‘Freedom Of The Press Is Guaranteed Only ...’Sampling The Networks' Hillary Committee Aftermath

Liebling was right, and his famous quotation is never more apt than when applied to politics on broadcast TV...

[flip broadcast TV — ON]

Charlie Rose, who is I assume a Republican (at least he married in succession two wealthy women), hosted... two Republicans and John Grisham, probably not a Republican (he is on the board of The Innocence Project, and GOPers seldom think anyone is innocent). Three-to-one R-to-D on the set. They weren't shy about it, either. 

[flip]

A local knockoff of The View; five people on set. I don't know the ratio, but one unabashedly partisan Republican woman dominated the conversation monologue.

[flip]

A major broadcast network's morning national news. A "political analyst" spins the Hillary testimony. In this case, "political analyst" meant "paid Republican hack."

[flip]

Another major broadcast network's morning national news. Carly Fiorina, not pitted against any Democrat, ranting derogatory crap about Hillary, with no one on set to defend Mrs. Clinton. You can just imagine... it was as if Fiorina had been given a free ad spot.

[flip — OFF]

There's not even an attempt to be subtle about it. Many Republicans hate Hillary so much that I am worried that if they can't stop her by legitimate means, one or more of them may assault her. But whatever they want to say is OK with me, as long as there is someone on set to present an opposing viewpoint. Somehow, there seldom if ever is such a person.

Regular readers know I am a strong supporter of Bernie Sanders, and I wish to goodness it was his year, but as much as I personally enjoy supporting a genuine progressive, I think Bernie is the proverbial snowball in Hell in the race for President. It ain't gonna happen.

When Bernie departs the race, I will revert to type: I am a strategic voter, and as distasteful as I find big-money politics, I plan to vote for Hillary... no matter what stupid (and utterly false) scandals the Rethugs toss at her. Hey, she's gotta be better than The Donald (admittedly not a very high standard).

As to who will win, I have no idea. With the broadcast networks wholly owned by right-wing nut-jobs (even PBS news shows are dominated by executive directors who lean right), the public never has a fair chance to see any other views. (A colleague of mine with whom I carpooled many years ago, a well-educated wing-nut but nonetheless a wing-nut, used to rant about the "liberal media." I can only wish...)

From Buckley v. Valeo (1976) forward, the "spending-is-speech" crowd, themselves mostly wealthy Republicans, have effectively owned US politics. If we want our democracy back, I don't know how in Hell we're going to get it. It's sad, when you think about it. <sigh />

Chris Hedges On 'The Criminalization Of Journalism'

Jaisal Noor, producer for The Real Network News, interviews the always plain-spoken Chris Hedges. I started to say "the indefatigable Chris Hedges," but honestly, Hedges looks as tired as I feel these days. It must be a terrible burden that he carries, largely on our behalf and for our education. Be that as it may, Hedges addresses the detention... face it, the criminal arrest... of David Miranda by British officials at London's Heathrow Airport, charging him with "espionage" and "terrorism" — i.e., journalism embarrassing to officialdom on both sides of the Atlantic. The interview is published both as a video and in print; it is worth viewing both forms. A couple of quotations:

...

NOOR: So, Chris, let's start off by getting your response to the British government accusing David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, who often collaborates with Greenwald, of, quote, espionage and terrorism and saying those were some of the reasons why they held him for hours on end at Heathrow without letting him speak to his lawyer or anyone else.

HEDGES: Well, they didn't just told him. They seized all of his electronic equipment--his computer, his phone--because they were looking for some of the files that [Miranda's partner Glenn] Greenwald has been using to publish his stories that were leaked by Edward Snowden. And this is just part of the criminalization of journalism which has taken place not only within the United States but within countries like Great Britain as well.

NOOR: Britain doesn't have the same safeguards for journalists as places like the U.S. do. ...

HEDGES: Well, there aren't any safeguards left within the United States as well. ... the security and surveillance state has the phone--all of the electronic communications of every journalist in this country. They've used the Espionage Act aggressively seven times, the last time being against Snowden, to make sure nobody does talk to the press to expose the inner workings of power.

So we once had, at least legally, more protection as journalists than were provided to journalists in Great Britain. But all of it's gone up in smoke, both here and there. ...

NOOR: Now, the NSA and its defenders, they cite 54 terrorist plots they have been able to supposedly thwart due to this massive spying. But a recent report by ProPublica found that the NSA was only able to provide evidence in four of those cases. Why do you think the NSA is not providing additional evidence for those remaining 50 cases?

HEDGES: Well, because they're lying. ...

What's interesting is that a lot of times when they lie, they get caught because of courageous whistleblowers like Snowden who expose their [lies]. ...

...

Please read and/or watch the rest. The interview is short and to the point.

A mere few years ago I began to wonder whether the United States could survive the beating it has taken at the hands of Americans who truly do not care for its founding principles as long as they control the nation's power... Dick Cheney, the PNAC gang, Karl Rove, etc. I don't wonder anymore: in the words of Leonard Cohen, "The war is over. The good guys lost." The Bill of Rights... especially the First Amendment's freedom of speech and press... is nothing but pen-scratchings on parchment; there is no substance to those freedoms in the era of presidents George W. Bush Dick Cheney and Barack Obama. To parody the title of another Hedges book, war is a farce that gives the U.S. beatings.

It was great while it lasted. I feel I owe an apology to Thomas Jefferson and to my father, both of whom did their damnedest to create and then preserve a nation where things were done right — thank goodness neither of them survived to see what my generation has done to it.

---

AFTERTHOUGHT: A couple of days ago I began reading Jeremy Scahill's new book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield. I have not read Scahill's other book, but I am reminded by his first chapter of Jane Mayer's The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, a book which I went out and bought (used, of course) *after* I finished reading the library copy. One difference: the Scahill book is immense; you could use it to exercise your arms, pumping pulp instead of pumping iron. But the content is just as depressing as Mayer's excellent work. I may not be able to finish it...

Espionage And Leaks... And Presidents Who Cannot Or Will Not Tell The Difference

Leak stopper

With the laying of charges of espionage against Edward Snowden, Barack Obama joins Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush in the exclusive group of presidents who have used the Espionage Act of 1917 as a club with which to beat leakers of information that embarrassed their administrations. Kevin Gosztola of FDL, who actually can tell the difference between espionage and leaks, explores the likely consequences if this course of action... so far used by Obama eight times, more often than by all other presidents combined... becomes common practice.

Leak stopper

Gosztola's article is long and thought-provoking, and I will not attempt to summarize it. If you give a damn about whether the American press and media are able to operate to the advantage of an open and democratic American government and a passionately motivated American people, you need to read the whole thing. If you don't, and if Obama succeeds where the other above-named presidents failed in establishing espionage charges as a default brickbat against leakers, you may be literally asking for the consequences Gosztola outlines, quoting Jonathan Alter's words from the latter's book The Promise:

Obama had one pet peeve that could make him lose his cool. It was a common source of anger for presidents: leaks. Complaints about loose lips became a constant theme of Obama’s early presidency. At his first Cabinet meeting he made a point of saying that he didn’t want to see his Cabinet “litigating” policy through the New York Times and the Washington Post. At a Blair House retreat for the Cabinet and senior staff at the end of July he devoted about a quarter of his comments to urging his people to keeping their disagreements within the family: “We should be having these debates on the inside, not the outside.” And during his twenty hours of deliberations over Afghanistan in the fall, he returned repeatedly to the theme. Naturally in Washington nearly every time he got upset about leaks it leaked.

For all his claims that he didn’t want yes-men around him, no one on his staff was brave enough to tell the president that obsessing over leaks was a colossal waste of time. (Aides should have recognized that the age-old problem in Washington isn’t managing leaks, but managing the president’s fury over them.) But it wouldn’t have mattered: leaks offended Obama’s sense of discipline and reminded him of everything he disliked about the capital. He was fearsome on the subject, which seemed to bring out his controlling nature to an even greater degree than usual...

I am increasingly convinced, notwithstanding all of Obama's mitigating virtues, that his essence is the stuff of which totalitarian leaders are made. He needs to be watched closely, and prevented to the extent possible by the counterbalance of other branches of our government from enforcing an un-American discipline on the world of American journalism. Our nation's survival as a free and open society may depend on it.

Journalism, including the release and publication of leaks, is not espionage: it is an essential element in the ongoing battle against the actions of controlling presidents and their governments. It must never be shut down or chilled out of existence by threats, applied through archaic laws, to the lives and freedoms of journalists.

AP CEO Alleges DoJ Intimidation Of Sources By Seizure Of Journalists' Phone Records

Regular readers know I quote as little as possible from an AP story to avoid being harassed. So here is as little as possible from this story:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department violated its own rules when it secretly seized records for thousands of phone calls to and from journalists for The Associated Press as part of a leak investigation, the head of the company said Wednesday.

AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt told a luncheon gathering of journalists and others that the seizure was not only excessively broad, but that the department failed to notify AP in advance of the subpoena, as normally required. Department rules say a delay in notification is justified only if needed to protect the integrity of its investigation. Pruitt said that justification was unfathomable in this case.

...

Notwithstanding any fundamental guarantees to the contrary, any government has the raw power to manipulate the press's coverage of that government's actions. At some point, if the government exercises a sufficiently draconian influence (e.g., implicitly threatening to reveal a news organization's undisclosed sources to the public or to law enforcement, or implicitly threatening harassment of the undisclosed sources themselves), the press is no longer free to do its job, and the public lacks the ability to obtain information necessary to make intelligent decisions as it must in a free society. Are we there yet in America? I don't know, but it certainly seems to me that this seizure of journalists' communications records is a big step in a very wrong direction.

Has anybody noticed this is happening in a Democratic administration? "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss..."

'Free People Read Freely'

Still restricted after
all these years

That's the motto of the ACLU of Texas's thirtieth annual Banned Books Week. On the linked page, click "2012 Report" for a .pdf containing a list of banned books this year and a lot of material about the cultural context of book-banning in America today. Example: in Tucson, AZ, classes in Latin-American Studies, including their entire reading lists, were banned. The good news: the total number of books banned has gone down steadily since GeeDubya left office. The bad: the bastards haven't stopped trying.

One banned book is one banned book too many. Every free individual should be able to read whatever s/he wants, with no exceptions and most certainly no legal restrictions. If parents want to restrict the reading of their minor children, I can't stop them, but a parent who is not a religious nutjob should seriously contemplate the consequences of rearing a child to believe that there are things s/he shouldn't read. Growing up, I was allowed to read literally any book on my parents' shelves, and often enough I read material "not suitable for younger readers" ... with no apparent harm to my eventual functioning as a good citizen. Free people read freely.

Read a banned book this week!

Apparent Undercover Charlotte Cops Threaten, Search FDL, TruthOut Journalists

It is with genuine sadness that I report this. FDL reporter Kevin Gosztola and TruthOut's Steve Horn, both credentialed journalists at the Convention, were photographing "four burly middle-aged white males" in the street during a protest march. The four males, dressed as protesters but later identifying themselves as cops, were themselves photographing undocumented immigrants in the march. The undocumenteds were urging President Obama to make good on his 2008 campaign promise to facilitate some sort of solution to the ongoing problem faced by farmworkers without papers, other than the brutal approach in effect now for many decades, which is getting worse in border states. The cops threatened the journalists, one saying he would punch Gosztola in the teeth, another dragging Horn away from his story to a street corner. Gosztola deleted all his photos rather than turn them over to a cop.

Oh, hell. Just go read it. I'm weary and tired of this shit. It is an old, old story with echoes of Chicago 1968, and it is no more acceptable at a Democratic convention than a Republican one. As Jane Hamsher said,

“There’s nothing illegal about photographing people on the street” says Jane Hamsher, publisher of Firedoglake. “There was absolutely no provocation that could have possibly justified the thuggery and bullying by law enforcement agents of journalists who were legitimately covering a public event. It was an outrageous abridgement not only of freedom of the press, but of individual civil liberties.”

But that is where we are in 2012. Civil liberties, especially for journalists and news photographers, are infringed daily, and cops take sides in matters that are not rightfully theirs to resolve, absent violence. Things are different now, but not in a good way. Freedom of the press is in grave danger in America today.

Internet Defense League Launches Tomorrow

Do you give a damn whether private corporations with unfriendly agendas prevail upon their lackeys in Congress to give them effective control over the Internet? Do you care whether SOPA/PIPA and its descendants impose ridiculously stringent restrictions on your web sites' content? You do, and you do? Great! Sign up to be part of the Internet Defense League. Before you sign up, take a look at their list of early institutional members; I think you'll feel you're in good company.

Here's a selection: Mozilla, WordPress, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), FightForTheFuture, reddit, CHEEZburger (!), Open Technology Institute, ... just go look for yourself, so I won't have to type dozens of links. And yes, your doggerelist is a member; I signed up many weeks ago.

Oh, and for members (free to sign up... donations accepted, of course), there are all kinds of cool logos for your site, including the cat face in the sidebar here.

Obama's War On Leaks

From MichaelMoore.com, with the usual reminder that individual items on Moore's front page are not linkable directly, we have a link to a post at Capital Comment by Shane Harris on the Obama administration's obsession with stopping leaks, and the extremes to which they will go to catch and prosecute leakers... and reporters who use them as sources:

“We’re out for scalps.” That’s what a senior Justice Department official told me when I asked what was behind the Obama administration’s unprecedented number of leak prosecutions. The “we” referred to federal prosecutors, but the official said the desire to see leakers punished extended to the White House, as well. The official, who also made it clear that reporters who talked to sources about classified information were putting themselves at risk of prosecution, asked not to be quoted by name.

The use of the DoJ for manifestly punitive measures against the press, to an extent not pursued by any prior president (even Bush 43), should be grounds for concern by Americans who believe we have a right to know what our government is doing.

This is not a liberal/conservative issue; this is a good-government issue. All presidential administrations... all of them... bend or break the rules all the time, doing favors for friends, sending business their way, giving them advance information about administration plans, trying to make their opponents look bad in press and media, etc. Without leaks, Americans have no hope of knowing about these abuses of government power; with leaks, there's at least a hope. A government without leaks is a government free to be as totalitarian as it wishes. And that is, to all appearances, the kind of government Obama has in mind. Please read the linked post for details. They are unsurprising, but you need to confront them.

Would Rmoney be any better? Silly question... of course not. Rmoney would unhesitatingly throw the whole White House press corps in jail on the mere suspicion that one received a leak. Draconian responses are the M.O. of the Republican Party, and Mittens is about as uninspired, uninspiring and unimaginative a Republican as you'll find.

But I cannot offer Obama more than my personal vote, and that mainly because he is less evil on women's rights. I cannot offer him my endorsement. The oh‑dash‑it‑all of hope has arrived, and my hopes are suitably dashed.