fran Townsend spouting the cannot-be-killed
lie<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/10/wikileaks_me
dia> that WikiLeaks indiscriminately dumped all the cables. And
I'm absolutely certain that had I not objected, that absolute
falsehood would have been unchallenged by Yellin and allowed to be
transmitted to CNN viewers as Truth. The same is true for the
casual assertion -- as though it's the clearest, most obvious fact
in the world -- that Assange "committed crimes" by publishing
classified information or that what he's doing is so obviously
different than what investigative journalists routinely do. These
are the unchallenged falsehoods transmitted over and over, day after
day, to the American viewing audience.
(4) If one thinks about it, there's something quite surreal about
sitting there listening to a CNN anchor and her fellow CNN employee
angrily proclaim that Julian Assange is a "terrorist" and a "criminal"
when the CNN employee doing that is . . . . George W. Bush's
Homeland Security and Terrorism adviser. Fran Townsend was a
high-level national security official for a President who destroyed
another nation with an illegal, lie-fueled military attack that
killed well over 100,000 innocent people, created a worldwide torture
regime, illegally spied on his own citizens without warrants,
disappeared people to CIA "black sites," and erected a due-process-free
gulag where scores of knowingly innocent
people<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article709
2435.ece> were put in cages for years. Julian Assange never did
any of those things, or anything like them. But it's Assange who
is the "terrorist" and the "criminal."
Do you think Jessica Yellin would ever dare speak as scornfully and
derisively about George Bush or his top officials as she does about
Assange? Of course not. Instead, CNN quickly hires Bush's Homeland
Security Adviser who then becomes Yellin's colleague and partner
in demonizing Assange as a "terrorist."
Or consider the theme that framed last night's segment: Assange
is profiting off classified information by writing a book! Beyond
the examples I gave, Bob Woodward has become a very rich man by
writing book after book filled with classified information about
America's wars which his sources were not authorized to give him.
Would Yellin ever in a million years dare lash out at Bob Woodward
the way she did Assange? To ask the question is to answer it (see
here as CNN's legal correspondent Jeffrey Toobin is completely
befuddled<http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/woodward-and-wikileaks.html>
in the middle of his anti-WikiLeaks rant when asked by a guest,
Clay Shirky, to differentiate what Woodward continuously does from
what Assange is doing).
They're all petrified to speak ill of Bob Woodward because he's a
revered spokesman of the royal court to which they devote their
full loyalty. Julian Assange, by contrast, is an actual adversary
-- not a pretend one -- of that royal court. And that -- and only
that -- is what is driving virtually this entire discourse:
UPDATE: At the CNN blog, Jessica Yellin responds to this
post<http://johnkingusa.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/28/jessica-yellin%E2%80%99s-res
ponse-to-last-night%E2%80%99s-assange-discussion/>. Standing on
its own, the response is not unreasonable, but I'll leave it to
others to decide if her claims are consistent with her comments and
conduct during the segment.
*
http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/369-wikileaks/443
1-the-merger-of-journalists-and-government-officials<http://www.salon.com/aut
hor/glenn_greenwald/index.html>
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