Similarly, senior U.S. politicians, including Hillary Clinton, and the U.S. mainstream media have falsely asserted that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies signed off on the Russia-did-it hacking claims.
For months, that canard was used to silence skepticism. After all, how could you question something that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed to be true?
But it turned out that -- as DNI Clapper, himself a hardline Russia-basher, belatedly acknowledged -- the Jan. 6 report on the alleged Russian hacking was the work of "hand-picked" analysts from only three agencies, the CIA, FBI and NSA, and the "assessment" itself admitted that it was not asserting the Russian conclusion as fact, only the analysts' opinion.
The New York Times finally retracted its use of the fake claim about "all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies" in late June 2017 although it wouldn't let the lie lie, so instead the Times made misleading references to a "consensus" among U.S. intelligence agencies without using the number.
Recent studies by former U.S. intelligence experts have punched more holes in the certainty by raising doubts that the email downloads could have been accomplished over the Internet at the recorded speeds and more likely were achieved by an insider downloading onto a thumb drive.
Deciding What's Real
So who is guilty of "fake news" and "disinformation"?
President Lyndon Johnson announces 'retaliatory' strike against North Vietnam in response to the supposed attacks on U.S. warships in the Gulf of Tonkin on Aug. 4, 1964.
(Image by (Photo credit: LBJ Library)) Details DMCA
One positive from the current PBS series, "The Vietnam War," is that despite its bend-over-backwards attempts to make excuses for the "good faith" decisions by U.S. politicians, no one can watch the series without encountering the chasm between the upbeat Official Story being peddled by the U.S. government and the ghastly on-the-ground reality.
Yet, given how little accountability was meted out then for journalists who served as conveyor belts for pro-war propaganda in Vietnam -- or more recently over the fraudulent reporting that rationalized the U.S. aggressive war against Iraq -- it is perhaps not surprising that similar false group thinks would coalesce around Russia now.
Careerist journalists understand that there is no danger in running with the pack -- indeed, there is safety in numbers -- but there are extraordinary risks to your career if you challenge the conventional wisdom even if you turn out to be right. As one establishment journalist once told me, "there's no honor in being right too soon."
So, for the Post reporters responsible for the latest journalistic violation of standards -- Adam Entous, Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg -- there will be no penalty for the offense of telling about Russia's alleged "disinformation" and "fake news" -- rather than showing, i.e., providing actual examples. When it comes to Russia these days -- as with the Vietcong in the 1960s or Iraq in 2002-03 -- you can pretty much write whatever you want. All journalistic standards are gone.
Yet, what is perhaps most insidious about what we are seeing is that -- in the name of defending democracy -- the U.S. mainstream media is trampling a chief principle of the Enlightenment, the belief that the marketplace of ideas is the best way to determine the truth and to create an informed populace.
The new U.S. mainstream media paradigm is that only establishment-approved views can be expressed; everything else must be suppressed, purged and punished.
For instance, if you question the State Department's narrative on alleged Syrian government sarin attacks -- by noting contrary evidence that points to staged incidents by Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate -- you are called an "apologist" for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
If you question the one-sided State Department narrative regarding the Ukraine coup in 2014 -- indeed even if you use the word "coup" -- you are denounced as a "Kremlin stooge."
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