Who needs Dana Perino when you have the NYT's Michael Gordon?
Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com
(updated below - Update II)
On Meet the Press yesterday during an interview with Barack Obama, Tim Russert said:
The administration, we have reported at NBC, are drawing up some plans for potential airstrikes in Iran at different missile weapons factories or special force compounds because we have indications, evidence that the Iranians are helping some of their supporters within Iraq to kill U.S. troops.
It's unclear whether the "we" in Russert's statement ("we have indications, evidence") refers to the U.S. Government or NBC News, though that distinction is essentially nonexistent. Russert didn't bother to describe this purported "evidence" leading to our planning air strikes against Iran, but he did then ask Obama: "If it could be demonstrated that was a fact, would you be in support of such limited attacks in Iran?"
Like clockwork, the administration's most stalwart surge supporter/journalist -- the New York Times' Michael Gordon -- has a lengthy article today bolstering the administration's war-justifying accusations against Iran. It claims in the lead sentence that "militants from the Lebanese group Hezbollah have been training Iraqi militia fighters at a camp near Tehran," and that "the training, the Americans say, is carried out at several camps near Tehran that are overseen by the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Command, and the instruction is carried out by militants from Hezbollah, which has long been supported by the Quds Force."
As usual with Gordon's articles, nothing is done here other than uncritically repeating Bush administration claims under the cover of anonymity. Virtually every paragraph in this article is nothing more a mindless recitation of uncorroborated assertions which he copies from Bush officials and then weaves into a news narrative, with the phrase "American officials say" tacked on at the end or the phrase "according to officials" unobtrusively interspersed in the middle, as in:
In a possible effort to be less obtrusive, it appears that Iran is now bringing small groups of Iraqi Shiite militants to camps in Iran, where they are taught how to do their own training, American officials say.
The militants then return to Iraq to teach comrades how to fire rockets and mortars, fight as snipers or assemble explosively formed penetrators, a particularly lethal type of roadside bomb made of Iranian components, according to American officials. The officials describe this approach as “training the trainers."
As presented, the "news" here isn't that Bush officials are making these accusations; the news, as Gordon reports it, is what the Iranians are allegedly doing, all based on anonymous, unchallenged Bush claims. It's nothing more than yet another Bush administration press release masquerading as a New York Times article on Iranian involvement in Iraq.
(Continued here.)
Salon.com
(updated below - Update II)
On Meet the Press yesterday during an interview with Barack Obama, Tim Russert said:
The administration, we have reported at NBC, are drawing up some plans for potential airstrikes in Iran at different missile weapons factories or special force compounds because we have indications, evidence that the Iranians are helping some of their supporters within Iraq to kill U.S. troops.
It's unclear whether the "we" in Russert's statement ("we have indications, evidence") refers to the U.S. Government or NBC News, though that distinction is essentially nonexistent. Russert didn't bother to describe this purported "evidence" leading to our planning air strikes against Iran, but he did then ask Obama: "If it could be demonstrated that was a fact, would you be in support of such limited attacks in Iran?"
Like clockwork, the administration's most stalwart surge supporter/journalist -- the New York Times' Michael Gordon -- has a lengthy article today bolstering the administration's war-justifying accusations against Iran. It claims in the lead sentence that "militants from the Lebanese group Hezbollah have been training Iraqi militia fighters at a camp near Tehran," and that "the training, the Americans say, is carried out at several camps near Tehran that are overseen by the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Command, and the instruction is carried out by militants from Hezbollah, which has long been supported by the Quds Force."
As usual with Gordon's articles, nothing is done here other than uncritically repeating Bush administration claims under the cover of anonymity. Virtually every paragraph in this article is nothing more a mindless recitation of uncorroborated assertions which he copies from Bush officials and then weaves into a news narrative, with the phrase "American officials say" tacked on at the end or the phrase "according to officials" unobtrusively interspersed in the middle, as in:
In a possible effort to be less obtrusive, it appears that Iran is now bringing small groups of Iraqi Shiite militants to camps in Iran, where they are taught how to do their own training, American officials say.
The militants then return to Iraq to teach comrades how to fire rockets and mortars, fight as snipers or assemble explosively formed penetrators, a particularly lethal type of roadside bomb made of Iranian components, according to American officials. The officials describe this approach as “training the trainers."
As presented, the "news" here isn't that Bush officials are making these accusations; the news, as Gordon reports it, is what the Iranians are allegedly doing, all based on anonymous, unchallenged Bush claims. It's nothing more than yet another Bush administration press release masquerading as a New York Times article on Iranian involvement in Iraq.
(Continued here.)
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