I'm hijacking Glenn Greenwald

and am going to demand he become president....or an owner of a really big newspaper...or something. Listen to him teach the mainstream media how to fucking do their job:

"But in general, journalists are willing to engage in this sort of meaningful reporting only when doing so is completely uncontroversial and risk-free, usually because the person whose statements are labelled false is universally reviled. National journalists virtually never subject statements from government officials to this sort of scrutiny, and virtually never label such statements as "fiction," or point out that they are contradicted by all available evidence, even when that is plainly true. That, of course, is why government officials lie with impunity -- because they know that journalists will not report that they are lying.

All of this is the by-product of the well-documented and much-discussed journalistic myth that "objectivity" requires mindless recitation of both sides's claims, and that it is improper and "biased" to take sides. But as the Times article above documents, objectivity and meaningful journalism often requires taking sides, particularly where one side is making objectively false statements.

Journalists are not the only ones laboring under this misconception. In response to my post yesterday regarding the adversarial function which a healthy press performs, several Bush followers equated a belief that the press ought to be "adversarial" to the government with a desire for "agenda journalism" (Bush followers have a handy cliche for every issue), i.e., with a belief that journalists should be "partisan" by siding with one side of a political debate over another.

That just isn't what "adversarial" means. An adversarial press does not mean that the media automatically and reflexively contradicts what the Government says or does. That is called being a mindless "contrarian," not "adversarial."

An adversarial process is designed to uncover deceit and falsehood by ensuring that claims and arguments are subjected to meaningful scrutiny by some opposing force. An adversarial press means that it views its function as a watchdog over the Government, as a check on its power. It fulfills that function by viewing Government statements and actions skeptically and with the intent to scrutinize them and determine their truth, rather than mindlessly convey what the Government asserts. It means that there is a difference between a free press and Pravda.

The media abdicates its function, and becomes a propaganda arm of the government, when it simply repeats verifiably false Government claims without pointing out, as the Times did with respect to holocaust denial arguments, that the statements are false and objectively contradicted by clear evidence. And our media does that all the time."


Maybe it's all that logic and intelligence that is making me lightheaded....

Why was the DHS standing by and letting people get murdered?

Via Whig at Cannablog, Glenn Greenwald:
"I really recommend reading the Observer article in its entirety, although though I will summarize the basic facts. In 2000, agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department (ICE) -- part of the Department of Homeland Security -- recruited Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, known as "Lalo," to work as an informant for ICE as part of its investigation into a Mexican drug cartel which operated close to the Texas border. ICE was intent on gathering enough information to indict high-level Mexican drug traffickers, and they paid "Lalo" more than $220,000 to work as a spy for them, including the wearing of a wire.

In August, 2003, Lalo's cartel boss ordered him to participate in the murder of a Mexican lawyer. Lalo participated in the murder -- which was extremely brutal -- while wearing the wire supplied to him by ICE. The ICE agents thus became aware that the cartel they were investigating was murdering people and that their own informant was participating in those murders -- even as he wore their wire.

After the initial murder, the ICE agents sought permission to continue using Lalo as their informant. Permission was given by high-level Justice Department officials in both Texas and Washington, including several Texans who are very close associates of both George Bush and Alberto Gonzales.."


Glenn Greenwald's second article:
"I want to follow-up on the post from yesterday regarding the complicity of Homeland Security and Justice Department officials -- including several very high level administration officials -- in the multiple murders committed by one of their paid informants.
[snip]
This case goes far beyond that. Agents of our government worked with, paid and recorded a serial murderer who repeatedly tortured and slaughtered people with the knowledge of high-level DOJ and DHS officials. The 30-year DEA agent in charge of the El Paso office who complained about this and brought it to light was threatened and then fired. The independent reporter who reported on it was harassed, intimidated and threatened by agents who, with pure malice, went to his boss in an unrelated job in order to disclose information about him that they thought would be damaging, if not get him fired -- all done to force the reporter to disclose his sources."