[update – response to Tbogg, et al, here]
A bit of perspective, from the Weekly Standard‘s “Scrapbook,” Jan 2, 2006:
As The Scrapbook enjoyed an afternoon walk down Washington’s M Street last week, it passed an array of newspaper vending machines, for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today, among others. A scan of the headlines found the words “Domestic Spying” on all the front-page headlines. This was the artful shorthand America’s top editors came up with to describe the president’s decision, after 9/11, to intercept calls “from outside the country to in the country, or vice versa,” when one of the parties to a call was someone with known ties to al Qaeda or its affiliates-without the benefit of a court warrant.
Intriguingly, when a similar controversy arose in 1994, with the Clinton administration claiming a similar duty to engage in warrantless surveillance for national security purposes, the headline writers, at least at the Washington Post, found a different way to describe what was going on. “Administration Backing No–Warrant Spy Searches,” was how the Post put it then. Arguably, it would have better served public understanding of Bush’s policy had the headlines last week said that the administration is “Backing No–Warrant Al Qaeda Searches.” But you can see how describing it that way might damp down enthusiasm for impeaching Bush. So “domestic spying” it was.
Equally intriguing is the fact that the papers couldn’t turn up any innocent victims of this “domestic spying” program. One of the Americans whose privacy was invaded by the Bush dragnet was described. He’s an Ohio truck driver named Iyman
Faris, now serving 20 years in federal prison for “supporting Al Qaeda by planning to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches,” as the New York Times described this particular activist’s agenda.
But give credit to the Washington Post. They found the next best thing to some innocent victims—an utterly unrelated bunch of ACLU clients who are being “monitored” (no mention of wiretaps) by the FBI in utterly unrelated investigations. The investigations of these groups—most prominently PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals—came to light thanks to an ACLU lawsuit against the FBI, news of which, the Post helpfully reported, came “amid recent revelations about the extent of domestic spying.” Indeed.
As is usually the case, the FBI had nothing to say about why it might or might not be monitoring PETA and the other aggrieved groups. The Post couldn’t come up with any clues, either, but gave the ACLU and PETA lots of room to speculate that this might be part of the well-known Bush administration plan to violate the First Amendment rights of its opponents and crush dissent in America.
We have a different idea. The animal rights movement is a large and diverse one, and includes some violent groups and some apologists for terror. Consider Jerry Vlasak, a California physician and spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front-a group funded by PETA in the past-who testified before a Senate committee last October 26. This page quoted his testimony at the time, but here’s a bit more, in which he defends the assassination of medical researchers who experiment on animals:
Sen. Inhofe: So you call for the murder of researchers and human lives?
Vlasak: I said in that statement and I meant in that statement that people who are hurting animals and who will not stop when told to stop, one option would be to stop them using any means necessary and that was the context in which that statement was made.
Sen. Inhofe: Including murder, is that correct?
Vlasak: I said that would be a morally justifiable solution to the problem. . . .
Sen. Lautenberg: Dr. Vlasak, you approve of these dastardly acts in the name of liberation, of a liberation movement?
Vlasak: Yes. . . .
Sen. Lautenberg: [You practice at several hospitals] but you are willing to take lives. That is the anomaly here. You are willing to say that somebody you don’t know, somebody’s kid, somebody’s parent, somebody’s brother, somebody’s sister-take that life, that’s okay.
Vlasak: These are not innocent lives.
Hmmm. On second thought, maybe the Post was more right than it knew to link these two stories.
Full disclosure: We should note that The Scrapbook’s Christmas shopping also came “amid recent revelations about the extent of domestic spying.” Make of this what you will.
You’ll note that the complaint here is not that the “Clinton administration did it too”—which is how many on the left have chosen to characterize arguments made by defenders of the NSA program, a straw man argument they then knock down by arguing quite self-righteously that wrong is wrong, and that they’d be against any executive order that shredded the Constitution and trampled on the rights of ordinary Americans, no matter which party was doing it (but for the record? What Clinton did was, like, totally different anyhow. Seriously. Have you read Think Progress?).
Instead, what is obvious is that the media chose to frame very similar stories in ways that were entirely different—in the first instance, effectively protecting an administration by softening the headline; in the second, couching the headline in rhetoric that sensationalizes the story and barely even approaches what can fairly be called an accurate portrayal of what the President ordered or what the NSA is doing, if we can believe any of the official statements addressing the substance of the program (as I’ve discussed at length, most recently here).
Also noted is one of the now-familiar rhetorical gambits critics of the program have engaged in—namely, the attempt to conflate the NSA program with other, unrelated programs (such as the FBI counter terrorism program, which, quite reasonably, monitors domestic groups from within which domestic terrorists have in the past emerged), so that the public comes to see “domestic spying” by the NSA as the same as “domestic spying” by the FBI.
However, the NSA’s gathering of signal intel is a military practice and proceeds from the AUMF granted the President by Congress; whereas the FBI’s program falls under the purview of federal law enforcement (the FBI investigates, after all, and there is no constitutional right not to be investigated, provided due process is followed)¹—all of which, you’d think, the media would go out of its way to explain rather than purposely set out to confuse in the public’s mind.
But then, that would presume today’s elite legacy media saw itself as a disinterested conduit of information—not as a quasi-coequal branch of government responsible for shaping stories in such a way that the public gets the “truth” behind the facts—that lessons are learned, and that justice is fought for.*
In other words, as an unelected check on the stupidity of the American public.
In 2006, let’s see if we can’t keep beating back this kind of presumtuousness and correct the media’s hubris with a few lessons of our own—namely, that what we want from them are the facts necessary to reach our own conclusions, and that we find their deliberate massaging of certain stories to fit a preconceived political or social advocacy agenda arrogant and insulting.
****
¹ As John Miller, a spokesman for the FBI, noted at the time the story came to light, “Just being referenced in an F.B.I. file is not tantamount to being the subject of an investigation” […] “The F.B.I. does not target individuals or organizations for investigation based on their political beliefs” […] “Everything we do is carefully promulgated by federal law, Justice Department guidelines and the F.B.I.’s own rules.”
That is a New Year’s Resolution worth keeping.
The most effective way to correct media hubris and over-inflated ego is to jail the dozen or so who are directly involved with the leaking from the intelligence agencies. There’s nothing better for the soul than some nice quiet time for contemplation and self-examination. And once they see the light and give up the swine within govt. who feed them, let them roam the land free, serving as an example to others of their kind.
Hey, I’d like to wish all of the very sharp people I’ve been exposed to at Protein Wisdom a very happy and healthy New Year (except for you, Dr. de la Voodoo, you can stroke out any time).
No. The way to correct media hubris is not to buy their product, and let their advertisers (who provide the actual money) know that you do not. Don’t boycott the advertisers. Just let them know that the ads they buy are totally ineffective and the money they give Pinch and ABCBSNNEIEIO is wasted.
It’s a pity. One of the criticisms of the blogosphere is that it’s all opinion; no effort (because no resources) put into fact gathering. It’s a revealing criticism, not as intended but because it shows the MSM’s mistake very clearly: opinions are two a penny and half price on Saturday afternoons, whereas data gathering is hard and expensive. If the [obscenity redacted] Press would just report, dammit, they’d be worth every penny. As it is, the endless bigoted condescension embedded in every story makes their product useless and therefore worthless. Don’t give them your money, your time, or your attention.
Regards,
Ric
Oh, and let me echo rickinstl, above. Happy new year to one and all, including Dr. le Betelgeuse or whatever his name is. There’s medication available, and it would, after all, be a very good year for him if he discovered it.
Regards,
Ric
Hmmm.
And these same journalists want a shield law?
Ric is right. The only effective way to vote for someone/something that is not on a ballot is with your wallet. That is the passive way to voice your displeasure. However, you can also be active and “call” your local paper on their distortions. Our local paper prints many stories directly from the NYT and WaPo. We have a decent reader’s rep who always replies.
Jeff and all: Happy New Year, I hope 2006 is good to all of you.
If I may be so bold as to make a suggestion – why don’t we all resolve to hit Jeff’s tip jar on a regular basis. After all, we use his bandwidth to voice our opinions, enjoy his humor and hopefully, learn something along the way. Even those on the left that post here should “pony up”. I, for one, resolve to hit the jar at least once a month…let’s all chip in.
Now I might consider going to a weekly tithe if that damn armadillo ever decides to dance…..
Hi Ric,
I’ve gotta differ with you on this one. Telling the average marketing genius that you are ignoring their ad-buys only serves to show him/her that you are a politically involved person who wants to stay informed. This is the same bunch who spends marketing bucks on direct mail, spam, and cold calls. If I were one of them, a call telling me that someone was ignoring me would go in the “effective” column.
I do agree that it is a pity that the media has run itself so far off the tracks. They could be an enormous force for truth if they simply did their jobs. But they are human beings, spoiled human beings. And like spoiled children, they need to be brought up short if you want to get their attention. I’m talking about an attitude adjustment, not a public flogging. Just that little swat across their large dimpled bottoms that lets them know that the adults are not happy. I do think that this is a very constructive turn in the dialogue, talking about pro-active measures to pull these people out of their comfy little bubble as oppossed to simply bitching about the shitty job they do. I think this is the first time I’ve found any reason to argue with you, and I’m sure these occasions will be rare, as you are one of the real hard heads commenting here.
Have a good one.
Of course, we also bring up the fact that the Left largely didn’t complain about the Clinton precedents—the Ames case, rendition, Echelon, asserting the inherent authority to conduct warrantless foreign surveillance, etc…
BECAUSE OF THE HYPOCRISY!!!
HAPPY NEW YEAR !!
Interesting that in the Clinton years they seem to have gone to pain-staking lengths to be objective and clear, referring to the warrantless searches as “no-warrant” searches, lest the reader be confused and reach the conclusion that good President Clinton is engaged in frivolous, unwarranted searches. Now it seems obvious that the ambiguity of the term “warrantless” is less troublesome to media types. Of course, why bother using mere ambiguity when you can shamelessly jump straight to nefarious charges of “domestic spying.”
The stakes are enormously high as America takes on the threat of global jihad sponsored by radical Islam.
The legacy media could be a powerful force in this battle, but has chosen instead to attack POTUS.
Journalism.
Thanks and Happy New Year to Jeff and the fine comment staff of this website.
TW: test- maybe the MSM is just doing a test to see if they can fool us again.
I give up, I can’t figure it out. What does the TW: at the end of the post mean?
Happy New Year!
Turing word: it’s that word that you enter in order to get your comment posted. Word has it around these here parts that sometimes the machine that produces these phrases sometimes comes up with something powerful like what’s in your comment.
Yes, a Happy New Year to pw minions and our host.
With regard to the issue of changing the MSM, here’s an interesting piece on one aspect of the subject by Vander Leun over at American Digest.
Frankly, I think 2005 was the year conservative bloggers kept the American public from giving up on the most important endeavor of the new century—creating a stable democracy in Iraq in order to change the entire dynamic between Islam and the Western world.
And to support that, yes, I’d be willing to pay a small monthly subscription fee to pw, so long as it included a special interactive members-only nekkid photos room. Of course, mine looks a lot like a cross between Mathew McConaughey and a Lippizaner stallion, but I’d tolerate others less fortunate.
that was just really excellent.
Even us net demons are forced to admire Jeff’s laser-sight analysis and biting wit.
but it just makes our jobs so much harder.
happy new year, all.
Facts? Facts are pretty hard to come by in the spying trade.
Here’s one fact most people agree on:
The president believes he has the right to wiretap anyone if he feels its necessary in carrying out his foreign policy.
Or, for what he calls carrying out “national security” matters. National security being that curious term that apparently means whatever a president wants it to mean.
The rightist nutters at the WS believes presidents have unlimited power in this area; others do not.
rickinstl,
I think we’re more in agreement than it seems on the surface.
Writing to the advertisers, or the agencies, to indignantly tell them that you actively avoid the MSM “news” would be counterproductive, just as you say.
Simply don’t respond. Advertisers don’t give a damn whether they delight you or piss you off; what they care about is that you notice and respond. Don’t do either. It is, and must be, a very slow process, but it’s the only process that will work.
In my case that happens automatically. I don’t respond to the ads because I never see the ads. For those of you who actually see the ads, it may take a bit of mental discipline to avoid responding to them.
The only semi-proactive thing that may add a bit of impetus to the project is those survey questions on the card when you buy something—y’know: “how did you find out about [product]? []Newspaper ad []TV ad []word of mouth…” Never check “newspaper”, and check “TV” only if you know the ad was on a program you watch. Even that may be too much, as it’s likely to make you a spam magnet.
BTW: I know a Rick in [actually near] St. Louis. Do we know one another?
Regards,
Ric
Carl W. Goss  Oh, please, the rightist nutters, especially the libertarians, are screaming as loudly as Daily Kos and Ted Kennedy about this.
We have a hemispheric spectrum of political lunacy these days. The far right has circled around to embrace the far left behind—way way behind– the farthest reaches of common sense. It’s almost Biblical, man, lions lying down with lambs, dogs and cats living together, David Duke and “Mother” Sheehan sharing a microphone…
Goss pukes up this gem: “The president believes he has the right to wiretap anyone if he feels its necessary in carrying out his foreign policy. “
The fact that the President has never claimed that of course doesn’t slow down Goss at all.
What’s cool about the blogosphere is that people seem to know what other people believe and then present it as a fact that most people agree on:
Here’s one fact most people agree on:
The president believes he has the right to wiretap anyone if he feels its necessary in carrying out his foreign policy.
Well here’s another fact that most people agree on:
Carl W. Goss believes that he is the long-lost love-daughter of Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan trapped inside the body of Kim Jong-il.
So ronery.
Attila Girl, I’d noticed that earlier. I thought it was just being sleepyl. Thanks for the info.
TW: far. As in, far out!
should be
TW: terms. I gotta watch the terms.
Ah, yes, it is only the nuts on the extremes who think are expressing faux outrage at Bush’s spying on Americans.
Bruce Fein, who worked in the Justice Department under President Reagan, said Bush acted “with a flagrant disregard for the separation of powers.” “Will Bush concede there are any limits to his authority to conduct the war on terror?” Fein asked.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, plans to hold hearings on the surveillance program early in 2006.
Specter said he wants Bush’s advisers to cite their specific legal authority for bypassing the courts.
After Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales cited executive authority in defending the legality of the administration’s actions, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA)—who is in charge of organizing an investigation into the issue—responded that he was “skeptical of the attorney general’s citation of authority.”
Government officials have refused to define the standards they’re using to establish such a link or to say how many people are being monitored. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called that troubling. If Bush is allowed to decide unilaterally who the potential terrorists are, he becomes the court,” Graham said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “We are at war, and I applaud the president for being aggressive,” said Graham, who also called for a congressional review. “But we cannot set aside the rule of law in a time of war.”
He [President Bush] has essentially thumbed his nose at the Congress and said, ‘Regardless of what you say, I can do as I wish,’” says Jeffery Smith, a former general counsel at the CIA.
Former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey refused to sign off on the President’s warrentless spying on American citizens.
Robert Novak: “I don’t know about the whole wiretap situation. It’s something that have really come to a conclusion on. I do believe that the Patriot Act goes—particularly the revised version coming out of the conference committee—goes too far. I think there’s too much freeloading by the police.â€Â
Lindsey O. Graham (R-SC) said that “I don’t know of any legal basis to go around” the requirement that the White House formally apply to the FISA court for a warrant to engage in domestic surveillance.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said it is a “legitimate question” to ask why “the president chose not to use FISA.”
Bob Barr, Larry Craig, Chuck Hagel, David Keene, Warren Rudman, Olympia Snow, George Will, are also part of the far-right & left extremists who oppose the Executive Branch’s unlimited authority to spy on Americans.
Pretending that Carter and Clinton did the same things is particularly lame. A cursory reading of the facts show that they did not, but what fun is that? Are you arguing that Clinton established the legal and ethical standards for spying on Americans? All your principles go out the window when it is Dear Leader destroying them.
How many times do you think you can repeat the misrepresentation “…spying on Americans…” ?
I don’t consider terrorists “Americans”. Hell, the terrorists don’t even consider themselves “Americans”. The only one who considers them to be Americans are you guys.
That was a great piece of work by the Standard. The Weekly Standard, that is; the Double Standard is, as usual, the MSM’s. Amazing, the mental contortions the press went through to avoid mentioning PETA’s domestic terror program…in an article about how they are victims of “domestic spying”! C’mon, boys; “connect the dots”!
And here I was thinking “domestic spying” was when John Kerry peeks in the door of Consuelo’s maid’s quarters at three in the morning wearing nothing but his lucky CIA hat.
Good point, Robin Roberts.
Americans just love other Americans in the abstract. We don’t want Americans being spied on by the NSA. We don’t want them monitored by the FBI. We don’t want them left without shelter by Katrina.
And that’s why it all has to be portrayed as the generic American. Hey, that could be me. That could be any of us.
Yet we go to bed at night and lock our doors against other Americans, and set our alarm systems and get caller id so we know which Americans are calling us, and demand no-call laws so other Americans can’t call us, and don’t want other Americans to set our homes on fire because it’s near a beautiful meadow, or kill the animal research lab owner, and we certainly don’t want Americans to buy too much fertilizer, rent a truck and bomb a day care.
Just the other day, Anderson Cooper was railing against people in New Orleans that didn’t want 150 trailers set up in their school yard to house other Katrina victims from lower-class neighborhoods. They are all Americans looking for homes, he said. And I’m sure that’s precisely what he told his co-op board as he fought to get Katrina victims from bad neighborhoods set up to live in the empty apartments in his building, right?
An American should never, ever be spied on. But a person here on a student visa talking to Osama’s #2? Well, let’s not put it that way. That might slant people’s opinion.
Jumpin aerial high-five to MayBee.
Insight, wit, and damn but that’s gotta sting even a mannequin like Cooper.
You get an A+ for that one.
I wonder if his ears are “hot” right now.
Ric Locke –
I agree with you on ignoring ads. I thought I was the only one who purposely averts my eyes, turns off the radio, and mutes the TV during ads.
I learned to do this during Clinton. After a year or so of the bs, I simply could not stand to listen to the man anymore. I get the same feeling with Kennedy and any number of mendacious dems.
As to knowing each other, “Ric Locke” doesn’t ring any bells. Unless that’s an alias you comment and rob convenience stores under, I don’t believe we’re aquainted.
And I see ‘06 is startiing off just like ‘05 ended.
Carl W Goss “showed” his ass on 1/1.
Simply ignoring ads or the MSM won’t work. What will work is spending money on conservative media.
Think about the 70’s hippies and how they stopped eating “factory” raised chicken to protest the way chicken got to the supermarket. Nothing changed.
Forty years later these same, now grown, hippies started buying free-range chickens in the supermarket at twice the price. All of a sudden the market took notice and started changing.
So instead of witholding your mullah, spend it lavishly on overtly conservative media outlets and thier advertisers.
The president believes he has the right to wiretap anyone if he feels its necessary in carrying out his foreign policy.
Or, for what he calls carrying out “national security†matters. National security being that curious term that apparently means whatever a president wants it to mean.
This might be relevant if there wasn’t a declaration of war.
A bit the left always seems to omit.
Funny that, huh?
I mean, how could someone omit that there wasn’t a declaration of war?
Many of the investigative documents turned over by the bureau are heavily edited, making it difficult or impossible to determine the full context of the references and why the F.B.I. may have been discussing events like a PETA protest. F.B.I. officials say many of the references may be much more benign than they seem to civil rights advocates, adding that the documents offer an incomplete and sometimes misleading snapshot of the bureau’s activities.