The Intercept's Coverage of RussiaHoax Has Been Terrible - Editor Betsy Reed Caught Peddling Collusion Delusion (Jimmy Dore Video)

Although we have to admit, Glenn Greenwald has been good on this. But why didn't he call out Reed? Who is in charge over there anyway?

Transcript:

So here just getting back to the Russia Gate.

You tweeted this out.

So Aaron, who is this? This was not Jeremy Scahill X' Intercept podcast.

Who is this woman that's gonna be speaking? Well this clip is Betsy Reid, who's the editor in chief of the Intercept.

Oh, ok.

So listen to this, this is nuts, right, so. Here this is the editor chief of the Intercept, and now you're gonna find out why the Intercept's coverage of Russia Gate sucked as bad as anybody's, right? 

And holy shit, listen to -  this is the editor. Oh my god listen, and this, this idea of like, a conspiracy, which you know Muller defined narrowly and set a very high bar for as a tacit or Express agreement with the Russians. 

I really think with the picture you get reading the report, is that the Trump campaign was not sufficiently competent to execute an agreement like that. 

Like, it's just complete mess, but there are a zillion connections with the Russians and attempts to kind of, you know, work together in some loose way. 

So I do think that there's plenty of evidence of a kind of soft loose type of collusion in the report, but just not that, you know, high level of conspiracy. 

And now you know why people who go to journalist school are usually the worst journalists, and that's a perfect example. 

She's a horrible journalist. She doesn't know she's not doing one due diligence thing about journalism. She's spreading again McCarthy Reds baiting bullshit that is evidence free, and she's the editor of fucking major of the Intercept. 

And so now you know why I don't have any respect for anybody in journalism except maybe Erin, because they suck worse than I do. 

I'm fucking high when I get up in the morning and I'll do a better job reporting Russia Gate than the Intercept will any day of the week. 

Let me throw it to you, Erin, why did you tweet that out? 

Well I'm not going to endorse you or your blanket no you said that characterization. 

I'm a real Renison use Canon I'm a loose cannon, that's not you, you're a real dude, but but on this issue the reason I highlighted that, that clip is because it shows that even at a website that brands itself and is in many ways in really serious, in really key ways an actual adversarial website, that website news outlet, when it comes to domestic issues on foreign policy, I think the Intercept really has a lot of shortcomings, but on domestic policy it is genuinely adversarial, there's a lot of really good stuff. 

And of course on Russia Gate they have as a columnist Glenn Greenwald, who led the pack, although that's separate from their editorial decisions, which were shaped by this kind of mentality: This is delusional, and this is what happens when you bite into a narrative as Betsy Reid the editor-in-chief of Intercept, that Trump conspired with Russia.

That even after the fact the report comes out and there's not even a contact between anybody actually acting on the Russian government's behalf, and anybody acting on the Trump campaigns behalf , because there's nothing there and this whole thing was a scam. 

You don't have the intellectual honesty to say yeah, this was a scam, and instead you rationalize it by saying that the report showed a zillion connections between Trump and Russia, and that there was a soft kind of soft loose form of collusion. 

Like, what does that even mean?

So it's a joke, and it shows the extent to which this kool-aid, this Russia gay koolaid grip, the progressive left. It's the point where the editor-in-chief of a major outlet and adversarial outlet is drinking the kool-aid and saying stuff like this, and it shows the climate that we are in that made it difficult. If Bernie ever had a chin to entertain the possibility of pushing back the fact that progressive adversarial outlets were going along with it made it that much more difficult, and made it that much easier for the neo liberals and their agenda to take hold, because you even had the peep the media outlets that were supposed to be holding them to account and saying, calling bullshit on this. You even had them saying moronic stuff like this.

So just to recap my words, what you have there is the editor of a major news organization that pretends it's doing adversarial journalism, and what it's actually doing is running the biggest PR stunt for the establishment of the history of my life, which is Russia gay and which which took everybody's eye off the ball.

And you're just doing the bidding. You could not be a bigger tool if you let the CIA run that fucking magazine and print their Russia Gate articles that and then when you realize that everything you've done has actually been undermining the country and the progressive movement, and any kind of progress whatsoever, or holding the account the other party in power that one and when you realize that, then you don't have the intellectual honesty, courage, or integrity to tell the truth, even then, and you're the editor of the Intercept! 

You're no better than Glenn Beck, you're no better than Sean Hannity, you're no better than Alex Jones.

You're a conspiracy theorist. But what's even worse about you is that people are skeptical of Alex Jones, but people actually trust the Intercept, and that's what's the problem is. They trust people like like the editor the Intercept when she's doing a full-blown hundred percent McCarthy red-baiting evidence free conspiracy theories and she knows it. 

That's why people don't trust the news, because the people who are the editors of our news magazines have zero integrity, and they reveal it every day. 

All right so go yeah and I know you don't agree with any of that, so don't worry about it. 

Well you know, like what's more embarrassing? So you know what we got this one wrong. Glenn Greenwald was right our columnist the rest of us who push this and they had the Intercept James rising writing constantly about how Muller was that much closer to getting Trump on there. We were wrong, we got this wrong or saying that yeah, actually, Muller found this kind of soft loose type of collusion.

I mean what's more embarrassing, you know, in the lack the the lack of humility, the refusal to own the mistake was it was not just damaging to journalism and damaging to their reputation it was damaging to the cause of defeating Trump, because there it helped prevent an honest reckoning with how disastrous this whole thing was.

And so by doing that you emboldened the wing of the party that that wants to defeat Bernie Sanders, because that's why they launched this whole thing is because they couldn't compete Sanders on real issues and they needed something that could help curb the anti-establishment sentiment that won the election in 2016.

You know, it's just nuts to see people who you know.

It's like when you get on a plane you want to think the pilot is a better person than you that he wasn't up drinking last night like I was and that he didn't puff in the morning and that he's actually got his shit together and he knows how to fly this plane and then I get into I somehow get slide over from comedy into journalism and I find out that all the pilots are fucking drunk and they're all assholes and then they all cover for each other and they gasp like they're fucking passengers that's what journalism is in America.

And that's why guys like you and and and and Max and the people over at grey zone are rare, right, as you actually do journalism and you actually do due diligence and you actually don't report innuendo or rumor, unless you make it clear this is just a rumor.

I've heard you don't actually report rumour as a fact and that's really rare and that's why you're not you're you know on the outsides of journalism today you're never gonna be welcomed into a newsroom so they could you could show them how to do it?

They don't want to fucking know how to do it right they want to know how to make it look like they're doing it right so they can continue to climb in their career and get a paycheck that's what journalists are okay you know generally.

Say quickly perfect example this is what we're seeing right now with the OPCW the the duma scandal you were on this from the start when you had this allegation in April 2018 that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack in the town of Duma you call bullshit on this immediately.

I didn't say anything cuz you know I you know like I I just didn't I didn't go there it was edgy was controversial you called bullshit on this immediately the trump ministration want launches a air strike on Syria based on this allegation.

The media universally goes along with it and you have outlets like the Intercept putting out articles advancing the Trump administration's narrative - okay fast forward about a year about a year later and a leak comes out from inside the OPCW saying that a detailed engineering study had concluded that actually this chemical attack was staged, that the cylinders that supposedly carried the chemical weapon were manually placed on the ground, meaning they were not dropped from the sky, not by the Syrian government.

And what do we have since then? We have a complete complete censorship of this story in the media we refusing to hear that first engineering report and then refusing to hear another whistleblower when that whistleblower comes forward and then another whistleblower so we have and then another whistleblower so there's actually been four whistleblowers and we've reported on all of them at the gray zone but meanwhile websites like the Intercept which advance the Trump administration is narrative have refused to even acknowledge the whistleblowers existence.

So there's no trace on their website of any story about the OPCW and Duma the site of this alleged chemical attack that even it acknowledges the existence of these whistleblowers that's not just a so we don't just have a scandal at the OPCW have a cover-up which by the way these whistleblowers say was done under US pressure. You also have a media scandal that's right just in the corporate media but in progressive media as well and I I just called out my old my old home Democracy. 

Now where I worked for 10 years they also their only coverage of this was to basically do one segment whitewashing it with a supporter of the Syria proxy war and since then this many months ago since more and more revelations have come out put up by WikiLeaks. Democracy Now is totally ignored it so it's just an example of where journalism is out.

Right now we're on the issues where we need people to be standing up and telling the truth.

We have even our most noble sites because these sites are historically very noble anyways both Democracy Now and the intercept have done very noble things being cowardly and go on going along and doing the Trump administration is bidding on the most serious issue you know war and peace I am NOT noble and yet I have more nobility that democracy doubt does when covering Syria

It's amazing you got nothing on me you got nothing on me Jimmy Dore is kicking your ass which is why I actually have more subscribers on you tube then Democracy Now does. I have more viewers that democracy now just fucking think about that.

And I started my show five minutes ago they've been doing that show for about eighty years I think so I wanted to that is just stunning so let  me just make the point to Aaron that when the Intercept doesn't cover the whistleblowers and when Democracy Now doesn't cover them and when if they do they cover it in a whitewash way, those aren't accidents.

That is deliberate and intentional. So when you go to the Intercept for news about Syria you just know that the Intercept is actively lying to you who was trying to get informed about a topic.

They are trying to mislead you actively. A news organization wants you to have the wrong idea on purpose about what's happening, and so does democracy now.

Just so you know so you can go watch those shows you can go read their stuff their coverage of this stuff and then you can come back here and you'll find out the truth, cuz you're not gonna get it from the Intercept and you're not gonna get it from Democracy Now.

That's how easy it is to out do fucking places like Democracy Now and the intercept I could do it that's how easy it is it doesn't take intelligence it takes courage and integrity.

And so why do you think they're intentionally misleading the people at the Intercept and the Democracy Now? What would be do you you don't have to give a theory if you don't want to but if you do I'd love to hear it.

Well there's a lot of pressure to conform to the establishment narrative. If you want to be accepted in mainstream culture you have to conform and you know Max Blumenthal, someone who's written about this extensively, he has a great book called the management of savagery  where he talks about basically the Western public and this is you know this goes to every major war that the u.s. becomes involved in but the Western  public has been subjected to a huge influence operation to either deny the fact that the u.s. launched a huge covert program inside Syria a proxy war inside Syria to basically destroy it and cut off a key ally of Iran and you had unfortunately a lot of you know a lot of pressure on progressive websites and successful pressure to go along with it.

And you know, using all the familiar tactics of smearing someone of being a dictator apologist or a dictator lover if they question the narrativ, and we see this every single time the same thing happened when you opposed the Iraq war unfortunately whereas the Iraq war was opposed by progressive outlets like Democracy Now which actually led the way really in media upon pushing back on the Iraq war lives.

Now you're seeing them enrolled in pushing the lies used to justify war on places like Syria and you know what I can speculate on the reasons I I just like to think that my best interpret my most charitable interpretation is that is that people are just credulous and not thinking enough and they're being intimidated by fear of being smeared. 

And this is why I do what I do is I want them to change I want them to reckon remember who they are and what they're about same extent then with the Intercept which is basically founded on the leaks from Edward Snowden a whistleblower, and the Intercept is always prided itself on championing whistleblowers like that's what they do well what where are they in relation to these two to these now for whistleblowers here but the two the two  main ones the actual inspectors who were involved in the Duma investigation.

Why are they silent now on these whistleblowers?And by the way when ou're when whistleblowers come forward and even adversarial outlets are silent on them you're actually putting them in danger. There's a long history of whistleblowers being bullied and when and what saves them is when there's light on the abuses that they're blowing the whistle on and when the media ignores their stories and their plight it actually puts them in danger.

In the case of the OPCW it's particularly serious because there's a long history of the u.s. bullying the OPCW and even threatening people so for example Jose Boustany who is the opcw's first director-general there's a famous story and you can find it in Democracy Now or in the intercept where back when the Bush administration was going to war on Iraq Hosea Boustany was the head of the OPCW he was trying to push for inspections and the opcw's involvement john bolton, then serving under Bush personally, threatened Boustany and his family, saying we know where your kids live and they successfully forced Boustany out and that's also successfully shut Boustany up for a while though he's recently started to tell a story a little bit more.

And there's you can go through case by case so when the media in the face of seeing whistleblowers being intimidated and whistleblowers being silenced when the media goes along with it it's especially whistle blowing out advocates like D in and like the intercept it's it's harmful to these whistleblower safety. It's really shameful.

I'm gonna keep calling it out until they change. I'm hopeful that they will. Yeah it's a again it's it's such a horrible feeling to be involved in news and to have people who are supposed to be telling the truth and you know it's like when I fought when I first found out NPR was completely a liberal claptrap garbage it was like oh I used to oh I thought well if we don't have NPR what do we have you know now it's like well if we don't have Democracy Now or  the intercept what do we have we just got grey zone and Jimmy door baby that's all we got because I don't know good to me yeah I I tell everybody thanks for the lane and I don't know if you've been watching how people have been reporting  the stimulus boat debacle what-have-you but the the progressive media is now running like a protection racket for the progressive politicians instead of pressuring them and exposing them and making them do better they're actually they know they can count on them to lie for them just like Sean Hannity lies for Donald Trump which is really shocking to see. 

Hey this is the part where I tell you our live shows our birth already and that I would tell you to go join our preview but but nobody has a fucking job so why don't you just enjoy the video.