Our media

Atrios: Versailles During the 90s and the whole Lewinsky saga I just thought the Villagers were a bunch of shallow childish gossips. Now I understand that they're much more malicious than that, a corrupt class of moral monsters dedicated to the preservation of their status and privilege. At least it's easier to point that out, now.


Terrific post by Glenn. You should go read the whole thing.
Glenn Greenwald: Three key rules of media behavior shape their discussions of "the 'torture' debate"

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(2) Nobody is more opposed to transparency and disclosure of government secrets than establishment "journalists." Richard Cohen wrote of the Lewis Libby prosecution: "it is often best to keep the lights off." ABC News' Peggy Noonan said this week of torture investigations: "Some things in life need to be mysterious. Sometimes you need to just keep walking." The Washington Post's David Ignatius, condemning Obama for releasing the OLC memos, warned: "the country is fighting a war, and it needs to take care that the sunlight of exposure doesn't blind its shadow warriors." And the favorite mantra of media stars and Beltway mavens everywhere -- Look Forward, Not Backwards -- is nothing but a plea that extreme government crimes remain concealed and unexamined.

This remains the single most notable and revealing fact of American political life: that (with some very important exceptions) those most devoted to maintaining and advocating government secrecy is our journalist class, of all people. It would be as if the leading proponents of cigarette smoking were physicians, or those most vocally touting the virtues of illiteracy were school teachers. Nothing proves the true function of these media stars as government spokespeople more than their eagerness to shield government actions from examination and demand that government criminality not be punished.

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Sully: What David Boren Saw

It's hard to think of a more establishment figure - particularly close to the Bush family, for example. He is also well-versed in intelligence and policy. He was chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee from 1987 to 1993. And when he was sent to be briefed at Langley in February on the torture program set up by Dick Cheney, he said that:

[A]ttending the briefings was "one of the most deeply disturbing experiences I have had" and that "I wanted to take a bath when I heard it. I was ashamed of it." He said he concluded that "fear was used to justify the use of techniques that violate our values and weaken our intelligence" and that the agency did not prove those methods "are particularly effective at getting the truth."

Is this debate still going to be refracted through the prism of right and left in the lazy MSM? Or are they even capable of telling right from wrong?