Washington Post: first newspaper ever to call for prosecution of its own source

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/09/19/washington-post-first-newspap.html

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Well, it was pretty bad of him to trick them in to doing their jobs and all.

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Seems more relevant today then at its time: https://youtu.be/YX9B-C_BWmU?t=2m

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“I am shocked… shocked to find that journalism was going on in here!”

“Your Pulitzer, sir.”

“Oh, thank you very much.”

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PRISM is probably one of the most important and relevant items of information from Snowden’s release.

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Bezos pandering to the “Never Trump” GOP?

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I am laughing uproariously. The headline seems to suggest the Post did something courageous. How cleverly I have been trolled!

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Sounds to me like the plants from operation mockingbird are now senior staff and management.

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I’m lost for words (apart from these) so a gif will have to do…

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Those feckless, gormless invertebrates are responsible for our news?
God help us, we’re screwed.

So is this the last nail in the coffin? Seriously, I don’t see how this coffin could possibly hold any more nails.

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Do we remember the 2003 Iraq war? When the US reached peak flag-waving?

US journalists were acting as uncritical propaganda mouth pieces for the government, critical information was suppressed and journalists asking the wrong questions fired.
When critical voices where needed the most, US journalism failed … hard.

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This seems not so much like shooting yourself in the foot, but shooting your nutsack, then reloading, and having a go at the old tallywhacker as well.

Next person with info that needs to be released: “hmm, should I risk going with the Washington Post, or should I go with an agency that I can trust to actually not reveal who I am?” …Tough choice…

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Totally unrelated, but this is an excuse for me to say “Fuck the Washington Post” in a public forum.

I was a paperboy for the Post, (and the Washington Star too, for awhile), back in the early '70s when we had to go around door to door every month trying to collect payment from a bunch of deadbeat subscribers. The route manager - our adult contact in the distribution system, made damn sure that he got his full cut of the collections, as did the newspaper itself.

They didn’t give a rat’s ass if there was anything left over for the person actually doing the work (me). I can’t believe that I stuck around as long as I did, but when you were 11-14 years old there wasn’t much other work available and I still had a naive trust of authority in those days. They also expected a cash bond from paperboys back then so we didn’t hand out their newspapers for free or anything.

These days the newspaper bills the subscribers directly and adults have all the paper delivery routes and don’t have to deal with deadbeats.

So if there is evidence that the Washington Post is run by assholes I’m not surprised in the least.

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Wasn’t the Post the charming newspaper that published an article about how Hillary was being poisoned by Vladimir Putin[1]? I mean, there’s shoddy journalism and then there’s trying to bring about WWIII.

[1] Presumably they meant ‘The Russian Federation’ and not him personally.

Except it’d be more like, “hmm, can I trust an established news organisation? Oh that’s right, no.

Though in fairness, the Post hasn’t (yet) betrayed a source, just their own erstwhile principles; this isn’t quite as bad as using their contact with Snowden to help the US government arrest him.

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"If all your friends were jumping off a bridge…"

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Sticking your foot in your mouth, shooting yourself in the foot, then shooting your mouth off about it.

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Timeline review:
June 2012: State Dept under Clinton selects Kindle over other devices and this may be the first direct interaction between Bezos & Clinton, who together announce the global launch of Kindle Mobile Learning Initiative. (I agree with their reasoning).
May 2013: Snowden starts sending documents to Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman
June 2013: Guardian and Washington Post publish leaks about PRISM and Guardian identifies Snowden as source.
August 2013: The Post announces they’re being bought by Jeff Bezos. Concerns are raised immediately about Bezos turning the Post into a propaganda machine for his political causes.
April 2014: HRC’s first extended remarks about Snowden suggesting he would have been protected as a whistleblower if only he’d done it here, and she doesn’t understand why he had to go hide abroad.
April 2015: HRC announces run for President.
September 2015: Snowden slams HRC over the email server.
October 13, 2015: Both Hillary and Bernie call for Snowden to face trial, with Bernie’s phrasing more sympathetic. This is the same debate wherein Bernie said, “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!
… and now, Post agrees.