Journalist/pundits who may-or-may-not have changed spots, after the jump:
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There are three journalists — one a mainstream TV reporter, the other two advocacy journalists — whose work I have admired over the years and all three had something in their personal lives I connected with. Yet in more recent times, they have changed …. either having a connection with conservative media or being a useful foil for them, not speaking on behalf of Trump yet more upset with those who oppose him. I can not make definitive judgements, as an armchair observer, but would welcome anyone else with some ideas and insight.
Lara Logan was a foreign correspondent for CBS for many years (and thus qualitatively different from the other two). A native of South Africa, I found her reporting to be quite competent and was touched by her telling of being sexually assaulted in Tahrir Square in Cairo, following the 2011 ouster of Hosni Mubarak. Truly my favorite story she told was during her coverage of the Iraq War, when many on the right were accusing mainstream correspondents of “suppressing the good news” such as schools opening, by the likes of Laura Ingraham, saying “It begins to look like you're invested in America's defeat”. Lara Logan replied:
You don't think that I haven't been to the U.S. military and the State Department and the embassy and asked them over and over again, let's see the good stories, show us some of the good things that are going on? “Oh, sorry, we can't take to you that school project, because if you put that on TV, they're going to be attacked, the teachers are going to be killed, the children might be victims of attack”.
“Oh, sorry, we can't show this reconstruction project because then that's going to expose it to sabotage. And the last time we had journalists down here, the plant was attacked”.
I mean, security dominates every single thing that happens in this country. Reconstruction funds have been diverted to cover -- away from reconstruction to -- they've been diverted to security.
Then her life changed when in 2013 — as a 60 Minutes correspondent — she had to apologize on-air for inaccuracies on a story she did on the Benghazi attack, relying upon the testimony of an unreliable witness and was suspended.
She eventually left CBS (blaming them for “moral cowardice”) and has since now become a defender of that story, believing she was singled out because she had previously given a speech which revealed that she didn’t believe the Obama administration’s initial statements that the attack began as a spontaneous protest.
She claimed in 2019 that she was approached by several right-wing outlets yet declared "I'm not going to pretend to be conservative so I can be the darling of the conservative media”. That was … still good enough for Sean Hannity, who urged the network to hire her.
She has since joined Sinclair Media (covering immigration), appearing on radio shows with Sebastian Gorka and now this year has a gig on the streaming service Fox Nation— covering “immigration, media bias, socialism and veterans” with remarks about antifa. During her war coverage, she befriended Mike Flynn — perhaps why she is a staunch defender of him.
It might be too much to say that the 60 Minutes debacle was a turning point … yet she seems to have done quite a right-hand-turn (yet unwilling to admit it).
It may have been at the 2007 Yearly Kos in Chicago (?) when I heard a discussion led by Glenn Greenwald— a blogger who was then turning-out posts about civil liberties (in general) and the W administration (in particular) that were a must-read for me. Importantly for me, his bold pronouncements included nuance and context, which I want hand-in-hand with opinion. I was glad to shake his hand, thanking him for his work.
He also published a 2011 book that was remarkably prescient: With Liberty and Justice for Some has points not only to the past but to today: “Vesting the powerful with license to break the law guarantees high-level lawbreaking; indeed, it encourages such behavior.”
And just earlier this year, I found myself rooting for him (as he lives with his husband, a Brazilian legislator) when the Bolsonaro government filed charges of espionage against him, with many on the left and right siding with him. Bolsonaro has long had animus against gays and seems to find Glenn an easy target.
I did, however, recall an incident that might have served as a warning light that I ignored. When the Eliot Spitzer Client 9 case unfolded in 2008, Greenwald’s blog in Salon carried an eminently reasonable defense of Spitzer (this should not be law enforcement’s job, he needs to deal with his wife and not the police, prostitution should be legal, this wouldn’t happen in Europe). Many of his readers differed (saying he is supposed to enforce the laws and not break them, he had a hypocritical program supporting the breaking-up of prostitution rings and he was easily replaceable). Spitzer did resign a few days later: and most bloggers would have let it go, or issue a simple restatement of their thoughts. Glenn was indignant, with an “I thought I learned you!” attitude. No nuance that time.
In 2019, there was an essay here at DK (by Keenan) asking What’s going on with Glenn Greenwald? Is he auditioning for a job at Fox News?— although he has not accepted a job there, he appears regularly on Tucker’s show, supported both the Iraq War and Citizens United, and is an immigration hawk. So in his case, it seems that his early rise (due to, say, the Patriot Act) was only part of his writings.
Yet it is his siding with Bill Barr’s reading of the Mueller Report that reflects his current mood: he seems to be part of the anti-anti-Trump contingent, placing an enormous resentment of the 2016 Russian interference report (likening it to the WMD story). Even if you dislike Trump, conservative media wants you if you can aim your criticism at liberals (letting the experts such as Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Judge Jeanine offer praise to Dear Leader).
One of my favorite writers at Rolling Stone was Matt Taibbi— and as someone who grew-up in the NYC suburbs, I always appreciated the stories that his father Mike reported on at the local NBC affiliate (before moving to other networks). Thus, I was already prone to embrace Matt the first time I read his work.
Matt Taibbi lived in Russia for several years in the 1990’s, which certainly gave him some experience few writers have. Like Lara Logan: he, too, had an incident that seemed to scar him later on. It seems a complicated story, but he has had to apologize for sexist behavior/satirical writings from that era.
When he went to write for Rolling Stone: he became required reading for me. And there are few stories of his I enjoyed more than this 2010 story about visiting a Tea Party rally for Sarah Palin in Kentucky:
Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters. As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — “Government’s not the solution! Government’s the problem!”— the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.
“The scooters are because of Medicare,” he whispers helpfully. “They have these commercials down here: ‘You won’t even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!’ Practically everyone in Kentucky has one.”
A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can’t imagine it.
And like Glenn Greenwald, Matt had a book pre-saging the current Administration: The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gaplooks at the connections between growing income inequality and a justice system that disproportionately punishes the poor — insisting that the big banks were guilty not just of reckless bets on what turned out to be troubled assets, but of systemic criminal wrongdoing that the government was willfully ignoring.
I can’t tell what changed in his work, and maybe it has something to do with his affinity with Russia of the 1990’s. But he now seems to be a both-sider, also skepticalof the Russia probe (“The biggest discovery is that Trump paid off a porn star”), obsessed about the Steele Dossier and that Trump is the real victim., saved by the efforts of Bill Barr. His is the more difficult case to analyze, and how he will be covering a potential Democratic administration …. is yet to be seen.
Let’s close with a singer-songwriter … whose song best exemplifies tonight.
Now, on to Top Comments:
From ontheleftcoast:
In the front-page story about attempts to birther the new vice presidential nominee — CyberMindGrrl unleashed an epic pwnage of Ari Fleischer here.
From elenacarlena:
In the diary by Joe Pac about the advertising campaigns being waged against you-know-who — It is SO important that we not rely on others to win this election for us, but that we all get out there and work to make it happen! Especially since they'll try to steal anything that's less than a landslide. Ptressel explains in this comment.
Highlighted by oscarsmom:
In the front-page story about the Trumpster’s new water-carrying physician — this comment made by zdefender.
And from Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening ........
In the diary by 1000words,reprinting the foreword from the upcoming Michael Cohen book — it partly describes his going to testify before the House. And Bobs Telecaster captures my own takeaway: that the most transcendent portion was his salute to the late Elijah Cummings, writing he was the only elected official to care about him as a human being.
TOP PHOTOSAugust 12th, 2020 Next - enjoy jotter's wonderful *PictureQuilt™* below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment that features that photo.
(NOTE: Any missing images in the Quilt were removed because (a) they were from an unapproved source that somehow snuck through in the comments, or (b) it was an image from the DailyKos Image Library which didn't have permissions set to allow others to use it.) |
And lastly: yesterday's Top Mojo - mega-mojo to the intrepid mik ...... who rescued this feature from oblivion:
3) [embed] by FoundingFatherDAR +1857) Beautiful. Let’s do it again tomorrow. by THirt +14414) And all the days until after the election. … by Gwennedd +12416) Even Sarah Fucking Palin posted a grac … by chicago minx +10826) Please Sarah Cooper. Do this one. Pl … by mnoble +96