One Tough Cookie

 

  Helen Thomas (1920-2013)

The Washington Post called her the "feisty scourge of presidents".  She was considered "tough", "outspoken", "abrasive", asking questions others couldn't--or wouldn't.  Questions a bit too probing for some, perhaps.  During the Bush administration she was summarily moved from her usual place in the front row, all the way to the back. A demotion (de-motioned).  You can't really see hands raised way, way in the back, or maybe even hear the question.  An effective strategy to pretend not see or hear someone.  Mission accomplished.

Today, criticism of your government's leader, policy, or behavior could get you blacklisted, or at the very least, "watched".  It depends on how you phrase it, in which venue, and the level of your probing or persistence.  Thinking a thing is one thing.  But blatently, passionately stating it or pursuing the truth of it (or worse, mediatizing your pursuit of an inquiry), can cost you your career as a journalist.

Press conferences don't seem the same without her.  Where are the gutsy, probing, really tough questions today?  The ones we all want answers to that just aren't being asked (or if asked, repeatedly go unanswered).  I watched a press conference recently where reporters stood or sat, pen and notepad ready, and to almost every question came the shrugfull response:  "We'll have to get back to you on that"; "I don't know the answer to that"; "I can't comment on that, it's classified"; "We don't know at this time", "I'm not authorized to divulge that information. ..... Next question?"

And not only at government press conferences.  Major traumatic events, such as mass shootings, or terrorist captures or attacks, or drone kills--why are the official reports so rife with inconsistencies, explanations that constantly change (inaccuracies never corrected), that strain common sense, the results of investigations kept secret, documents gone missing, inadvertently or deliberately shredded--or legislature quickly enacted to make them unavailable?

If you blow the whistle on corruption, you are not thanked; instead you yourself sometimes become a target.  If you question the lack of evidence, you are considered impertinent (or a conspiracy theorist). If you ask too many questions, you are first marginalized; then made an example of.  The result from the public is not, as one might expect, revolution, but apathy.

I imagine a future where at press conferences or daily briefings to reporters, official spokespersons will probably be dispensed with altogether.  Some underling will be designated to show up and hand out prepared printed statements, which reporters can then use to paraphrase and regurgitate into their respective 'reports'.  By that time maybe  no one will be reading newspapers or watching the news anymore, televised fictional happenings long having replaced the real news; besides, nobody could tell the difference, they've gone mad trying.  And so it goes, as Vonnegut would've said.



Journalists come
journalists go.

They go where others sometimes fear to tread
           and wind up dead
(or shunned or ridiculed,
sent politely      to the back row
so as not to be so       in your face.

'Now, now, behave yourself', is what is meant.
Know your place.)

But if questions don't get asked no more --
           does that mean we already   know the score?
       or that it no longer
 matters.


R.I.P. Helen Thomas


 

Droning for Transparency

 Definition of the verb "drone":  "making noise continuously"

                 (as in repeatedly asking, requesting, pleading, demanding Transparency ....)

	Antonyms: "be quiet, silence" (as in, government response to the above).
	President Obama, upon taking office in 2009:  "I will also hold myself as president to a new standard of openness .... Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency."

So, how come:

The government refuses to formally acknowledge that the CIA even has a drone program, let alone discuss its thornier elements, like how many civilians have been killed, or how the CIA chooses targets.

Officials have given speeches on the legal rationale for targeted killing and the use of drones in broad terms. The administration has also acknowledged “military operations” outside the “hot” battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, but again, details have remained under wraps.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Times have both filed multiple Freedom of Information Act requests for documents relating to the CIA’s drones. The agency has responded by saying that it can “neither confirm nor deny the existence of records.”  [Source ]

[Source]

Whether or not the CIA has authority to or does in fact conduct targeted lethal operations, however, remain classified and protected from disclosure....To the extent the ACLU Request seeks records specifically about the CIA's use of unmanned aerial vehicles, to confirm or deny the existence of responsive records would also reveal whether the CIA possessed a particular 'advanced technological platform.'

[From a motion filed by the Department of Justice  in response to lawsuits from the ACLU and the New York Times over FOIA requests seeking information about the killing of Al-Awlaki, June 20, 2012.]      [Source]

According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the Obama administration has launched 293 drone attacks in Pakistan alone, as compared to 52 strikes under the Bush administration. The bureau estimates that between 2,565 and 3,329 people have been killed, among whom 474 to 884 were civilians. However, distinguishing militants from civilians in the drone war is notoriously difficult, both because militants have an incentive to exaggerate the civilian death count and because, according to The New York Times' sources, the administration "in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants ... unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."  [Source]

 The drone strikes continue.

So do the questions.