When the authorities are going out of their way to keep your journalistic colleagues from witnessing what they’re up to, yet they reach out to give a ringside seat–what does that say about your reporting?
That’s the question raised by a blog post by Yves Smith (Naked Captialism, 11/16/11) that makes the case that the NYPD offered special access to journalists from the New York Times, tipping them off ahead of time to the force’s secret mobilization at South Street Seaport prior to the pre-dawn November 15 raid.
This New York Times photograph appears to be taken under the FDR Drive, which is on the opposite side of the Financial District from Liberty Plaza, so unless the photographer just happened to be in the right place at the right middle-of-the-night time, it would seem likely that the paper did get an official tip off.
So if you were excluding virtually all journalists from your suppression of a political protest, how would you choose who you let see it? Well, the news article that Smith cites, along with the photography, as suggestive of before-the-fact access was co-written by Joseph Goldstein–whose work we looked at in a FAIR Blog post (9/28/11) called “Did the NYT Coverage of Occupy Wall Street Just Get WORSE?”
Journalists often pride themselves on “access”–even though, more often than not, it’s exclusion that’s the true badge of honor.
Call it a brown nose for news.
I was told George Orwell was writing about some other country…
Wow. No irony that the police massed under a road named for Franklin Delano Roosevelt while getting ready to crack some peaceful economic protesters’ heads.
Hey, the NYP learned from the Bush administration to reward propagandists (calling Goldstein by the somewhat more esteemed titles of “reporter” or “journalist” is a bit of a stretch) by giving them exclusive coverage of events as the government demands they be reported. Bush & Co. “embedded” (great term, by the way, exposing how these reporeters are “in bed” with politicians) reporters who cooperated and shut out – and sometimes even shot at – journalists who didn’t want to report the news the way the US military wanted it reported or show only images the US military wanted to be seen.
Very few people have the courage and integrity to, at the same time, turn down offers of substantial amounts of money for helping run the propaganda machine, and face the financial ruin of their family for insisting on telling or writing the truth. Those who take the money seem to be gleeful about it. Those who don’t are busting their asses constantly trying to keep the truth alive. I’m sure there is some joy and satisfaction in that, but glee is pretty much out of the question. I have only a modest income and an almost imperceptible voice, so the pressure on me is minimal, but I recognize and financially support the work of FAIR, Alternet, ConsortiumNews, Wikileaks, Firedoglake, Truthout, Truthdig, FreePress, and others who are under enormous pressure and constraint as they try to publish the truth, or at least an alternative to the propaganda. Some of us are apparently born with a conscience.
Gregory it is hard for this tea party member not to notice- that those who you claim to be “truth tellers”are what i see as liberal swill sellers.I guess diversity is the spice of life