Saturday, March 16, 2013

What Was Richard Nixon Thinking?

Trey Smith

Thanks to the courageous action of Private Bradley Manning, the young soldier who has been held for over two years by the US military on trumped-up charges including espionage and aiding the enemy, we now have solid evidence that the country’s two leading news organizations, the Washington Post and the New York Times, are not interesting in serious reporting critical of the government.

Manning, in admitting at his military court martial hearing recently that he was in fact the source of hundreds of thousands of damning and embarrassing documents and cables exposing the perfidy and even war crimes of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan which were turned over to Wikileaks, also stated that he had first attempted to provide those documents -- which included the secret video of an attack helicopter massacring civilians, including two Reuters journalists, and those who tried to rescue the victims -- to the Post and the Times.

Both supposed “news” organizations failed to pursue his offer, and did not run those stories of US criminality until the documents had been released by Wikileaks.
~ from Rejecting the Offer of Evidence of US War Crimes by Dave Lindorff ~
Richard Nixon (the infamous 37th President of these United States) did not like the "liberal press," particularly the Times and the Post. He thought both newspapers were out to get him. What the man from Whittier College didn't seem to understand is the job of the press is to investigate and report on information important to the American people. Since Nixon was the nation's leader, what he said and did was fair game. It certainly wasn't the fault of journalists that Nixon's administration was rotten to the core!

But something has happened to the "liberal press" that Nixon so reviled. For one thing, they aren't so liberal anymore. Today they exist on the left side of a very narrow corridor. But the other thing that has happened would have angered Nixon to no end, if he was still alive. They no longer seem that interested in digging below the surface of anything. Nixon would lament that this new tack didn't happen a few decades sooner!

If these two news organizations behaved then as they do now, there would have been no Watergate Scandal. Nixon would have finished out his second term -- instead of resigning -- and his legacy would be altogether different today. Instead of being the butt of jokes, Nixon would be remembered in the same breath with Ronald Reagan.

So, here we have the two newspapers that spearheaded the investigation into Watergate and yet, in the current day, took a pass on information that incriminated numerous government officials and military personnel on war crimes. That right there should tell you how far the "liberal press" has fallen in its duty to be the eyes and ears of the public.

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