CNN: "Don't be nosy about Fast and Furious"

Father Nose Best.



Don't be nosy about Fast and Furious

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/26/opinion/granderson-fast-furious/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn

By LZ Granderson, CNN Contributor
June 26, 2012 -- Updated 2114 GMT (0514 HKT)

Editor's note: LZ Granderson, who writes a weekly column for CNN.com, was named journalist of the year by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and is a 2011 Online Journalism Award finalist for commentary. He is a senior writer and columnist for ESPN the Magazine and ESPN.com. Follow him on Twitter: @locs_n_laughs

(CNN) -- We are a nosy country.

Though to be fair, it's not entirely our fault. Between the 24/7 news cycle, social media and reality TV, we have been spoon fed other people's private business for so long we now assume it's a given to know everything. And if there are people who choose not to disclose, they must be hiding something. Being told that something's "none of your business" is slowly being characterized as rude, and if such a statement is coming from the government, it seems incriminating.

Times have changed. Yet, not everything is our business. And in the political arena, there are things that should be and need to be kept quiet.

Issa, White House clash over Fast and Furious executive privilege

I know that's hard to digest in a society where pregnancies and marriages of D-list celebrities make the cover of People magazine, but there comes a point where the public's right to know needs to take a back seat to matters like national security and diplomacy.

Heads should roll because of the Fast and Furious debacle. We don't need every detail of that operation to be made public in order for that to happen.

If it were an isolated sting, maybe. But it is at least the third incarnation of a gun-running scheme stretching across two administrations, which means we could be pressing to open Pandora's Box. We do not want to open Pandora's Box, not about this and certainly not about a bunch of other potentially scandalous things the federal government has been involved with.

Fast and Furious? Please.

We still don't have access to all of the messy facts surrounding the Iran-Contra scandal that erupted during the Reagan administration. All we know is that weapons were sold to Iran in exchange for hostages and that the proceeds from those sales were used to illegally fund rebels in Nicaragua who were supposedly fighting Communism.

Lt. Col. Oliver North took one for the team back then, and there's a good chance Attorney General Eric Holder will have to take one for the team in the Fast and Furious controversy. And by team, I'm not referring to Republicans or Democrats, but rather Americans.

You see, freedom isn't entirely free.

It also isn't squeaky clean.

And sometimes the federal government deems it necessary to get its hands a little dirty in the hopes of achieving something we generally accept as good for the country.

By the numbers: Fast and Furious

Such as the death of Osama bin Laden. We danced, we cried, but we did not make a big deal about a secret operation that was executed in Pakistan without the permission of the Pakistani government. The Obama administration did what it thought was in the best interest of America.

Much in the same way, Project Wide Receiver and Project Road Runner -- the earlier versions of Fast and Furious under President Bush -- were executed with the hope that they will do more good than harm. Hardly anyone in the public knows the finer points of these programs.

Were they legal?

Hell no.

Were they effective?

Who knows?

Were they done as a way to keep America safe?

Yes.

North was a fall guy. Not for President Reagan but for all of us. Just as Holder has become a villain to many who are pointing fingers at him.

But to go much beyond the criticism of these men runs the risk of learning that this great nation of ours is heavily involved in doing some things that are not so great.

Think about it: We have allowed weapons to cross the Mexican border and into the hands of criminals for years. Many of these weapons were involved in killing innocent Mexicans. There's nothing very admirable about that. But the truth is, it's very American.

By allowing guns to infiltrate Mexico's drug cartel, we thought we could trace them up the ladder to the leaders. Take off the head and the body dies. As for the innocent people who lost their lives? Collateral damage. That's the uncomfortable backstory to this scandal. And there are likely other operations like it in our nation's history that we don't even have a clue about.

And maybe it's better for us not to be so nosy, not to know everything because, to paraphrase the famous line from the movie "A Few Good Men," many of us won't be able to handle the truth.


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CNN Sinks To 21-Year Primetime Ratings Low In Second Quarter

http://www.deadline.com/2012/06/cnn-sinks-to-21-year-primetime-ratings-low-in-second-quarter/

By DOMINIC PATTEN | Tuesday June 26, 2012 @ 10:50am PDT
Tags: CNN, Fox News Channel, Ratings, The Situation Room

Coming off its least-watched month in primetime in 20 years in May, CNN has taken another big ratings blow: The cable news network has registered to its lowest-rated quarter in primetime since 1991. For this year’s second quarter, CNN hit a low among total viewers and the key adults 25-54 demographic, with all primetime programs posting steep declines. The network averaged 446,000 total viewers and 129,000 in the 25-54 demo in primetime. Compared to last year’s second quarter, that’s down 35% and 41%, respectively. Rival Fox New Channel, meanwhile, with 1.79 million primetime total viewers on average, was down 1% from its 2011 second-quarter numbers. FNC lost 14% in the 25-54, bringing in 355,000 viewers. MSNBC was down 13% in total primetime viewers, with 689,000 on average, and down 17% in the 25-54 with 217,000. The quarter ran March 26-June 22.

Individually, CNN shows hemorrhaged viewers heavily compared with last year. Wolf Blitzer’s The Situation Room, which airs from 4-6 PM ET, was down 42% in 25-54 and 26% in total viewers. His show is expanding to three hours beginning Friday, taking over CNN’s recently cancelled John King U.S.A. At 7 PM, Erin Burnett OutFront, which debuted in October replacing a then-moving John King U.S.A., was down 45% in 25-54 from last year’s second quarter and down 33% in total viewers. Piers Morgan Tonight, which replaced Larry King Live in January 2011, was down 33% in the 25-54 and 29% in total viewers. Pulling double duty, Anderson Cooper took a double hit: Anderson Cooper 360 at 8 PM was down 23% in the 25-54 and 19% in total viewers, and its 10 PM airing was down 48% in the demo and 44% in viewers. The top-rated cable news shows for the second quarter were all FNC shows, with The O’Reilly Factor and Hannity sitting at No. 1 and No. 2.

 

How the US media is dumping on WikiLeaks - and censoring the cable disclosures

In a hard-hitting piece in defence of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange - now officially named as a fugitive - Alexander Cockburn contends that American newspapers have colluded with the US government to conceal some of the leaked embassy cables.

He cites research by Gareth Porter, who identified a cable released by WikiLeaks that provides a detailed account of how Russian specialists countered official US claims that Iran had missiles capable of reaching Europe, or that Iran intended to develop such a capability. Porter wrote:

"Readers of the two leading US newspapers never learned those key facts about the document. The New York Times and the Washington Post reported only that the United States believed Iran had acquired such missiles... from North Korea.

Neither newspaper reported the detailed Russian refutation of the US view on the issue or the lack of hard evidence...

The Times, which had obtained the diplomatic cables not from WikiLeaks but from The Guardian... did not publish the text of the cable.

The Times story said the newspaper had made the decision not to publish 'at the request of the Obama administration'. That meant that its readers could not compare the highly distorted account of the document in the Times story against the original document without searching the WikiLeaks website."

Aside from this self-censorship, Cockburn also remarks on the distaste among the "official" US press for WikiLeaks after its previous releases of documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He writes:

"The New York Times managed the ungainly feat of publishing some of the leaks while simultaneously affecting to hold its nose, and while publishing a mean-spirited hatchet job on Assange by its reporter John F Burns, a man with a well burnished record in touting the various agendas of the US government."

As for TV coverage, he cites Glenn Greenwald, writing on the Salon.com:

"On CNN, Wolf Blitzer was beside himself with rage over the fact that the US government had failed to keep all these things secret from him...

Then - like the Good Journalist he is - Blitzer demanded assurances that the government has taken the necessary steps to prevent him, the media generally and the citizenry from finding out any more secrets...

The central concern of Blitzer - one of our nation's most honoured 'journalists' - is making sure that nobody learns what the US government is up to."

Some of that Blitzer rant (no longer available on the CNN site) deserves quoting. Here's a sample:

"Are they doing anything at all to make sure if some 23-year-old guy, allegedly, starts downloading hundreds of thousands of cables, hundreds of thousands of copies of sensitive information, that no one pays attention to that, no one in the security system of the United States government bothers to see someone is downloading all these millions - literally millions of documents?...

It's amazing to me that the US government security system is so lax that someone could allegedly do this kind of damage just by simply pretending to be listening to a Lady Gaga CD and at the same time downloading all these kinds of documents...

Do we know yet if they've [done] that fix? In other words, somebody right now who has top secret or secret security clearance can no longer download information onto a CD or a thumb drive? Has that been fixed already?"

Journalists who oppose WikiLeaks are opposed to journalism. Here's Jack Shafer offering some sense:

"Information conduits like Julian Assange shock us out of that complacency. Oh, sure, he's a pompous egomaniac sporting a series of bad haircuts and grandiose tendencies.

And he often acts without completely thinking through every repercussion of his actions.

But if you want to dismiss him just because he's a seething jerk, there are about 2,000 journalists I'd like you to meet."

Quite so. Too many "seething jerks" who also deny the point of their own trade - disclosure!

Sources: The First Post/CounterPunch/Salon.com/
worldnewsmania/Slate.com

 

No difference to who/what? Idiot Obama lovers? Well duh.