Glenn Greenwald: Time Magazine's FISA Fiasco shows how Beltway reporters mislead the country

[babylonsister]

Time Magazine's FISA Fiasco shows how Beltway reporters mislead the country


On Wednesday, I documented that Joe Klein's column in this week's Time Magazine contained multiple false statements about the new FISA bill -- The RESTORE Act -- passed by House Democrats last week. The most obvious and harmful inaccuracy was his claim that that bill "would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court" and that it therefore "would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans." Based on those outright falsehoods, Klein called the House Democrats' bill "well beyond stupid."

That day, Klein responded on his blog to what I wrote without acknowledging that he was doing so and without even telling his readers what the criticisms were. He insisted that everything he wrote was accurate ("as I reported, obliquely gives foreign terrorists the same procedures as American citizens, if not the same rights"). He also said that the RESTORE Act was just "a partisan waste of time, fodder for lawyers and civil liberties extremists."

Yesterday -- Saturday night on Thanksgiving weekend -- Klein returned to the Time blog to write an extremely conditional, weaselly, self-justifying and partial "correction" to what he wrote in the print magazine. There's no indication whether any correction will appear in the print magazine, but the online version of Klein's article contains no such correction and still contains all of his grave misstatements.

I don't want the focus here to be on Klein himself. It's beyond well-established what he is and what a slothful, easily manipulated and dishonest "reporter" he is. As deceitful as the correction itself is (for the reasons set forth below), at least he returned to the issue and finally admitted wrongdoing (Klein: "Clearly, I didn't do sufficient vetting of the facts"), which is more than most of this type of pundit typically does.

* * * * *

What I want to do is examine Klein's conduct here to illustrate how so many Beltway reporters (though not all) function. This is not a matter of some obscure error involving details. Because of what Klein did, Time Magazine told its 4 million readers that the bill passed by the House Democrats "would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans" and thus shows how Democrats still can't be trusted on national security. The whole column was built on complete, transparent falsehoods about the key provisions of that bill.

more...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/?last_story=/opinion/greenwald/2007/11/25/klein_fisa/

[Benhurst]

1. ...

Recommended :kick: #1

[hlthe2b]

2. Thank God for Greenwald, but I fear he is not sufficiently

high profile at Salon to adequately and effectively counter Klein with Time Magazine pushing his ilck. Why does Klein even have a job... These corporate media drones need to go.

[Old and In the Way]

3. I read the reader comments on Klein's blog.

I'd be really embarrassed if I were Klein's Times editors. This guy is obviously clueless about FISA....his commenter's schooled him on the facts.

[Leopolds Ghost]

4. Sounds like Greenwald is defending the FISA Bill and advocating amnesty for telecoms

See how the Rovian strategy of "set up a strawman -- preferably a falsified expose of the Big Lie -- and discredit it" works?