[Peace-discuss] Aaron Maté leaving Democracy Now (Russiagate & Syria), The Intercept (Russiagate), and The Real News (Russiagate)

[J.B. Nicholson]

Brussel, Morton K wrote:
> It is certainly evident that TRNN is no longer a critical place for most
> important news events. It’s been degraded.
Naked Capitalism has also withdrawn its endorsement of The Real News 
Network. From 
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/11/paul-jay-and-sharmini-peries-ousted-from-the-real-news-network-in-june-current-fundraiser-hides-that-fact-falling-viewership-and-liberal-turn-result.html

> Naked Capitalism is withdrawing its endorsement of The Real News Network
> as a trusted platform for interviewees, financial contributors and/or
> viewers. Dishonest efforts to create the impression that it is operating
> on a “business as usual” suggest that even more is amiss. It is our view
> that The Real News Network is no longer, either intrinsically or
> administratively, what it once was and aspired to be.
> 
> Moreover, if you are as deeply disturbed as we are by this turn of
> events, I strongly urge you to contact The Real News Network, give them
> a piece of your mind, and demand answers. The official contact form is
> here[1]. Please also circulate this post widely, including featuring it
> on Facebook and Twitter

[1] https://therealnews.com/about/contact-us

Brussel, Morton K wrote:
> The loss of Aaron Maté was regrettable: Was that due to Paul Jay?

The two did not agree on Russiagate. Jay struck me as being either somewhat 
supportive of Russiagate or he dismissed the idea that Russiagate was a 
story of importance.

Maté left Democracy Now over Syria & Russiagate differences, and he left 
The Intercept over Russiagate differences as well.

https://www.reddit.com/r/WayOfTheBern/comments/a81poe/aaron_mate_is_now_basically_saying_he_got_fired/ 
-- used to have some information about Aaron Maté's departure from The Real 
News

Aaron Maté posted https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/985980643971608576 
(which is now removed) but used to say:

> I was a producer at @democracynow for 10 years, until early 2016, and
> even before I worked there it was hugely formative for me. I disagree
> with where it's gone on two crucial issues, Russiagate and especially
> Syria.

In https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS0AlApiWLs Aaron Maté discussed that he 
couldn't get his Russiagate analysis published at The Intercept.

27m07s:
> Jimmy Dore: But that's what most of the people in journalism are about 
> -- they're about their career and they don't have a lot of courage. 
> Because that's what it takes to do this; it took a lot of guts to stick
> your chin out and do this and thank God you found someone like Katrina
> Vanden Heuvel over at The Nation to champion your writing otherwise you
> would have been spending [your time], you and me over on our jagoff 
> YouTube channel and nobody would have been getting awards.
> 
> Aaron Maté: It's true. It's true. It's true. Listen, I can tell you that
> I tried to write this stuff at The Intercept. It wasn't welcome there. I
> wrote one piece about Rachel Maddow -- you covered this on your show, I
> wrote that piece about Rachel Maddow and talking about how she covered
> Russia more than all other issues combined and going through and
> debunking a lot of her conspiracy theories; basically, arguing very 
> politely that she was a propagandist. That piece did very well but after
> that I was never welcome back at The Intercept again. And I tried, you
> know. And I thought that of all outlets, an outlet that calls itself
> fearless and adversarial would wanna put resources that challenging the
> claims of intelligence officials like John Brennan and challenging this
> conspiracy theory that was so widespread across the corporate media. But
> they weren't interested, and instead they went and hired Jim Risen.
> 
> [Jimmy Dore throws his head back and laughs.]
> 
> Dore: Jim Risen, who famously misused the word 'treason': it was pointed
> out to him on video that he was misusing it, he admitted he was misusing
> it, and then he said I don't give a fuck I'm gonna keep misusing it and
> because words aren't that important to journalists like Jim Risen when
> he's angry at someone like Donald Trump he reveals all the cracks in his
> personality. A guy like Trump revealed every crack in Jim Risen's
> personality. And it was shone a light on and that guy fell down harder
> on the job than fucking anybody and I wish he would quit doing what he's
> doing.
> 
> Maté: And to The Intercept's credit, they publish Glenn Greenwald who 
> pushed back on Russiagate from the beginning, before I did. It was 
> pretty much him and Bob Perry, the late legendary Bob Perry of 
> Consortium News, a legend. So Glenn and Bob Perry were among the first.
>  And so Glenn deserves a lot of credit. The Intercept cannot take credit
>  for what Glenn did because Glenn has autonomy, he does whatever he 
> wants, and they have nothing to do with what he did.
> 
> Dore: Who are the people you work for at The Intercept? Who are your 
> editors that said no?
> 
> Maté: I'm not going to get into individuals, but the point is: 
> institutionally there was a decision that -- this website that does such
> great work -- they do, I mean I love The Intercept, actually. I think
> it's a great website. But on this key issue, the one that was engulfing
> our politics, I think, they could maybe argue to the contrary if they
> want to, but I think they made a concerted editorial decision to not be
> aggressive and adversarial but to be careerist and to go along with the
> prevailing narrative and sort of burnish their adversarial bona fides
> through Glenn Greenwald over whom, again, they had no editorial control.
> And that's why, for example, they also publish this really over-hyped
> and overblown piece about based on the Reality Winner leak about how
> Russia was trying to hack into voting systems. I mean, if you look at
> the actual document they based their article on, the document itself
> doesn't even show what they said it did. It was like a vague attribution
> [to] Russian hacking but that was based on one analysts' judgment and
> that was contextual information, it wasn't even -- they distinguished
> between contextual information and confirmed information, which it was
> not but they ignored that. It also was basically a spearphishing attack
> that they were talking about which they kind of minimized; spearphishing
> is not a sophisticated hacking thing. As illustrated by the fact that
> whoever was carrying out this supposed massive attack on our election
> system was using a GMail address impersonating a voting company with a
> GMail address. And that's why when I had on James Risen when I was back
> at The Real News and we discussed this issue, he couldn't defend the
> substance of the article and he hung up on me.
> 
> [...]
> 
> Maté: And I'll say also my former workplace Democracy Now which is my 
> favorite news show has the most noble, has such a noble legacy and I 
> benefit a lot from it. But their top guest on Russiagate was Marcy 
> Wheeler who is one of the most vocal conspiracy theorists out there.
> 
> Dore: And revealed a source to the FBI, no?
> 
> Maté: That's right, she also turned in a source to the FBI who she said
> played a key role in what she called "Russia's attack on the election".
> Well, her source and her story are nowhere in the Mueller report. And 
> we haven't heard her explain what happened there. And yet she was 
> treated by many people as sort of a hero for turning in her source,
> when really she was actually violating one of the core tenets of
> journalism [which] is don't turn your source in to the government. And
> now we know, based on the fact that Mueller didn't go anywhere with it
> that it was baseless as was her entire conspiracy theory. So, I'm not
> saying that these two outlets -- Democracy Now and The Intercept -- were
> the worst, but the fact that even our most noble outlets could drink the
> Kool-Aid and go along with it really says something about how bad our
> media culture was.
> 
> Dore: And that's why it was emotionally wrenching for me to see places 
> like Democracy Now, The Intercept, The Young Turks where I worked push 
> Russiagate. It destroyed me, kind of, internally. It was way worse than
> the [coverage of the] Iraq war for me because at least during the Iraq 
> war most of the people on the Left were awake about it, right? But this
> was ubiquitous, it was horrible. I looked up who is the editor: Betsy 
> Reed is the Editor-in-Chief of The Intercept. Betsy Reed is the editor 
> based in New York City, Glenn Greenwald is the co-founding editor. Now 
> we know where he stood at. Then the other one is Jeremy Scahill, he's 
> the co-founding editor. So I'm gonna guess Betsy Reed sets the tone over
> there, I guess.

Side note: I disagree with Dore at 45m05s when he claims that:

> [J]ournalists are bigger fuck-ups and screw-ups than comedians. 
> Comedians have a higher standard than these people [journalists].
There are plenty of corporate-friendly comics and they get corporate media 
comedy specials (Sarah Silverman, for instance, who famously chastised 
Clinton/DNC rally attendees they were "being ridiculous" for not accepting 
Hillary Clinton's nomination), they get TV shows (Samantha Bee, John 
Oliver, Bill Maher, Joy Behar, Whoopie Goldberg are all neoliberals and 
neocons or push for same via identity politics), they get interviewed by 
mainstream-compatible interviewers (Margaret Cho saying G.W. Bush "is cute 
now" when interviewed by Larry King on his RT show which is easily RT's 
worst show when King hosts), and virtually everyone on Saturday Night Live. 
Most comics you are allowed to hear from on establishment media have very 
low standards and will echo whatever the establishment wants them to say. 
If they didn't echo establishment propaganda they wouldn't be allowed to 
appear on establishment media.