US Shutting Down a Key News Source

[marmar]

from Consortium News:



US Shutting Down a Key News Source
December 3, 2013

Exclusive: The U.S. intelligence community vacuums up vast amounts of data, but it has one agency, World News Connection, that gives back information to the public – except that the service is getting shut down at year’s end, notes ex-intelligence analyst Elizabeth Murray.

By Elizabeth Murray


This New Year’s Eve, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence will quietly deliver a devastating blow to the American public’s access to accurate, unbiased information that is unparalleled in quality and comprehensiveness by shutting off access to the World News Connection.

WNC is a valuable trove of U.S. government-sponsored media translations and analyses that has informed the work of American scholars, journalists, writers and historians for the past six decades. It is one of the few offices in the U.S. intelligence community that regularly shares information with the people, rather than simply extracting metadata about them.

Since 1941, the Open Source Center (OSC) – which was known by its earlier moniker, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) until 2005 – has produced timely, mainly unclassified products based on foreign media that provide valuable strategic insights to the U.S. intelligence community, including military and diplomatic developments. Previously administered by the CIA, it now comes under the purview of the ODNI.

The Open Source Center has long made a substantial amount of this material available to public subscribers, such as university libraries, think tanks and other institutions – as the “World News Connection” via the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), a government information clearinghouse. .......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2013/12/03/us-shutting-down-a-key-news-source/

[WillyT]

1. K & R !!!

[BelgianMadCow]

2. Which reminds me

do we have Consortium News in the sticky thread of progressive sources, over in the Progressive media forum?

On the substance of the post: another tragedy of the commons.

[2naSalit]

4. I think I saw a link

to it in one of the suggestion lists a couple days ago. I would have added it if I hadn't seen it there. Great news source.

[L0oniX]

3. If it could our government would shut down all info sources that concern its self.

It's also trying to shut down "real" journalism right now. It's not going to stop with the closing the WNC. What's next? Turning out the lights on all government buildings so terrorists can't see them at night by using Google sat? Duh!

[progressoid]

5. Meh. So what. I can still get all the important news from Perez Hilton.

[Divernan]

6. Horrifying & unexplained development from an administration promising transparency!

From the comments:

Ironically, the ODNI’s move to end public access to the Open Source Center’s products also could have the effect of making whistleblowers even more valuable and necessary for an informed public.”

Note: this implies that the product will still exist, but public access to it will be terminated. Functionally, this amounts to an expansion of what can be considered “classified”. Independent investigative reporting which uncovers the truth, in that context, becomes a violation of National Security and a criminal offense. Think of those old cowboy movies, and that phrase, “circling the wagons”. Goebbels did the same thing with his foreign press service. In the immortal words of George Carlin, “Don’t believe anything until it’s been officially denied…but nobody listens, nobody cares.”

You gotta read the whole article to get a sense of what a big effing blow this is to freedom of informatin.

[KamaAina]

7. "it lacked the authority to rescind the decision"

so presumably said decision came from Somewhere Upstairs.

[Divernan]

8. Yup. The Great Champion of Transparency strikes again.

[woo me with science]

9. K&R

[liberal_at_heart]

10. what a sham of a democracy.

[Uncle Joe]

11. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, marmar.