Madison's Farce In Action: The media’s disgraceful reaction to Seymour Hersh’s bin Laden Report
EXTRACT
In an ideal world, Hersh’s report would trigger more investigative journalism. Yet despite its obvious importance, as Trevor Timm explains below in the Columbia Journalism Review, the mainstream media’s reaction to the Hersh report has not been to dig deeper, but to shoot the messenger.
By now, most readers have heard of Seymour Hersh’s latest tubesteak in the London Review of Books. Hersh outed the Obama Administration’s lies surrounding the killing of Osama bin Ladin in a 10,000 word report. For readers who have not yet read the Hersh report, Jeffrey St. Claire, editor of Counterpunch, penned an excellent summary as a lead in to an essay written by the late Alexander Cockburn who criticized the Obama Administration's story about the liquidation of bin Ladin only four days after the event. St. Claire’s point was not to criticize or diminish Hersh’s work, but to remind people that questions about bin Ladin’s liquidation arose from the get go. Rumors have been swirling for years, but it was Hersh has put together the most coherent story yet published. That makes his report worth a careful study and analysis.
In an ideal world, Hersh’s report would trigger more investigative journalism. Yet despite its obvious importance, as Trevor Timm explains below in the Columbia Journalism Review, the mainstream media’s reaction to the Hersh report has not been to dig deeper, but to shoot the messenger.
This reaction reminds of behaviour in the Pentagon (and also in Climate science) that instinctively occurs whenever someone identifies problems with the consensus “party line,” or in the sterile language of newspeak, whenever one posits a new “narrative” in place of the consensus “narrative.” This kind of group-think is very dangerous stuff when it comes to the media, because as James Madison implied* almost 200 years ago, the integrity of the Fourth Estate (the quest for knowledge not narratives) is a necessary condition for maintaining the vitality of the American concept of a republic based on the theory of representative democracy:
“A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” – James Madison, from a letter to W.T. Barry, August 4, 1822
But as one Pentagon wag opined to me in the early 1980s in reaction to my work analyzing the delusions implied by the Plans/Reality Mismatch, ‘You have shown how the Pentagon is always a step ahead of society. People talk about about the revolutionary implications of the information era, but we have already moved to next rung of progress — Welcome to the Post Information Era.'
* Madison was talking about popular education, but the point is universal and self-evidently applies to the mass media
Chuck Spinney
The media’s reaction to Seymour Hersh’s bin Laden scoop has been disgraceful
Columbia Journalism Review, MAY 15, 2015
SEYMOUR HERSH HAS DONE THE PUBLIC a great service by breathing life into questions surrounding the official narrative of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Yet instead of trying to build off the details of his story, or to disprove his assertions with additional reporting, journalists have largely attempted to tear down the messenger.
Phi Beta Iota: Completely apart from Chuck Spinney's commentary and the article defending Hersh's report, we believe that Hersh did not go far enough. Had he wished to, he could have taken this to the nth degree, to wit, Bin Laden died in 2001, a series of Bin Ladens were concocted by the CIA and the Saudis over time to continue leveraging that mythical terrorists, and this last Bin Laden was a patsy put in place precisely to help re-elect Obama — Leon Panetta's greatest betrayal not only of the public trust, but of the SEALS and others who died for a political act steeped in treachery and naked lies. We have not direct knowledge, but based on many other informed reports and Bin Laden's own death as reported in 2001, we conclude there is a 70% probability or better than the last Bin Laden was a patsy, JSOG was lied to by CIA, and this was all political theater.
See Especially:
Paul Craig Roberts: For the Record – Bin Laden’s 2001 Obituary Notice
Bin Laden Show 46: Blackwater Blown in Abottabad in January 2010
Bin Laden Show 45: Overview of Fake Bin Ladens
Bin Laden Show 24: Abbottabad Resident Say Bin Laden Operation a Hoax
See Also:
Bin Laden Show: Entries 00-99 UPDATED 4 Jan 2014
