User:Jcoffey24/sandbox

Court Journalism
Wendy McElroy of The Future of Freedom Foundation puts forth the concept of court journalism: "a presentation of current events that morally justifies the powerful to the public." She borrows the idea from "court history," the history put forth by the courtiers of a sovereign's court.

Selective Interpretation
McElroy gives an example of selective interpretation via a widely read news agency, The Washington Post, in comparison to a news agency with less readership, McClatchy. The following quotes were both in reference to the same U.S.-led air strikes on Northern Syria, which occurred on September 23, 2014.

The Washington Post: "At least on the first day of bombing, there was little public backlash, with virtually no outcry beyond a pro-Islamic State protest in Istanbul."

McClatchyDC: "Anti-government [Syria] media activists and rebel commanders gave a mixed assessment of U.S.-led airstrikes…saying that some of the Islamic State encampments hit had been evacuated and one building that was struck had been filled with displaced civilians, even as at least one major Islamic State base was seriously damaged and many fighters were killed.… But the greatest damage, they said, may be to the Free Syrian Army, the moderate rebel faction that enjoyed U.S. support for years."

News Agency Manipulation
A September 13 article in the Huffington Post may point to why the coverage by these two newspapers differs. The headline announced, “Obama Met Privately with Top Journalists before ISIS War Speech.” Various representatives from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, the New Republic, and the Daily Beast were included.

Obama has made a habit of confidentially prepping major journalists at sympathetic news outlets before making foreign-policy announcements. In his book The Message, MSNBC commentator Richard Wolffe explains why. In 2011, Obama became enraged after the New York Times ran several negative editorials about his foreign policy. A series of off-the-record meetings between Obama and the New York Times ensued, especially with editorial-page editor Andy Rosenthal.

Censorship
An Investors Business Daily article (Sept. 24), entitled “Press Helps Obama Censor The News” explained another means of media control: the censorship of pool reports. Pool reports are stories filed by White House correspondents who follow the president to events. The stories are usually picked up without question by other media outlets. Investors stated that “pool reports can be inane.” But they can also be devastating, “such as the pool report that alleged President George H.W. Bush’s ignorance of supermarket scanners.” Clearly, Obama’s press team was ensuring they were the former.

The censorship of pool reports was conceded in a Washington Post article that appeared “below the fold in the paper’s Style section next to a piece about a famous concert violinist performing in a Metro station.” Apparently, the White House correspondents meekly comply with White House censorship, perhaps from fear that access to Obama would otherwise be limited.

Disinformation
On Sept. 28, independent news source the Intercept published an article by Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain entitled “The Fake Terror Threat Used To Justify Bombing Syria.” The authors remarked on two problems Obama faced in bombing Syria without congressional or UN approval. First, how could he convince the America public to accept even more years of an expanding war? Second, how could he overcome his lack of legal authority to bomb yet another noncombatant nation?

The authors explained the solution: convince Americans there was an imminent threat to their own soil. The solution came in the form of the “Khorasan” group. Greenwald and Hussain wrote,

After spending weeks depicting ISIS as an unprecedented threat…administration officials suddenly began spoon-feeding their favorite media organizations and national security journalists tales of a secret group that was even scarier and more threatening than ISIS, one that posed a direct and immediate threat to the American Homeland. Seemingly out of nowhere, a new terror group was created in media lore.

On September 13, the Associated Press rang the alarm bell based on reports from unnamed “U.S. officials.” It claimed the Khorasan group was recruiting “Europeans and Americans whose passports allow them to board a U.S.-bound airliner with less scrutiny.” The mainstream media quickly spread fear-inspiring tales of a new brand of terrorism coming to American soil.

But as the Intercept observed, “There are serious questions about whether the Khorasan Group even exists in any meaningful or identifiable manner.” CIA officials, a former ambassador to Syria, and Syrian rebels themselves had not heard of the group. Some media less sympathetic to Obama called it an outright invention. Former terrorism federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy stated bluntly in the National Review, “You haven’t heard of the Khorosan Group because there isn’t one. It is a name the administration came up with, calculating that Khorosan—the Iranian–Afghan border region—had sufficient connection to jihadist lore that no one would call the president on it.”

Suppression
The savage treatment of whistleblowers Bradley/Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden is too well known to require exposition. It is a chilling warning to everyone else who may wish to expose the true face of war.