Danny Schechter, one step closer to being recognized as the most trusted man in America
Schechter is recognized all over the world as a reliable journalistic pro; Iran, Russia, and KSA—that stands for Kingdom of Saudia Arabia, and via Al-Jazeera, throughout the rest of the Middle East, except for Israel.
Unfortunately, the 1%’s control of America’s “domestic networks” like the ones he worked with, including ABC, CNN or even PBS, have frozen Schechter out no differently than the John Birch Society’s Joe McCarthy era blacklisted artists and writers in the 1950s. These same ”news” media monopolies led by the New York Times and Judith Miller supported PNAC’s Cheney-Bush White House (neocon), and the Pentagon’s Military Industrial Complex (defense contractors) Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL); Shock and Awe; the Iraq war. Besides Schechter, there are 100 other American journalists who wrote against the US going to war in Iraq, but they don’t have the trust of the Iranian, Russian and Middle East press.
Oh, and Schechter as the most trusted man in America? It seems that he has also won the Brits over to his side.
On Sunday night Schechter was called by the BBC to comment on ”the criticism that the State Department is making about CNN coverage of a supposed personal diary with notes by the late US Ambassador to Libya which suggested that the Ambassador was very worried about threats by Al Qaeda linked groups to his personal safety.”
In case you missed it
”This issue has now been reduced to an attack on the media which found the document in the remains of the consulate and reported on it over the objections of the Ambassador’s family. The implication is that network was being insensitive to the family.
”As far as I know, the only thing they reported was his worries about Al Qaeda, and nothing really personal. Clearly the government doesn’t want the public to think that its intelligence was very poor or that the Ambassador’s concerns were ignored. So they blame the media messenger.
”CNN had reported: ’For CNN, the ambassador’s writings served as tips about the situation in Libya, and in Benghazi in particular. CNN took the newsworthy tips and corroborated them with other sources.’
”A source familiar with Stevens’ thinking told CNN earlier this week that, in the months leading up to his death, the late ambassador worried about what he called the security threats in Benghazi and a rise in Islamic extremism.
”Stevens died on September 11, along with three other Americans, when the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi came under attack amid a large protest about a U.S.-made film that mocked the Muslim Prophet Mohammed.”
The Washington Poat in a long article that sniped at CNN, nevertheless said the network was right to report own the so-called diary,
“’Any fair accounting of this dispute must start with an endorsement of CNN’s industriousness. That a reporter from the network got to the scene and fetched an item that no one else had found speaks well of CNN and its commitment to international reporting.’
”If CNN hadn’t been on the ground, after all, the Stevens family may never have recovered the journal. That a news organization, and not a U.S. government entity, scored the journal speaks ill of the latter.
From there, the story gets more complicated. Journals enjoy an exalted cone of privacy among civilized people: (Huh? How about the State Department diplomatic cables that Wikileaks leaked?) Hands off.
That cone shatters, of course, when we’re talking about the writings of an ambassador who’s been killed in a high-profile attack in a volatile foreign country. Reflections and information in the journal may be of immediate public interest, an imperative that steamrolls any considerations about privacy. Not only was CNN right to read and copy the journal, but also it was obligated by its newsgathering mission to do so.
What We Need To Know
What’s being lost in this is whole context–the NATO invasion and bombardment of Linya, with the US “Leading from behind” and the fact that this was always all about oil, not human rights and democracy The murder of Gadaffy and the killing of as many as l0,000 Libyans is no linger news. Gadaffy has long charged that Benghazi was an Al Qaeda base. His concerns were ridiculed. There were charges that NATO worked with [transmission garbled] not against, armed groups like AlQaeda.
The NY Times reports today the CIA’s plans to install a pro-western government been a failure. Maybe that’s whats embarrassing to the State Department.
“WASHINGTON — The attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans has dealt the Central Intelligence Agency a major setback in its intelligence-gathering efforts at a time of increasing instability in the North African nation.
Among the more than two dozen American personnel evacuated from the city after the assault on the American mission and a nearby annex were about a dozen C.I.A. operatives and contractors, who played a crucial role in conducting surveillance and collecting information on an array of militant armed groups in and around the city.
“It’s a catastrophic intelligence loss,” said one American official who has served in Libya and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the F.B.I. is still investigating the attack. “We got our eyes poked out.”
As for the background, here’s an account from Foreign Policy magazine that does not criticize CNN but, instead, the lack of “post conflict reporting. (That’s as if the conflict reporting was good in the first place. It wasn’t.
Read this and see if you can find it any of the beat up on CNN coverage—or even the coverage on CNN.
“Benghazi itself is one of the most dangerous places in Libya. Not only is the city home to a militia, Ansar al-Sharia, whose leaders have linkages to al Qaeda, but in April and June 2012 ’militants’ carried out a series of attacks in that city on the U.N., Red Cross, the U.S. consulate, and the British consulate, all international entities that al Qaeda has specifically targeted in other countries.
Now Ansar al-Sharia has been implicated responsibility for this latest attack on the U.S. consulate. If this is true, then Libya’s security problems are no longer a matter solely of local concern, but have global implications. Even before this attack there was evidence to suggest that al Qaeda was involved in Libya.
Although there is no proof of al Qaeda participation in the original uprising against Qaddafi, high-ranking al Qaeda leaders did make their way to Libya at the end of 2011. Not long afterward the al Qaeda flag — a distinctive black banner adopted officially by al Qaeda in Iraq and other affiliates — was openly flown over public buildings; al Qaeda’s version of sharia was demanded and Sufi shrines attacked; and by the spring of 2012 an al Qaeda military unit was strong enough to hold a public parade in Sirte (Qaddafi’s former stronghold) featuring heavy weaponry and dozens of technicals.
The entire region was in fact affected by al Qaeda’s presence in Libya: AQIM openly boasted of benefiting from Qaddafi’s weapons cache and many of the members of a new al Qaeda-linked group, Ansar al-Din, came out of Libya to take over northern Mali and impose al Qaeda’s version of sharia on a reluctant population.
It is worth emphasizing that we are facing far more than just further chaos in Libya and the possibility of an al Qaeda terrorism problem. The assault on the Benghazi consulate was a sophisticated and complex attack, involving automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), suggesting that Ansar al-Sharia is preparing for an insurgency and not just carrying out terrorist attacks. The group’s imposition of sharia and attempts at shadow governance in Benghazi (see their Facebook page for details), support this interpretation of the group’s longer-term objectives. [FULLTEXT]
Via the NewsDissector (blog); via @DissectorEvents on Twitter. cc: #OWS, #A99 and #OpESR
