hello and welcome to crossfire where all things are considered on peter lavelle is real journalism a thing of the past and much of the western world in the name of security challenging the official media message of the elites is often met with serious threats and reprisals whistleblowers are damned and made to feel severe consequences what remains is a deafening echo chamber warning all to get in line. to cross out the state of journalism i'm joined by david swanson in charlottesville he is an author and radio host who works for roots action dot org and in san francisco we cross to robert rosenthal he is the executive director of the center for investigative reporting all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want robert if i can go to you first in san francisco what is the state of investigative journalism in light of all of these affairs with

whistleblowers and i don't have to name names because we all know who they are. i think actually investigative reporter reporting in the united states is relatively healthy believe it or not even with the decline in the destruction really of the business model and what's happened in this country is a lot of independent investigative reporting organizations have started up the center for investigative reporting as is the oldest actually and right now the largest. but there's a lot of interest in how do you sustain this kind of information information and investigative reporting the threats from the government which are real from the federal government have put it chill on not only the journalists but more importantly the whistleblowers but at the same time there are many many ways to get information and tell the stories that are out there but it also takes a lot of hard work and skill investigative reporting if it's going to be done really well and have credibility takes

a lot of hard work knowledge and access most importantly to either documents or sources who can help guide you to the real story in david you know do we have any today woodward and bernstein because we know mr snowden approached the washington post with the washington post turned him down so what does that say about the washington post or what does that say about the level of investigative reporting and i guess i'm so focused on national security here in this case. well it tells you that the washington post like many major media outlets in the united states is too interested in power too subservient to statements from the government too interested in access and not enough interested in the truth but the washington post has ended up using information that came from documents from edward snowden. while at the same time allowing its pundits and op ed columns and so forth to bash

edward snowden as a as a traitor and so you have major media outlets that even while benefiting from these whistleblowers who of course require ever greater courage in the face of the crackdown. bash them in their editorial pages suggesting where in fact these the loyalties of these media outlets actually lie we of course in the past week have heard about a new media organization being created by a multi-billionaire with journalist glenn greenwald and others what that amounts to remains to be seen but something is badly needed i'm afraid robert what do you think about that i mean you mentioned the business model here i mean could you be more specific about that i mean because it could just cost a lot of money because you can sell a story it sells itself ok it has a ripple effect here so what do you mean by business model. well. i think what i what i'm saying is i was in the past i was the editor of the philadelphia inquirer

which was a great paper. before i became the editor as well but there were six hundred fifty people in the newsroom in. one thousand nine hundred ninety eight two thousand and the enquirer has been sold i think five or six times in the journalists there's fewer than a third and what happened really was that sometimes the most expensive reporters in terms of their salaries and the most skilled and this happened all over the country as the newsrooms were downsized and the goal was to cut costs to keep profits high they were let go they were and supported no newspaper really sustained its revenue and its business based on investigative reporting its what the public frequently wanted more than anything else but at the same time in journalism we have an expression you have to feed the beast which is even more prevalent today because of the twenty four hour news cycle so if you're really interested in clicks you're going to do all kinds of things that have more entertainment value i know substantial value i know i know that i know the value of your hoarding you know the

problem ok i mean everybody fades out and yeah i myself you know david you know that that's where they get really let down david have people been really let down i'm looking of the majors in television and in newspapers and whatnot is that you just go dumb go yellow and you'll get exactly what we heard robert say you'll get your clicks but you know you don't get much good quality public discussion on any particular issue anymore. well that's right you do get a lot of discussion it's the good quality that's missing and it's not always a question of simply not reporting information like there was a great study of deaths in the war on iraq that's appeared in all the blogs and foreign media but not the us major corporate media this week it's also often a question of spinning the information in misleading ways and framing the debates in misleading ways c.n.n. is akari ahead on three billionaires in the past week to discuss the inequality of

wealth where they talk about redistributing wealth as the evil of allowing the people who who produce things to keep some of it and raising the minimum wage instead of restoring part of the value the minimum wage has lost and job creators as in robber barrons in a previous name for those types of people and so you have everything framed in a in a misleading direction to the point where you have a majority of americans believing iraq benefitted from the war on iraq and in a strong plurality believing that the iraqis are grateful for it and so it's hard to have informed an informed public or even informed discussions among the pundits when everything is spot on in these twisted ways that are almost universally accepted and the media outlets are aiming for acceptance and you see this sort of group think in the punditry rather than a clash of interests you know robert there there's a quite

a few talk going to let me go ahead you know to reply that before you do yeah i was just going to jump in i think that i don't disagree with that but i also think that this is something that's happening existed. as long as there's been media in this country and right now where there's an opportunity though with the technology and i hate the phrase values it is sort of like that what i would call an information leader who understand what's happening and hopefully have the influence and we've seen it c.i.r. is that we've got an ability to push information and stories out not through necessarily big corporate media that we partner with them but through social media through engagement tools that really create an impact and have a result so i'm not pessimistic i think it's really we're in this moment of change and the other thing i think sort of dancing around it's clear is that certain business models now cater to a specific audience as the fox business model is the m.s.m. the see business model you know you could call it this information propaganda but there's spinning information to the audience that wants to hear it and those are

actually small audiences so but the mass of people i still think you know are not informed and that's sort of historical in this country and it's you know i don't think. it's not hasn't changed as much but the technology has created an opportunity to do things in different ways and hopefully reach a bigger audience not necessarily through you know the big mass media so i think there's opportunities to pursue things and get information out in ways we all have to be really creative about and innovative about you know david you know i watch a lot of television obviously it's my job to watch my competitors and i i always see or more of a trend propaganda versus propaganda polemics versus polemics for polemic sake ok for entertainment sake it's poly i call it polluted tame and because you don't really get to anything you don't have any kind of meeting of minds or are using the same facts it's the spin versus the spin and this is very destructive for

a democracy and for people trying to understand what's going on. absolutely i think robert's right that there are encouraging trends there are potentials but i think we have a long long way to go and when you have an entire debate for weeks covering a shutdown where both sides and both parties have harmoniously agreed not to shut down half the government the military and the spying and the drug enforcement agency all all of the deadly parts of the government are up and running smoothly and the whole entire debate is framed around the shutdown of the government it's very difficult for independent smaller outlets to insert into that the fact that half the government isn't shut down the fact that we have shut down feeding the hungry and caring for the sick as in essential non-essential items while continuing all sorts of supposedly essential deadly items it's very hard to talk about that when many of the pundits and we saw

a great study produced within the past couple weeks about the pundits who are on t.v. in the lead up to the non missile strikes into syria enough and how many of them stood to profit from that action and it wasn't and the conflicts weren't expose stephen hadley from raytheon on as an independent source of information and ino it's it and yet and yet the american public said no despite the corporate media with the help in fact of foreign media and blogs it's often amazing to me how far ahead the american public is on many many issues and yet how unaware of that we have majorities imagining we're little fringe minorities on many issues because that's how the media covers things you know over what about that i mean because so much of corporate media are owned by corporations ok they frame the agenda they were exactly you heard from charlottesville from david i think. right and i think

what david's point is a good one also because you know if you really look at the corporate media now they cover certain things there may be an assumption of what the message is but the reality today and i was alluded to earlier is the peoples who because of the technology have access to a huge range of information and data the question is how how how hard will they work to get it so i think you know the build up to the you know what did not happen in syria is a good example where you could look at sort of the push but there was clear division in this country a lot of people had access to all kinds of information so a very good some very bad some of propaganda but all filtered into sort of the decision making process and again you know mass media you know think of the one nine hundred thirty s. with father cockle in this country and what he represented for a huge huge gentlemen i'm going to have to jump in here and we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the state of journalism say with our.

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saying i and the rest that life is going to be taking a little baby every week they. do we speak your language does anyone know they will or not a day of. news programs and documentaries and spanish more matters to you breaking news a little turn to tip angles to the stories. here. and then try to alter the spanish find out more visit eye to our. tivo it's called. you know we've only one. welcome to cross talk we're all things are considered i'm peter lavelle to mind you

we're discussing the state of journalism whistleblowers and propaganda versus propaganda. ok david in charlottesville about to go back to you do you like the phrase obama is having a war against journalism in journalists do you think that's a fair characterization i never like using war as a metaphor for other things while we continue the barbaric practice of actual war but i do think that the obama administration is quite hostile to whistleblowers to transparency in government quite the opposite of what candidate obama campaigned on and toward independent journalism and freedom of the press incredibly hostile to the point where we've begun thinking of whistleblowers as traitors and seen them prosecuted under the espionage act and seen sources dry up through the intimidation

there is no question on top of which you have president obama presented as the left side of the debate that has two sides and never a third and never goes beyond a certain range which is incredibly destructive and during that lead up to the missiles that didn't fly into syria i was screened for interviews and i was told you must take the position that there hasn't there isn't enough evidence yet to send the missiles but there might be and if i objected in the screening process there never could be anything to justify sending missiles into another country well i wasn't used in that interview ok ok david can i ask your question for a let me answer your question david because anybody on the crosstalk producers ever screen you before you come on the program because you've been on before you've been screened here i don't think so. well i mean mail the topic and if you have questions and says send me back your brief responses and i do i've never been turned down maybe i've always given the right responses no because we look for real debate on this program here that's where you look for what not agreement or

disagreement with me ok because people love the disagree with me it's go to san francisco robert what do you think what it counts for obama's change from candidate to being president right now because you know this is the most secret we i don't know every single president since richard nixon this is the most secretive president presidency we've ever had i mean how much more secret can it get. i think that obama is has been is the most aggressive of this administration in terms of whistleblowers and journalists in our history that's for sure what happened what did it i'm not sure but i think the reality is once you get in the power you have access to all kinds of information that you can't even imagine at the same time i think president obama seems to have a thin skin and his administration and criticism and the adversarial role of the media or the press is historic in this country and what we're seeing now is the most aggressive really strategy or campaign continual against not only the sources but the media and the history of the country so i think it's potentially quite

dangerous. you know the in from the control of information when by the worst governments historically is what they go at and the first group of people go is really squelched in any kind of totalitarian state are the journalists and the information seekers so it's something the public needs to be aware of i think the public is not that aware of it they don't really understand the difference between mass media quality journalism investigative reporting that's part of our job to really show what's happening and the people who support us to understand that you know journalism reporting investigative reporting is really crucial to protecting the democracy we have so i think it is a crisis point for a lot of different reasons not just the financial issues you know media or vents of last week or this week or we're not sure where that's going but i think it's good that more people are getting interested in investing in information and hopefully good good information available to everyone it's very interesting i gree with that

because and i but i think there's an intuitive understanding with audiences and publics right now because they don't believe governments they don't believe this president when it comes to national security we've already mentioned syria here but this the reaction to me is conspiracy theories people come up you can't trust them so this must be happening with some a lot of times just pure nonsense but. and it confuses the public sphere when you think about that david well i think a lot of people distrust the government and distrust the media and here new york times reporter adam a panel discussing journalism say well you can't call the president a liar not in the new york times most people wonder why in the world not if the president happens to tell a lie when you have the media endlessly presenting people's viewpoints and two sides to in a distant remit without commenting on which side has the facts and where the truth might lie people lose interest and respect and begin searching for what robert points out fortunately are beginning to develop in significant ways other sources

of information it is a mean it is a collaboration between the corporate media and the government that creates a level of incredible distrust and hopefully responsible independent adversarial journalism can restore some some trust in the printed word because we need that we need to understand what our government is doing and not just dismiss it as unknowable and and. a wild conspiracy of course many conspiracies are in fact real we think about that robert in san francisco because again i think because of the poor quality of a lot of journalism from the major news outlets people go elsewhere and unfortunately can trip up and going to a place just counter productive and you get the opposite effect here ok and there's that there's that filtering is i guess what i'm not going to really be filtering

issue here go ahead. yeah i agree i think that there again you go back to what i would call of this information and really i mean you look at the biz some of the business models it's about making the other side fail it's almost dehumanizing them and there's a hell of a lot of confusion and people feel like overwhelmed and helpless and i think they're looking for answers and you could look at some of the conspiracy theories and they're quite logical. i don't believe many of them but but people are looking for answers and again they have access to information in unprecedented ways and if you're going to spend time seeking answers for yourself and explanations they're there some are accurate some are complete b.s. some are conspiracies some are gender driven some are propaganda and it's i think it's overwhelming for the consumer and it takes hard work for somebody to want to be informed and it's just as changes just to go to one source if you only watch fox news your view of the world is really different from somebody who watches m s n b c

or c a c.n.n. or reads the new york times i mean your news sources if people want to work for it or sort of limitless right now how you filter that out and decide what's real or what you want to believe in is really complicated i think all these issues we're talking about to me are fascinating because we're in this information and technology revolution which is really unprecedented you know you think about the speed of how information moves today whether it's truth or accurate or not it distorts everything and the ability to manipulate and confuse has never been greater on a mass level so i these issues we're talking about are not just for us to i think they're really crucial to the functioning really of a global inner commuting cation that we're going to how decisions are made and on a level that can really be abused and i think one of the things you're talking about or what we're talking about today we tend to talk about the wonders of technology and information but the abuse of side of it and where that can go is so that has to be really talked about more i cri david you know and i guess. i don't

know if you're on facebook i'm on facebook because i have to because i'm in journalism here and you know the stories coming out of syria and how people want to frame the debate in these horrific pictures and you know because it's my job to look at these things unfortunately some of his awful to look at i have no idea if they're true or not you know what i mean and this is the confusion that's being created because people are putting these things up on the internet and facebook and i have to be very you know i have to decide you know do i believe this or not believe this and i think that's one of the biggest confusions that we have in dealing with media because if you dismiss the major outlets which i do i don't pay attention to the much anymore and look at very specific people but i have to know who to trust. you have to learn who have who to trust and we have to develop sources that can be trusted but i think the problem is that even once we've done that we don't have the capacity to create stories we don't have the capacity to create movements the occupy movement wouldn't have happened without the corporate media and when the corporate media when away it went away the american public is

even more against the cia army in one side in syria then it was against sending in the missiles but because the governments of the world and the corporate media haven't made that a question people aren't banging down the doors of congress to say stop arming one side the way they say they did to say stops don't send the missiles and so at some point we're going to have to develop credible independent sources of information that can create a story just as the corporate media creates non-stories a scandal over the closing of a world war two memorial in washington d.c. is a big story huge endless coverage it's a non-story while people are going without food and medicine and we're continuing to to engage in it in q julie expensive military actions in afghanistan and elsewhere the stories all about a world war two memorial we the rest of us popular only don't have the ability to do that the way the corporate media still does you know robert when i when i watch

c.n.n. like one of their run news rundowns and i'm struck how little news is actually in it and i look at fox i remember the first time i saw fox and i became a fox came into being after i left the united states to live abroad and i first saw it i just thought what is this this is opinion t.v. there are no facts at all if you have to pin it on a person i was really shocked about what would happen to my country because there's no news in this there's news station. you know if you if you click around or you go through you know the major news websites i agree i mean it tends to be the same story we tune certain to a certain level or degree and not much new. you information and clearly you know fox's business model and they're you know that it's not a secret is to you know carry a conservative or republican agenda and their major goal if you watch their show is to really make sure obama doesn't succeed as a democrat said business model they made a decision and the people who go there tend to believe that but i do think this

this what i call the you know this siloing of information that's developed in this country is dangerous and at the same time part of the challenge for organizations like mine is no one has figured out how to say that we have tremendous value to society we're not partisan we get results but are we going to survive and other organizations like ours because no one is created even though it's values to society's clear a business or a value in terms of dollars so this is the dilemma you know sort of gentlemen we're not entirely and i would have hoped that the truth has some kind of value many thanks today to my guest in charlottesville and in san francisco and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time and remember. these.

looking at the situation right now where we have a crack almost on a daily basis where we have people getting arbitrarily arrested from their homes during night raids where we have children being picked off the streets where we have people in. their homes where torture is. not in itself a form of anarchy. but it. was. all a face. a

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