Hersh: Bin Laden story a "big lie"

[cqo_000]

Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism – close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider.

He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth.

Don't even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends "so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would" – or the death of Osama bin Laden. "Nothing's been done about that story, it's one big lie, not one word of it is true," he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.

Hersh is writing a book about national security and has devoted a chapter to the bin Laden killing. He says a recent report put out by an "independent" Pakistani commission about life in the Abottabad compound in which Bin Laden was holed up would not stand up to scrutiny. "The Pakistanis put out a report, don't get me going on it. Let's put it this way, it was done with considerable American input. It's a bullshit report," he says hinting of revelations to come in his book.

The Obama administration lies systematically, he claims, yet none of the leviathans of American media, the TV networks or big print titles, challenge him.

"It's pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama]," he declares in an interview with the Guardian.


Read More: http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2013/sep/27/seymour-hersh-obama-nsa-american-media

[gopiscrap]

1. interestin

[procon]

2. "Hersh is writing a book..."

'Nuff said, eh?

[nxylas]

4. Of course

I mean, no-one could really believe that a journalist should not just accept everything the President says at face value, could they? That's crazy talk.

[mwrguy]

3. Hersh is full of shit

[rhett o rick]

11. Your argument is lacking something. nm

[grahamhgreen]

5. "The republic's in trouble, we lie about everything, lying has become the staple." And he implores

journalists to do something about it.

Don't we all!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

6. I can hear the tin foil hat crowd now: "Feed me Seymour!!!"

[cprise]

7. "how does [Obama] get away with the drone programme"...?

1. Its a profitable new frontier for big business, and today's mass media are owned by many of the same 1%'ers that own defense contractors. There are no more ownership restrictions on news media, so they have been subsumed into the larger corporate plutonomy.

2. Even better, it makes money and power for those at the top at the expense of the masses.

3. The flip side of not having to deal with as many military/police casualties is that political leaders can exert more control over the masses while needing fewer and fewer loyalists.

[tavalon]

8. Hersh is right more often than he is wrong

And yes, the Obama administration has gotten very comfortable with the lying thing.

[Doctor_J]

9. yep. while this administration is different than the last one on many things,

their reliance on lying is very similar.

[zentrum]

10. He lost credibility....

....when he wrote in an absolute and insistent way that we were definitely, positively going to attack Iran several years ago.

[bananas]

12. Hersh exposed Bush's plans to attack Iran, public discussion prevented it.

Similar to what happened with Syria recently.

Obama is still threatening to bomb Iran's military enrichment facilities.

Bush was going to nuke those facilities, and there were people right here on DU in favor of that.

Bush was also going to invade Iran with US troops.

Whenever I mention it, people can't believe that DUers would advocate nuking Iran,
so here's a thread against nuking Iran, it contains links to other threads advocating nuking Iran:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x3060468