Our Press Sucks

I've become convinced that the newspapers of record in the U.S. are propaganda outlets for elements of the government and intelligence slash military services.  The lack of coverage on a number of recent new stories exemplifies this:

• U.S. Propaganda Regarding Venezuela Proven False
• Lyme Disease Spread from  U.S. Biological Weapons Facility on Plum Island, NY
• Exposé in "The Hill" challenges Mueller, media
• Ten Points I Just Can’t Believe About the Official Skripal Narrative
• Steele and Skripal: A Unified Theory
• Big Dots — Do They Connect? Steele and Skripal Revisited
• Why has Britain given such a warm welcome to this shadowy professor?
• The Maltese Phantom of Russiagate

The mainstream media occasionally hints that they know better.  The NY Times eventually confirmed the alternative press finding regarding the Venezuelan aid truck fire (first bullet point above), although it was mostly ignored subsequently.  One article above is from a mainstream newspaper, The Guardian.  With regard to one of supposedly key sections of the Mueller report, Taibbi points out that the NY Times published an in-depth analysis consistent with the exposé in The Hill.  However, these are the exceptions.

I have to agree with Taibbi:  

MSNBC burned up countless hours obsessing over the Manafort-Kilimnik relationship. You can find the tale discussed ad nauseum here, here, here, here, and in many other places, with Kilimnik routinely described on air as a “Russian asset” with “ties to Russian intelligence,” who even bragged that he learned his English from Russian spies.

CNN has likewise done a gazillion reports on the guy: see here, here, here, here, and here. Some reports said Manafort’s conduct “hints” at collusion, while Chris Cilizza said his meetings with a “Russian-linked operative” were a “very big deal.” Bloviator-in-chief Jake Tapper wondered if this story was “Game, Set, Match” for the collusion case. Anytime a Democrat spoke about how “stunning” and “damning” was the news that Manafort gave Kilimnik poll numbers, reporters repeated those assertions in a snap.

I could go up and down the line with the Times,the Washington Post, and other print outlets. Every major news organization that covered Russiagate has covered the hell out of this part of the story. But the instant there’s a suggestion there’s another angle: crickets. 

Russiagate is fast becoming a post-journalistic news phenomenon. We live in an information landscape so bifurcated, media companies don’t cover news, because they can stick with narratives. Kilimnik being a regular State Department informant crosses the MSNBC-approved line that he’s a Russian cutout who tried to leverage Donald Trump’s campaign manager. So it literally has no news value to many companies, even if it’s clearly a newsworthy item according to traditional measure.

Incidentally, Solomon’s report being true wouldn’t necessarily exonerate either Kilimnik or Manafort. It may just mean a complication of the picture, along with uncomfortable questions for Robert Muller and embassy officials who dealt with Kilimnik. That’s what’s so maddening. We’ve gotten to the point where news editors and producers are more like film continuity editors — worried about maintaining literary consistency in coverage — than addressing newsworthy developments that might move us into gray areas.

Our press sucks. There are third-world dictatorships where newspapers try harder than they do here. We used to at least pretend to cover the bases. Now, we’re a joke.