The Jeffrey Goldberg Media

[Jefferson23]

Sunday, Jun 27, 2010 08:28 ET

By Glenn Greenwald


In a stunning display of self-unawareness, The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg pointed to last week's forced "resignation" by Dave Weigel from The Washington Post as evidence that the Post, "in its general desperation for page views, now hires people who came up in journalism without much adult supervision, and without the proper amount of toilet-training." Goldberg then solemnly expressed hope that "this episode will lead to the reimposition of some level of standards." Numerous commentators immediately noted the supreme and obvious irony that Goldberg, of all people, would anoint himself condescending arbiter of journalistic standards, given that, as one of the leading media cheerleaders for the attack on Iraq, he compiled a record of humiliating falsehood-dissemination in the run-up to the war that rivaled Judy Miller's both in terms of recklessness and destructive impact.

Except unlike Miller, who was forced to leave the New York Times over what she did, and the NYT itself, which at least acknowledged some of the shoddy pro-war propaganda it churned out, Goldberg has never acknowledged his journalistic errors, expressed remorse for them, or paid any price at all. To the contrary, as is true for most Iraq war propagandists, he thrived despite as a result of his sorry record in service of the war. In 2007, David Bradley -- the owner of The Atlantic and (in his own words) formerly "a neocon guy" who was "dead certain about the rightness" of invading Iraq -- lavished Goldberg with money and gifts, including ponies for Goldberg's children, in order to lure him away from The New Yorker, where he had churned out most of his pre-war trash.

One of his most obscenely false and damaging articles -- this 2002 museum of deceitful, hideous journalism, "reporting" on Saddam's "possible ties to Al Qaeda" -- actually won an Oversea's Press Award for -- get this -- "best international reporting in a print medium dealing with human rights." Goldberg, whose devotion to Israel is so extreme that he served in the IDF as a prison guard over Palestinians and was described last year as "Netanyahu's faithful stenographer" by The New York Times' Roger Cohen, wrote an even more falsehood-filled 2002 New Yorker article, warning that Hezbollah was planning a master, Legion-of-Doom alliance with Saddam Hussein for a "larger war," and that "oth Israel and the United States believe that, at the outset of an American campaign against Saddam, Iraq will fire missiles at Israel -- perhaps with chemical or biological payloads -- in order to provoke an Israeli conventional, or even nuclear, response," though -- Goldberg sternly warned -- "Hezbollah, which is better situated than Iraq to do damage to Israel, might do Saddam’s work itself" and "its state sponsors, Iran and Syria, maintain extensive biological- and chemical-weapons programs." That fantastical, war-fueling screed -- aimed at scaring Americans into targeting the full panoply of Israel's enemies -- actually won a National Magazine Award in 2003. Given how completely discredited those articles are, those are awards which any person with an iota of shame would renounce and apologize for, but Goldberg continues to proudly tout them on his bio page at The Atlantic.

remainder: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/27/goldberg/index.html

[Jefferson23]

1. Topic related from Ken Silverstein: Washington Post: Now hiring

* This statement by Logan is beyond arrogant, the bashing of Hastings has begun.



“Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has,” says Lara Logan of CBS.

Andrew Sullivan asks, “When will the Washington Post hire her?”

You know the answer to that, Andrew, it’s a shame you won’t say it: Right after they hire your colleague Jeffrey Goldberg.


http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/06/hbc-90007318

[Jefferson23]

2. Related: John Pilger: There Is A War on Journalism

From Democracy Now. I will post the transcript when available..for now, view interview on video at link.

It’s been a week since Rolling Stone published its article on General Stanley McChrystal that eventually led to him being fired by President Obama. Since the article came out, Rolling Stone and the reporter who broke the story, Michael Hastings, have come under attack in the mainstream media for violating the so-called "ground rules" of journalism. But the investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger says Hastings was simply doing what all true journalists need to do.

* John Pilger, award-winning investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker. He began his career in journalism nearly half a century ago and has written close to a dozen books and made over fifty documentaries. He lives in London but is in the United States working on a forthcoming documentary about what he calls 'the war on the media.' It’s called "The War You Don’t See."


http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/29/john_pilger_there_is_a_war

[tom_paine]

3. Greenwald hits the nail right on the head again n/t