Friday, February 8, 2013

As Brennan 'Escapes,' Criticism of Media 'Self-Censorship' on Drone Program Grows | The Nation

A good story. Just want to highlight a reminder that establishment papers like the NYT and Washington Post routinely collaborate with the government to suppress legitimate news.  So many times we see big news in these papers only when it's going to make a big splash elsewhere (see, e.g., the NYT sitting on the domestic spying scandal until after the 2004 election). 

"As I noted yesterday, it was not until this week that leading outlets, such as The New York Times and Washington Post, finally disclosed the existence of a US drone base in Saudi Arabia. They admitted they had known about it long ago but kept it under wraps. This was particularly odd, since this fact had been reported by some media abroad, although without the alleged credibility of their heavyweight  counterparts in the U.S.  

It even had gained mention in the US, as Adrian Chen at Gawker pointed out, leading to a damning charge:  '[I]t turns out that base had already been reported months earlier—including by Fox News. In the case of the Saudi drone base, the Times and the Postweren't protecting a state secret: They were helping the CIA bury an inconvenient story.'"



Typos courtesy of my iPhone

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