Remember Saddam's weapons of mass destruction?
Of course you do. And when the mass media in our vaunted democracies climb aboard a patently false and deliberately promoted narrative, bad shit happens. The fact that the bad shit mostly happens somewhere else just helps us downplay the consequences.
Simon Houpt has an interview with former Guardian ed in chief Alan Rusbridger in yesterday's Globe. The article oozes gravitas. We've got one journalist interviewing another, and both are convinced that it is primarily their profession that stands between the light of civilization and the darkness lurking just out of view... that darkness in which democracy shall surely perish.
In the hysteria leading up to the Iraq war the Guardian was just as guilty as everyone else in the newsbiz big leagues of pushing the war agenda being promoted by London and Washington. To Rusbridger's credit, they were one of the first major brands to climb down from that, apologizing as early as 2004 for having mislead their readership.
Houpt interviewed Rusbridger for this article on November 29. Two days prior, Rusbridger's former paper had a notable scoop on view, and quite a salacious one at that. According to the Guardian, disgraced former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret meetings with Julian Assange right there in the Ecuadorian embassy in early 2016!
And what a scoop that would be! The disgraced Trump underling and the evil Assange huddling up together, plotting god knows what!?
If there were the slightest chance that this story had anything to it other than wishful thinking, we would have heard a lot more about it, but it's kind of drifted away, hasn't it? The Ecuadorian embassy is probably the most heavily surveilled piece of real estate on earth. There would be evidence galore.
Alas, the story seems to be nothing more or less than fake news.
If the people in charge of our reputable news outlets are seriously concerned that Donald Trump is undermining their credibility with his constant cries of "fake news," their first order of business should be to make sure they're not promulgating fake news.
No comments:
Post a Comment