Over the weekend, CBS 60 Minutes ran a story about the high profile NSA spying programs revealed by Edward Snowden. It was, to put it plainly, embarrassing.
Twitter was ablaze with politicos, wonks, and experts criticizing the CBS report as crude propaganda, a stenographic public relations infomercial for the NSA that asked softball questions and failed to showcase opposing views. The CBS correspondent, John Miller, has previously worked at high level positions in the NYPD and the LAPD. At the beginning of the 60 Minutes program, Miller offered his “full disclosure: I once worked in the office of the Director of National Intelligence.”
Now, the NY Post is reporting that Miller has been looking to get out of the “journalism” business (as if he was ever in it) and go back to law enforcement. Indeed, he has been negotiating a new counterterrorism job while pretending to “report” on the NSA.
In the past two years, Miller has been a prominent presence discussing national security and crime on “CBS This Morning” and on the “CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley.”
“John has been doing great on television,” commented a close friend, “but at heart, he’s a ‘buff.’
“He wants the badge, the gun and the adrenaline — to be in the center of the action.”
Miller is expected to land a top intelligence or counterterrorism role with Bratton.
This is journalistic malpractice of the highest order. And not a good time for CBS. But I’d note that the damage has already been done. Millions of Americans without the ability to consume news critically have already had their minds poisoned by Miller’s propaganda report.
Pad the resume and head for the money. Journalistic credentialism for sure.
I watched that disgusting "puff piece" and kept waiting for at least one critic to be interviewed. Miller treated Big Brother Gen. Alexander with kid gloves, as if he was interviewing for a job there. What was interesting were the large number of young whiz kids, obviously lifetime tech geeks, who are willing to spend all day enclosed in windowless air conditioned dungeons staring at computers. They must be getting paid a lot. Is there another Snowden among them? We can only hope.
Also worrisome is the decline of journalism. Recently on "60 Minutes" there was Lara Logan's false and unchecked Benghazi story, followed by Charlie Rose's valentine to Amazon (again no critics interviewed). Makes one miss the days of the hard-hitting reporting of Mike Wallace.
When have any of these bought-and-paid-for hacks and propaganda artists ever been "journalists"? That includes Myron Leon Wallace (original family name: Wallik), Dan Blather, Walter Crankcase, et al. Nothing but tools, the lot of them. I hope there will be a tribunal someday for them, too. At least Myron and Walter are dead now and can no longer lie to us.
Why should anyone care what his family name is?
It comes straight from his bio in Wikipedia. Check it out for yourself.
60 minutes with what it really should be disclosed to the table, but need to look at the issue in more multifaceted and almost all of us should look at a multi-dimensional way.
Bring back Dan Rather.
What isn't a revolving door these days? Maybe complex is just another name for revolving door. Military-industrial-journalism-etc.-complex.
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60 Minutes 'exposee' certainly llulled me into a state of (false) security.
I'm 66 now and while I couldn't imagine a JSOC 'nght raid' (even though I think they're all total *******s, the thought of suddenly becoming a smoking crater scares the poop out of me.
During the last round of negotiations, Iran was reported to have made considerable concessions in its proposed deal. These included “a freeze on production of 20% enriched uranium” and “a pledge to convert its stockpile to fuel rods
During the last round of negotiations, Iran was reported to have made considerable concessions in its proposed deal. These included a??a freeze on production of 20% enriched uraniuma?? and a??a pledge to convert its stockpile to fuel rods
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