If "facts" can be
established simply by what "anonymous intelligence sources" tell
reporters, we remain in grave threat from irresponsible journalism
By Howard
Friel
My source at the CIA, who will
remain anonymous, has told me recently with “a high level of confidence”
that Krugman repeatedly voted for Hillary Clinton on election day on November
8. The source told me that Krugman “went to great lengths to vote for Clinton
at multiple polling places.” My source also told me that Krugman “did this
because Hillary told him to.”
Given that the entire liberal
news media and Democratic establishment has been hijacked by anonymous
intelligence sources to the effect that Russia engineered this year's
presidential election in Trump's favor, I expect that virtually every
mainstream news organization in the United States will now report as fact,
given what my anonymous source has told me, that Krugman sought to fix this
year’s presidential election on behalf of Clinton and that she was
"personally involved" in his election-tampering.
"Today, including with
the aid of Paul Krugman, who was mostly silent during the run-up to the 2003
invasion of Iraq, the Times is at the wheel and driving us once again to
war, this time with Russia, by using the same reckless brand of journalism and
commentary."
Krugman denies the
allegations. Just yesterday (December 17), Krugman
reported in the Times “It’s important to realize that the
postelection C.I.A. declaration that Russia had intervened on behalf of the Trump
campaign was a confirmation, not a revelation (although we’ve now learned that
Mr. Putin was personally
involved in the effort).”
Krugman’s claim that Putin was
“personally involved” was linked to a report from NBC News that cited
intelligence sources as follows: “U.S. intelligence officials now believe with
‘a high level of confidence’ that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally
involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential
election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.”
As in all such reports to date
from other mainstream news sources, including as practiced on a nearly daily basis
by David Sanger and his colleagues at the Times, the U.S.
intelligence officials are not identified. This is a long-standing and
condemnable feature of news reporting at the New YorkTimes, which in 2002 and
2003, while journalistically co-piloting the United States toward an invasion
of Iraq, repeatedly quoted anonymous intelligence sources that Iraq possessed
weapons of mass destruction that could be used against the United States and
our allies.
Today, including with the aid
of Paul Krugman, who was mostly silent during the run-up to the 2003 invasion
of Iraq, the Times is at the wheel and driving us once again to war, this
time with Russia, by using the same reckless brand of journalism and
commentary. And in case the Times hasn't noticed, Russia, unlike Iraq, does
have nuclear weapons. And so do we.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Howard Friel is author of Chomsky
and Dershowitz: On Endless War and the End of Civil Liberties (Olive Branch
Press). He also wrote the The
Lomborg Deception: Setting the Record Straight about Global Warming (Yale
University Press, 2010), and is co-author with Richard Falk of Israel-Palestine
on Record: How The New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East
(Verso, 2007), and The
Record of the Paper: How The New York Times Misreports U.S. Foreign Policy
(Verso, 2004).
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