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L.A. Times National Security Reporter Cleared Stories With CIA Before Publishing
New submitter Prune (557140) writes with a link to a story at The Intercept which might influence the way you look at media coverage of the kind of government activity that deserves rigorous press scrutiny. According to the story, "Email exchanges between CIA public affairs officers and Ken Dilanian, now an Associated Press intelligence reporter who previously covered the CIA for the Times, show that Dilanian enjoyed a closely collaborative relationship with the agency, explicitly promising positive news coverage and sometimes sending the press office entire story drafts for review prior to publication. In at least one instance, the CIA’s reaction appears to have led to significant changes in the story that was eventually published in the Times." Another telling excerpt: On Friday April 27, 2012, he emailed the press office a draft story that he and a colleague, David Cloud, were preparing. The subject line was “this is where we are headed,” and he asked if “you guys want to push back on any of this.” It appears the agency did push back. On May 2, 2012, he emailed the CIA a new opening to the story with a subject line that asked, “does this look better?”
The piece ran on May 16, and while it bore similarities to the earlier versions, it had been significantly softened.
I'd like to know where they are.
Lets also remember, that the media industry are some of the biggest backers of the government, and pay for quite a few seats in congress on their own right. There are few truely independant news sources.
Tell us something we don't know.
I didn't expect my submission to be actually posted, so I didn't bother to write a summary and only sent in a naked link to the story. Thanks to the editor for doing my job. My intention was just to bring attention to this in the expectation that someone else would make a proper submission. And, in a way, it's what happened--this is really timothy's submission.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
No, it is the Los Angeles Times. There are many Times in the world, the summary should reflect that.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
...you haven't been paying attention. (Tried to put that all on the headline, but wouldn't fit.)
Simply put, as many here already know, if you compare foreign news coverage on domestic affairs to our own domestic coverage, the gaps become obvious and huge: The Guardian et al on Snowden vs the play-down or even silence from domestic sources is just one of MANY examples. Art Bell commented on this years ago (15-20 years ago when I heard it) that he was amazed the coverage of America from the BBC was better than any American news outlet, so this isn't new at all.
The entire point of the 1st Amendment's Press Freedom was to prevent this from happening; so much for that.
It all makes me wonder how much longer before the rest of the conspiracy theorists' predictions come true...
Really vastly right leaning? Did you read about the Pew Research study that showed MSNBC to be even mored biased, and opinionated than Fox News?
I assume you're talking about this study, with further commentary here? This story was then reported by some outlets as saying that MSNBC was most "opinionated" by far (e.g., here).
If so, your use of the word "opinionated" is very misleading, and the study did not even address issues of who is "more biased."
Read the study. It's basically about the difference between type of programming. The cable news networks used to present much more of the traditional anchor looking into the camera and saying, "And now, for our next story..." -- that's "factual reporting," according to Pew.
What this study found was that cable news networks have increasingly moved to "opinion" or commentary-driven shows, with pundits talking or debating, rather than just "reading the news." MSNBC has a LOT of these shows, and much more than CNN or Fox. But that doesn't mean they are more "opinionated" or "biased" -- it just means that they have more commentary-focused shows (probably because it's cheaper to get some idiots to talk ABOUT the news than it is to put actual reporters out into the field and do research).
In any case, this says nothing about bias. It's possible for an "opinion" show to be relatively balanced, for example if guests are invited from across the ideological spectrum and treated with respect. It is also very possible for "factual reporting" to be incredibly biased -- for example, imagine a network that reported every single negative story it could find about a Democratic politician and every positive story about a Republican, but never reported the positive Dem stories or the negative Rep stories. (Or the reverse...) All of the reporting could be "factual" here, but the selection of stories could lead to a much greater overarching bias.
(I haven't really watched either one of these networks in years, so I don't have a personal stake in these arguments. But aside from a different Pew study that found a somewhat greater bias in presentation of candidates in 2012 on MSNBC than Fox, I'm not familiar with any Pew studies that have actually found greater OVERALL "bias" on liberal vs. conservative issues on MSNBC.)