December 19, 2016
The mainstream U.S. media’s
gullible acceptance of unproven CIA claims about Russian interference in the
U.S. elections is another reason to doubt the media and fear for the future of
American democracy, says Joe Lauria.
By Joe Lauria
President Obama admitted
in his press conference on Friday that his government hasn’t released any
evidence yet of Russian interference in the election, but he said some would be
coming.
That’s proof that an
uncritical press has already printed stories as if true without any evidence
just on the say-so of the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization long
dedicated to deception, disinformation and meddling in other countries’
elections, not to mention arranging coups to overthrow elected governments.
Forty years ago, the
established press would have been skeptical to buy anything the CIA was selling
after a series of Congressional committees exposed
a raft of criminal acts and abuses
of power by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Today’s journalists work
for newspapers that fraudulently still bear the names New York Times and
Washington Post, but they are no longer the same papers.
The vast U.S. news media also
is not the same. The working journalist today is living off the reputation for
skepticism and determination to get beyond government pronouncements that was
established by their papers decades ago. Rather than add to that reputation,
the credibility of the biggest newspapers continues to erode.
Both the Times and the Post
should today be stained by their credulous reporting of official lies about
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Instead of showing professional
skepticism, the big papers became cheerleaders for an illegal invasion that
killed hundreds of thousands of people and left behind a disaster that still
reverberates today. Neither the Times nor the Post suffered any consequences
and have picked up where they left off, still uncritically reporting anonymous
U.S. officials without demanding proof.
On the contrary, any reporter
who did demand evidence was in danger of career consequences. An editor for a
newspaper chain that I was reporting for called me to chew me out because he
said my stories were not in support of the Iraq war effort. He told me his son
was a Marine. I told him I was sure he was proud but that my job was to report
the news based on the evidence. On the very day when the invasion began, I was
fired.
Of course, the television
networks, including CNN, were most egregious for selling the war. I was shocked
when I heard reporter Kyra Philips from aboard a U.S. warship in the Persian
Gulf gleefully announce: “Welcome to Shock and Awe!” just after a cruise missile
was shown being fired. The people it killed on the receiving end were almost
never mentioned.
CNN, which has accepted
Russian interference in the U.S. election as a given, is also living off its
reputation of a once very serious news organization. On its very first broadcast on
June 1, 1980, Cable News Network aired as its second story a lengthy
investigative report on faulty fuel gauges in commercial airliners. It
broadcast an in-depth live report from the Middle East, and veteran newsman
Daniel Schorr interviewed and challenged President Jimmy Carter.
But 1980 was when the period
of skeptical, professional journalism that demanded proof from its own
government started to decline as Ronald Reagan was elected. He worked to stamp
out the skepticism bred from Watergate, Vietnam and the Congressional
intelligence hearings. Reagan did this, in part, by resurrecting the most
obvious and adolescent myths about America. And he worked with the CIA to
manage America’s perceptions away from the critical thinking of the 1970s, as
journalist Robert Parry has extensively reported.
There have been a few periods
in American journalism when demanding proof from government was expected. The
muckraking period led by Lincoln Steffens of the Progressive Era was one. The
1970s was another. But mostly it has been a business filled with careerists who
live vicariously through the powerful people they cover, disregarding the even
greater power the press has to cut the powerful down to size.
Egregious Case
The reporting on the supposed
Russian hack of the elections is one of the most egregious examples of
unprofessional journalism since 2003, particularly because of the stakes
involved.
There have now been a slew of
stories, each of which seems to offer a new promise of evidence, such as one
under the ludicrous New York Times headline, “C.I.A. Judgment on Russia
Built on Swell of Evidence.” But when you read the piece, its only sources are
still unnamed intelligence officials. A later 8,000-word Times article was the
same, as though the length by itself was supposed to lend it more credibility.
If there were any doubts,
Obama wiped them away with his admission that no evidence had been released.
Worse still, perhaps, is that counter-evidence has been suppressed, another
consistent feature of today’s journalism.
The former British diplomat
Craig Murray, has written and told at least two radio
interviewers that the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta emails
were not obtained by WikiLeaks through hacks, but instead from leaks by American
insiders.
This story was totally ignored
by established media until the Daily Mail in London reported it online, but
incorrectly said Murray had himself received the leak. In the U.S., only The
Washington Times reported the story, quoting the Mail. But that story took a
swipe at Murray’s reputation, merely saying he was “removed from his diplomatic
post amid allegations of misconduct.” In fact, Murray was let go for blowing
the whistle on U.K. use of evidence extracted by torture by the corrupt Karimov
administration in Uzbekistan. The rest of the Washington Times story just
repeats what every other reporter has written about Russian interference.
Two Obstacles
Even if it were proven that
Russian government operatives hacked these emails as part of their intelligence
gathering, there remains the additional evidentiary hurdle that they then
supplied the data to WikiLeaks, when the recipients, including WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange, say the source or sources weren’t Russians.
It’s also noteworthy that none
of the information in the emails has been shown to be false. The leaks provided
real insights into how the DNC favored Hillary Clinton over Sen. Bernie Sanders
and revealed some shady practices of the Clinton Foundation as well as the
contents of Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street bankers that she had tried to
hide. In other words, the leaks gave voters more information about Hillary
Clinton, confirming what many voters already believed: that she was beholden to
the financial sector and benefited from her insider connections. But none of
that was particularly news.
It is important to note, too,
that Obama himself in his press conference said there is zero evidence Russia
tried to hack into the electronic voting systems. In fact it now emerges from
dogged reporting
by a local Atlanta TV station that the Department of Homeland Security appears
to have been behind earlier attempted hacks of voting systems in several
states.
So, it would be virtually
impossible to prove that the DNC and Podesta emails were the deciding factor in
the election. Indeed, before the election, pro-Clinton corporate media
downplayed the email-related stories and Podesta said the emails may have been
faked (although none of them appears to have been made up).
The emails also revealed
numerous instances of reporters colluding with
the Clinton campaign before publishing stories, something no hard-boiled editor
from an earlier era would have stood for.
Democratic Misdirection
By focusing on the alleged
Russian role now, Democrats also have diverted attention from other factors
that likely were far more consequential to the outcome, such as Clinton largely
ignoring the Rust Belt and not going once to Wisconsin or her calling many
Trump supporters “deplorables” and “irredeemable.” Further, Clinton was a
quintessential Establishment candidate in an anti-Establishment year.
And, there was the fact that
in the campaign’s final week, FBI Director James Comey briefly reopened the
investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server while Secretary of
State, a move that reminded many Americans why they distrusted Clinton.
Yet, as the mainstream U.S.
media now hypes as flat fact the supposed Russian role, there remains the
inconvenient truth that the Obama administration’s intelligence community has
presented no verifiable evidence that the Russians were the source of the
leaks.
Demanding to see the evidence
on Russia, the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee called the CIA, FBI
and Office of the Director of National Intelligence to a closed-door briefing.
Though these agencies are obligated to show up in response to requests from
their Congressional oversight committees, the three agencies flatly refused.
Then, DNI James Clapper refused to brief concerned Electoral College voters
whose votes for or against Trump may have been influenced by the news media
frenzy about alleged Russian interference. Clapper reportedly is preparing a
report on Russia’s “hacking” for Congress.
Political Strategy
The Russia fiasco appears to
have been part of a political strategy that I first wrote
about on Nov. 5 – three days before the election – that a fallback plan, if
Trump won a narrow victory, would be to influence the electors to reject Trump
when they assemble in state capitals on Dec. 19. Playing the Russian card was
designed to appeal to the electors’ patriotism to defend their country against
foreign interference.
Assuming that Electoral
College long shot failed, there would be one more chance for Clinton to stop
Trump: on Jan. 6, when Congress meets to certify the election. The Clinton camp
needs one Senator and one Representative to sign an objection to Trump’s
certification (no doubt citing Russia) forcing a vote by both chambers.
If Trump loses – and there are
a number of anti-Trump Republicans in Congress – the election would be thrown
to the House where Clinton or a more conventional Republican could be selected
as President.
Given those stakes for the
American democracy and the risks inherent in U.S. relations with nuclear-armed
Russia, the fact that the most influential establishment media has bought into
this extremely flimsy story about Russian hacking should condemn them further
in the minds of the public.
Joe Lauria is a veteran
foreign-affairs journalist based at the U.N. since 1990. He has written for the
Boston Globe, the London Daily Telegraph, the Johannesburg Star, the Montreal
Gazette, the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers. He can be reached at
joelauria@gmail.com and followed on Twitter at @unjoe.
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