There is real journalism going on in the world. It’s just not happening anywhere I looked when I was young and impressionable.
Seymour Hersh, who exposed the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, uncovered the secret bombing of Cambodia, and first reported on U.S. mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, published a report the other day about how U.S. special forces sabotaged the Nord Stream Pipeline.
A week earlier, Columbia Journalism Review published an extensive report by Jeff Gerth, another Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, which spells out in meticulous detail how traditional journalism giants like the New York Times dropped all pretense of objectivity and became obsessed with a story that was completely fabricated — how Donald Trump colluded with Russian agents to gain the presidency of the United States — and has spent the last six years in open warfare with the man. (I am no fan of Trump, but I am embarrassed by my colleagues’ behavior.)
Neither of these impeccably documented stories has gained any traction in the traditional media, and who can blame them? They are among the most damning exposes of how far the “mainstream media” has fallen into its new role as propagandists.
While these stories were rolling out, the Times instead was publishing a warning that public health and democracy itself are threatened by The First Amendment.
In the contemporary vernacular, I can’t even, so instead I link you to a sobering commentary by Craig Murray, former U.K. diplomat and now human rights activist, who says it better than I can.