It’s amazing what passes for journalism these days. Aaron Mate’s frustration is also my frustration. Why is it that the “bad” guys like Aaron (and Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi) needs to keep giving Journalism 101 lectures to those who refuse to take the bottom-up (facts first) approach to presenting the “news.” Here is an excerpt from Aaron’s recent article, “McCarthyite meltdown shows how Russiagate, Syria propaganda captured ‘left’ mediaIn slandering me, The Young Turks demonstrated how Western chauvinism and careerism have been normalized in progressive media spaces.”

If Kasparian and Uygur were really to be “quite honest with you” and with themselves, they’d come clean about my real crime, in their eyes: being a journalist who does my job. One of the tasks that entails is questioning official narratives put forth by the intelligence agencies and foreign-policy wonks that keep US empire running, and examining evidence on its merits, regardless of partisan or careerist utility. Apparently, TYT has made it a policy to perform neither of these tasks, and, far worse, to slander someone who does.