{"id":77487,"date":"2017-09-14T06:18:09","date_gmt":"2017-09-14T06:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2017\/09\/14\/the-grey-ladydevrait-consulter\/"},"modified":"2017-09-14T06:18:09","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T06:18:09","slug":"the-grey-ladydevrait-consulter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2017\/09\/14\/the-grey-ladydevrait-consulter\/","title":{"rendered":"The Grey Lady<\/em>\u00a0devrait consulter"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Grey Lady<\/em> devrait consulter<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

Finalement, le meilleur de l’article de Robert Parry, ce 12 septembre 2017, se trouve dans le titre et le sous-titre : « Le NYT est-il devenu collectivement fou ? – Franchissant la ligne entre l’irresponsabilit\u00e9 et la folie, le New York Times a publi\u00e9 une analyse en premi\u00e8re page sugg\u00e9rant que les Russes se trouvent derri\u00e8re toutes les critiques contre Hillary Clinton qu’on trouvait dans les r\u00e9seaux sociaux<\/em>… »<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Robert Parry, dont le New York Times <\/em>(The Grey Lady<\/em> pour les amis) est la cible favorite, fait un travail d’horloger pour mettre \u00e0 jour l’absurdit\u00e9 d’un texte du journaliste Scott Shane mettant en cause les Russes pour avoir \u00e9t\u00e9 les inspirateurs et les coordinateurs de toutes les attaques et toutes les critiques d\u00e9velopp\u00e9es sur les r\u00e9seaux sociaux contre la candidate Hillary Clinton durant la campane USA-2016. Cette \u00ab\u00a0enqu\u00eate\u00a0\u00bb aberrante dans son esprit m\u00eame n’apparaît nullement comme un accident mais comme une d\u00e9march\u00e9 d\u00e9lib\u00e9r\u00e9e et hautement appr\u00e9ci\u00e9e de la r\u00e9daction et de sa direction puisqu’elle sert de base \u00e0 un \u00e9dito paru le lendemain (les 8 et 9 septembre respectivement). Egalement remarquable, le fait que l’auteur de la d\u00e9monstration se base sur des informations qu’il a lui-m\u00eame trait\u00e9es, qui datent de janvier dernier et qui pulv\u00e9risaient par avance la m\u00e9thodologie de sa d\u00e9monstration.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

C’est \u00e0 ce point qu’on peut juger justifi\u00e9e l’hypoth\u00e8se de Parry sur l’\u00e9tat collectif de la psychologie au New York Times. A<\/em>lors que la campagne Russiagate<\/em> semble s’essouffler, alors qu’aucun \u00e9l\u00e9ment probant n’a \u00e9t\u00e9 relev\u00e9 en plus d’un an d’enqu\u00eate, alors que la c\u00f4te d’amour d’Hillary Clinton est en train de chûter \u00e0 cause de sa conduite erratique et m\u00e9diocre \u00e0 l’occasion de la sortie de son livre sur sa campagne, cette intervention du NYT conduit en effet Parry \u00e0 penser qu’il existe sans aucun doute une sorte de pathologie collective dans la r\u00e9daction du NYT, avis que nous partagerions volontiers. Le m\u00eame diagnostic peut d’ailleurs \u00eatre pos\u00e9 pour nombre d’autres organes de la presseSyst\u00e8me, et de m\u00eame pour nombre de militants antirussistes et anti-Trump, g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement du type progressistes-soci\u00e9taux. Il n’est certainement pas question d’envisager l’hypoth\u00e8se de campagnes d\u00e9lib\u00e9r\u00e9es de fausses nouvelles (FakeNews<\/em>), de d\u00e9sinformation, etc., tant ce qui serait alors une \u00ab\u00a0technique du faux\u00a0\u00bb serait primaire, grossi\u00e8re et absurde. Comme toujours dans cette crise psychologique \u00e0 \u00ab\u00a0D.C.-la-folle\u00a0\u00bb, on rel\u00e8ve des d\u00e9marches de bonne foi, simplement la foi concerne une psychologie malade, et la raison et le jugement \u00e9tant par cons\u00e9quent \u00e0 mesure. Ce jugement implicite qu’on peut tirer des observations de Parry a d’autant plus de valeur que ce journaliste r\u00e9put\u00e9 est par ailleurs un opposant r\u00e9solu \u00e0 Trump et \u00e0 nombre d’aspects de sa politique dite-\u00ab\u00a0populiste\u00a0\u00bb, – m\u00eame si cette politique s’abîme dans le d\u00e9sordre et la confusion les plus complets. Parry parle en homme de raison et juge s\u00e9v\u00e8rement le comportement et la psychologie des journalistes du NYT, nullement la cause qu’ils pr\u00e9tendent d\u00e9fendre.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Cette persistance du NYT d’\u00e9voluer dans ce domaine si compl\u00e8tement hyst\u00e9rique, et dans les conditions où cela est r\u00e9alis\u00e9, font penser que l’affaire du Russiagate<\/em> peut red\u00e9marrer au quart de tour si certaines conditions favorables \u00e9taient r\u00e9unies dans l’environnement de \u00ab\u00a0D.C.-la-folle\u00a0\u00bb. En d’autres termes, Russiagate <\/em>est essouffl\u00e9e mais ne demande qu’\u00e0 reprendre son souffle, et les deux articles (surtout l’\u00e9dito, confirmant l’analyse de Shane) en sont le signe. L’article de Parry est du 12 septembre 2017<\/a>, sur ConsortiumNews<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

dde.org<\/em><\/h4>\n<\/p>\n

___________________<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Has the NYT Gone Collectively Mad?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

For those of us who have taught journalism or worked as editors, a sign that an article is the product of sloppy or dishonest journalism is that a key point will be declared as flat fact when it is unproven or a point in serious dispute – and it then becomes the foundation for other claims, building a story like a high-rise constructed on sand.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This use of speculation as fact is something to guard against particularly in the work of inexperienced or opinionated reporters. But what happens when this sort of unprofessional work tops page one of The New York Times one day as a major \u00ab\u00a0investigative\u00a0\u00bb article and reemerges the next day in even more strident form as a major Times editorial? Are we dealing then with an inept journalist who got carried away with his thesis or are we facing institutional corruption or even a collective madness driven by ideological fervor?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

What is stunning about the lede story<\/a> in last Friday’s print edition of The New York Times is that it offers no real evidence to support its provocative claim that – as the headline states – \u00ab\u00a0To Sway Vote, Russia Used Army of Fake Americans\u00a0\u00bb or its subhead: \u00ab\u00a0Flooding Twitter and Facebook, Impostors Helped Fuel Anger in Polarized U.S.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In the old days, this wildly speculative article, which spills over three pages, would have earned an F in a J-school class or gotten a rookie reporter a stern rebuke from a senior editor. But now such unprofessionalism is highlighted by The New York Times, which boasts that it is the standard-setter of American journalism, the nation’s \u00ab\u00a0newspaper of record.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In this case, it allows reporter Scott Shane to introduce his thesis by citing some Internet accounts that apparently used fake identities, but he ties none of them to the Russian government. Acting like he has minimal familiarity with the Internet – yes, a lot of people do use fake identities – Shane builds his case on the assumption that accounts that cited references to purloined Democratic emails must be somehow from an agent or a bot connected to the Kremlin.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

For instance, Shane cites the fake identity of \u00ab\u00a0Melvin Redick,\u00a0\u00bb who suggested on June 8, 2016, that people visit DCLeaks which, a few days earlier, had posted some emails from prominent Americans, which Shane states as fact – not allegation – were \u00ab\u00a0stolen … by Russian hackers.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Shane then adds, also as flat fact, that \u00ab\u00a0The site’s phony promoters were in the vanguard of a cyberarmy of counterfeit Facebook and Twitter accounts, a legion of Russian-controlled impostors whose operations are still being unraveled.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Times’ Version<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

In other words, Shane tells us, \u00ab\u00a0The Russian information attack on the election did not stop with the hacking and leaking of Democratic emails or the fire hose of stories, true, false and in between, that battered Mrs. Clinton on Russian outlets like RT and Sputnik. Far less splashy, and far more difficult to trace, was Russia’s experimentation on Facebook and Twitter, the American companies that essentially invented the tools of social media and, in this case, did not stop them from being turned into engines of deception and propaganda.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Besides the obvious point that very few Americans watch RT and\/or Sputnik and that Shane offers no details about the alleged falsity of those \u00ab\u00a0fire hose of stories,\u00a0\u00bb let’s examine how his accusations are backed up:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u00ab\u00a0An investigation by The New York Times, and new research from the cybersecurity firm FireEye, reveals some of the mechanisms by which suspected Russian operators used Twitter and Facebook to spread anti-Clinton messages and promote the hacked material they had leaked. On Wednesday, Facebook officials disclosed that they had shut down several hundred accounts that they believe were created by a Russian company linked to the Kremlin and used to buy $100,000 in ads pushing divisive issues during and after the American election campaign. On Twitter, as on Facebook, Russian fingerprints are on hundreds or thousands of fake accounts that regularly posted anti-Clinton messages.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Note the weasel words: \u00ab\u00a0suspected\u00a0\u00bb; \u00ab\u00a0believe\u00a0\u00bb; ‘linked\u00a0\u00bb; \u00ab\u00a0fingerprints.\u00a0\u00bb When you see such equivocation, it means that these folks – both the Times and FireEye – don’t have hard evidence; they are speculating.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

And it’s worth noting that the supposed \u00ab\u00a0army of fake Americans\u00a0\u00bb may amount to hundreds out of Facebook’s two billion or so monthly users<\/a> and the $100,000 in ads compare to the company’s annual ad revenue of around $27 billion<\/a>. (I’d do the math but my calculator doesn’t compute such tiny percentages.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

So, this \u00ab\u00a0army\u00a0\u00bb is really not an \u00ab\u00a0army\u00a0\u00bb and we don’t even know that it is \u00ab\u00a0Russian.\u00a0\u00bb But some readers might say that surely we know that the Kremlin did mastermind the hacking of Democratic emails!<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

That claim is supported by the Jan. 6 \u00ab\u00a0intelligence community assessment\u00a0\u00bb that was the work of what President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper called \u00ab\u00a0hand-picked\u00a0\u00bb analysts from three agencies – the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation. But, as any intelligence expert will tell you, if you hand-pick the analysts, you are hand-picking the conclusions.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Agreeing with Putin<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

But some still might protest that the Jan. 6 report surely presented convincing evidence of this serious charge about Russian President Vladimir Putin personally intervening in the U.S. election to help put Donald Trump in the White House. Well, as it turns out, not so much, and if you don’t believe me, we can call to the witness stand none other than New York Times reporter Scott Shane.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Shane wrote<\/a> at the time: \u00ab\u00a0What is missing from the [the Jan. 6] public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. … Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to ‘trust us.'\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

So, even Scott Shane, the author of last Friday’s opus, recognized the lack of \u00ab\u00a0hard evidence\u00a0\u00bb to prove that the Russian government was behind the release of the Democratic emails, a claim that both Putin and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who published a trove of the emails, have denied. While it is surely possible that Putin and Assange are lying or don’t know the facts, you might think that their denials would be relevant to this lengthy investigative article, which also could have benefited from some mention of Shane’s own skepticism of last January, but, hey, you don’t want inconvenient details to mess up a cool narrative.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Yet, if you struggle all the way to the end of last Friday’s article, you do find out how flimsy the Times’ case actually is. How, for instance, do we know that \u00ab\u00a0Melvin Redick\u00a0\u00bb is a Russian impostor posing as an American? The proof, according to Shane, is that \u00ab\u00a0His posts were never personal, just news articles reflecting a pro-Russian worldview.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

As it turns out, the Times now operates with what must be called a neo-McCarthyistic approach for identifying people as Kremlin stooges, i.e., anyone who doubts the truthfulness of the State Department’s narratives on Syria, Ukraine and other international topics.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Unreliable Source<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

In the article’s last section, Shane acknowledges as much in citing one of his experts, \u00ab\u00a0Andrew Weisburd, an Illinois online researcher who has written frequently about Russian influence on social media.\u00a0\u00bb Shane quotes Weisburd as admitting how hard it is to differentiate Americans who just might oppose Hillary Clinton because they didn’t think she’d make a good president from supposed Russian operatives: \u00ab\u00a0Trying to disaggregate the two was difficult, to put it mildly.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

According to Shane, \u00ab\u00a0Mr. Weisburd said he had labeled some Twitter accounts ‘Kremlin trolls’ based simply on their pro-Russia tweets and with no proof of Russian government ties. The Times contacted several such users, who insisted that they had come by their anti-American, pro-Russian views honestly, without payment or instructions from Moscow.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

One of Weisburd’s \u00ab\u00a0Kremlin trolls\u00a0\u00bb turned out to be 66-year-old Marilyn Justice who lives in Nova Scotia and who somehow reached the conclusion<\/a> that \u00ab\u00a0Hillary’s a warmonger.\u00a0\u00bb During the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, she reached another conclusion: that U.S. commentators were exhibiting a snide anti-Russia bias perhaps because they indeed were exhibiting a snide anti-Russia bias.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Shane tracked down another \u00ab\u00a0Kremlin troll,\u00a0\u00bb 48-year-old Marcel Sardo, a web producer in Zurich, Switzerland, who dares to dispute the West’s groupthink that Russia was responsible for shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine on July 17, 2014, and the State Department’s claims that the Syrian government used sarin gas in a Damascus suburb on Aug. 21, 2013.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Presumably, if you don’t toe the line on those dubious U.S. government narratives, you are part of the Kremlin’s propaganda machine. (In both cases, there actually are serious reasons to doubt the Western groupthinks which again lack real evidence.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

But Shane accuses Sardo and his fellow-travelers of spreading \u00ab\u00a0what American officials consider to be Russian disinformation on election hacking, Syria, Ukraine and more.\u00a0\u00bb In other words, if you examine the evidence on MH-17 or the Syrian sarin case and conclude that the U.S. government’s claims are dubious if not downright false, you are somehow disloyal and making Russian officials \u00ab\u00a0gleeful at their success,\u00a0\u00bb as Shane puts it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

But what kind of a traitor are you if you quote Shane’s initial judgment after reading the Jan. 6 report on alleged Russian election meddling? What are you if you agree with his factual observation that the report lacked anything approaching \u00ab\u00a0hard evidence\u00a0\u00bb? That’s a point that also dovetails with what Vladimir Putin has been saying – that \u00ab\u00a0IP addresses can be simply made up. … This is no proof\u00a0\u00bb?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

So is Scott Shane a \u00ab\u00a0Kremlin troll,\u00a0\u00bb too? Should the Times immediately fire him as a disloyal foreign agent? What if Putin says that 2 plus 2 equals 4 and your child is taught the same thing in elementary school, what does that say about public school teachers?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Out of such gibberish come the evils of McCarthyism and the death of the Enlightenment. Instead of encouraging a questioning citizenry, the new American paradigm is to silence debate and ridicule anyone who steps out of line.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

You might have thought people would have learned something from the disastrous groupthink about Iraqi WMD, a canard that the Times and most of the U.S. mainstream media eagerly promoted.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

But if you’re feeling generous and thinking that the Times’ editors must have been chastened by their Iraq-WMD fiasco but perhaps had a bad day last week and somehow allowed an egregious piece of journalism to lead their front page, your kind-heartedness would be shattered on Saturday when the Times’ editorial board penned a laudatory reprise<\/a> of Scott Shane’s big scoop.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Stripping away even the few caveats that the article had included, the Times’ editors informed us that \u00ab\u00a0a startling investigation by Scott Shane of The New York Times, and new research by the cybersecurity firm FireEye, now reveal, the Kremlin’s stealth intrusion into the election was far broader and more complex, involving a cyberarmy of bloggers posing as Americans and spreading propaganda and disinformation to an American electorate on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. …<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u00ab\u00a0Now that the scheming is clear, Facebook and Twitter say they are reviewing the 2016 race and studying how to defend against such meddling in the future. … Facing the Russian challenge will involve complicated issues dealing with secret foreign efforts to undermine American free speech.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

But what is the real threat to \u00ab\u00a0American free speech\u00a0\u00bb? Is it the possibility that Russia – in a very mild imitation of what the U.S. government does all over the world – used some Web sites clandestinely to get out its side of various stories, an accusation against Russia that still lacks any real evidence?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Or is the bigger threat that the nearly year-long Russia-gate hysteria will be used to clamp down on Americans who dare question fact-lite or fact-free Official Narratives handed down by the State Department and The New York Times?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Robert Parry<\/h4><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Grey Lady devrait consulter Finalement, le meilleur de l’article de Robert Parry, ce 12 septembre 2017, se trouve dans le titre et le sous-titre : « Le NYT est-il devenu collectivement fou ? – Franchissant la ligne entre l’irresponsabilit\u00e9 et la folie, le New York Times a publi\u00e9 une analyse en premi\u00e8re page sugg\u00e9rant… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[934,3278,3256,4464,4280,3099,13389,6328,3134,13022,9655,2852,3257],"class_list":["post-77487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ouverture-libre","tag-clinton","tag-hillary","tag-new","tag-parry","tag-pathologie","tag-psychologie","tag-redaction","tag-reseaux","tag-robert","tag-russiagate","tag-sociaux","tag-times","tag-york"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}