Did LA Times get 'punked'? Liberals push back against LA Times story

Did LA Times get 'punked'? Liberals push back against LA Times story

rawstory.com

Many liberal online journalists and bloggers are pushing back against the LA Times story, saying that the paper "got rolled" and/or "punked."

At his blog at The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan writes about the "rendition canard."

"For some reason, many people on the right and a few within the CIA feel the need to minimize the difference between Obama and Bush on the terror war," Sullivan writes. "And so we are greeted with whoops and hollers because the Obama administration will return to the rendition policies of the GWH Bush and Clinton administrations."

However, Sullivan, Washington Monthly's Hilzoy, Harper's Scott Horton, and Cernig at Newshoggers all beg to differ with the LA Times take on Obama's 'endorsement' of rendition.

"It is not the practice of 'extraordinary rendition' that the Bush-Cheney administration pioneered to supplement its own torture program," Sullivan writes. "It is the practice of capturing terror suspects and rendering them to non-torturing foreign governments for detention, interrogation or prosecution."

Sullivan charges, "The LA Times got rolled by the usual suspects, who seem not to understand how the program changed under Bush-Cheney."

At Washington Monthly, Hilzoy argues that "in addition to announcing that the administration will obey the Convention Against Torture, the administration will also study not whether to send detainees off to be tortured, but how to ensure that our policies are not intended to result in their torture, and will not result in their torture. This seems to me like a very clear renunciation of the policy of sending people to third countries to be tortured."

"The Los Angeles Times just got punked," Scott Horton writes.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Alright. I don't know who to believe at this point...

So we all were just fed this lie about Obama wanting to continue to rendition?

Did LA times just lie to us?

I don't think this would be the first time that we've been lied to by the news. Look, this article about Obama wanting to continue the policy of rendition could have just been misinformation.

We just believed it, just because, we thought that it was about a conspiracy theory.

We assumed that it was just an excuse to send people to foreign countries because Gitmo closed.

We can do better than that. I am ashamed of us. We've lived under paranoia under Bush for too long and then they lie about something the President has been doing and we believe it. What's to stop us from believing the next big lie from the press?

I'm disappointed. I thought that we could have done better at spotting this obvious misinformation.

rawstory.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 2-2-2009 by Frankidealist35]

Originally posted by Frankidealist35
I don't think this would be the first time that we've been lied to by the news.

What's to stop us from believing the next big lie from the press?

I'm disappointed. I thought that we could have done better at spotting this obvious misinformation.

I tend to have a basic rule of thumb when it comes to media and news outlets, don't believe a word they have to say if the event in question can affect it's staff.

... and don't immediately trust what western news outlets have to say anyways.


The media outlets in the states are pretty politically biased.
Hence, don't believe a word they have to say about politics.

There are plenty of media outlets in countries around the globe who are neutral to American politics. Check them instead.

I know it sounds wacky, checking other neutral nations news stations for your own local news, but it's one heck of a BS filter.

[edit on 2-2-2009 by johnsky]

It seems that regardless of the Administration, the media will continue to do what it seems to do best...encourage partisanship.

Obfuscate reality and encourage discussion born of confusion and the inability to substantiate the facts...indeed, the writing of articles that contain more adjectives and opinion than fact is a good way to do this. The unassuming will of course interpret as they want and repeat the material as fact.

The press is dead.

The press is among the institutions which were either corrupted by, or surrendered to, corporate commercial interests. It no longer exists to disseminate facts and relay information to the community. It is now a vehicle for advertising, and popular control of the population.

The press used to house editorial leadership who were staunch supporters of journalistic integrity. Then, about at the turn of the 20th Century, those loyal to corporations over their country, began the campaign of confidence; slowly making journalism an anachronism.

In case you're interested, here's my list of American institutions destroyed or terminally infected by commercial/corporate interests:

The Federal Government of the United States of America
Medical Arts
Primary, Secondary, and Higher Education
Organized Religion
The Legal Profession
The Press
Engineering and Material Sciences
Agriculture
Emergency Management
National Security
Military Support
Eco-Industries

Essentially corporate loyalty - to the exclusion of the community - was and still is the culprit.


[edit on 2-2-2009 by Maxmars]

reply to post by Frankidealist35

I'm a little confused. The "Rawstory" article you link to implies that the practice of rendition has been "preserved," two days afer Obama took office. (Leo Strauss, by the way, posted the same article yesterday). It leaves me with the impression that there will be little or no change from the Bush-Cheney policy.

Then your snippet and your OP suggest that the new administration's definition of "rendition" is different from past ones and that the press got punked, presumably by Rawstory and similar articles.
Is your point that Rawstory is, or is not, accurate in its reporting?

Given the Obama administration's termination of the practice of torture and the ultimate closing of Gitmo, it seems ( and seemed yesterday) unlikely that it would preserve "extraordinary rendition," at least not as it was used by Bush-Cheney. That appears to be the case.

Evidently the conservative press was just a little too eager to find some parallel between Obama and Bush. Political reporters and bloggers on both sides of the aisle are prone to jump the gun if the news supports their own biases.