CIA's spokesman at NBC, @KenDilanianNBC, expressed the same indignation. Amazing how often journalists concoct excuses to be angry the public will see & learn things. It's valid to object to Trump's motives & selectivity, but many US journalists hate transparency more than NSA

https://twitter.com/LizWFB/status/1041805111369129989

If you enjoy demanding that documents and other information be kept concealed from the public due to vague "national security" mantras, there are a lot of jobs for which you're suited: CIA, DOD, NSA spokesperson, etc. So weird to have that attribute, then become a *journalist*.

In late 2016, @RandPaul tried to stop the US from supplying Saudi Arabia with the bombs and other weapons it was using to destroy Yemen. Watch what @wolfblitzer suggested to him on CNN about why that was a bad and radical idea: In the scheme of deciding who is good and who is bad: what weight do we give to those who assisted the Saudis in destroying Yemen and creating one of the world's worst humanitarian crises versus those who tried to stop that? What role has the heroic US media played in this?

1/ Since international law & tribunals are in the news, it's a good time to review what happened when the International Court of Justice ruled that the Reagan CIA had violated the law, and the US Govt simply declared it would ignore the ruling & was immune from the judgment. 2/ In the early 1980s, the CIA, under Reagan, decided it would overthrow the government of Nicaragua. This was illegal because it lacked Congressional approval. They did it anyway. One of the steps CIA took was to put mines in the harbors of Nicaragua, endangering civilian boats.

Media outlets pretend there are complex, deeply ethical, highly intricate considerations governing when they grant anonymity to powerful people to say things. It's a sham. The tortured debates are theater. The actual standard is: we grant anonymity when powerful people demand it.

https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/1038881497648902145

Last week, The New Yorker - among the most flamboyant at feigning pained introspection over ethical anonymity quandaries - gave anonymity to "leading American progressives" (people over whom I have no power) not to reveal secret info about me but to hurl playground insults:

Jair Bolsonaro, the fascist Congressman leading Brazil's 2018 presidential polls (once Lula is excluded), was stabbed today in the abandon at a campaign event and taken to the hospital for treatment. No further news on his condition yet:

https://twitter.com/GeorgMarques/status/1037781955738259458

Preliminary reports suggest that the stabbing caused no serious injuries. I hope he's physically fine and also hope that this stupid act doesn't generate sympathy or support for a truly dangerous and hateful demagogue.

1/ In the wake of the @NewYorker profile, several people recommended I look at the ugly 2003 hit piece that magazine did on Chomsky (on the even of the Iraq War) & 2008 attack on Naomi Klein after "Shock Doctrine." It is striking how they use the same expel-from-mainstream script 2/ Here we have: Chomsky used to be so beloved by mainstream liberals during the Vietnam War, but now even his own liberal allies have turned against him because he has no ideas to offer, is against their wars, as has become too dogmatic & anti-American newyorker.com/magazine/2003/…

The newsletter from CNN's media reporters pretends to address the scandal surrounding its "blockbuster" Cohen debacle, but it entirely ignores - like the network itself - the key problem: their reporters outright lied when they said Lanny Davis (their source) refused comment. CNN's strategy here is as obvious as it is lame: pretend it's just a scandal among the "right." That's 1) not true & 2) an indictment of non-conservative journalists if it were true. It's a huge deal that CNN outright lied about a key issue on its biggest story & won't address it

The reason @jimsciutto and @carlbernstein won't admit what is obvious - that Lanny Davis was one of their sources - is because they said the exact opposite in their original story: "Contacted by CNN, one of Cohen's attorneys, Lanny Davis, declined to comment." This is shocking.

https://twitter.com/perlberg/status/1034532703813730304

CNN has painted itself into a tiny, twisted corner. Is there anyone who doubts that this sentence in its "blockbuster" story was flat out false? If it's not false, how they can refuse to explain it? Are we fine with major media deceit if it's in service of a particular agenda?

CNN, Credibly Accused of Lying to its Audience About a Key Claim in its Blockbuster Cohen Story, Refuses to Comment theintercept.com/2018/08/28/cnn… This latest CNN scandal is simple, not complex: Lanny Davis says he was an anonymous source for CNN's blockbuster July 26 story. But CNN told the public he refused to comment. Who is lying? Only CNN can say. Why won't they? theintercept.com/2018/08/28/cnn…

The attempt by some journalists to suppress criticisms of *highly polarizing* politicians upon death - and to demonize those who critique them - is not just misguided but blatantly selective: only western politicians they personally love enjoy this rule theguardian.com/commentisfree/… 2 questions about the journalist-imposed prohibition on speaking critically of McCain:

1) Does this apply to all politicians? Could we criticize Maduro despite his grieving family? Trump? Cheney?

2) What's the time limit for when the hagiography can be balanced with critiques?

I can't believe I'm saying this but I just saw a Trevor Noah segment that I liked and thought was both insightful and funny: on the obscene GoFundMe campaigns for FBI agents like @PeterStrzok and Andrew McCabe, & the monetary exploitation of the #Resistance generally - Part I: Part II:

The only reason this anti-Semitism framework has become "widely accepted" is the success of the global campaign to outlaw criticisms of Israel as bigotry: that's why French activists are arrested for wearing "Boycott Israel" t-shirts & pro-Palestinian students routinely censored:

https://twitter.com/BoothWilliam/status/1028632856652918785

Anyone who becomes too influential & effective in advocating for Palestinian rights & criticizing Israeli aggression is demonized as an anti-Semite. That's all that's driving this latest smear of Corbyn- that and the attempt to *outlaw* criticism of Israel theintercept.com/2016/02/16/gre…

In 2011, US Supreme Court ruled Fred Phelps could not be barred, or even sued, for protesting with vile signs at funerals, due to free speech. All Justices (except Alito) agreed. Phelps had been represented by ACLU. None was "defending Phelps" &, yes, it was a hill to die on. Legally, there's obviously a difference between state censorship v. private companies. But: 1) this shows what rhetorical tactics are & are not valid, and 2) it highlights the most pressing question from the Alex Jones case: are FB & Google monopolies? slate.com/news-and-polit…

Good @mtaibbi article on the dangers of Silicon Valley giants being able to unite to vaporize people from the internet, and the irrationality of cheering for it simply because you happen to hate their first target rollingstone.com/politics/polit… Leftists used to recognize without much difficulty that - ethics and the like aside - nothing strengthens fascists and neo-fascists more than censorship. It turns them into martyrs, draws more attention and appeal to them. Every fascist group I've ever known loved being censored

We're going to spend the morning pretending that the US media didn't play a vital role in spreading the lies that led to the worst political crime of this generation: the invasion & destruction of Iraq? Or the worst crime of the prior generation: Vietnam? Or multiple other wars? The media figure who did the most to convince Americans of the lie that Saddam was in an alliance with Osama bin Laden, @JeffreyGoldberg, won a National Magazine Award for those fabrications while at the @NewYorker, then fell upward to be editor-in-chief of @TheAtlantic.

The presidential candidate backed by Brazil's media establishment, Geraldo Alckmin, just chose as his Vice President a right-wing Senator, Ana Amélia, who just confused "Al Jazeera" with "Al Qaeda," accusing someone who gave an interview to AJ about Lula of talking to terrorists This VP candidate is a member of the party that has the most defendants in Brazil's corruption probe, Lava Jato. So the Brazilian media that has spent 3 years pretending to be so furious about corruption that they removed the President now backs 2 of Brazil's most corrupt parties

This seems like an odd accusatory theory for someone who regularly goes on the TV show of @JoyAnnReid, who deleted her entire website - years worth of political articles - then inserted special code to block the Wayback Machine from saving them. What is she hiding from Mueller???

https://twitter.com/MalcolmNance/status/1022898870282592256

Then again, maybe my tweets were deleted (or written in the first place) by Joy Reid's hacker (who, we must keep in mind for the good of public safety, is still at-large).

1/ Let's make a few points about this. 1st: for all the talk in US about how foreign outlets are "state media," the US Government has induced *journalists* to lead the calls for the imprisonment of *sources* - including ones who provided Pulitzer-winning exposés. That's warped:

https://twitter.com/politico/status/1018566911360208896

2/ The @Politico article launders an outright lie by hiding it under the sleazy "some say" formulation. Just compare the demonstrable lie in this article (Snowden refuses to criticize Russia's authoritarian) to the indisputable truth:

The Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, elected in 2016, is an evangelical pastor. He promised not to mix religion with politics. Last week, he got caught secretly promising pastors priority for cataract surgery & other procedures. Impeachment petition was just filed g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-jane… I'd like to show you something about the Brazilian Right, and how shockingly bigoted and pitifully adolescent they are. During today's debate over whether to impeach the right-wing Mayor of Rio, one of the evangelical City Councilman mocked @davidmirandario -- with a gay dance:

So excited to reunite today with one of this generation's greatest whistleblowers and my colleague in defense of press freedoms on @FreedomofPress, Edward @Snowden instagram.com/p/Bk47fOIgtpS/… 1/ Permit me to use the opportunity of the photo I took today with @Snowden in Moscow to show you how often what you read on the internet and from journalists, supposed experts and authorities are absolutely false and stated without the slightest idea what they're talking about:

Has there been another presidential election where the followers of the losing candidate - almost a full 2 years later - spent so much of their time & energy trying to blame everyone they can find for the loss: except the losing candidate and the losing campaign staff & party???? I've seen multiple viral tweets today alone excoriating the usual list of villains to blame for Hillary's loss. The leading culprits are non-voters. Here's a NYT article from 12/2016 on African-Americans in Milwaukee who didn't vote and don't regret it nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/…