[Peace-discuss] Yet another reason to question Democracy Now

[J.B. Nicholson]

Consider this transcript of an excerpt from a discussion between Jimmy Dore 
and Max Blumenthal from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWJbdIqwJBU (Dore 
interviews Blumenthal about charges against Blumenthal, his arrest, raid, 
and that the US government has now dropped these apparently false charges):

[Starting around 18m16s]
> Jimmy Dore: So did Democracy Now cover your story?
> 
> Max Blumenthal: Well they did in that what they did is refer to me as
> "blogger Max Blumenthal"[1] when I've done more field work, I mean
> outside of Amy Goodman, I've done more field work than all of those
> producers combined. And they know that, they just used it as a way to
> attack me because they don't agree with me on some issues.
> 
> Jimmy Dore: Democracy Now? So they didn't give you honest coverage on
> this?
> 
> Max Blumenthal: Well I think one of the reasons why you have, what,
> 650,000 subscribers?
> 
> Jimmy Dore: Yes.
> 
> Max Blumenthal: Is you're filling a void that's been left by Democracy
> Now as it's moved toward the center and become more like MSNBC and Amy
> Goodman's sort of phoning it in more and more. So then they have these
> young producers who support regime change in places like Syria, so they
> despise me. Apparently.
> 
> Jimmy Dore: Yes, it's sad. It's sad to see even lefty radio, right? So
> non-corporate lefty radio is 90%, you know, CIA talking points now. It's
> sad to see.
> 
> Max Blumenthal: Yeah, if you turn on Pacifica, like, in the Bay area,
> turn on Pacifica you'll hear an hour about Russiagate or Ukrainegate and
> it's like who's setting the agenda there? It's the national security
> state, now Pacifica is echoing those talking points? Sort of, really
> tragic.
> 
> Jimmy Dore: Well, I've tried to tell people at Pacifica that if you're
> going to oppose Trump you have to do it from the Left and not the Right.
> And that's a big mistake [Pacifica is making] because once you oppose
> Trump from the Right, which is how they're opposing him, you're now
> going against the exact mission of Pacifica radio which was founded as
> an anti-war radio station. So that's kinda crazy that that's happening
> right now but that's Trump Derangement Syndrome, and I'm trying to push
> back against it as hard as I can in a constructive way.
[1] In 
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/10/30/headlines/blogger_max_blumenthal_says_he_was_arrested_on_false_charges 
you'll find the only story covering Max Blumenthal's arrest and raid. The 
coverage is so short I can quote the entire coverage here:

> Journalist Max Blumenthal Says He Was Arrested on False Charges
> > Max Blumenthal, editor of the website The Grayzone, reports he was
> arrested at his home in Washington, D.C., on October 25 by a team of
> police, in what he describes as an attack on the press. Blumenthal says
> he was arrested on a five-month-old warrant for assaulting a Venezuelan
> opposition member during protests at the Venezuelan Embassy in March.
> Blumenthal denies the charges. He says he was held in jail for two days,
> shackled for five hours and denied a phone call.

As I've written before, the coverage DN offered was filled with distancing 
language and DN (as far as I can tell) made no attempt to talk to 
Blumenthal about this story. Blumenthal was ready and willing to talk to 
other media outlets (RT, for instance, carried reports on his arrest in a 
few segments). Obvious questions to ask that could have provided fruitful 
analysis went unasked including how did it take 5 months to carry out this 
arrest and not discover that the woman making the charge had an axe to 
grind against Blumenthal (she was part of the Venezuelan opposition 
supporting the self-proclaimed president Juan Guaidó)? When did the 
investigators learn that she was making up her claims which ostensibly 
backed this warrant? How does DN not provide analysis on any of this, 
particularly after knowing that Blumenthal is a journalist who was denied 
his right to a phone call (the kind of thing DN used to bring to their 
audience's attention)?

You might notice that the title on this story has changed to read 
"Journalist Max Blumenthal" (which is what it reads now if you visit the DN 
URL above). What Blumenthal referred to is the older title that still shows 
up in cached copies of DN's webpages. The older title read "Blogger Max 
Blumenthal Says He Was Arrested on False Charges" (see attached for a 
screenshot of some search results still showing the old title).

Someone at DN apparently changed the title of the story from "Blogger" to 
"Journalist" so now that story doesn't show up the same way if you visit 
the story directly but cached copies of pages that pointed to that story 
show up with the old title. Hence Blumenthal's read on this is correct and 
truthful, but DN has altered their archive.

-J
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