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PolitiFact and the scam of neutral expertise

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Jan. 01 (Opinion) - The fact-checking site PolitiFact serves a valuable purpose when it actually performs its stated function: to “help you find the truth in American politics” by “fact-check[íng] statements” from political and media figures. But it undermines its own credibility when it purports to resolve subjective disputes of political opinion under the guise of objective expertise. That’s precisely what it did yesterday in this incredibly sloppy and often factually false analysis of Ron Paul’s condemnation of the new AUMF and detention authorities embedded in the pending Levin/McCain bill. What matters here more than PolitiFact‘s obvious, specific errors is the reason they were led to such error: namely, reliance on supposedly neutral, ideology-free “experts” who are anything but that.

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Professional fact-checking about as broken as professional journalism

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Alex Pareene - Dec. 21 (Opinion) - If I were to, say, swipe your grandfather’s copy of “See, I Told You So” by Rush Limbaugh from his den, and then mail him a gift card good for a portion of the price of an Amazon Kindle, I think your grandfather would be well within his rights to call me a thief and possibly a communist. Politifact disagrees, apparently, as Democrats have been accused of telling the “lie of the year” for arguing that a vote to replace Medicare with a private voucher system does not constitute voting to “end” the program. The government program that would be replaced with a private voucher system. Replacing a thing with something else no longer constitutes getting rid of that thing. FYI. Politifact’s decision, needless to say, frustrated a lot of people. They have been accused of naming this arguably true claim the year’s biggest lie because Rep. Paul Ryan, the man who came up with the Medicare-replacing plan, launched a big letter-writing campaign lobbying for it, complete with a badly lit YouTube video. Paul Krugman and others say that Politifact made this decision in the interest of achieving the illusion of “balance,” because the past couple “lies of the year” have all belonged to Republicans.

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Wells Fargo is not your amigo

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Tim Fitzsimons - Oct. 29 (News Analysis) - The banking giant preys on minorities while its executives donate to anti-immigration Republicans

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The "Shock Doctrine" Comes to Your Neighborhood Classroom

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By David Sirota - Sep. 06 (News Analysis) - "Let's hope the fiscal crisis doesn't get better too soon. It'll slow down reform." -- Tom Watkins, a consultant, summarizes the corporate education reform movement's current strategy to the Sunday New York Times.

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How the U.S. Government uses its media servants to attack real journalism

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Jul. 17 (News Analysis) - Earlier this week, the truly intrepid investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill published in The Nation one of the most significant political exposés of the year. Entitled "the CIA's Secret Sites in Somalia," the article documented that the CIA uses and effectively controls a secret prison in Mogadishu, where foreign nationals who are rendered off the streets of their countries (at the direction of the U.S.) are taken (along with Somali nationals) to be imprisoned with no due process and interrogated (by U.S. agents). Although Somali government agents technically operate the facility, that is an obvious ruse: "US intelligence personnel pay the salaries of intelligence agents and also directly interrogate prisoners" and are "there full-time," Scahill reported.

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In a pure coincidence, Gaddafi impeded U.S. oil interests before the war

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Jun. 11 (Opinion) - When the war in Libya began, the U.S. government convinced a large number of war supporters that we were there to achieve the very limited goal of creating a no-fly zone in Benghazi to protect civilians from air attacks, while President Obama specificall

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The joys of repressed voyeuristic titillation

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Jun. 07 (Opinion) - There are few things more sickening -- or revealing -- to behold than a D.C. sex scandal. Huge numbers of people prance around flamboyantly condemning behavior in which they themselves routinely engage. Media stars contrive all sorts of high-minded justifications for luxuriating in every last dirty detail, when nothing is more obvious than that their only real interest is vicarious titillation.

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Democrats seek to slash subsidies for "Big Oil" - Budget Showdown

Wed, 11 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Andrew Taylor - May. 11 (News) - Democrats running the Senate are seeking to take away tax breaks that pad the profits of the five biggest oil companies by $2 billion a year and use the money to attack the spiraling deficit. The new legislation would cut off immensely profitable companies like Shell Oil and Exxon Mobil from subsidies like a deduction originally aimed at boosting manufacturing. The top five oil companies have booked profits of $36 billion in the first quarter of this year alone.

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A more militarized CIA for a more militarized America

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Apr. 28 (Opinion) - It's rare for American media outlets to list all of our "wars" this way, including the covert ones (and that list does not even include the newest one, in Libya, where drone attacks are playing an increasingly prominent role as well). But Barack Obama does indeed preside over numerous American wars in the Muslim world, including some that he started (Libya and Yemen) and others which he's escalated (Afghanistan and Pakistan). Because our wars are so often fought covertly, the CIA has simply become yet another arm of America's imperial war-fighting machine, thus making it the perfect fit for Bush and Obama's most cherished war-fighting General to lead (Petraeus will officially retire from the military to take the position, though that obviously does not change who he is, how he thinks, and what his loyalties are).

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Journalists angry over the commission of journalism

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Feb. 14 (Opinion) - Identifying lies told by powerful political leaders -- and describing them as such -- is what good journalists do, by definition. It's the crux of adversarial journalism, of a "watchdog" press. "Objectivity" does not require refraining from pointing out the falsity of government claims.

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The Tea Party and civil liberties

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Feb. 09 (Opinion) - It's long been clear that the best (and perhaps only) political hope for civil liberties in the U.S. is an alliance that transcends the standard Democrat v. GOP or left v. right dichotomies.

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Al Jazeera's Egypt coverage embarrasses U.S. cable news channels

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Alex Pareene - Jan. 28 (Opinion) - Fox, CNN and MSNBC are all acquitting themselves better than they did the day Tunisia's government collapsed. All of them have reporters in Cairo, and are airing footage of the demonstrations on the streets. But none of them are reporting on the situation as compellingly as Al Jazeera English, which has reporters across the country.

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Homeland Security's laptop seizures: Interview with Rep. Sanchez

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Jan. 15 (Opinion) - For those who regularly write and read about civil liberties abuses, it's sometimes easy to lose perspective about just how extreme and outrageous certain erosions are. One becomes inured to them, and even severe incursions start to seem ordinary. Such was the case, at least for me, with Homeland Security's practice of detaining American citizens upon their re-entry into the country, and as part of that detention, literally seizing their electronic products -- laptops, cellphones, Blackberries and the like -- copying and storing the data, and keeping that property for months on end, sometimes never returning it. Worse, all of this is done not only without a warrant, probable cause or any oversight, but even without reasonable suspicion that the person is involved in any crime. It's completely standard-less, arbitrary, and unconstrained. There's no law authorizing this power nor any judicial or Congressional body overseeing or regulating what DHS is doing. And the citizens to whom this is done have no recourse -- not even to have their property returned to them.

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How propaganda poisons the mind - and our discourse

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Jan. 12 (Opinion) - People devoted to a corrupt cause necessarily rely on falsehoods to advance it. And what we're seeing here is not only the government doing that, but The Watchdog Media -- as usual -- serving as its most valuable ally. At the very least, the outlets that published this serious -- and seriously false -- accusation owe their readers a prominent, clear retraction.

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Bank of America is the next target for Wikileaks

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Adam Clark Estes - Jan. 11 (Breaking News) - After weeks of guessing, a contact close to Julian Assange's controversial organization confirms that the next batch of leaked documents released by Wikileaks will nail Bank of America.

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What WikiLeaks revealed to the world in 2010

Sat, 25 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Dec. 25 (Opinion) - it's well worth reviewing exactly what WikiLeaks exposed to the world just in the last year: the breadth of the corruption, deceit, brutality and criminality on the part of the world's most powerful factions.

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The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Dec. 15 (Opinion) - Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime. Despite that, he has been detained at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia for five months -- and for two months before that in a military jail in Kuwait -- under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture.

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The FBI successfully thwarts its own Terrorist plot

Sun, 28 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Nov. 28 (Opinion) - The FBI is obviously quite pleased with itself over its arrest of a 19-year-old Somali-American, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who -- with months of encouragement, support and money from the FBI's own undercover agents -- allegedly attempted to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon.

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Who will smack down all the lies?

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Gene Lyons - Nov. 18 (Opinion) - For most of two decades, Democrats have acted as if they actually believed what conservatives say about the allegedly liberal "mainstream" news media. Any day now, appropriately stringent and evenhanded news gathering and editorial standards will reappear as if by magic.

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The Rally to Restore Sanity: Nonpartisan, but political

Sat, 30 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Alex Pareene - Oct. 30 (Opinion) - Jon Stewart didn't lie. His "Rally to Restore Sanity" was aggressively non-partisan. But while none of the participants had anything to say about the upcoming midterm elections (besides a brief shout of "vote!" by American treasure and '60s civil rights marcher Tony Bennett), there was a quiet political message. And, honestly, it's a message that Democrats should be happy with.

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The real danger from NPR's firing of Juan Williams

Sat, 23 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Oct. 23 (Opinion) - I'm still not quite over the most disgusting part of the Juan Williams spectacle yesterday: watching the very same people (on the Right and in the media) who remained silent about or vocally cheered on the viewpoint-based firings of Octavia Nasr, Helen Thomas, Rick Sanchez, Eason Jordan, Peter Arnett, Phil Donahue, Ashleigh Banfield, Bill Maher, Ward Churchill, Chas Freeman, Van Jones and so many others, spend all day yesterday wrapping themselves in the flag of "free expression!!!" and screeching about the perils and evils of firing journalists for expressing certain viewpoints. Even for someone who expects huge doses of principle-free hypocrisy -- as I do -- that behavior is really something to behold. And anyone doubting that there is a double standard when it comes to anti-Muslim speech should just compare the wailing backlash from most quarters over Williams' firing to the muted acquiescence or widespread approval of those other firings.

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NPR fires Juan Williams for anti-Muslim bigotry

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Oct. 21 (Opinion) - On Monday, I documented the glaring double standard in our political discourse generally and in the world of journalism specifically, whereby anti-Muslim bigotry is widely tolerated, while those perceived as expressing similar (or even more mild) animus toward other groups are harshly punished (see, for instance, Octavia Nasr, Helen Thomas, Rick Sanchez). That double standard suffered a very welcome blow last night, when NPR announced it was firing its long-time correspondent, Juan Williams, due to blatantly bigoted anti-Muslim remarks Williams made on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News program.

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Obama's view of liberal criticisms

Sat, 18 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Sep. 18 (Opinion) - Sitting at a $30,000 per plate fundraising dinner and mocking liberal critics as irrational ingrates while wealthy Party donors laugh probably does wonders for bruised presidential egos, but it doesn't seem to be a particularly effective way to motivate those who are so unmotivated.

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America the Exceptional

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Sep. 11 (Opinion) - So, to recap: the U.S. creates a worldwide regime of torture, disappearances and lawless imprisonment. Then, the Bush administration, the Obama administration, and the American federal judiciary all collaborate to shield the guilty parties from all accountability (Look Forward, Not Backward!), and worse, to ensure that not a single victim can even access American courts to obtain a ruling as to the legality of what was done to them, let alone receive compensation for their suffering, even while recognizing that many of the victims were completely innocent and even though other countries have provided the victims with compensation for their much more minor role in what happened. Our courts even ensure that Blackwater guards are shielded from prosecution for the cold-blooded murder of Iraqi citizens. But we invade, occupy and destroy Iraq -- while severely abusing, torturing and killing their citizens -- and then demand, as a condition for our allowing the end of crippling sanctions, that they fork over hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation to American torture victims, even though it all happened 20 years ago, under an Iraqi regime that no longer even exists. They hate us for our Freedoms.

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Who's a journalist? Does that matter?

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Dan Gillmor - Aug. 26 (Opinion) - If you're a creator of media, and most of us are these days in one way or another, what should I call you? Why do I ask? I'm finishing up a new book, called "Mediactive," to be published this fall. My primary goals are to persuade people to become much more active users, not passive consumers, of media. Part of this is what we've traditionally called "media literacy" -- among other things, applying critical thinking to what we consume. And because we are all becoming creators in the Digital Age, it also means we need to apply some basic principles so people will trust what we say (assuming we want to be trusted). One of my dilemmas has been what to call these new trusted media creators. In the era of scarcity, when there were relatively few outlets, many of them were called "journalists." This isn't only my problem, and it's more than just semantics. Asking the question in the right way has real-world impacts. So-called shield laws, for example, aim to protect whistle-blowers and the journalists whom they tell about government or corporate wrongdoing. Some states specify who counts as a journalist, which leaves out a huge range of people who effectively practice journalism nowadays; it also encourages a pernicious, back-door licensing of journalists. The right approach, if we need shield laws at all, is to protect acts of journalism. As digital media become ubiquitous and more and more of us communicate and collaborate online, every person is capable of doing something that has journalistic value. Quite reasonably, relatively few of these folks imagine themselves as journalists, and they'd laugh if you called them one.

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