Asymmetrical Polarization

[John Bailey]

I'm a journalist and I can assure you all we don't meet in the
underground grotto to receive today's unilateral briefing. The trade
is as varied as the plumbing biz, to call back on this thread, and
there are as many honest, dodgy and cack-handed members in both. Just
as much shit on everyone's hands, too.
But I'm OK with Thomas and Atticus throwing shade on journalism and
providing examples of where individuals and organisations might
deserve deep scrutiny.
To give the finger to the whole business of investigative journalism,
though? That's treating "The Media" as a regime. "The Media" is a far
more anarchic system than most would imagine. We're more often calling
each other out than you are, but thankfully Facebook algorithms ensure
that everyone only sees one corner of the debate ;-)

On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 8:24 PM, Thomas Eckhardt
<thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Dec 2017 08:59:28 +0100
>  This is not about "playing into the hands" of anyone. It is not about "soul
> searching". It is not about partisanship. It is about fact finding and
> reporting. At least for me.
>
> I pointed to a specific case, that of Michael Gordon. In my opinion, he lied
> to the public when he forwarded government propaganda -- just like his
> colleague, the discredited Judith Miller, did. The consequences were at
> least hundreds of thousands of dead Iraquis and the destabilisation of a
> whole region of the world. Mark Kohut -- just stopping short of calling me
> an idiot for pointing out the obvious, or at the very least fowarding a
> well-founded argument -- argued that Gordon did not lie but was being played
> by the government. Which presumably means that we can now trust Gordon when
> he reports about Syria. The same presumably is valid for Fred Hiatt from the
> WP.
>
> They were either complicit, or they were duped, no?
>
> One may choose to believe that these journalists were played by the
> government, I guess. That they provided false information to the public that
> at the very least contributed to an illegal war of aggression back then is
> not disputable I hope.
>
> For me these people are warmongers who sell regime change wars to the
> public. As I said, I do not think everything reported in those papers is a
> lie. But much of it is, mostly by omission. And the general impression one
> gets about events in geopolitical hot spots like Libya, Ukraine, Syria is
> plainly skewed in favour of regime change.
>
> One example: Have you read the House of Commons report on Libya? It is well
> worth anyone's while:
>
> "In March 2011, the United Kingdom and France, with the support of the
> United States, led the international community to support an intervention in
> Libya to protect civilians from attacks by forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi.
> This policy was not informed by accurate intelligence. In particular, the
> Government failed to identify that the threat to civilians was overstated
> and that the rebels included a significant Islamist element. By the summer
> of 2011, the limited intervention to protect civilians had drifted into an
> opportunist policy of regime change. That policy was not underpinned by a
> strategy to support and shape post-Gaddafi Libya. The result was political
> and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian
> and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of
> Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of ISIL in North
> Africa."
>
> "An Amnesty International investigation in June 2011 could not corroborate
> allegations of mass human rights violations by Gaddafi regime troops.
> However, it uncovered evidence that rebels in Benghazi made false claims and
> manufactured evidence. The investigation concluded that much Western media
> coverage has from the outset presented a very one-sided view of the logic of
> events, portraying the protest movement as entirely peaceful and repeatedly
> suggesting that the regime’s security forces were unaccountably massacring
> unarmed demonstrators who presented no security challenge."
>
> https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmfaff/119/11903.htm#_idTextAnchor004
>
> You have not read about this report anywhere, have you? Is this also playing
> into Trump's hands and should therefore be discredited?
>
> Here is a slightly dated take on things by John Pilger, whom you, please
> pardon the polemics, probably consider another one of those many, many
> journalists whose reporting used to be good but who have now somehow "lost
> it" (Hersh, Parry, Greenwald, Assange etc.) because their reporting is
> "playing right into the hands of the new regime" (I despise the man just as
> much as the next person, but "regime", really?):
>
> https://consortiumnews.com/2016/10/28/selling-regime-change-wars-to-the-masses/
>
>
>
>
> matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Stop attacking journalism - you guys are playing right into the hands of
>> the new regime. I mean really. "...mainstream american journalism is
>> complicit in much more mass murder than any good they may have done."
>> What?
>> Dude, stop using in the AM.
>
>
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