Insidiocracy: Russiagate, Corporate Media & Losing My Religion – Part Two

NinaIllingworth January 25, 2019November 17, 2022 Abby Martin, ABC News, Alex Nichols, Amy Siskand, Andrew McCabe, ANSSI, Anthony Weiner, anti-Russian propaganda, AP, Associated Press, Breaking the Set, Brian Flood, broken bombshell, CIA, CNN, corporate media, Crimea, CSPAN, Current Affairs magazine, debunking, debunking Russiagate, Democratic Party, Department of Justice, dissent, DoJ, Donald Trump, Doug Johnson Hatlem, edits and corrections, Eduard Mikhailov, Essays, Evan Perez, Fantastic Lies, FBI, Ferguson protests, foreign policy, Fortune magazine, Fox News, France, Giant Russia Theory, Glenn Greenwald, GOP, Guillaume Poupard, hacking, Impeach Trump, Iran, James Comey, Jeff Sessions, Joy Reid, liberal mainstream media, Louise Mensch, Macron, Manchurian Candidate, Manu Raju, Maxine Waters, McCarthyism, Media, Mueller investigation, Nathan J Robinson, new cold war, new McCarthyism, New York Times, New Zealand Herald, News, Nina Illingworth, obstruction of justice, OODS, Patribotics, Patrick Leahy, Philippines, Politics, proxy war, Putin, Real Clear Politics, Rec Reads, Recommended Reading, retractions, Reuters, Robert Mueller, RT, Russell Goldman, Russia, Russia Today, Russiagate, Russiagate grifters, Russian allies, Russian bots, Russian Hacking, Russian hacking of French Election, Russian trolls, Sessions, shady, Six Things I Think, skepticism, Steve Bannon, swine emperor Trump, Syria, The Guardian, The Intercept, The Wrap, Trump, Trump-Russia, Twitter, US media, US politics, US power grid, US sanctions against Russia, Vermont, Vermont utility grid, Vladimir Putin, walk backs, Washington Post, Wikileaks

Editor’s note: this is Part Two in what I believe will be a five part series about corporate media corrections, retractions and walk-backs while covering the truly bizarre “Russiagate” saga; you can find Part One here.

Before we get started however, I would like to emphatically state that this article is not intended to serve as any sort of defense on behalf of US swine emperor Donald Trump; a man who I have identified in previous articles as a fascist, a rapist, a crook, a warmonger and a liar. This series is merely focusing on the disturbingly large number of misreported, or in some cases outright fabricated, “Russia” stories in US corporate media over the past twenty-eight months; stories with terrifying national security and foreign policy implications, and released by professional media outlets that should be held to a higher standard of professional conduct than they seemingly have been. For those of you who are curious about my position on the entirety of the “Russiagate” scandal, I encourage you to read this December 2017 recap; nothing about my opinion has changed in any relevant way, since I wrote that just over a year ago.

Finally, as I mentioned in Part One, a portion of the research in this article is sourced from the work of Twitter user Doug Johnson Hatlem (@djjohnso) whose recently-published thread of forty plus mainstream media “Russiagate” mistakes added numerous examples to this article that I wouldn’t have remembered on my own.

The Audacity of Pig Empire Propagandists

It’s a humid night in September of 2016 and I’m about to publish the first in what will be a mindbogglingly large number of articles debunking what we now call “Russiagate.”

Of course, I don’t know that yet; in the moment, I can’t imagine the possibility that I’m going to spend weeks of my life going blind on data that demonstrates there is no way Russian bots or Facebook memes “rigged” the 2016 election, or that I’d waste days of my life explaining that it is highly unlikely swine emperor Trump is threatening Russian-allied Iran, bombing Russian-allied Syria and conducting a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, just to keep up appearances and hide his loyalty to Vladimir Putin. Right now, I just think I’m dunking on an unhinged, openly mendacious Boomer hack who figures that she can score political points for Team Hillary by going full Bircher about Russia.

What I do already know however is that the entire Pig Empire has been gearing up for a conflict with Russia since the annexation of Crimea. I know that Syria is a Russian ally and that Vladimir Putin will consider Hillary Clinton’s proposed “no-fly zone” an open act of war. I’ve begun to notice that Democrats and friendly media minions close to the Clinton campaign are preparing voters in advance for the idea that Russia is trying to sink her run for president. I am at once so close and yet so far away from putting it all together; this whole thing should be ringing alarm bells inside my skull, but there’s just one problem – you see, despite predicting precisely how Trump will win the election in writing months before, I’ve convinced myself that Hillary Clinton can’t lose on November 9th.

Tale of the Tape

Russia Hysteria Infects WashPost Again: False Story About Hacking U.S. Electric Grid – a stern rebuke of a correction to an absurd Washington Post article that really should have resulted in a retraction, this must-read, scathing December 31st, 2016 piece by Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept offers a detailed look at how outrageously sloppy reporting, click baiting and tough talk from US politicians perpetually fuels the Russiagate narrative – even in the face of retractions and the absence of facts. Without so much as rudimentary investigation or fact-checking, WaPo printed the sensational and horrifying headline “Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, officials say.” This then lead to the Democrat Governor and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy issuing aggressively belligerent statements with extremely direct accusations against Russia. Unsurprisingly, corporate mainstream media, desperate to get their hands on literally anything about Russia (perhaps to distract from their own culpability in electing a fascist), took those soundbites and ran with them like a purse snatcher fleeing the scene of the crime. As Greenwald notes however, the problem is that none of it was true. The power grid wasn’t hacked, nor is there really any evidence that anyone was trying to do so; a malware code was found on a single laptop that was not connected to the grid at all. Furthermore, even WaPo’s insistence that “Russia” was somehow involved is based entirely on the fact that the malware (available for purchase online) found on that laptop was made in Russia; which is why their correction is still a sick joke and they were forced to release an article essentially contradicting the paper’s own story a few days later. The original of course remains live on the Washington Post website, fueling Russia-based paranoia and ensuring that variations on this sensational story (supported only by the word of US officials in departments with a long track record of lying for empire), never truly die.

Russia offers to conduct joint military exercises with the Philippines in the South China Sea – in another story that had nothing to do with swine emperor Trump and everything to do with fomenting New Cold War hysteria, the Associated Press and at least ABC News published reports claiming that Russian rear-admiral Eduard Mikhailov had told one of his counterparts from the US-allied Philippines that “you can choose to cooperate with United States of America or to cooperate with Russia” while visiting Manila harbor. The alarming story was subsequently corrected, and then deleted altogether by both the AP and ABC (as far as I can tell) – leaving behind only this January 5th, 2017 summary at the New Zealand Herald and the memory of sharp-eyed observers like Doug Johnson Hatlem.

Russia’s RT: The Network Implicated in U.S. Election Meddling – this January 7th, 2017 hit piece on Empire Files creator and former RT journalist Abby Martin by Russell Goldman, came on the back of the ODNI report’s inexplicable decision to focus on Martin’s “Breaking the Set” program on the network formerly known as Russia Today (a program that ended in February 2015) in a desperate effort to “prove” that Russia “hacked” or “rigged” the 2016 US election. In the NYT, Goldman proceeded pile the McCarthyism nice and high, stating “two anchors who quit during live broadcasts say the network is a propaganda outlet.” The problem is, Martin was one of those two anchors and she has emphatically denied that Russia interferes with her reporting at all. Furthermore, Goldman stated (and the NYT correction still strongly implies) that Martin had quit RT after criticizing Vladimir Putin and Russia’s actions in Ukraine, thus in a round about way proving the ongoing claim that RT is a state controlled propaganda operation masquerading as a TV station (as we discussed briefly in Part One of this series.) Martin again disputes this, pointing out that she continued to host the network’s main prime time opinion show for an entire year after criticizing and while continuing to criticize, Russia’s aggression in Crimea. Unsurprisingly, the evidence vindicates Abby; a fact which Goldman could have easily confirmed by asking her, or performing a rudimentary Google search – all of which certainly does make one wonder what exactly the NY Times considers “all the news that’s fit to print” and why.

C-SPAN Concludes Russia Didn’t Hack Network’s Online Feed – easily one of the most moronic media panics in the “Russiagate” saga, this story gained traction when Fortune magazine (inaccurately) ran the headline “C-SPAN Confirms It Was Briefly Hacked by Russian News Site” on January 12th, 2017, in this article produced with the Associate Press. Unfortunately for the authors however, even the most charitable interpretation of the evidence didn’t support that headline; C-Span itself said it suspected a mere technical glitch – a fact generally, if begrudgingly, reported by most major news outlets that picked up the story. Would cooler heads prevail? Of course not, in the immediate aftermath of glitch, prominent liberal establishment figures like Congresswoman Maxine Waters and author Amy Siskand publicly insinuated that Russia had hacked C-Span to silence Waters; an insinuation that seems absurd on its face when levied in response to a ten minute interruption of a live online feed hardly anyone was watching. As noted in this January 19th, 2017 summary at The Wrap, C-Span itself would confirm it was simply a router problem, six days after the (non) story broke and circulated far and wide on social media.

What Constitutes Reasonable Mainstream Opinion – this brilliant, March 22nd, 2017 analysis and opinion piece by Nathan J. Robinson and Alex Nichols at Current Affairs magazine, takes a (rightfully) dim view of the New York Time’s curious decision to publish an op-ed about “Russia’s hacking of the election” by noted delusional conspiracy theorist Louise Mensch. To suggest that Mensch, a former Tory MP, longtime pinhead conservative windbag and the current voice behind the objectively unhinged Trump-Russia conspiracy blog “Patribotics,” is not a reliable source would be a mild understatement; indeed, as the CA authors note, it would be fair to say that Mensch is “one of the least credible people on the internet.“ Although listing Mensch’s numerous fabrications and conspiracy theories would constitute an article unto itself, she counts suggesting the death penalty (for espionage) was being considered for former Trump advisor (and noted fascist) Steve Bannon, now-convicted creeper Anthony Weiner was entrapped by a Russian hacker and that the Ferguson protests were actually a Russian psyop, among her greatest hits. Okay, but so what, right? If the New York Times wants to publish the clearly labeled “opinions” of a woman with no background in Russian politics or national security qualifications and a long history of issuing outrageously conspiratorial ravings online, what does it matter? After all, this is the same NYT that gladly publishes climate science denier Brett Stephens in its Op-Ed section, multiple times a week. The problem, as noted by Robinson, Nichols and numerous other commentators, is that when the Times, other media outlets and even some Democratic Party officials amplify Mensch’s conspiracy theories, they lend an entirely unwarranted air of credibility to what are essentially things Mensch makes up, off the top of her head. She simply should not be in your newspaper, or on your TV screen, and if she weren’t writing what amounts to anti-Russian propaganda, she wouldn’t be. As the authors at Current Affairs remark, the very fact that Mensch was given an opportunity to write an opinion piece in “the paper of record” demonstrates that “the press’s standards for Russia commentary are lower than at any point since the Cold War.”

Acting FBI Chief: Russia Probe Is on Track – another story that I simply would not have remembered about without Doug Hatlem’s research, this May 12th, 2017 Real Clear Politics summary notes that then-acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s sworn testimony directly contradicts reports by dozens of outlets (including the New York Times, Reuters, CNN, the Washington Post and others) that former FBI Director James Comey had approached Herr Donald to request more resources for the Bureau’s Russia investigation, with the obvious implication that this was part of why Trump fired Comey. Under oath however, McCabe denied that the request had occurred and added that he strongly believed “the Russia investigation is adequately resourced.” Whether or not you believe Trump fired Comey because of the Russia investigation (for the record, I most certainly do believe he did) is largely besides the point; what matters here is that once again, dozens of highly-respected corporate media outlets printed false claims, attributed only to anonymous sources and that this behavior is a reoccurring pattern when it comes to stories about Russia over the past three years. Please also note, there have been to my knowledge no corrections or retractions of the now-debunked stories about Comey’s request.

First on CNN: AG Sessions did not disclose Russia meetings in security clearance form, DOJ says – this May 25, 2017 story by Manu Raju and Evan Perez turned out to be just another busted CNN “bombshell” with the shelf life of a mayfly. The network initially reported that when then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions has applied for his security clearance, he hadn’t disclosed meetings he had with a Russian ambassador when he was a senator. Soon afterward, a spokesman contacted CNN to inform them that Sessions “was instructed not to list meetings with foreign dignitaries and their staff connected with his Senate activities.” Unwilling to lose such an explosive scoop that easily, CNN promptly issued an update reporting the Justice Department’s clarification that Sessions didn’t have to report those meetings, only to then turn around and strongly imply that they thought the DoJ was full of shit; the network even brought out a dubious “legal expert” to argue the case! As this December 11th, 2017 Fox News report by Brian Flood reveals however, CNN would quietly walk back virtually all of these allegations six months later when it released a new article saying that yes, the FBI had correctly informed Sessions he didn’t have to report his contacts with the Russian ambassador from his time in the Senate. Naturally, the original “scoop” remains up, even though CNN’s own reporting has now rendered it meaningless.

The Latest: France says no trace of Russian hacking Macron – in the late spring of 2017, international media widely reported that dastardly election-rigging super-villain Vladimir Putin and his unstoppable team of Russian hackers had struck again and were responsible for the leak of soon-to-be French President Emanuel Macron’s emails just before the country’s May elections. In fact, although no evidence was offered to the public, U.S intelligence officials effectively “confirmed” the story that Russia was behind the hack – which until then had relied on dubious Cyrillic metadata. Dashing the hopes of New Cold Warriors everywhere however, was Guillaume Poupard, who said France had “found no trace” that Russia was behind the attack and that the Macron campaign hack “was so generic and simple that it could have been practically anyone” – and Poupard would know, he is after all the director general of the French cyber-defense agency, ANSSI. It will of course shock no one to learn that western media largely ignored Poupard’s statement (this paltry June 1st, 2017 AP line item is one of the very few stories reporting ANSSI’s verdict that I could find online) – indeed, at least one frothing war pig WaPo writer recently cited the incident as evidence that Macron was too timid to pursue the issue with Putin and Russia.