Later On

Greenwald has an extremely important (and cogent) column today on how the mainstream media have leapt to the Pentagon’s defense without a second’s thought (or any investigation of the matter). It begins:

The New York Times‘ John Burns yesterday responded to (and complained about) criticisms — voiced by me, Julian Assange and others — over his gossipy, People Magazine-style "profile" of Assange, which his newspaper centrally featured as part of its coverage of the WikiLeaks document release.  In a self-justifying interview with Yahoo! News‘ Michael Calderone, Burns makes several comments worth examining:

Burns said he doesn’t "recall ever having been the subject of such absolutely, relentless vituperation" following a story in his 35 years at the Times. He said his email inbox has been full of denunciations from readers and a number of academics at top-tier schools such as Harvard, Yale, and MIT.  Some, he said, used "language that I don’t think they would use at their own dinner table."

This is really good to hear:  quite encouraging.  Apparently, many people become quite angry when the newspaper which did more to enable the attack on Iraq than any other media outlet in the world covered one of the most significant war leaks in American history — documents detailing the deaths of more than 100,000 human beings in that war and the heinous abuse of thousands of others — by assigning its most celebrated war correspondent and London Bureau Chief to studiously examine and malign the totally irrelevant personality quirks, alleged mental health, and various personal relationships of Julian Assange.  Imagine that.  Then we have this from Burns:

Such heated reactions to the profile, Burns said, shows "just how embittered the American discourse on these two wars has become."

Oh my, how upsetting.  People are so very "embittered," and over what?  Just a couple of decade-long wars that have spilled enormous amounts of innocent blood, devastated two countries for no good reason, and spawned a worldwide American regime of torture, lawless imprisonment, and brutal occupation.  It’s nothing to get upset over.  People really need to lighten up.  And stop being so mean to John Burns.  That’s what really matters.  

After all — as he himself told you just a couple of months ago — there was just no way that he and his war-supporting media colleagues — holding themselves out as preeminent, not-to-be-questioned experts on that country — could possibly have known that an attack on Iraq would have led to such devastating violence and humanitarian catastrophe (except by listening to, rather than systematically ignoring, the huge numbers of people around the world loudly warning that exactly that could happen).  The last thing he should have to endure are insulting emails from people who seem to think that such episodes warrant anger and recrimination.  And that’s to say nothing of the obvious irony of a reporter complaining about our "embittered discourse" after he just wrote one of the sleaziest, most vicious hit pieces seen in The New York Times in quite some time.

Then there’s this:

The profile, Burns said, is "an absolutely standard journalistic endeavor that we would use with any story of similar importance in the United States" . . . . Burns added that the Times is "not in the business of hagiography" but in the "business of giving our readers the fullest context for these documents" and the Assange’s motivations. "To suggest that doing that is some kind of grotesque journalistic sin, and makes me a sociopath," Burns said, "strikes me as pretty odd."

This is the heart of the matter.  What Burns did to Julian Assange is most certainly not a "standard journalistic endeavor" for The New York Times.  If anyone doubts that, please show me any article that paper has published which trashed the mental health, psyche and personality of a high-ranking American political or military official — a Senator or a General or a President or a cabinet secretary or even a prominent lobbyist — based on quotes from disgruntled associates of theirs.  That is not done, and it never would be.

This kind of character smear ("he’s not in his right mind," pronounced a 25-year-old who sort of knows him) is reserved for people who don’t matter in the world of establishment journalists — i.e., people without power or standing in Washington and, especially, those whom American Government authorities scorn.  In official Washington, Assange is a contemptible loser — the Pentagon hates him and wants him destroyed, and therefore the "reporters" who rely on,  admire and identify with Pentagon officials immediately adopt that perspective — and that’s why he was the target of this type of attack.  After I wrote my criticism of this article on Monday, I was contacted by Burns’ co-writer, Ravi Somaiya, who defended this article from my criticisms.  I agreed to keep the exchange off-the-record at his insistence — and I will do so — but that was the question I kept asking:  point to any instance where the NYT ever subjected Someone Who Matters in Washington to this kind of personality and mental health trashing based on the gossip and condemnation of associates.  It does not exist.

As for Burns’ pronouncement that "the Times is ‘not in the business of hagiography’," he should probably remind himself of what he himself wrote about the Right Honorable Gen. Stanley McChrystal, after Burns had attacked Michael Hastings for daring to publish the General’s own statements that reflected badly on him.  Here’s what Burns wrote while falling all over himself in reverence of this Great American Warrior:

[A]ll that I know about General McChrystal suggests that he is, just as the Rolling Stone article suggested, a maverick of high self-belief and intensity, uncautioned in his disregard for the conventional, but for all that a soldier with a deep belief in the military’s ideals of "duty, honor, country." Though handed what many would regard as a poisoned chalice in the Afghanistan command, he had worked relentlessly to rescue America’s fortunes there. . . . grave misfortune it is, considering what is lost to America in a commander as smart, resolute and as fit for purpose as General McChrystal . . . .

General George S. Patton Jr. . . .  a man who was regarded at the time, like General McChrystal in Afghanistan, as the best, and the toughest, of America’s war-fighting generals. . . . In Iraq, we barely glimpsed General McChrystal, then running the super-secret special operations missions that were crucial in turning the tide against Al Qaeda and the Sunni insurgency under General Petraeus’s command; but he, too, continued the pattern of access after he took command in Afghanistan in June 2009. . . .

Reporters, of course, do best when they keep their views to themselves, to retain their impartiality. But it’s safe to say that many of the men and women who have covered General McChrystal as commander if Afghanistan, or in his previous role as the top United States special forces commander, admired him, and felt at least some unease about the elements in the Rolling Stone article that ended his career.

It seems Burns wrote that while standing and saluting in front of a large wall photograph of the General, or perhaps kneeling in front of it.  The only hint of a criticism was quite backhanded: that Chrystal  "blundered catastrophically" by failing to exercise sufficient caution when speaking to an Unestablished, Unaccepted, reckless, low-level loser like Michael Hastings, who simply did not know — or refused to abide by — the General-protecting rules that Real Reporters use when venerating covering for covering top military officials.  And despite writing 2,700 praise-filled words about McChrystal, Burns never once mentioned little things like his central involvement in the Pat Tillman fraud or the widespread detainee abuse in Iraq under his command, until a reader asked about it, and only then, he mentioned it in passing to dismiss it. Burns’ view of McChrystal is the very definition of journalistic hagiography.

Or consider this NYT profile of Gen. McChrystal by Elisabeth Bumiller and Mark Mazzetti, after he was named to run the war in Afghanistan, that was more creepily worshipful than any Us Weekly profile of a movie star whose baby pictures they are desperate to publish.  It goes on and on with drooling praise, but this is how it begins: . . .

Continue reading. It really makes the case that mainstream journalism is now more or less committed to protecting the Pentagon and covering for government missteps.