Sunday night, a CNN anchor asked an envoy, “What do you think of this new intelligence?” in the sense of information passed on by the spy services.
The reporter drew conclusions about a future Russian attack, without questioning it. Also in the news of the day in the New York Times, “US warns of major attack”, citing “a senior official” anonymous.
It’s the daily headlines of the war, even after NBC reported (above) that “US is using intelligence to fight an information war with Russia, even when the information is not solid”.
Citing several unnamed officials, NBC points out that “the Biden administration is deploying intelligence, even when it’s not steadfast, to unbalance Vladimir Putin.”
For example, Biden and others, in a “statement that made headlines around the world,” declared that “Russia may be preparing to use chemical weapons” in Ukraine. “But three officials told NBC that there is no evidence that Russia brought chemical weapons.”
Nor is there “evidence that Putin’s inner circle lied to him”, another of “a series of examples”.
INCONVENIENT FACT
The pro-Democrat The Atlantic ran an event about “disinformation” calling out Ben Smith, a former NYT media columnist. To the chagrin of the moderator, marketer David Axelrod, Smith said:
“There are things being labeled as disinformation because you don’t like who’s saying it. ‘These liars are talking about Hunter Biden’s laptop, so it’s disinformation.’ It had formal features of disinformation, but with the inconvenient fact that it was true.”
Worse, “people then started saying, ‘well, it could be misinformation and truth,’ which is disturbing.”
CHEERLEADERS
What echoed most of the Atlantic event was a question from a freshman at the University of Chicago to Brian Stelter, a CNN media correspondent:
“You say Fox News is a purveyor of disinformation, but CNN is on the same level. You’ve played the ‘Russian collusion’ farce and dismissed the laptop as Russian disinformation. With ‘mainstream’ journalists becoming little more than leaders of crowd, is it time to finally declare the canon of journalistic ethics dead?”
MUSK & TAIKONAUTAS
In a break from his Twitter crusade, SpaceX’s Elon Musk participated in a conversation with American taikonauts and students for social mediaat the Chinese embassy (above), saying:
“The foundations for future cooperation in space are incredible. I look forward to humanity working together to form a self-sustaining civilization on Mars and beyond, for the survival of life as we know it.”
