Constitutional Law, Media, Supreme Court

Our Courtier Press

-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger

misdirectionWhile the NSA is, perhaps unconstitutionally, intercepting your electronic data, our media is focusing on whether Snowden should be charged with treason. One of reasons Snowden was charged with espionage is so the media would follow that meme. While James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, is getting away with lying to the Senate, our media is playing Where’s Waldo with Snowden. Instead of a debate on the constitutionality of the NSA programs out media is focusing on insignificant details regarding the private lives of Snowden and Greenwald.

One of the most outrageous performances of our lapdog press came on Meet The Press when host David Gregory asked Glenn Greenwald:

Final question for you…. To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?

Snowden had passcodes, tank clearances, and thumb drives. To think that Greenwald could have possibly assisted Snowden in removing the classified data is pure fantasy. Nobody’s lapdog, Greenwald responded:

I think it’s pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies. The assumption in your question, David, is completely without evidence, the idea that I’ve aided and abetted him in any way. The scandal that arose in Washington before our stories began was about the fact that the Obama administration is trying to criminalize investigative journalism by going through the e-mails and phone records of AP reporters, accusing a Fox News journalist of the theory that you just embraced, being a co-conspirator in felonies, for working with sources.

In Bartnicki v. Vopper (2001), a 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a radio station was not liable since it did nothing illegal in obtaining an illegally taped conversation. In United States v. Stevens (2010), an 8-1 U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Stevens’ selling of dog fight videos should not be added to the list of First Amendment restrictions. Although Senator Dianne Feinstein, in a feat of empty threat misdirection, wants Greenwald prosecuted, the law is not on her side.

As Noam Chomsky reminds us: distract the people by allowing very lively debate on a limited spectrum of issues. So the courtier press will focus on the illegality of Snowden’s actions and not discuss the legality of the NSA’s actions.

The courtier press is also focusing on how the Snowden affair will effect US-Russian and US-China relations. Playing the leads in this drama are Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer and Secretary of State John Kerry. Schumer’s line was: “Putin always seems almost eager to stick a finger in the eye of the United States – whether it is Syria, Iran and now of course with Snowden,” Kerry’s line was “It would be obviously disappointing if he was willfully allowed to board an airplane.”

We the people need to know the full extent of our surveillance state to make an informed decision of acceptance or rejection. Is some unverifiable and vague spin about successful preventions enough for us to make a reasoned decision to forfeit our civil liberties? Does the FISA court constitute genuine judicial oversight? Should government agencies be required to obtain a warrant, based on probable cause, before searching a citizen’s phone and internet usage? Does the courtier press serve itself or the people?

H/T: David Sirota, Juan Cole, Erik Wemple, Charles P. Pierce, Alfredo Lopez, John Cassidy, Paul Campos, Orin Kerr.

93 thoughts on “Our Courtier Press”

  1. The “Word Press” censors are sensing American history again, and are not allowing comments to be published.

    So excuse me if I make multiple posts to fool them.

  2. Otteray Scribe 1, June 29, 2013 at 9:03 am

    I always thought the Grand Jury was the ultimate ex parte. I was wrong. It is the FISA court.

    As for the media, the major media outlets have become nothing but hacks.
    …
    ========================================
    The major problem with them is that they, like us being infiltrated and spied on by the military NSA, have also been infiltrated, spied on, and made an asset:

    Later that year [1948] Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic American media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham (Washington Post) to run the project within the industry. Graham himself recruited others who had worked for military intelligence during the war. This included James Truitt, Russell Wiggins, Phil Geyelin, John Hayes and Alan Barth. Others like Stewart Alsop, Joseph Alsop and James Reston, were recruited from within the Georgetown Set. According to Deborah Davis (Katharine the Great): “By the early 1950s, Wisner ‘owned’ respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles.”

    In 1951 Allen W. Dulles persuaded Cord Meyer to join the CIA. However, there is evidence that he was recruited several years earlier and had been spying on the liberal organizations he had been a member of in the later 1940s. According to Deborah Davis, Meyer became Mockingbird’s “principal operative”.
    …
    The Bush administration turned the U.S. military into a global propaganda machine while imposing tough restrictions on journalists seeking to give the public truthful reports about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Associated Press chief executive Tom Curley said Friday.

    (Mocking America). This is quite well documented in American history.

  3. Great column – said much that is ignored by many Americans (especially the media).

  4. To expect different from the mainstream corporate media is delusional. They pumped the Iraq War based on flimsy government evidence, they are pumping the govt’s Syria intervention meme because of “chemical weapons.” They pump the govt’s need to keep Guantanamo open to mention but a couple of examples. The mainstream, corporate controlled media is an arm of govt. The great independent journalists, such a Greenwald, Palast, Scahill, Taibbi, and groups like ProPublica unearth reality while corporate media parrots its govt overlords.

  6. Hello,

    I have long been of the opinion that many, perhaps even most, of these soi-disant journalists are not merely fawning courtiers, but are active assets of the intelligence community serving the interests of a de facto military despotism.

    I wonder what FOIA requests might reveal about the likes of David Gregory, Kurt Eichenwald, David Ignatius, Richard Cohen, Edward Epstein, Barbara Starr, etc.

    — http://ericpetersautos.com/2012/05/07/deathstar-america-and-the-endgame-of-empire/

    Cheers,

    JQP

  7. Thanks, Nal! This is certainly an important story that the “courtier press” ought to be investigating and dsicussing. Just as David Gregory and Andrew Ross Sorkin went after Greenwald–others in the courtier press went after Michael Hastings after his story about Gen. Stanley McChrystal appeared in Rolling Stone. They don’t much like the “real” journalists who uncover the important stories.

    *****

    Email from Michael Hastings before crash mentions FBI probe
    By Andrew Blankstein and Brian Bennett
    June 21, 2013
    http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-hastings-crash-emails-20130621,0,2806628.story

    Excerpt:
    In an email sent hours before his death in a single-car L.A. crash, journalist Michael Hastings wrote that his “close friends and associates” were being interviewed by the FBI and he was going to “go off the radar for a bit.”

    According to the email, sent to KTLA, Hastings wrote he was working on a “big story” and was going to disappear. He told his colleagues that if the FBI came to interview them, they should have legal counsel present.

    The subject of the email was “FBI Investigation re: NSA.” Hastings sent the email to his colleagues just before 1 p.m. Monday and blind-copied his friend, Staff Sgt. Joseph Biggs.

    *****

    Hey, MSM: All Journalism is Advocacy Journalism
    By Matt Taibbi
    POSTED: June 27
    http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/hey-msm-all-journalism-is-advocacy-journalism-20130627

    Excerpt:
    So New York Times Dealbook writer Andrew Ross Sorkin has apologized to journalist Glenn Greenwald for saying he’d “almost arrest” him, for his supposed aid and comfort of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. “I veered into hyperbole,” was Sorkin’s explanation.

    I got into trouble the other day on Twitter for asking if David Gregory may have just had a “brain fart” when he asked Greenwald his infamous question, “To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you be charged with a crime?” I hadn’t seen the show and had only read the quote, and quite frankly, I don’t watch a lot of David Gregory. Apparently, in context, even the question I asked is absurd (more on that later). But Sorkin is different. For Sorkin to call his outburst an accident, that I know is hilarious.

    Did he also “veer into” a long career as a shameless, ball-gargling prostitute for Wall Street? As Jeff Cohen eloquently pointed out on HuffPo, isn’t Sorkin the guy who’s always bragging about how close he is to top bankers and parroting their views on things? This is a man who admitted, in print, that he only went down to Zucotti Park after a bank C.E.O. asked him, “Is this Occupy thing a big deal?”

    (Sorkin’s reassuring response: “As I wandered around the park, it was clear to me that most bankers probably don’t have to worry about being in imminent personal danger . . .”)

    And when Senator Carl Levin’s report about Goldman’s “Big Short” and deals like Abacus and Timberwolf came out, it was Sorkin who released a lengthy screed in Dealbook defending Goldman, one I instantly recognized as being nearly indistinguishable from the excuses I’d heard from Goldman’s own P.R. people.

  9. I always thought the Grand Jury was the ultimate ex parte. I was wrong. It is the FISA court.

    As for the media, the major media outlets have become nothing but hacks. Some of them do have an excuse. My oldest daughter used to date a newspaper editor. He said that deadlines and trying to compete in the 24-hour news cycle was destroying traditional media. Few reporters have time or resources to really investigate stories before they go to press or on the air. In fact, he said, background investigations and follow up questions of the type he learned in journalism school are becoming a lost art. Speed trumps quality of content.

    The product of that need for speed is being exploited by savvy political operatives like Karl Rove. Lee Atwater is dead now, but his sick sociopathic legacy lives on in people like Rove and Frank Luntz. Aided and abetted by “reporters” who are really celebrities instead of reporters.

    One of the worst things ever to happen to the news was repeal of the Fairness Doctrine. Reporting is reduced to bumper-sticker slogans and seven second sound bites. That is why we have so many low information voters. Analysis of what is being said and who is saying it is a thing of the past. Thus, the poor are sold on voting against their own best interest.

  11. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/06/24/glenn-greenwald-pushes-back-hard-on-latest-edward-snowden-revelations/

    “This whole theory of aiding and abetting is nothing more than a diversionary tactic,” Greenwald said. “Every single journalist works cooperatively with sources in order to obtain evidence.”

    Greenwald concludes of his and Snowden’s critics: “They are trying to shift attention away from what the U.S. government has done onto what the people who have reported it have done.”

    So they are. And there’s more to come.

  14. firefly-

    I think any debate on this issue, in order for it to be true and legitimate, must start with a pardon, either full, limited, or qualified, for Edward Snowden

  15. What goes on in the FISA stays in the FISA court.
    It is Ironic that the same promotional statement for the gambling industry applies and is sought for justification of the NSA secret policies.

    Regulation and oversight has lessened the organized crime and abuses that were common in Vegas. NSA ….not so much.

  16. I firmly believe the only way we are going to get our politicians to listen and understand is when they hear those famous last words: Ready, Aim, Fire.

  17. What goes on in the FISA court stays in the FISA court.
    It is Ironic that the NSA and it’s mega network of paid supplicants & sycophants are claiming the same “privilege” as the Gambling industry.

    ….. Of course organized crime in Vegas has been lessened through tougher oversight and regulation. …. NSA not so much.

  18. “Instead of a debate on the constitutionality of the NSA programs [our] media is focusing on insignificant details regarding the private lives of Snowden and Greenwald.”

    The NSA portion of The U.S. Military has all the data it needs to smear anyone now.

    What is interesting is that they learned this smear technique from one of the queens of Stalingrad (The Queens of Stalingrad – 2).

  19. RE: Snowden, Obama said he welcomed this opportunity to have a public debate about the surveillance issue.

    Well, when’s he going to start debating? He always has access to the public microphone; yet, he never said anything more about this “debate” we were going to have.

    Instead, he started talking about climate change, which is surely important, but it’s not the “debate” he was so eager to have about what rights we are willing to give up to ensure our safety.

    As for the media people, they are a disgrace.

  20. “That’s one of reasons Snowden was charged with treason, so the media would follow that meme.”

    Studies have shown that the American People feel that the military, which includes the NSA, is the most competent institution in America (Stockholm Syndrome on Steroids? – 2). The dynamic competent = honest or competent = harmless may be being used by media as an asset to further the meme.

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