Greenwald - Popping The Fourth Estate's Bubble

Glenn Greenwald is at his most spectacular best today. He takes apart a Washington Post article that, like so very many others published by newspapers here and abroad these days, is nothing more than a stream of quotes from "undisclosed government sources" masquerading as investigative journalism then writes:

Of all the dysfunctional aspects of our governmental system, this is, by far, the most dangerous. This is how most journalism works now. The Government wants to implant certain claims as "facts" into the public discourse. It then contacts the most slavish reporters, promises them exclusivity, and then feeds them a bunch of highly dubious claims which the reporter then dutifully and mindlessly publishes as though it is fact, without any corroboration, investigation, or anything else that distinguishes journalism from other fields such as, say, government propaganda, public relations, or stenography.

There are no critical faculties exercised, no investigation, no skepticism of any kind. In short, there is nothing adversarial between the government and the media -- which was supposed to characterize how this watchdog relationship was to function. The founders didn't guarantee a free press in order to ensure that it could publish government claims without interference. The idea was that the press would be adversarial to the Government, serve as a Fourth Estate when other checks on government power failed. The press has, of course, become the opposite -- it now exists only to amplify and lend credence to even the most suspect and manipulative government claims.

Absolutely spot on - I've covered some of just how exactly spot on it is myself in the past - so much so that the phrase "The founders didn't guarantee a free press in order to ensure that it could publish government claims without interference" may yet become my new sidebar quote-line for Newshog. It's a sentence I would love to hear and see more often! (Glenn, I have to tell you - I long to see Newshog on your blogroll, it would be an honor.)

Moreover, a comment on Glenn's blog by my good bloggy pal The Heretik got me doing a little research:

I am shocked, shocked you didn't mention the method of working to get a sympathetic story in an MSM outlet, and then referring to the story as "proof" that something is going on.

Because to a casual observer it isn't always obvious just how much of this stuff goes on in neocon ranks.

Take for example Amir Taheri's latest column for the UK's Daily Telegraph, a newspaper where "reporters" like Con Coughlin and Phil Sherwell have raised shilling for the Bush administration to an artform. Taheri, ridiculously, claims that President Ahmannutjob wants nuclear weapons in order to hasten the coming of the 12th Imam and a new Persian...oops, Islamic...Empire. I'm pretty certain that this comes as a surprise to the leader of the neocon's favourite Iranian dissident group the MeK - he thinks HE is the 12th Imam! Anyway, no matter how ridiculous these claims may be when made about a term-limited President utterly under the thumb of other powers they were immediately taken up by rightwing bloggers.

Taheri has written for notable newspapers such as the Guardian, The Australian, The New York Post, the London Sunday Times and many others. You will also find his articles on rightwing sites such as NRO, Townhall.com, FrontPage Magazine and many others. A prolific writer with a wide circulation. Why? Well, his involvement with Benador associates has a lot to do with it. Benador Associates are, according to SourceWatch, "a public relations firm that promotes conservative writers and speakers dealing with U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East."

Here's what veteran journalist Jim Lobe had to say about them:

"When historians look back on the United States war in Iraq, they will almost certainly be struck by how a small group of mainly neo-conservative analysts and activists outside the administration were able to shape the US media debate in ways that made the drive to war so much easier than it might have been… But historians would be negligent if they ignored the day-to-day work of one person who, as much as anyone outside the administration, made their media ubiquity possible. Meet Eleana Benador, the Peruvian-born publicist for Perle, Woolsey, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney and a dozen other prominent neo-conservatives whose hawkish opinions proved very hard to avoid for anyone who watched news talk shows or read the op-ed pages of major newspapers over the past 20 months."

Other Benador alumni include Victor Davis Hanson, Mansoor Ijaz and Charles Krauthammer - all of whom can regularly be found on NRO - along with a host of other neocon mouthpieces. Mike Ledeen is, of course, the neocon point man for regime change...well...everywhere.

Of course, if all these fifth columnists in the Fourth Estate actually showed their interconnectedness on their bylines by mentioning the various organisations they hold in common, even a casual observer would smell an orchestra of rats.

Useful Sites to Bookmark: Right Web and SourceWatch.