Ray McGovern on whether Assange is a “journalist”
By truthtelling007 on December 16, 2010 at 1:00 PM in Current Affairs
Editor’s Note: Truthtelling007 is our terrific videographer who built this blog’s excellent YouTube channel.
Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern (who posts at NoQuarterUSA) is asked by CNN’s Don Lemon if Julian Assange is a “journalist”. Note his answer and Lemon’s fairly conditioned and defensive response about “standards”…
There is this myth living in the CNN sphere (clearly they aren’t the only ones) that there is a “journalistic standard” that they abide by. Anderson Cooper seems to be the guy most prone to promote the “mr man from nowhere” journalist nonsense as he and CNN bask in the partisanship at MSNBC and FoxNews.
CNN even has a show on Sunday called, “Reliable Sources” that makes sure you hear what Rachel Ray has to say. This show features the ever so astute Howard Kurtz. Kurtz works for WaPo and Daily Beast but is more known to common viewers as the periodic “media critic” used to bolster CNN’s image as a “credible news source”.
But if you look at the CNN guest list regulars, you can’t find a more biased and ignorant bunch of partisan hacks than at CNN. Lower level operatives who are making careers out of being useless hacks. And they know it. Paul Begala, Hack. Gloria Borger. Hack. Roland Martin. Hack. Floyd the Barber. Hack. (sorry, I meant Alejandro “Alex” Castellanos) Donna Brazil, multiple campaign losing failure. Hack.
Back to the video, “why do you think Assange is doing the right thing by releasing all these documents”….
I didn’t catch the opening salvo but note that McGovern draws it back to whether or not he’s a journalist. He points out that it is the job of a journalist to tell the people what their governance structure is doing. He is wise to quote Jefferson’s concerns about the choice between being informed and having governance.
The banner at the bottom is offensive to anyone with intelligence. This false choice between Journalist and Terrorist is childish. What we put down in the lower third of a news piece can set the town. Lower third is the area where we place headlines and messages. This is a very suggestive area when you use labels.
“Michael Jackson: Freak or Molester?”
“Plame: Patriot or Camera Crazy”
This is not a “journalistic standard”, CNN.
McGovern continues by pointing out the “malnurished” state of information in the American populace due to the “fawning corporate media who act more as stenographers than they do as journalists”. As I’ve demonstrated in the past with other stories, the fact checking of these major media sources like CNN is lacking woefully. They are extremely prone to group think.
WMD anyone?
Lemon refers to “journalistic standards” and “fact checking”. Coming from CNN, this is pretty humorous. The only reason CNN thinks it has a “fact checking” standard is because it simply regurgitates whatever the Pentagon tells it.
Ask yourself how many times Wolf Blitzer says, “The Pentagon says today”…then brings on Barbara Star to parrot the Pentagon message then will raise some arbitrary critic. It is here where one must pay strict attention. The critic chosen is perhaps the most important part of understanding where these pathogenic groupthink moments happen.
If you want to discredit the critic base, find the wackiest or most remote from mainstream thought and make sure to frame your questions in a mocking fashion, “but do you really think that…” is a great lead in. (Grayson, Kucinich, The Ron/Rand Pauls, etc). Make sure language reminds people that these are not the ‘mainstream’ people.
If you want agreement find the least wackiest critic that essentially has no disagreement with the first source and make sure the appearance of division is minimal. (any segment with Leiberman, Dianne Feinstein, or Lindsay Graham qualifies)
Lemon refers to how “journalists” will avoid printing information (censoring) it believes may cause harm somewhere to someone. But this really raises a question, for me anyway,…who decided at CNN they have the right to stand between you, a voting member of this governance structure called Your Government, and the information about what your governance structure is doing in your name with your tax dollars. My first impression is instinctive: of course I don’t want to cause harm to a person, a group, or a country by leaking secrets. Fortunately I don’t stop at instincts that are so primal as self defense.
Next I examine the claim. If the claim doesn’t hold up…then it should be challenged. As McGovern rightfully pointed out, much alarm has been made about nothing. No person has been harmed in the publishing of information, thus far. Embarrassment comes when you’re duplicitous. It is the nature of being revealed for being two faced. These cables, if you’ll read them, are not revealing Cheney’s secret bunker location or the password to the Presidential Blackberry.
Reading over many of them so far I have found it more fascinating to match what I learned in the public sphere by timing against when the cable related to the topic was sent. Example: Barack “Hope” Obama promised to close Gitmo and restore Ameica’s honor. Yet his State Department is leaning on Spain to leave former US officials alone. Aka, more of the same old shit. Or how under Barack “Yes We Can” Obama, we see a leaning on countries to take Gitmo detainees.
What part of this was unknown?
(author’s note: I forgot to finish this piece. I was drafting it in the NQ posts. So, I’ll call this: “Part One”…) Enjoy your holidays
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