Scott Johnson of Powerline makes a good point about the MSM and Russiagate
Here it is, on the topic of the fact that media reports were almost uniformly wrong about Russiagate, the Nunes vs. Schiff memo, the Steele dossier’s reliability, and so much else:
If reporters were burned, they should be angry, and corrections should be forthcoming. If there isn’t an effort to reverse the wrong coverage, it will look like certain outlets (particularly cable channels) were complicit in knowingly giving oceans of airtime to shaky stories. It’s a bad look either way, but door number two is worse.
He’s right. If reporters were duped by the FBI and people such as Schiff, the MSM should be saying so and attacking those who deceived them, and trying to find out why it happened. The paucity of such articles, even now, suggests two things. The first is that it’s difficult for our self-righteous journalists to admit that they got this whole thing wrong, wrong, wrong. That’s hard because of both the natural human tendency to admit wrongdoing, as well as the fact that the truth goes in a political direction (defense of Donald Trump) that is anathema to them.
But the second is that they may indeed have known they were lying.
It’s another variant of ye olde “fools vs. knaves (or both)” question.
If I was a betting man, I would be going all in on “both” as the answer to that question.
I’ll take door number two, Alex. I doubt they’re much bothered by the truth.
God rest ye merry fools & knaves,
Let nothing you dismay!
Because nothing will dismay them, at least no mistakes they make.
Here’s a question that I think gets straight to the heart of the matter:
ASIDE FROM MATT TAIBBI, is there ANY OTHER left-wing journalist who has so publicly “turned”?
(Yes, I understand that the WAPO has supposedly said that they will get to the bottom of their reporting “lapses”; but seriously, what are the odds of a whitewash there? No doubt, something along the lines of the following has already been rubber stamped: “We firmly believed that we were doing the most professional job possible under the most difficult circumstances. [And throwing in the following for good measure—well, why not?] We admit that it is entirely possible that mistakes were made but if so, they were made in spite of our most professional intentions and highest journalistic standards….” etc., etc., ad nauseum.)
They wanted to believe it was true and that was all that mattered.
Has happened dozens of times the last few years with Trump this was just the biggest one of them all.
And the left and media are filled with profound narcissists and anyone who has had the special joy of dealing with one knows they don’t admit they were wrong easily.
It’s another variant of ye olde “fools vs. knaves (or both)” question.
Amazing how often that question comes up, in one form or another.
I vote for fools who don’t want to admit they were fooled. Recall Rhodes, Obama’s was it National Security advisor, who told us that reporters were 27 year olds who literally knew nothing. Or something like that . 🙂
Speaking of literally knowing nothing, compare Kissinger’s qualifications for being National Security advisor versus Rhodes’s qualifications. Like Tom Brady versus the Foxborough High quarterback- a comparison that Belichick brings up when he wants to say you really messed up.
But the second is that they may indeed have known they were lying.
That involves both knowledge and research capabilities that are beyond most reporters. Most reporters are ignorant idjits.
We should look at the Return of the Repressed to explain their mass hysteria. Something that cannot be acknowledged is about to break into the open.
At the simplest level, there is not enough money in the cities to satisfy all the Party’s client groups. Not without sacrificing the Party members who have cleaned up. But if the Party loses cohesion and loses control of the government patronage machines, it is really all over. The situation calls the competency and legitimacy of the leadership class (and their children and followers) into question.
The Smart Ones are not smart.
The Good People are not good.
Their current supremacy will pass away: the horror.
It’s also interesting that it’s not just the millenial indoctrinated from birth ‘journalists’ who have somehow gone directly from college to the NYT or WP that won’t admit their errors it’s also the older generation.
I generally hate twitter but one of more interesting things I’ve seen since the IG report is some of the threads by people like Sean Davis and many others going pack to tweets and articles by people like Chuck Todd and Jake Tapper who are older and supposedly oh so serious journalists and they haven’t really addressed all their mistakes either.
The unmasking of the media as even more unserious, biased, partisan hacks than we even imagined has been yet another great thing that Trump has brought about.
Griffin wrote:
“ They wanted to believe it was true and that was all that mattered.”
“It’s not a lie if you believe it.” – George Constanza
Life imitates Art.
(It is arguable that ‘Seinfeld’ was not Art.)
They’re like Obama. You bring up truth and falsehood and they just think you’re trash talking them.
Wouldn’t it be something if Matt Taibi and the WashPost red pilled? That right there would be the very best legacy of the Trump era.
I can’t think of the MSM admitting any major mistakes that were within the Narrative.
As I recall, the MSM just stopped talking about Rathergate (the forged papers which functioned as an October Surprise against W. Bush in 2004), while Dan Rather and his producer Mary Mapes still pretend the documents were not proved false and were valid.
The MSM did make a conspicuous show of breast-beating how they were taken in by the wily. duplicitous Bush administration for the Iraq War, and resolved “won’t get fooled again,” but that was within the progressive Narrative.
So I’m not optimistic the MSM will come clean on RussiaGate etc.
They weren’t “fooled.” They were complicit because the mocked him and predicted he’d lose and he won. It made them look like idiots and they doubled down gladly. They are simply a second swamp that needs draining.
I see it as being very similar to the collective insanity that took place in the McCarthy Era Red Scare. The difference is that that was mostly bi-partisan. In this case, it is the entire Democratic Party that is unhinged.
I don’t see anything changing till after the election. Hopefully, the electorate will sense the insanity and vote for the sane candidates. Perhaps a Republican landslide would be the wakeup call.
I agree with Ken about the MSM. Unfortunately, they can’t be voted out. They can only be defeated by by the grand majority simply tuning them out.
“…complicit…”
It was—and continues to be—a comprehensive, masterful, Obama & Co. “echo-chamber” operation, with strategic and graduated leaks emanating from the CIA, the DOJ/FBI and Congress (e.g., Harry Reid), with the MSM playing its essential role—disseminating synchronized falsehoods globally—to absolute perfection:
“Ben Rhodes & intelligence officials laundered it through national security reporters who gave their explosive claims anonymous cover.”
https://twitter.com/RoscoeBDavis1/status/1208076064544755712
H/T Lee Smith Twitter feed
To be sure, instead of the term “complicity”, there are those who would characterize years of such concentrated, focused and comprehensive criminal behavior on the part of the MSM as “collusion”.
They would be right.
The job of Reporter for the MSM is to advance the Narrative and comfort the believers.
Retaining membership in the tribe is the key to success, self-respect, and happiness. Accuracy in reporting is not even part of the formula.
The journalists will never admit they were wrong.
“The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination. We cannot pity those we have wronged, nor can we be indifferent toward them. We must hate and persecute them or else leave the door open to self-contempt.” Eric Hoffer
Roy Nathanson.
I see it as being very similar to the collective insanity that took place in the McCarthy Era Red Scare.
With the difference that the higher echelons of the federal government actually did contain Soviet spies, such as Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White. Perhaps not as many as McCarthy insinuated, but they were there- or had been.
And the USSR did fund and direct the CPUSA. (Though for several decades beginning in the late 1950s, the bagman bringing Moscow gold to the CPUSA did so under the direction of the FBI. John Barron’s Operation Solo tells the story. )
And creative types like Pete Seeger and Dalton Trumbo did release pro-pacifist works when pacifism was the party line that Stalin wanted for the US- and Seeger and Trumbo changed their views on pacifism after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union changed the party line on pacifism.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I knew some Red diaper babies from my home area and also from my year in Berserkeley. I found it out from research in subsequent decades. Can’t say I blame them for hiding the Commie ties of their parents and relatives.
With the difference that the higher echelons of the federal government actually did contain Soviet spies, such as Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White. Perhaps not as many as McCarthy insinuated, but they were there- or had been.
Gringo: Bingo! I had the same thought.
Not just knaves, journalists are trained and certified knaves.
“And the USSR did fund and direct the CPUSA.”
… the CPUSA that Brennan voted for. You didn’t have to read the Venona papers to know that the CPUSA was nothing but a front for the Soviets. Absolutely appalling that an out-and-out commie was made head of the CIA.
huxley on December 21, 2019 at 9:13 pm said:
I can’t think of the MSM admitting any major mistakes that were within the Narrative.
* * *
Why should they? No one holds them accountable for any kind of mistake at all.
https://www.pulitzer.org/news/statement-walter-duranty
And ,yes, I am counting on the the Neo community to know about the controversy over Duranty’s reporting.
by the grand majority simply tuning them out. [RoyNathanson]
We’re doing our share, Roy. All we have to hear is, “I’m Korva Coleman and this is NPR New. ….. ” and that soft, toneless sound you hear next is the CD button being pushed on kitchen radios all over America.
I am counting on the the Neo community to know about the controversy over Duranty’s reporting [AesopFan]
Yes, everyone should know this. I just re-read the Wikipedia reference to this in its Duranty article because I thought I remembered the Times “returning” the Pulitzer.
They did everything but. (“Let’s just leave it up to them,” you can almost hear Timesmen saying.) And, in the next step, I can understand the Pulitzer board not wanting to re-open an old prize — sort of; it could so easily lead to Confederate-statue-syndrome, or perhaps it already has (Laurence) — but the answer from the Pulitzer committee is so weak-kneed and erroneous. Naturally, the letter from Pinch Sulzberger accompanying the Times’s own findings would apply perfectly to the last three years of their reporting, too. Tellingly, the letter sounded the right note but did not actually do anything. What a disaster he has been for the paper. Yet the family never did a thing.
And the Duranty case, to the Jayson Blair business, to the current campaign and prizes, argue that the Times’ editing has been consistenty fraudulent in direct lineage.
Janet Cooke’s fake “Jimmy” Pulitzer-winner in 1981 or thereabouts could have been predicted if they had checked her claimed credentials; she seems to have been a fabricator from the get-go, though she also blamed editorial pressures for the story. And Duranty was a follower of Aleister Crowley, which should really have raised some eyebrows. It was in their nature, in both cases, then, to fabricate and propagandize, albeit for different reasons.
Btw, Cooke’s story raised some doubts inside the Post, according to Wiki, but was still nominated by editor Bob Woodward.
Tellingly, the letter sounded the right note but did not actually do anything. What a disaster he has been for the paper. Yet the family never did a thing.
He’s more-or-less retired. It’s his Millennial son who runs the paper now. By all appearances, the son is at least as bad as the father. If he has an original observation to make about public life in this country, we haven’t seen it yet.
What’s amazing is that in quality, these papers go in one direction only – downhill. The last Meyer scion sells the Post a few years back to Jeff Bezos, because the paper was threatening to bankrupt them and they needed to diversify their residue of holdings. For Bezos, the Post‘s deficits are sofa change. Bezos, who had nothing to do with the news business previously, installs editors who make the paper gobsmackingly awful. Our elites are insane, even the ones who are proven profit-generators. This will not end well.
Janet Cooke’s fake “Jimmy” Pulitzer-winner in 1981 or thereabouts could have been predicted if they had checked her claimed credentials; she seems to have been a fabricator from the get-go,
My recollection is she spent 1 year at Vassar and finished up at a state university in Ohio. She claimed in her application to the Post time a menu of elite schools as well as proficiency in multiple languages; I seem to recall there was a trail of job and grant applications and the menu of schools and languages got longer with each one. The episode anticipated the Stephen Glass affair: the fabrication was quite gaudy, but got past the Post‘s editors because it played to their wishes and prejudices.
Aleister Crowley! I had never heard the name, so I spent some time this morning reading up on him. The story stretches back to a late Victorian group of esoterics called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
In a twist of bizarre synchronicity, we learn today that Jeremy Corbyn has been awarded the MacBride Prize, named for Sean MacBride, who managed to be at various points Chief of Staff of the IRA, founder of Amnesty International, a high UN official and winner of both the Nobel and Lenin Prizes. Honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up. MacBride was son of one of the Easter Uprising martyrs and W.B. Yeats’ famous Maud Gonne, heiress-actress and activist, who was herself a member of…wait for it… the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
What this Golden Dawn group was up to, I have no idea, but Crowley and its successors seem to have exerted a fatal fascination for bored and neurotic heirs and heiresses from that time until this, not least because they came up with all the rationalizations one could desire for random sex and drug use, often dressed up in the trappings of Eastern Mystery—Egyptian or Indian depending on the mood of the moment. Oh, and violent revolutionary politics: Nazi, Communist, whatever.
The echoes remain in popular culture, for example Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. It is said that L. Ron Hubbard was exposed to Crowley’s movement. I wonder now about the demon “Crowley” in Pratchett & Gaimon’s Good Omens. I even wonder about J.K. Rowling’s “Lucius Malfoy:” could that be an echo (perhaps unconscious) of Lucien Millevoy, a right-wing nationalist journalist and politician…and lover of Maud Gonne? Maud seems to have been a Jane Fonda of her day.
I apologize for the digression. My point is that if we need to account for the extraordinary levels of crazy around us, we need to recognize that the craziness goes way back; it has always seduced rich, insecure, bossy, neurotic people; and there is a lot to repress. A lot can never be admitted.
He’s [Sulzbrgr Jr] more-or-less retired. It’s his Millennial son who runs the paper now. By all appearances, the son is at least as bad as the father. If he has an original observation to make about public life in this country, we haven’t seen it yet. [Art Deco]
Thank you! I see Pinch is still corporate chairman. Looking over these past two generations, it is hard not to conclude that the Protestants wrecked the family and the business.
AesopFan quoting Pulitzer board on Duranty:
However, the board concluded that there was not clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception, the relevant standard in this case.
Malcolm Muggeridge was apparently the only foreign journalist who went to Ukraine during the famine/Holodomor time AND to do so without supervision from the authorities. As such, he was apparently the only foreign journalist to write eyewitness accounts of the famine/Holodomor in Ukraine. Muggeridge had something to say about Duranty. From his memoir, Chronicles of Wasted Time I :The Green Stick:
Duranty’s admitting “an appalling food shortage” in a conversation with Muggeridge yet not mentioning the “appalling food shortage” in his articles in the NYT is a rather strong indication of deliberate deception.
1. Podolski was one of the regimes censors, who had to approve what foreign correspondents cabled to their home offices. He did not survive the purges of the late 1930s.
2. Muggeridge’s wife Kitty was a niece of Beatrice Webb. Beatrice and Sidney Webb were the authors of Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation. Muggeridge was a lefty before he went to the Soviet Union.
It is said that L. Ron Hubbard was exposed to Crowley’s movement.
Oblio: No question about that. It’s a wild chapter.
Before Scientology, Hubbard got involved with Jack Parsons, a classic American tech maverick who specialized in rocketry and helped found the famous Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Parsons was seduced by Crowley’s magick (the ‘k’ is important to indicate real magic) and founded the California branch of Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO).
I’m not clear how Hubbard and Parsons met and became friends in SoCal, but they did. They became involved in some sex partner swapping and in a sex magick scheme to produce a magic goddess child, which apparently didn’t work. But Hubbard and Parsons’ ex-lover successfully defrauded Parsons of his money. Parsons died young and mysterious in a lab explosion.
There is a crater on the Moon named for Jack Parsons.
“It is an addiction, and in such cases there is never any lack of hands to push in the needle and give the fix.” Malcolm Muggeridge, quoted by Gringo.
That seems to be an apt description of our political elites these days: they seek power at all times, and in all ways, and can’t seem to do without the seeking, even when they lose the battle and stand revealed for the naked opportunists that they are.
Like a drug addict getting busted, and going right back to the pushers when he gets out of jail.
Part of the behavior of these Leftists is explained by the concept of the Closed System, as explained by Arthur Koestler (himself a former Communist)…
“A closed system has three peculiarities. Firstly, it claims to represent a truth of universal validity, capable of explaining all phenomena, and to have a cure for all that ails man. In the second place, it is a system which cannot be refuted by evidence, because all potentially damaging data are automatically processed and reinterpreted to make them fit the expected pattern. The processing is done by sophisticated methods of causistry, centered on axioms of great emotive power, and indifferent to the rules of common logic; it is a kind of Wonderland croquet, played with mobile hoops. In the third place, it is a system which invalidates criticism by shifting the argument to the subjective motivation of the critic, and deducing his motivation from the axioms of the system itself. The orthodox Freudian school in its early stages approximated a closed system; if you argued that for such and such reasons you doubted the existence of the so-called castration complex, the Freudian’s prompt answer was that your argument betrayed an unconscious resistance indicating that you ourself have a castration complex; you were caught in a vicious circle. Similarly, if you argued with a Stalinist that to make a pact with Hitler was not a nice thing to do he would explain that your bourgeois class-consciousness made you unable to understand the dialectics of history…In short, the closed system excludes the possibility of objective argument by two related proceedings: (a) facts are deprived of their value as evidence by scholastic processing; (b) objections are invalidated by shifting the argument to the personal motive behind the objection. This procedure is legitimate according to the closed system’s rules of the game which, however absurd they seem to the outsider, have a great coherence and inner consistency.
The atmosphere inside the closed system is highly charged; it is an emotional hothouse…The trained, “closed-minded” theologian, psychoanalyst, or Marxist can at any time make mincemeat of his “open-minded” adversary and thus prove the superiority of his system to the world and to himself.”
huxley , thanks for filling in that chapter.
Duranty was English and Cambridge-educated. His family returned to England in 1842 from the West Indies and established a successful merchant business. Duranty grew up in upper middle class surroundings until the family lost its money while he was in his teens. So perhaps he suffered from the resentments and rage of the downwardly mobile.
Apparently Duranty was attracted to sociopaths like Crowley and Stalin.
John Lennon and David Bowie felt the same attraction for Crowley. This begins to help me understand why my Yale contemporaries idolized Lennon and Bowie, which was unfathomable to me at the time. Those contemporaries never apologized for anything, as I recall, and they were completely shameless. Now that I think of it, many of them became journalists or went to work for DOJ.
Oblio: Jimmy Page, the guitarist for Led Zeppelin, was the most fanatical rock Crowleyite. He steeped himself in Crowley magick. He collected much Crowley memorabilia — even the house Crowley once lived in. Page didn’t spend much time there, though the caretaker he hired claimed the house was seriously haunted. Page sold the place in 1992.
https://carwreckdebangs.wordpress.com/2015/06/09/aleister-crowley-jimmy-page-and-the-curse-of-led-zeppelin-when-myth-magick-and-weird-facts-collide/
For complicated reasons I ended up with a college roommate’s Tarot deck after he committed suicide. It was the Crowley Tarot deck. I’m not superstitious but I didn’t want to keep that deck and I didn’t want to destroy it. (The Crowley deck is strikingly beautiful in its way.) I gave it to some kids in a cafe who didn’t mind the history.
http://tarotgarden.com/thoth-tarot-deck-usg-purple-box-standard-size-edition/
Never fathomed Led Zeppelin either.
Just to complete the bizarre connections of this thread, Neil Gaimon’s grandparents started a grocery chain in England and his parents became Scientologists.
In 1990, Gaiman wrote a series for DC Comics called The Books of Magic about a 12 year old English boy (“Tim Hunter”) destined to be the greatest wizard. In 1990, a former researcher for Amnesty International (no kidding) comes up with a full-blown story about a wizard boy unrecognized by normal society, and the rest is history.
We’re not talking about normal differences in ideology, interests, and perspectives. We are talking about irrational claims based on narratives of identity that have passed down for several generations now.
Oblio: This is probably more info than you had in mind but….here’s an excerpt from an interview with L. Ron Hubbard’s son:
The rest [of the real-life stories in Dianetics] stem from [my father’s] own secret life, which was deeply involved in the occult and black-magic. That involvement goes back to when he was sixteen, living in Washington. D.C. He got hold of the book by Alistair Crowley called The Book of Law. He was very interested in several things that were the creation of what some people call the Moon Child. It was basically an attempt to create an immaculate conception –except by Satan rather than by God.
http://lermanet.org/scientologynews/penthouse-LRonHubbardJr-interview-1983.html
The book and film, “Rosemary’s Baby,” were based on the Moon Child idea.
Which leads to the connections between Roman Polanski, Charles Manson, John Lennon, and the Dakota [building], if one cares to drop down that rabbit hole. One can read too much into such things, of course.
“Just as the intelligentsia have been foremost in the struggle to abolish intelligence…”
Though it’s not just abolishing intelligence but elevating thuggery, cruelty, torture and systematic murder as moral endeavors (such that promoting “utopia” would appear to be a most unethical, inhuman pursuit; i.e., be very careful about those who promote utopia, or perhaps, more correctly, “secular” utopia…).
Brings to mind Eric Hobsbawm….
From https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eric_Hobsbawm :
“On several occasions, Hobsbawm went to disturbing lengths to portray Soviet communism as the greatest thing ever made, no matter the human or moral cost. During an interview on British television, he reportedly said that Stalin’s murders of 20 million people would have been justified if the Soviet promise of utopia had been fulfilled;…he later stated that because Soviet communism failed, these deaths were in vain.”
And yes, Muggeridge, Orwell, Robert Conquest, Whitaker Chambers, Koestler (to some extent) and of course Solzhenitsyn are absolutely must reading.
Thank you huxley, David Foster, Barry Meislin, Gringo, AesopFan, and others.
We are discussing cult programming in the context of ongoing psychological damage.
Bottom line, don’t hold your breath waiting for apologies.
I’ve asked the question here several times.
Why haven’t we seen any genuine FBI whistleblowers come forward to expose the corruption within the FBI & DOJ?
And I’ve always thought that that the absence of such whistleblowers indicated that, effectively, everyone at the FBI—high to low—was just fine with the coup attempt.
Sundance has a different take.
Says Sundance, any potential whistleblower would have his attempt at whistle-blowing blocked by a couple layers of individuals (and there are quite a few of them, says Sundance)–who are themselves involved in the corruption; government officials who are the “official channels” that the whistleblower would have to go through, to get the OK for any such whistle-blowing.
See https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/12/25/understanding-why-theres-no-fbi-whistleblowers-outlining-institutional-corruption/