Too Busy Writing New Baseless News Stories. We Don’t Have Time to Retract the Old Ones

Glenn Greenwald's recent Tweet opens up a Who's Who of irresponsible "news" media," left wing media this time:

These many news outlets are too busy slurping up new stories from American spies to clean up the old ones. The technique is called "bomb holing." I learned of this term from Matt Taibbi recently:

This technique of using the next bombshell story to push the last one down a memory-hole — call it Bombholing

Continue ReadingToo Busy Writing New Baseless News Stories. We Don’t Have Time to Retract the Old Ones

Uncle Joe Gets a Lot of Free Passes from the Self-Proclaimed Left Wing Media

Matt Taibbi is working hard to piss off a lot of media cheer-leaders with facts like these:

Obama in other words won a contentious primary against Hillary Clinton by snowing reporters like me into hyping him as the clean hands guy who’d push aside Clintonian transactional politics. Then he turned around a year later and passed his signature program with help from the worst industry actors, paying for it by killing the progressive parts of the plan.

This history — important history — is now being rewritten by people like Klein as an “ideological compromise” inspired by the Obama/Biden White House’s misguided desire to govern with Republican votes. The fact that the Affordable Care Act passed with a grand total of zero such votes is apparently irrelevant, as was Biden’s ignored and erroneous (do we only say “lie” in some cases?) insistence as a candidate last year that he found “Republican votes” for “Obamacare.

. . . .

Reporters and audiences decide what they want to believe now, and get there together. Highlight the facts you want — “JRB” is raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent! Then, downplay stuff that doesn’t fit, like that the Obama/Biden administration once proposed lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 to 28 percent, or that Biden is declining to raise that rate back to pre-Trump levels, and you can argue anything. We don’t know much about Biden’s presidency yet, but it’s crystal clear what narrative they’d like us to believe.

Continue ReadingUncle Joe Gets a Lot of Free Passes from the Self-Proclaimed Left Wing Media

Matt Taibbi Discusses the Sovietization of the American Press

I follow Matt Taibbi writings at his site, TK. His recent article is titled: "The Sovietization of the American Press: The transformation from phony "objectivity" to open one-party orthodoxy hasn't been an improvement."

It is a thoughtful analysis with many examples. What I'd like to do in this post is simply post one excerpt showing how the exact same issue is treated extraordinarily differently by the same Newspaper (NYT) under Trump versus under Biden:

[C]overage of Biden increasingly resembles official press releases, often featuring embarrassing, Soviet-style contortions. When Biden decided not to punish Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi on the grounds that the “cost” of “breaching the relationship with one of America’s key Arab allies” was too high, the New York Times headline read: “Biden Won’t Penalize Saudi Crown Prince Over Khashoggi’s Killing, Fearing Relations Breach.” When Donald Trump made the same calculation, saying he couldn’t cut ties because “the world is a very dangerous place” and “our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the paper joined most of the rest of the press corps in howling in outrage.

“In Extraordinary Statement, Trump Stands With Saudis Despite Khashoggi Killing.” was the Times headline, in a piece that said Trump’s decision was “a stark distillation of the Trump worldview: remorselessly transactional, heedless of the facts, determined to put America’s interests first, and founded on a theory of moral equivalence.” The paper noted, “Even Mr. Trump’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill expressed revulsion.”

This week, in its “Crusader for the Poor” piece, the Times described Biden’s identical bin Salman decision as mere evidence that he remains “in the cautious middle” in his foreign policy. The paper previously had David Sanger dig up a quote from former Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross, who “applauded Mr. Biden for ‘trying to thread the needle here… This is the classic example of where you have to balance your values and your interests.’” It’s two opposite takes on exactly the same thing.

Continue ReadingMatt Taibbi Discusses the Sovietization of the American Press

Corporate Media versus Real Journalists

To those who people who are all comfy with their NPR/NYT news pipeline (or their FOX pipeline), Glenn Greenwald is making a stunning claim. He then presents ample evidence to back up his claim. Corporate journalism is turning into a vast Nanny-state. Letting the factual chips fall where they might is no longer part of its mission. Here's an excerpt from Greenwald's Substack site: "Journalists Start Demanding Substack Censor its Writers: to Bar Critiques of Journalists: This new political battle does not break down along left v. right lines. This is an information war waged by corporate media to silence any competition or dissent":

On Wednesday, I wrote about how corporate journalists, realizing that the public’s increasing contempt for what they do is causing people to turn away in droves, are desperately inventing new tactics to maintain their stranglehold over the dissemination of information and generate captive audiences. That is why journalists have bizarrely transformed from their traditional role as leading free expression defenders into the the most vocal censorship advocates, using their platforms to demand that tech monopolies ban and silence others.

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Progressive News Media Abandons Julian Assange

It's amazing to watch the "progressive" media slip away and abandon one of the biggest First Amendment threats of our time. Not too long ago, progressive media outlets gave full-throated support for Assange. Are there any progressive voices still speaking out for a pardon for Julian Assange? There would be, except that thinking has clearly become a team sport these days.

Continue ReadingProgressive News Media Abandons Julian Assange