We are shocked, shocked, I say!
NEW YORK — Greg Mitchell, author of a recently updated book on media mistakes during the run-up to the Iraq War, So Wrong For So Long, revealed Saturday night on his blog that the Washington Post’s Outlook section had killed an assigned piece related to the press debacle that was slated for publication this weekend.
Mitchell noted that the Outlook section did run what he called a “misleading, cherry-picking” piece by Post media writer Paul Farhi, in which Farhi claims the media didn’t fail during the 2002-2003 rush to war.
The Post’s decision to run Farhi’s piece defending the press, and not Mitchell’s, got a lot of attention Sunday morning on Twitter. It was especially noteworthy given that the paper’s editorial board –- which helped promote the Bush administration’s bogus rationale for invading Iraq -– was silent on last Tuesday’s 10th anniversary of the start of the conflict.
Outlook editor Carlos Lozada told The Huffington Post that the Post didn’t run Mitchell’s piece because it didn’t draw the “broader analytical points or insights” the paper was looking for on the topic of Iraq War mea culpas. (Mitchell has posted his article here.)
WaPo has long since given up any credibility as serious journalism, or any kind of journalism for that matter. They’re firmly rooted among the beltway media lackies defending the Corporate parasites killing America. Not so hard explaining the rising body count among ‘journalists,’ when the most prominent among them are baltant shills for Corporate militarism.
When you get to Greg Mitchell’s blog, Pressing Issues, be sure to scroll forward and backward to get all the posts he has up about the sad state of the US Mainstream Corporate Media back in the days leading up to and after the illegal Iraq War.
Maybe bookmark his blog.
http://gregmitchellwriter.blogspot.com
But he’s just one of a long list of excellent reporters and analysts who got things pretty damn close to 100% right who now has lost a regular job at a newspaper.
This is the new “vaunted free press” of the US and much of the West: If you investigate and write about the truth, you will be punished by losing your job. If you lie and mislead and cower to the Powers That Be, you may keep your job and get lots of kudos for being…a lap dog.
Maybe the lefty blogs should have a list somewhere on their front pages to keep track of where these good reporters are now doing what reporting and analysis they can. I know that I had lost track of Mitchell and some others whose names I don’t even remember right now.
But the lying liars? Brazenly published up front and in our faces, should we open the pages of the WaPo and NYTimes, among others.
Actually, I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I do forget some of the good ones to read, like Mitchell. Like, gleep, forgot he’s a regular at The Nation…. I had never known about his own blog, however.
Well the Post hasn’t failed to devote lots of column inches to its latest golden boy Mr. Douchbag, John Kerry. Or on Kerry’s latest scheme to bring Assad of Syria down. Over the weekend Kerry demanded that Iraq stop allowing Iranian airplanes to fly over its airspace. The Iraqis told him to shove it. (Maybe we should re-invade the place?) Kerry thinks that all of those Iranian planes are filled with weapons going to Assad. Taking a page from his heroes the neo-cons(Zionists) Kerry offers no proof of that. Kerry also got Obama to get Netanyahu to apologize to Turkey’s president over the Gaza floatilla assassinations. That’s because Turkey is allowing the CIA to fly plane loads of U.S., British, French, and Sunni Arab state weapons into Syria from Turkish territory. Kerry couldn’t care less that the Syrian opposition is a bunch of thugs and terrorists fully infiltrated by al Qaeda types. And neither does the Post.