Politico Uses Anonymous Sources to Attack Hersh…for Using Anonymous Sources

06/03/2011 by Steve Rendall

Seymour Hersh reports in the New Yorker (6/6/11–subscription required) that there is s virtually no evidence Iran has a nuclear weapons program, despite huge  efforts on the part of the U.S. to prove otherwise. Though Hersh’s findings do not contradict the past two National Intelligence Estimates, they do fly in the face of long-held official and corporate media views.

Corporate media routinely treat the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program as a matter of fact. New York Times reporter Michael Gordon has done it at least twice (2/24/03, 10/19/04), in one case suggesting that a U.S.-friendly regime in Iraq might pressure “Iran to halt its nuclear weapons program.” With little variation in wording Gordon’s Times colleagues Patrick Tyler  (6/27/05) and Scott Shane (3/26/05) have done the same.  So has the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus and Karen DeYoung (9/28/09), and  Post editors and editorials routinely treat Iran’s nuke program as a proven fact (e.g., 9/11/10, 6/17/09).

So it’s not a big surprise that Hersh is coming under fire in a corporate media which has largely internalized successive White House claims on Iran.

In a Politico report flagged by Glenn Greenwald , White House sources are quoted disparaging Hersh’s New Yorker piece in a report the concludes by reminding readers that Hersh has been criticized in the past for relying too much on anonymous sources. Just a little problem with that angle though, as Greenwald points out:

That’s the criticism that ends an article that relies exclusively on anonymous government sources, appearing in a D.C. gossip rag notorious for granting anonymity to any powerful figure who requests it for any or no reason.  The difference, of course, is that the Pulitzer Prize-winning, five-time-Polk-Award-recipient investigative journalist who uncovered the My Lai massacre and the Abu Ghraib scandal grants anonymity to those who are challenging the official claims of those in power (that’s called “journalism”), while Politico uses it (as it did here) to serve those in power and shield them from all accountability as they spew their propaganda (which is called being a “lowly, rank Royal Court propagandist”).

Tags: Glenn Greenwald, Politico, Seymour Hersh

Tags: Glenn Greenwald, Politico, Seymour Hersh
Posted in Internet, Iran | Permalink | Trackback | Share

This entry was posted on Friday, June 3rd, 2011 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Internet,Iran.