NSA Uses Corporate News to Spread Propaganda and Silence Dissent - Truthdig

NSA Uses Corporate News to Spread Propaganda and Silence Dissent - Truthdig

Investigative reporter Glenn Greenwald published an expose this week
detailing how the NSA has been feeding “propaganda” to various news
publications, which have happily played along. The propaganda isn’t
limited just to schlock networks like Fox News, but is promulgated also
by widely trusted newspapers, including The Washington Post and the Los
Angeles Times. 

The message NSA and other officials send to the public every time a
whistle-blower and journalist step forward to expose an inconvenient
truth is, “You’re all going to die because of these leakers and the
journalists who publish their disclosures!” Greenwald writes. This
encourages a fervor of fear that has led some legislators and
“journalists” to openly call for the assassination of WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange for disclosures made through his site. The “danger” of
these leaks is the general reason given for convicting Chelsea Manning,
who exposed war crimes committed under the name of Americans. (Manning’s
failure to expose what she witnessed would have been a violation of the
Nuremberg Laws.) Of course, this justification was never subjected to
scrutiny during Manning’s trial and never criticized in the corporate
media. Truthdig columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris
Hedges, who was at the Manning hearings, has said the U.S. government
was never able to find a single example in which lives were endangered
by Manning’s disclosures.

Greenwald shows that this isn’t just the hyperbole
of government officials, but also the position taken by the press, as is
demonstrated through repeated cover stories. He offers the example of
NSA chief Keith Alexander, who has claimed, without providing evidence,
that “Snowden leaks could lead to deaths.” Statements like these become a
cover, Greenwald argues, a sound bite that permits no critical thought
of what is said.