Media-Driven Defense: Their Attempt To Spin This Won't Work
The debate still rages over the New York Times, and their blatant disregard for US national security. In fact, the MSM is really circling the wagons on this one as Breitbart attests to this morning.
Headline by headline, a trickle of news leaks on Iraq and the antiterror campaign has grown into a steady stream of revelations, and from Pennsylvania Avenue to Downing Street, Copenhagen to Canberra, governments are responding with pressure and prosecutions.
The latest target is The New York Times. But the unfolding story begins as far back as 2003, when British weapons expert David Kelly was "outed" as the source of a story casting doubt on his government's arguments for invading Iraq, and he committed suicide.
And it will roll on this fall, when Danish journalists face trial for reporting their government knew there was no evidence of banned weapons in Iraq.
In London's Central Criminal Court, too, accused leakers will be in the dock this fall, for allegedly disclosing President Bush talked of bombing al-Jazeera, the Arab television station. The British government threatens to prosecute newspapers that write any more about that leaked document.
Media advocates are alarmed at what they see as a mounting assault on press freedom in country after country, arguing it is potentially chilling the pursuit of truth as U.S. and European leaders pursue wars on terror and in Iraq.
"It's grotesque that at a time when political rhetoric is full of notions of democracy and liberty that we should have this fundamental right of journalists to investigate and report on public interest matters called into question," Aidan White, general-secretary of the Belgium-based International Federation of Journalists, told The Associated Press.
But others counter that national interest requires stopping leaks of classified information, and that some media reports endanger lives by tipping terrorists to government tactics.
"We cannot continue to operate in a system where the government takes steps to counter terrorism while the media actively works to disclose those operations without any regard for protection of lives, sources and legal methods," Sen. Pat Roberts said in Washington.
The Kansas Republican was reacting to a June 23 report by the Times _ and other papers _ detailing a U.S. government program that taps into a huge international database of financial records to try to track terror financing.
Some Republican lawmakers called for criminal investigations of the journalists responsible and of the government insiders who leaked the information.
Investigations are already under way in other U.S. cases, reaching back to 2003, when whistleblower Joseph Wilson questioned a Bush administration claim about Iraq's supposed nuclear program. Times reporter Judith Miller spent three months in jail in that complex case last year, as investigators sought whoever leaked the name of Wilson's CIA-agent wife.
The Washington Times says the Justice Department is also investigating New York Times and Washington Post reporters _ the Times for disclosing in 2005 that the government was monitoring Americans' phone calls without court warrants and the Post for reporting that the CIA was operating secret prisons for suspected terrorists in eastern Europe. The CIA in April fired a top analyst as an alleged source for the reports on covert prisons.
What the MSM has decided, all on its own, is that they are the purveyors of ALL news. They, and they alone, should be the sole sources of news and information for the world. And while they may be news outlets, and they may report the news, there are some things that are off limits. Secrets, classified material, war plans, strategies, and tactics--just to name four things--fall into that category. These are no-no's for the press to print, report, publish, or otherwise convey to the general public.
Mr. Aidan White (above) believes, as many of these journalists do, that there should be no subject that a journalist can't discuss. That we should have an open, honest society where everyone knows everything. I hate to drop the bombshell on Mr. White and his vaunted federation, but that isn't happening around the world. Governments aren't opening their doors, their meetings, or their mouths about certain things because they don't want some people to know about it.
I wonder what Mr. White would say about revealing some secrets from North Korea, or even Iran? It seems that journalists have no problem revealing secrets from the freedom-loving nations, so let's keep the field fair here. Let's see some loose lips from the despotic regimes, too. After all, they have far more to hide than we do. The gulags/concentration camps. the murders, the torture, etc. I mean, we have the press towing the ACLU/Amnesty International line about Gitmo. Hell, they've even got the president stating he wants "Gitmo closed." (Which I think is the most retarded, hair-brained decision that may ever come out of the Bush White House, but he's the president, and we don't get a say in that decision.)
And while the press is definitely openly hostile towards this administration (far more than past presidents except maybe Reagan) their continued argument that they do nothing wrong when they reveal these programs is pure hogwash. They reveal classified materials and it puts a severe hamper on our ability to catch these terrorists still out there fighting against us. And it hurts our efforts here at home when we're trying to locate these animals. But the press doesn't seem to care. To them, this was done "in the public's interest." The public had a right to know, a need to know.
Bravo-Sierra, we had either a "right" or a "need."
I know my government is doing it's best to protect us. Yes, there will always be a level of mistrust when it comes to the government. (Anyone who doesn't have a level of suspicion regarding their respective governments is either a fool, or a rube.) But, the New York Times shrieking about the NSA surveilling terrorists, or tracking their financial transactions don't bother me. Know why?
I'm not a terrorist. I'm not backing, funding, or supporting these animals. And the only thing I'd like to do is line them up against a wall, and shoot each and everyone of them. (I'd save Osama for last, but I'd feed him some estrogen. Let's see how he likes being a woman for while, and get that burkha ready.) Yes, it's not PC to think that way, but then again I'm not PC. Political correctness is for the sheeple out there that abide by that Leftist thought process.
So, I don't care what the papers scream about. These monkeys aren't connected to the government, and like the recent stories revealed regarding national security, they have no clue what they're talking about. When they yelled about the NSA program, they proclaimed what was happening to be illegal. No one bothered to really check on that "fact." Had they done so, they would've seen that how the program was run, it was quite legal. They stated in the story that we were targeting Americans, which is an outright lie. In the banking story, they asserted the same thing. Again, they're wrong.
But the Times doesn't bother to recognize when they're wrong. As a matter of fact, they have the ultimate excuse that they're pulling out for just such an occasion; a time where they know they're wrong, and got caught, again, breaking the law:
"Although there is still freedom of speech, it is not entirely free. There is a price," Rod Barton told the AP.
Freedom doesn't come free, dips**t. And the press's stupid assertion that "freedom of the press" guarantees them the right, privilege, and protection when it comes to publishing details about classified programs has to be one of the worst interpretations of the First Amendment that I've seen since the Supreme Court ruled that a non-denominational prayer at a high school commencement represents the government pushing religion on the audience. This is why I despise the press for their idea that they understand and know the law. They don't. They've got no clue. And yet they, with laissez-faire attitude, print and say what they want with no fear of any recriminations.
Both Bill Keller and Dean Baquet (editors for the NY Times and LA Times, respectively) are certainly trying to spin this. They combined their talents yesterday in a collaborative effort to explain their actions, again. (Let me state right here that their idea of a collaborative effort stinks, and that comes from a guy who has been writing them with his better half for over a year.) Here are a couple excerpts from their piece:
Last week, our newspapers disclosed a secret Bush administration program to monitor international banking transactions. We did so after appeals from senior administration officials to hold the story. Our reports — like earlier press disclosures of secret measures to combat terrorism — revived an emotional national debate, featuring angry calls of "treason" and proposals that journalists be jailed, along with much genuine concern and confusion about the role of the press in times like these.
While we were not one of the sites proclaiming this as treason, we do agree that this has to stop, and the best way to do it is to file charges against the journalists involved. If they want the charges dropped, they'll reveal the identity of the leaker. Leaks of classified material in wartime is a detriment to the nation, and can't be excused on any level. To do so only invites more. We have had four major leaks in the past year that are bad for national security. And if their goal was to "revive" a debate, then do so on a hypothetical basis, and not through direct revelations.
Make no mistake, journalists have a large and personal stake in the country's security. We live and work in cities that have been tragically marked as terrorist targets. Reporters and photographers from both of our papers braved the collapsing towers of the World Trade Center to convey the horror to the world. We have correspondents today alongside troops on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others risk their lives in a quest to understand the terrorist threat; Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal was murdered on such a mission. We, and the people who work for us, are not neutral in the struggle against terrorism.
Funny thing about that assertion by both men. The press has always maintained their neutrality. When 11 September occurred many news organizations didn't want their journalists wearing flag lapel pins because it would send a message that they were "rooting for America to win." Yet, here are the two editors of the NY Times and LA Times now telling us that they aren't neutral. I really wish the press could get their stories straight.
Thirty-five years ago Friday, in the Supreme Court ruling that stopped the government from suppressing the secret Vietnam War history called the Pentagon Papers, Justice Hugo Black wrote: "The government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people."
And this goes back to why I dislike the press, and their feeble attempts to interpret the law. The Pentagon Papers case revolved around the government telling a media outlet they couldn't publish them. They ruled the government can't do that. Thegovernment didn't tell either paper they couldn't print these recent stories. They asked them not to, and the papers disregarded the secure nature of the programs, and printed their stories anyway. And I notice how they fail to bring up the point about how President Kennedy called the editor of the New York Times personally, and asked him not to run with his story about missiles in Cuba. The Times capitulated because the president had personally asked them not to run with it. Where was their vaunted courage then to run with it, and let the chips fall where they may?
Our job, especially in times like these, is to bring our readers information that will enable them to judge how well their elected leaders are fighting on their behalf, and at what price.
It's simply not the job of the press to do that. The people can gauge that for themselves when they see we haven't been hit by a terrorist attack since 11 September. Obviously, the government is doing a good job, and no, it's not to the detriment of our rights. To date the comaplints brought to light regarding supposed abuses have gone nowhere. There's no evidence out there, accepted by any court, that Americans have lost any rights, or are having theirs violated.
The spin doesn't match the reality that the MSM has decided that we, as Americans, need to know everything our government does, and damn the government if they don't like it. They fail to accept the responsibility that they're hurting our efforts to protect this nation when our enemies see stories like this, and change tactics or operations. As Hugh observed this past week, this program was used to nail Hambali, the mastermind of the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing. Hugh has asked numerous experts on his show if it's feasible to assume that al Qaeda could reverse engineer how he was caught, and avoid making the same mistakes. Almost every expert answered int he affirmative.
And that is the legacy that both Times newspapers have handed us. The ability for them to continue to publish information with impunity, and tip our enemies off to what we're doing. And as long as the government refuses to take a stand against this sort of behavior the secrets will continue to roll out, and we'll be the ones paying the ultimate price in the end.
Publius II
The debate still rages over the New York Times, and their blatant disregard for US national security. In fact, the MSM is really circling the wagons on this one as Breitbart attests to this morning.
Headline by headline, a trickle of news leaks on Iraq and the antiterror campaign has grown into a steady stream of revelations, and from Pennsylvania Avenue to Downing Street, Copenhagen to Canberra, governments are responding with pressure and prosecutions.
The latest target is The New York Times. But the unfolding story begins as far back as 2003, when British weapons expert David Kelly was "outed" as the source of a story casting doubt on his government's arguments for invading Iraq, and he committed suicide.
And it will roll on this fall, when Danish journalists face trial for reporting their government knew there was no evidence of banned weapons in Iraq.
In London's Central Criminal Court, too, accused leakers will be in the dock this fall, for allegedly disclosing President Bush talked of bombing al-Jazeera, the Arab television station. The British government threatens to prosecute newspapers that write any more about that leaked document.
Media advocates are alarmed at what they see as a mounting assault on press freedom in country after country, arguing it is potentially chilling the pursuit of truth as U.S. and European leaders pursue wars on terror and in Iraq.
"It's grotesque that at a time when political rhetoric is full of notions of democracy and liberty that we should have this fundamental right of journalists to investigate and report on public interest matters called into question," Aidan White, general-secretary of the Belgium-based International Federation of Journalists, told The Associated Press.
But others counter that national interest requires stopping leaks of classified information, and that some media reports endanger lives by tipping terrorists to government tactics.
"We cannot continue to operate in a system where the government takes steps to counter terrorism while the media actively works to disclose those operations without any regard for protection of lives, sources and legal methods," Sen. Pat Roberts said in Washington.
The Kansas Republican was reacting to a June 23 report by the Times _ and other papers _ detailing a U.S. government program that taps into a huge international database of financial records to try to track terror financing.
Some Republican lawmakers called for criminal investigations of the journalists responsible and of the government insiders who leaked the information.
Investigations are already under way in other U.S. cases, reaching back to 2003, when whistleblower Joseph Wilson questioned a Bush administration claim about Iraq's supposed nuclear program. Times reporter Judith Miller spent three months in jail in that complex case last year, as investigators sought whoever leaked the name of Wilson's CIA-agent wife.
The Washington Times says the Justice Department is also investigating New York Times and Washington Post reporters _ the Times for disclosing in 2005 that the government was monitoring Americans' phone calls without court warrants and the Post for reporting that the CIA was operating secret prisons for suspected terrorists in eastern Europe. The CIA in April fired a top analyst as an alleged source for the reports on covert prisons.
What the MSM has decided, all on its own, is that they are the purveyors of ALL news. They, and they alone, should be the sole sources of news and information for the world. And while they may be news outlets, and they may report the news, there are some things that are off limits. Secrets, classified material, war plans, strategies, and tactics--just to name four things--fall into that category. These are no-no's for the press to print, report, publish, or otherwise convey to the general public.
Mr. Aidan White (above) believes, as many of these journalists do, that there should be no subject that a journalist can't discuss. That we should have an open, honest society where everyone knows everything. I hate to drop the bombshell on Mr. White and his vaunted federation, but that isn't happening around the world. Governments aren't opening their doors, their meetings, or their mouths about certain things because they don't want some people to know about it.
I wonder what Mr. White would say about revealing some secrets from North Korea, or even Iran? It seems that journalists have no problem revealing secrets from the freedom-loving nations, so let's keep the field fair here. Let's see some loose lips from the despotic regimes, too. After all, they have far more to hide than we do. The gulags/concentration camps. the murders, the torture, etc. I mean, we have the press towing the ACLU/Amnesty International line about Gitmo. Hell, they've even got the president stating he wants "Gitmo closed." (Which I think is the most retarded, hair-brained decision that may ever come out of the Bush White House, but he's the president, and we don't get a say in that decision.)
And while the press is definitely openly hostile towards this administration (far more than past presidents except maybe Reagan) their continued argument that they do nothing wrong when they reveal these programs is pure hogwash. They reveal classified materials and it puts a severe hamper on our ability to catch these terrorists still out there fighting against us. And it hurts our efforts here at home when we're trying to locate these animals. But the press doesn't seem to care. To them, this was done "in the public's interest." The public had a right to know, a need to know.
Bravo-Sierra, we had either a "right" or a "need."
I know my government is doing it's best to protect us. Yes, there will always be a level of mistrust when it comes to the government. (Anyone who doesn't have a level of suspicion regarding their respective governments is either a fool, or a rube.) But, the New York Times shrieking about the NSA surveilling terrorists, or tracking their financial transactions don't bother me. Know why?
I'm not a terrorist. I'm not backing, funding, or supporting these animals. And the only thing I'd like to do is line them up against a wall, and shoot each and everyone of them. (I'd save Osama for last, but I'd feed him some estrogen. Let's see how he likes being a woman for while, and get that burkha ready.) Yes, it's not PC to think that way, but then again I'm not PC. Political correctness is for the sheeple out there that abide by that Leftist thought process.
So, I don't care what the papers scream about. These monkeys aren't connected to the government, and like the recent stories revealed regarding national security, they have no clue what they're talking about. When they yelled about the NSA program, they proclaimed what was happening to be illegal. No one bothered to really check on that "fact." Had they done so, they would've seen that how the program was run, it was quite legal. They stated in the story that we were targeting Americans, which is an outright lie. In the banking story, they asserted the same thing. Again, they're wrong.
But the Times doesn't bother to recognize when they're wrong. As a matter of fact, they have the ultimate excuse that they're pulling out for just such an occasion; a time where they know they're wrong, and got caught, again, breaking the law:
"Although there is still freedom of speech, it is not entirely free. There is a price," Rod Barton told the AP.
Freedom doesn't come free, dips**t. And the press's stupid assertion that "freedom of the press" guarantees them the right, privilege, and protection when it comes to publishing details about classified programs has to be one of the worst interpretations of the First Amendment that I've seen since the Supreme Court ruled that a non-denominational prayer at a high school commencement represents the government pushing religion on the audience. This is why I despise the press for their idea that they understand and know the law. They don't. They've got no clue. And yet they, with laissez-faire attitude, print and say what they want with no fear of any recriminations.
Both Bill Keller and Dean Baquet (editors for the NY Times and LA Times, respectively) are certainly trying to spin this. They combined their talents yesterday in a collaborative effort to explain their actions, again. (Let me state right here that their idea of a collaborative effort stinks, and that comes from a guy who has been writing them with his better half for over a year.) Here are a couple excerpts from their piece:
Last week, our newspapers disclosed a secret Bush administration program to monitor international banking transactions. We did so after appeals from senior administration officials to hold the story. Our reports — like earlier press disclosures of secret measures to combat terrorism — revived an emotional national debate, featuring angry calls of "treason" and proposals that journalists be jailed, along with much genuine concern and confusion about the role of the press in times like these.
While we were not one of the sites proclaiming this as treason, we do agree that this has to stop, and the best way to do it is to file charges against the journalists involved. If they want the charges dropped, they'll reveal the identity of the leaker. Leaks of classified material in wartime is a detriment to the nation, and can't be excused on any level. To do so only invites more. We have had four major leaks in the past year that are bad for national security. And if their goal was to "revive" a debate, then do so on a hypothetical basis, and not through direct revelations.
Make no mistake, journalists have a large and personal stake in the country's security. We live and work in cities that have been tragically marked as terrorist targets. Reporters and photographers from both of our papers braved the collapsing towers of the World Trade Center to convey the horror to the world. We have correspondents today alongside troops on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others risk their lives in a quest to understand the terrorist threat; Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal was murdered on such a mission. We, and the people who work for us, are not neutral in the struggle against terrorism.
Funny thing about that assertion by both men. The press has always maintained their neutrality. When 11 September occurred many news organizations didn't want their journalists wearing flag lapel pins because it would send a message that they were "rooting for America to win." Yet, here are the two editors of the NY Times and LA Times now telling us that they aren't neutral. I really wish the press could get their stories straight.
Thirty-five years ago Friday, in the Supreme Court ruling that stopped the government from suppressing the secret Vietnam War history called the Pentagon Papers, Justice Hugo Black wrote: "The government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people."
And this goes back to why I dislike the press, and their feeble attempts to interpret the law. The Pentagon Papers case revolved around the government telling a media outlet they couldn't publish them. They ruled the government can't do that. Thegovernment didn't tell either paper they couldn't print these recent stories. They asked them not to, and the papers disregarded the secure nature of the programs, and printed their stories anyway. And I notice how they fail to bring up the point about how President Kennedy called the editor of the New York Times personally, and asked him not to run with his story about missiles in Cuba. The Times capitulated because the president had personally asked them not to run with it. Where was their vaunted courage then to run with it, and let the chips fall where they may?
Our job, especially in times like these, is to bring our readers information that will enable them to judge how well their elected leaders are fighting on their behalf, and at what price.
It's simply not the job of the press to do that. The people can gauge that for themselves when they see we haven't been hit by a terrorist attack since 11 September. Obviously, the government is doing a good job, and no, it's not to the detriment of our rights. To date the comaplints brought to light regarding supposed abuses have gone nowhere. There's no evidence out there, accepted by any court, that Americans have lost any rights, or are having theirs violated.
The spin doesn't match the reality that the MSM has decided that we, as Americans, need to know everything our government does, and damn the government if they don't like it. They fail to accept the responsibility that they're hurting our efforts to protect this nation when our enemies see stories like this, and change tactics or operations. As Hugh observed this past week, this program was used to nail Hambali, the mastermind of the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing. Hugh has asked numerous experts on his show if it's feasible to assume that al Qaeda could reverse engineer how he was caught, and avoid making the same mistakes. Almost every expert answered int he affirmative.
And that is the legacy that both Times newspapers have handed us. The ability for them to continue to publish information with impunity, and tip our enemies off to what we're doing. And as long as the government refuses to take a stand against this sort of behavior the secrets will continue to roll out, and we'll be the ones paying the ultimate price in the end.
Publius II
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 8:43 AM
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