CNN

Snowden vs The Elite

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Ruth Marcus from the Washington Post and Glenn Greenwald from the Guardian went head-to-head on CNN this Monday, discussing the recent New York Times editorial calling for clemency for US whistleblower Edward Snowden. As the New York Times rightly concluded in their editorial:

When someone reveals that government officials have routinely and deliberately broken the law, that person should not face life in prison at the hands of the same government.

This was not the view of Ruth Marcus, who, showing much in common with the self-serving elitists and power fetishists who festoon Washington D.C., seems to swoon at government overreach and seeks to protect her own kind from any kind of scrutiny or consequences of their actions, whilst happily throwing the little guy or the outsider under the bus at the first opportunity:

Snowden … is seized with infuriating certitude about the righteousness of his cause. Not for Snowden any anxiety about the implications for national security of his theft of government secrets, any regrets about his violations of a duty of secrecy.

Quite how she knows that Snowden has no anxiety about these things is not entirely clear, but since she has never met Snowden I think it would be fair to surmise that she made this statement up. It would harm her cause, cheerleading for the Obama administration and the national security apparatus, if she acknowledged the fact that Snowden may have wrestled with his decision to divulge what he knew, that he had to weigh up the pros and cons of his actions.

It’s never good when experienced, professional commentators seek to drag George Orwell into their arguments, but Marcus indulges herself:

George Orwell himself would have told Snowden to chill — and the author of “Animal Farm” surely would have shown more recognition of the irony of Snowden’s sojourn in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Does a man whose life is conducted so much online really believe that Putin’s spies are not cyber-peering over his shoulder?

I believe that the irony, such as it is, is that a man from a supposedly free society has more liberty hiding out in Putin’s oppressive Russia than he would in his own native land, for doing nothing more than exposing the secret and unlawful actions of his government. That fact doesn’t make a mockery of Snowden, but it does make the United States look rather bad.

But it is on her next point that Marcus really overreaches:

On behavior, if Snowden is such a believer in the Constitution, why didn’t he stick around to test the system the Constitution created and deal with the consequences of his actions?

And here is where it gets good, because when CNN host Jake Tapper asked Glenn Greenwald to comment on Marcus’ position, he gave it to her with both barrels:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OouL16eWQvk

 

Temporarily putting aside the correctness of Greenwald’s position, the real money quote, and the thing that really gets to the rub of the matter is this:

I think Ruth Marcus’ argument exemplifies everything that’s really horrible about the D.C. media … People in Washington continuously make excuses for those in power when they break the law.

Yes, we see this time and again, and Greenwald has himself addressed this topic at length in his excellent book “With Liberty and Justice for Some”.

But in terms of refuting Marcus’ fatuous and glib suggestion that if Snowden really valued the US. Constitution he should have been willing to surrender himself and submit himself to the American legal system in order to advance his cause and win his case in the court of public opinion, Greenwald correctly states:

“If he had stayed in the United States, as Daniel Elsberg (widely considered to be a hero by most Americans) argued in the Washington Post, he would have been barred from making the very argument that she just said he should have made. Under the Espionage Act, you’re not allowed to come into court and say “I was justified in disclosing this information”, there is no whistleblower exception in the Espionage Act which is why whistleblowers don’t get justice in the United States.”

May this once and forever do away with the misleading assertion by national security fanatics and civil liberty deniers that Edward Snowden ever had – and spurned – a realistic chance of making his case to the public whilst remaining in the United States, or that his flight to Russia is in any way ironic or detracting from the validity and strength of his arguments. This is not the case.

Mediaite also provides a good summary of the exchange here.

Keep It Classy, Fox News

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Here we go again.

Slate.com, in their critical role monitoring Fox News 24/7 so that the rest of us don’t have to, picked up on the fact that everyone’s favourite Fair & Balanced (TM) news network decided to mock recently-convicted whistleblower Chelsea (née Bradley) Manning’s decision to live the rest of her life as a woman, via the surreptitious medium of their “let’s go to commercial” music.

 

They report:

Fox News wasted little time weighing in on the Great Chelsea Manning Pronoun Debate. “I don’t do what Bradley Manning wants me to do,” America’s Newsroom host Gregg Jarrett declared last week, explaining why he had just repeatedly used masculine pronouns to describe Manning. But as you can see in the clip above, Jarrett’s friends at Fox & Friends took that stance to the extreme this morning by mocking the Army private by playing Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady).”

It should come as no surprise to readers that the incident took place on that most highbrow and intellectual segment of the FNC’s lineup, Fox  & Friends. But the slowness of the mainstream media in responding appropriately to Manning’s decision is not limited to Fox. As Slate points out:

Setting aside the absurdity of that clip for a second, it should be noted that Fox News isn’t the only major cable network to decide that it won’t respect Manning’s wish to live out the remainder of her life as a woman. CNN says that it won’t make the pronoun switch because Manning has “not yet taken any steps toward gender transition through surgery or hormone replacement therapy.” (It’s unclear why announcing her wish to “begin hormone therapy as soon as possible” doesn’t count as such a step.)

But who can expect anything more from a so-called news network (CNN) that considers the twerking abilities of Miley Cyrus more newsworthy than the unfolding crisis in Syria?

Sadly, this is not the first time that this blog has felt compelled to cover the inexplicable need for US news channels to make their broadcasts more palatable to a dumbed-down audience by injecting them with lively, and (almost always) inappropriate musical excerpts. As I wrote last time:

Since CNN has probably already haemmoraged most of it’s wavering audience to Fox or MSNBC, why not quit catering to that tiny remaining sliver of their viewers who need their news to be lubricated with frequent doses of perky music, and just…y’know…report the news?

The world doesn’t need another Fox & Friends.

So no real progress, then.

It’s baa-aaaack. On CNN’s “Crossfire”.

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CNN’s formerly famous show, “Crossfire” (or “I’m gonna kick your ass”, as Jon Stewart called it), is to be relaunched on September 16th this year.

Reports Politico:

CNN has announced that its highly anticipated debate show “Crossfire” will relaunch on Sept. 16 at 6:30 p.m.

“Crossfire… will resemble the show’s original format with passionate conversation and focus on topical events of the day,” the network announced in a press release. “The daily, 30-minute program will feature two hosts and guests each night, discussing a range of issues from all sides of the political and cultural spectrum. In addition to the weekday show, the Crossfire co-hosts will appear across the network’s programming.”

So continues the revamp of CNN as it seeks to find its own niche between the partisan rivalries of MSNBC and Fox News.

Unfortunately, the hosts of the show include Newt Gingrich (the philandering Pilsbury doughboy) and a slew of ex-Obama administration alumni. Based on the line-up, I don’t think we can expect very much.

What was it Jon Stewart once said?

 

Ah yes, that’s it.

“Stop. Stop stop stop. Stop hurting America.”

“Patriot” Watch, Ctd. 3

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Since the “Patriot” Watch is going to be an ongoing series on this blog, it would be negligent of me not to link to this amazing video of our intrepid hero, Alex Jones from InfoWars, as he totally owns Piers Morgan on his own CNN show, in a debate on gun control legislation.

 

I have very few positive things to say about Piers Morgan, and I am actually quite relieved that he is now polluting the airwaves of the United States rather than residing and editing newspapers in London, close to me.

And so it is with considerable glee that I watched this 14-minute “interview”, in which Piers Morgan manages to utter probably no more than 100 words, and in which Alex Jones answers precisely none of his questions, but delivers a wonderfully spirited argument in favour of his conspiracy theories and warnings about the coming New World Order.

Enjoy.

More Advice For CNN

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Apparently I’m not the only one with words of advice for CNN today.

Ramesh Ponnuru, writing at Bloomberg.com, believes that cable news “talking head” shows are getting a disproportionate share of the blame for the decline in the intellectual standard and civility of American political discourse, and that one way to redress the balance might be…to bring back “Crossfire”.

“Crossfire” is, of course, the show that Jon Stewart memorably mocked for “hurting America” with its adversarial, Left vs. Right format:

 

Ponnuru, however, makes a reasoned argument in favour of resurrecting the format:

By the time Stewart appeared on it to promote his book, the show had degenerated. At its height, though, it did a good job of sharpening political arguments. And the original format, to my mind, has never been bettered.

The show ran for half an hour and examined one question. There were two hosts: one liberal, one conservative, both opinion journalists rather than operatives for a political party. In the early 1990s, Michael Kinsley (now a Bloomberg View columnist) and Patrick Buchanan did the job. There were two guests, usually politicians or public-policy experts on each side of the debate. There was no studio audience.

Each of these features made “Crossfire” better. The one-subject rule made it impossible for the politicians to make it through the show on sound bites alone. That both hosts were journalists made for a fairer debate than the usual practice of today’s political shows, which put journalists up against political operatives.

This idea in its purest form would make a great format for actually getting to the rub of important issues. Spending a full thirty minutes debating an issue means that even the most cookie-cutter, by-the-book politician or political operative will soon run out of approved talking points and eventually have to speak freely based on their underlying core beliefs, better educating the public in the process.

The danger always comes, of course, when new gimmicks are included in an attempt to broaden the appeal of the show – in the case of “Crossfire”, the addition of a live studio audience significantly harmed the show, as hosts and guests alike started pursuing the soundbite that had previously been so successfully kept at bay in the show, in order to win a positive reaction from the audience:

It got worse, as well, when it added a studio audience. Hosts and guests alike now played to the crowd, which itself could add nothing more intelligent to the conversation than hoots and hollers.

Ponnuru concludes:

“Crossfire” was balanced by design, and I bet there would be an audience for it once again. Of course, I’m not a professional TV executive. Then again, the professional executives at CNN sank millions into “Parker Spitzer.” Maybe it’s worth listening to someone else.

If CNN is determined to maintain and consolidate the non-ideologically biased middle ground so thoroughly, depressingly vacated by Fox News and MSNBC, there could be worse ways to go about staging a comeback.