Blanking Bradley Manning: NYT and AP Launch Operation Amnesia

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Blanking-Bradley-Manning--by-Chris-Floyd-121201-505.html




Blanking Bradley Manning: NYT and AP Launch Operation Amnesia
By Chris Floyd
OpEdNews Op Eds 12/1/2012 at 17:50:44

On Thursday, Bradley Manning, one of the foremost prisoners of conscience in the world today, testified in open court -- the first time his voice has been heard since he was arrested, confined and subjected to psychological torture by the U.S. government.

An event of some newsworthiness, you might think. Manning has admitted leaking documents that detailed American war crimes in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. He has been held incommunicado for more than 900 days by the Obama administration. Reports of his treatment at the hands of his captors have sparked outrage, protests and concern around the world. He was now going to speak openly in a pre-trial hearing on a motion to dismiss his case because of that treatment. Surely such a moment of high courtroom drama would draw heavy media coverage, if only for its sensationalistic aspects.

But if you relied on the nation's pre-eminent journal of news reportage, the New York Times, you could have easily missed notice of the event altogether, much less learned any details of what transpired in the courtroom. The Times sent no reporter to the hearing, but contented itself with a brief bit of wire copy from AP, tucked away on Page 3, to note the occasion.

That story -- itself considered of such little importance by AP that it didn't even by-line the piece (perhaps the agency didn't send a reporter either, but simply picked up snippets from other sources) -- reduced the entire motion, and the long, intricate, systematic government attack on Manning's psyche, to a matter of petty petulance on Manning's part, a whiner's attempt to weasel out of what's coming to him. This is AP's sole summary of the motion and its context:



unhappycamper comment: Too bad we detain/prosecute whistle-blowers and let war criminals go free.

[Ligyron]

1. Journalism used to champion the little guy

"reporters" used to investigate such things and they had a conscience. Now they tend to champion the Big Guys in their corporate castles. Remember Daniel Ellsberg?

[WooWooWoo]

2. is there any realistic alternative to prosecuting him?

he broke the law - in a severe way. whether it was to do some sort of greater good is irrelevant. He had to have known the consequences before he did it. That whole process of getting a security clearance kind of makes that clear.

[Recursion]

3. Unfortunately DoD's treatment of him has turned him into a martyr and muddied the case

I'm not a Manning fan (indiscriminately dumping Gigabytes of State Department cables and military emails that he had never even read is not the same as whistleblowing), but his treatment since his arrest has been nothing short of brain-dead, and has turned him into a cause celebre (there are ads supporting him in Metro stations here in DC). From what it looks like, nobody in DoD can decide what to do with him, and nobody wants to take responsibility for deciding.