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.

Comments

A little scary

[Anonymous Coward]

A little scary when press cozies up to a law-enforcement branch of government, isn't it?

Re:A little scary

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as people do want to believe slogans like "Fox News - Fair and Balanced", it won't get any better.

The story is about a reporter at the LA Times, it is not a story about "Fox News." As long as some people (like you) keep obsessing over Fox News instead of the sorry state of the media in general things are likely to get worse.

I'll repeat: this story is about an LA Times reporter, not about Fox News. If the mainstream media would simply report the facts fairly instead of spin them to try to "change the world" like they were taught in journalism school there would be less market need for Fox News.

Re:A little scary

[jcr]

Gosh, what a clever deflection. Yes, we should all praise the TelePrompter In Chief because the asshole that the other brand of the Ruling Party nominated was just as bad.

-jcr

Re:A little scary

[Mashiki]

Well considering the still-on-going corruption at the IRS where they targeted groups that "didn't fit the political narrative." I'd hazard that to be a yes, after all there's something like 25-30 people now who all worked on it, around it, and have "had their emails mysteriously disappear." The most recent case was another group of 5 employees emails who just suddenly had theirs disappear as well. So, at this point I wouldn't even be surprised.

People already know about the corruption at the BLS, people have seen it with the EPA. Do you really think there aren't people who'd be willing to engage in it from the CIA. Hell I'm not even american, but canadian and I can see this stuff from across the border clear as day.

Re:A little scary

[whoever57]

The IRS scandal is pretty much all hogwash. But it was handled badly.

Then what was in the "lost" emails? Something doesn't smell right.

Re:A little scary

[phantomfive]

So, any time a government official "accidentally lost the hard drive with the data," you know there's something bad going on.

In this case, very illegal stuff happened. It wasn't just 'extra scrutiny' and delays, although that happened too. The IRS illegally released donor lists. If you want to understand why that is a problem, it helps to remember that the supreme court affirmed that such donor lists should not be released in the 50s when southern states tried to get the donor lists for the NAACP. Think of what problems that could have caused.

In any case, your own article shows that there was inappropriate political targeting going on at the IRS. the only question remaining is whether the targeting was biased to one side or the other. From the emails it is clear that some of the agents (Lois Lerner) strongly opposed Republicans. Do you think that bias affected her work? Maybe the lost emails would tell us.

Re:A little scary

[NeutronCowboy]

The point here is that you don't seems to bat an eye that the most popular news network in the US is essentially a mouthpiece of the Republican Party. But if one LA Times reporter checks his stories with a CIA PR flack, then it's a sign of.... dunno, some sort of impending doom.

Show me that Obama (or any President) ordered this kind of behavior from the press and the CIA, and we can talk. In the meantime, this is little more than the usual "Bad Stuff is Happening Under Obama! He Is Therefore The Evil!"

Re:A little scary

[NeutronCowboy]

No, systematic harrassment of political lobbying groups posing as charitable 501 c(3) organizations. They should have registered as c(4)s, and no one would have given a shit.

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Follow the money...

[dtjohnson]

Many will likely go 'cluck, cluck...they are the independent press and shouldn't do that' and, of course, they are right. But the 'independent press' is rapidly disappearing because there is no longer any money to be made in being part of the 'independent press.' Newspapers (such as the LA Times) have a plummeting circulation of mostly older subscribers and a shrinking advertising base. Most of them are losing money hand over fist or, at best, barely breaking even. Television news (network and local) is seeing its viewer base plummeting and consequently, its advertising revenues are declining rapidly, leaving it fortunate to still be on the air. Internet media gets lots of hits but not much revenue. The bottom line is that there are no longer any major 'independent' news organizations that can afford to antagonize powerful organizations, be they government or corporate or whatever. The LA Times reporter was likely grateful for any scraps of information that his CIA friends would give him because he would never have any way of getting that information otherwise. He is probably lucky if the LA Times will pay him car mileage to drive over to meet with a source. You get what you pay for. Follow the money. What do you pay for news?

Re:Follow the money...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It's not just money(though that doesn't hurt).

Journalists practically worship 'access'. This behavior is adaptive, since it's hard to get stories written without information; but it comes with the nontrivial downside that the people the stories are about are in the best position to provide information. The competent ones have learned to take advantage of this by cultivating a relationship with the press: any really juicy story has a comparatively safe penumbra of tidbits, unattributed statements, unofficially sanctioned leaks, and so on. If a journalist is a nice, cooperative, team player, (like the quisling in TFA), they'll be well placed for a steady supply of such things.

By contrast, the uncooperative journalist might, on occasion, get a really nice scoop on where the bodies are buried(sometimes literally); but whenever that isn't available he'll be regurgitating press releases and stale news.

Re:how nice

[jcr]

So how is this different, functionally, from state owned media like the soviet union's pravda?

Pravda doesn't bother pretending to be an objective outlet for factual information.

-jcr

I was a refugee back then

[Taco Cowboy]

Back when I arrived in America I had no passport. I was a refugee from a Communist Country, yearning for freedom, liberty and democracy, a place where I can think freely, without being told how to think or what to think

When I reached America, to me, at least, it was paradise - I felt that "freedom" that I never got to enjoy when I was in China

Of course I did not know anything about "Operation Mocking Bird", or anything similar - but even if I did know, at that time, America was still "free-ier" than the China that I ran away from

Today, however, if I were to be truthful to myself, I could no longer say the same thing

Sure, China is still a repressive country, but the America that I loved so much has slowly creeping towards the authoritarian style of government

And the worse part is, many of my fellow Americans are supporting that change --- for they want the government to make the "hate things"(like "hate speech") illegal, and they want the government to take away all the firearms (for safety), and they want to government to take away their liberty so that the government could "protect them"

That is the America of today, very different from the America when I first arrive in, some decades ago

Nowadays the 1st Amendment is an illusion

[Taco Cowboy]

With the climate nowadays 1st Amendment does not offer any real protection of free speech anymore

You can be accused of "hate speech", you can be prosecuted under whatever trumped up charge they can cook up, and they can silence you with their "national security" privileges - and the unknown number of secretive laws there are (so secret that we may not know the extent of those laws) can be used at any given time to shut anybody and everybody up, by any mean