It's refreshing to see that there is at least one reputable mainstream reporter left in America. Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Seymour Hersh brandishes his colleagues in the media for "carrying water for Obama" in an interview with The Guardian. On the death of Osama bin Laden, Hersh chastises the media for failing to do any independent investigative work. Hersh says "it's one big lie, not one word of it is true." I guess you'll have to put the respected Hersh in the same category as the rest of us who have been marginalized as wacko conspiracy theorists for challenging the Obama narrative, which anyone with a brain should have been able to figure out was totally contrived.
Hersh condemns the Obama administration for lying systematically. "[N]one of the leviathans of American media, the TV networks or big print titles, challenge him," Hersh laments. "It's pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama]." "It used to be when you were in a situation when something very dramatic happened, the president and the minions around the president had control of the narrative, you would pretty much know they would do the best they could to tell the story straight. Now that doesn't happen any more. Now they take advantage of something like that and they work out how to re-elect the president."
Hersh credits NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden, who has been vilified by much of the mainstream news media as a criminal and traitor, with changing the debate on the American surveillance state. He thinks the news bureaus of NBC and ABC should be shut down and 90% of the editors in the publishing business should be fired to return to the fundamental job of journalists to act like outsiders.
Thank you for this review, Gary. I certainly agree with Seymour's ideas on how to fix journalism by closing down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sacking 90% of editors in publishing, and getting back to the fundamental job of journalists, namely, to be an outsider.
ReplyDeleteA cousin told me that his highschool age daughter wants to be a journalist, and we both applauded her decision, saying what a worthy profession that is and how truthtellers are needed. Is Lisa O'Carroll correct, in writing in her piece in the Guardian, that once the Republican Party declared Hersh as a terrorist?
truthtellers are needed.
Bin Laden had nothing to do with 9/11, died years ago and, as myth, can be killed as easily and verifiably as one dispatches a monster in the closet.
ReplyDeleteObama "killed" Bin Laden because he knew all of 9/11 was a fabrication and could do as he wished with the official fables.
We are lucky that Journalists like Seymour Hersh and Glenn Greenwald have an outlet at the Guardian. We are lucky also the Internet Exists so we can access the Guardian. The Mega-Media here in the USA is now for the most fully embedded with Wall Street-Security-Military Industrial Complex.
ReplyDeleteAnother Journalist I sometimes follow is Pepe Escobar. Escobar writes recently about the collapse of the USA's Syrian National Council (SNC). Escobar, writes, "So for all practical purposes it's now a war between the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and a bunch of jihadis. Of course this will NOT be explained by supine corporate media to Western public opinion."
The "Experts" our Mega-Media trots out to comment on Snowden, Iran, or Syria all seem to have connections with the Security Establishment and supporting it's moneyed interests.
The Mega-Media here in the USA, CNN, MSNBC and FOX have carved out an Audience rather than practicing Journalism. Their strategy is no different than marketing a product i.e., Coke, Pepsi or pitching a Fast Food Restaurant.