{"id":61987,"date":"2017-01-02T15:16:34","date_gmt":"2017-01-02T19:16:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=61987"},"modified":"2017-03-30T09:06:53","modified_gmt":"2017-03-30T13:06:53","slug":"washington-post-propornot-demolished-for-mccarthyite-hogwash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=61987","title":{"rendered":"Washington Post, PropOrNot Demolished For “McCarthyite Hogwash”"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Natasha Hakimi
\nTruthdig.com<\/p>\n

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\nFlickr \/ CC 2.0<\/small><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n

Every week the Truthdig editorial staff selects a Truthdigger of the Week, a person or group worthy of recognition for speaking truth to power, breaking the story or blowing the whistle. It is not a lifetime achievement award. Rather, we\u2019re looking for newsmakers whose actions in a given week are worth celebrating.<\/i><\/p>\n

As many of our readers know<\/a>, Truthdig, along with Truthout, CounterPunch, Naked Capitalism and WikiLeaks, among 200 alternative news websites from all over the political spectrum, were named as Russian propagandists on a blacklist compiled by a shadowy site called PropOrNot that was used as a source for a chilling piece by Washington Post reporter Craig Timberg on Nov. 24. The list, which some in the media have branded \u201cMcCarthyite,\u201d has been widely criticized, particularly because Timberg and the Post did not disclose sufficient identifying details about the accusing group, which has not released its members\u2019 names. And neither Timberg nor Post editors have provided any insight on their reasoning in publishing PropOrNot\u2019s findings. For its part, PropOrNot continues to offer erratic, at times childish, responses to the backlash.<\/p>\n

In the days after publication of the Post\u2019s story, many fellow journalists<\/a> have come to the defense of Truthdig and several other sites the list identified, tearing apart both the Post for its role in propagating the shameful list and PropOrNot\u2019s careless methodology in choosing the publications it named. Below are some of the highlights of the defenders\u2019 responses.<\/p>\n

At The Intercept<\/a>, Glenn Greenwald and Ben Norton wrote a detailed account of the entire fiasco and condemned The Washington Post\u2019s part in disseminating so-called research by this \u201cnew, hidden, and very shady group\u201d:<\/p>\n

Even more disturbing than the Post\u2019s shoddy journalism in this instance is the broader trend in which any wild conspiracy theory or McCarthyite attack is now permitted in U.S. discourse as long as it involves Russia and Putin \u2014 just as was true in the 1950s when stories of how the Russians were poisoning the U.S. water supply or infiltrating American institutions were commonplace. Any anti-Russia story was \u2014 and is \u2014 instantly vested with credibility, while anyone questioning its veracity or evidentiary basis is subject to attacks on their loyalties or, at best, vilified as \u201cuseful idiots.\u201d \u2026 The Post itself \u2014 now posing as a warrior against \u201cfake news\u201d \u2014 published an article in September that treated with great seriousness the claim that Hillary Clinton collapsed on 9\/11 Day because she was poisoned by Putin. And that\u2019s to say nothing of the paper\u2019s disgraceful history of convincing Americans that Saddam [Hussein] was building non-existent nuclear weapons and had cultivated a vibrant alliance with al Qaeda. As is so often the case, those who mostly loudly warn of \u201cfake news\u201d from others are themselves the most aggressive disseminators of it.<\/p>\n

Indeed, what happened here is the essence of fake news. The Post story served the agendas of many factions: those who want to believe Putin stole the election from Hillary Clinton; those who want to believe that the internet and social media are a grave menace that needs to be controlled, in contrast to the objective truth that reliable old media outlets once issued; those who want a resurrection of the Cold War. So those who saw tweets and Facebook posts promoting this Post story instantly clicked and shared and promoted the story without an iota of critical thought or examination of whether the claims were true, because they wanted the claims to be true. That behavior included countless journalists.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Adrian Chen outright called Timberg\u2019s piece and PropOrNot\u2019s list \u201cpropaganda about Russian propaganda\u201d in a piece for The New Yorker<\/a>, in which he explained that he had passed on the very same shoddy \u201cresearch\u201d that Timberg and the Post deemed worthy of printing:<\/p>\n

The story of PropOrNot should serve as a cautionary tale to those who fixate on malignant digital influences as a primary explanation for Trump\u2019s stunning election. The story combines two of the most popular technological villains of post-election analysis\u2014fake news and Russian subterfuge\u2014into a single tantalizing package. Like the most effective Russian propaganda, the report weaved together truth and misinformation.<\/p>\n

Bogus news stories, which overwhelmingly favored Trump, did flood social media throughout the campaign, and the hack of the Clinton campaign chair John Podesta\u2019s e-mail seems likely to have been the work of Russian intelligence services. But, as harmful as these phenomena might be, the prospect of legitimate dissenting voices being labeled fake news or Russian propaganda by mysterious groups of ex-government employees, with the help of a national newspaper, is even scarier. Vasily Gatov told me, \u201cTo blame internal social effects on external perpetrators is very Putinistic.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a piece for Rolling Stone<\/a>, Matt Taibbi called the Post\u2019s story \u201cshameful and disgusting\u201d:<\/p>\n

All of this is an outgrowth of this horrible election season we just lived through.<\/p>\n

A lot of reporters over the summer were so scared by the prospect of a Trump presidency that they talked \u2013 in some cases publicly \u2013 about abandoning traditional ideas about journalistic \u201cdistance\u201d from politicians, in favor of open advocacy for the Clinton campaign. \u201cTrump is testing the norms of objectivity in journalism,\u201d is how The Times put it.<\/p>\n

These journalists seemed totally indifferent to the Pandora\u2019s box they were opening. They didn\u2019t understand that most politicians have no use for critical media. Many of them don\u2019t see alternative points of view as healthy or even legitimate. If you polled a hundred politicians about the profession, 99 would say that all reporters are obstructionist scum whose removal from the planet would be a boon to society.<\/p>\n

The only time politicians like the media is when we\u2019re helping them get elected or push through certain policies, like for instance helping spread dubious stories about Iraq\u2019s WMD capability. Otherwise, they despise us. So news outlets that get into bed with politicians are usually making a devil\u2019s bargain they don\u2019t fully understand.<\/p>\n

They may think they\u2019re being patriotic (as many did during the Iraq\/WMD episode), but in the end what will happen is that they will adopt the point of view of their political sponsors. They will soon enough denounce other reporters and begin to see themselves as part of the power structure, as opposed to a check on it.<\/p>\n

This is the ultimate in stupidity and self-annihilating behavior. The power of the press comes from its independence from politicians. Jump into bed with them and you not only won\u2019t ever be able to get out, but you\u2019ll win nothing but a loss of real influence and the undying loathing of audiences.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Joshua Frank, co-editor of \u201cCounterPunch<\/a>,\u201d another left-leaning site named on the blacklist, details a revealing email exchange with PropOrNot:<\/p>\n

In further emails, I explained to the group that there were many other media outlets that were not tools of Russian propaganda; Truthout, Truthdig, BlackAgendaReport, Antiwar.com, among others. Here is their reply:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Truthout, Truthdig, Antiwar, BlackAgendaReport, etc, were to reach out to us like you did, things might well end up playing out very similarly to how this one has! We\u2019ve asked people to do that on our site. Several have. Others have not.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then this gem:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone contacts us and the resulting conversation makes clear that they understand, for example, how Putin\u2019s Russia is a revisionist authoritarian wannabe-imperialist kleptocracy that uses \u2018fake news\u2019 as online propaganda, then we have a lot of common ground. That factors into our understanding of the merits, but more importantly, becomes a basis for constructive movement forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Huh? That isn\u2019t very sound methodology if you ask me, more like a shallow smear campaign manufactured by amateurs. PropOrNot will consider taking these sites off their blacklist, not based on the sites\u2019 content but on whether or not they contacted PropOrNot directly and if \u201cthey understand\u201d Putin is a bad hombre? The group lists these aforementioned sites right along RT and Sputnik News, both of which are openly funded by the Russian government and provide a point of view that\u2019s in line with the Kremlin. It\u2019s clearly a case of guilt by association.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See more of Frank\u2019s, as well as Truthdig columnist Sonali Kolhatkar\u2019s, responses to the smear in the video below.<\/p>\n