Media Elite Fall Down Again, and Again and …

For all of their gasbaggery about the virtue and necessity of the Fourth Estate, the glittering mainstream media elite (big names, big money, very little gumshoe) is simply allergic to breaking news, and intelligently reporting about anything that implicates the power structure beyond the isolated criminal doings of one man or woman, i.e, senators and congressmen who terrorize airport bathrooms and congressional pages, or cheesy Midwest governors with small mind/big hair complexes. Those stories are safe, and therefore deserve the exhaustion of every pitiful analysis and resource.

But when it comes to serious stuff — preemptive war, torture, spying on Americans without warrant, the upending of the U.S constitution — these mainstream mavens (who are ever-so-fond of waxing nostalgic about their weaning during the Woodward & Bernstein glory years of the 70’s)  quickly “close ranks” and reframe the context of these stories to ensure the teeniest impact possible on the status quo. This typically means protecting their establishment friends in government, not rattling the corporate sponsors, and skittering off  to perceivably more ratings-grabbing news, like what really happened to Anna Nicole Smith, and what are the ladies on The View dishing about today? This is all done of course, in that gratingly condescending way (think and picture Chris Matthews)  that has all the subtle effect of nails filing down on a chalkboard.

The worst is when they completely ignore stories that put their “profession” in the most garish of lights, those little slivers of truth that peek out from time to time thanks to real reporters in the business. David Barstow won a Pulitzer Prize this week for his expose on the media using generals planted by the Pentagon to sell the war , but I bet most Americans haven’t heard of “message force multipliers” and wouldn’t know why they should care, since the story never made it to the nightly news.

As for the current torture scandal, of which we have hardly heard the full extent, Glenn Greenwald has an excellent analysis on his site today regarding the corporate media’s complicity in playing down the story throughout the Bush years and its ongoing attempts to frame it in the most self-serving way possible. A taste:

For years, media stars ignored the fact that our Government was chronically breaking the law and systematically torturing detainees (look at this extremely detailed exposé by The Washington Post‘s Dana Priest and Barton Gellman from December, 2002 to get a sense for how much we’ve known about all of this and for how long we’ve known it).  Now that the sheer criminality of this conduct, really for the first time, has exploded into mainstream political debates as a result of the OLC memos, media stars are forced to address it.  Exactly as one would expect, they are closing ranks, demanding (as always) that their big powerful political-official-friends and their elite institutions not be subject to the dirty instruments that are meant only for the masses — things like the rule of law, investigations, prosecutions, and accountability when they abuse their power.

Read more here.

Congressional Quarterly‘s Jeff Stein on Antiwar Radio

On Tuesday Scott Horton interviewed Congressional Quarterly’s Jeff Stein for Antiwar Radio about his explosive new story about Rep. Jane Harman’s deal with an agent of the government of Israel to try to put pressure on the Department of Justice and/or the White House to have espionage charges against Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, formerly of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, reduced.

The Congresswoman from California was apparently picked up on a phone tap by the National Security Agency, which was investigating the Israeli agent under Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court authorization. Harman allegedly promised to “waddle in” to the Rosen-Weissman case on behalf of the defense if the Israeli agent would use his influence to push then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi into making Harman chair of the House Intelligence Committee after the upcoming election which her party was widely expected to win.

In a further twist, the reason the investigation never proceeded was apparently not due to a “lack of evidence” as reported by Time magazine back in 2006. Instead it was thwarted even before it could begin by then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who, mindful of the then-impending New York Times piece about the illegal warrantless wiretapping program, said he “needed Jane” to help cover for the administration when the storm broke.

That, of course, is exactly what she did, as discussed in the interview.

Pity for a Constitution Stomper?

Congresswoman Jane Harman is indignant. A National Security Agency wiretap reportedly picked up her conversation seeking favors from a suspected Israeli agent in return for Harman lobbying the Justice Department to drop the lawsuit against AIPAC’s former top officials.

Harman denies the charge and swears that her good name has been defiled. (Har!). Harman sent a letter today to Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to release the transcripts of some of her NSA-tapped phone calls and to “investigate possible wiretapping of other Members of Congress and ‘selective leaks of investigative material which can be used for political purposes.’”

Harman was a champion of illegal wiretaps on average Americans. She even urged the New York Times not to publish its original expose on Bush’s massive domestic warrantless wiretaps, and she suggested that the New York Times should be prosecuted when they did finally uncork the story.

Jeff Stein’s superb CQ article on Sunday revealed that Attorney General Gonzales had rebuffed proposals to prosecute Harman after the wiretpped conversations in part because Harman became a vigorous cheerleader for Bush’s destruction of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable, warrantless searches.

The feds should release the records of Harman’s phone calls (at her request) – and all the other evidence regarding members of Congress, White House and other exeuctive branch officials, lobbyists, and other insider players who have sought to pull strings to squelch the trial of AIPAC’s former leaders.

Antiwar Radio: Jeff Stein and Michael Hastings

Jeff Stein and Michael Hastings will be the featured guest on the Scott Horton Show at Antiwar Radio on Friday, April 21st.

Stein will discuss the major scandal involving Rep. Jane Harman, Alberto Gonzales and AIPAC at 2:00PM Eastern and Hastings will discuss his recent article from GQ Magazine, “Obama’s War” at 2:30PM Eastern.

Jeff Stein is the National Security Editor and SpyTalk columnist for Congressional Quarterly and Michael Hastings is a correspondent for Newsweek and author of I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story.

The Scott Horton Show airs Tuesday through Friday from 2PM-4PM Eastern at Antiwar.com/radio, where additional archives from past shows can also be found.