Media, Politics & The Death Of Intellectual Honesty

from the what-just-happened dept

Yeah, so I get that it's political silly season, and people like to throw around all kinds of arguments of "bias" -- especially towards the media. I've been on the receiving end of those accusations, but for the most part, I think claims of media bias are silly and over-hyped. What's true, though, is that it's all too easy to be sloppy in reporting and to try to hype up a nothing story into a something story. Here's a story where no one comes out of it looking very good and the end result is a complete mess. It starts with Newsweek reporter Kurt Eichenwald. Last night I saw a marginally interesting story by Eichenwald about how a Russian government connected news website, Sputnik, misread an email leaked via Wikileaks from Hillary Clinton pal Sidney Blumenthal to campaign chief John Podesta. The email contained a link and full text to a much earlier Eichnwald story about Benghazi and Clinton. The Sputnik story incorrectly stated that the text in the email was by Blumenthal, and not by Eichenwald. It took one sentence out of this longer article, and falsely claimed that Blumenthal was admitting that the mess in Benghazi was "preventable." As Eichenwald notes, this is wrong:

Those words sounded really, really familiar. Really familiar. Like, so familiar they struck me as something I wrote. Because they were something I wrote.

The Russians were quoting two sentences from a 10,000-word piece I wrote for Newsweek, which Blumenthal had emailed to Podesta. There was no mistaking that Blumenthal was citing Newsweek—the magazine’s name and citations for photographs appeared throughout the attached article.

Okay. So that's actually kind of interesting. This Russian source was so eager to get a story out of the leaked emails that it misrepresented them -- either by accident or on purpose. That's marginally interesting, and certainly a fun thing to report on. What happened next is where things really go off the rails. While Sputnik pulled down its story once Eichenwald pointed out the error, a few hours later, Donald Trump mentioned the story at a rally as if it were true:

At a rally in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump spoke while holding a document in his hand. He told the assembled crowd that it was an email from Blumenthal, whom he called “sleazy Sidney.”

“This just came out a little while ago,’’ Trump said. “I have to tell you this.” And then he read the words from my article.  

“He’s now admitting they could have done something about Benghazi,’’ Trump said, dropping the document to the floor. “This just came out a little while ago.”

Okay. So we've still got a story here, and the story is this: holy shit, Donald Trump is willing to take very, very unreliable sources and broadcast them as fact. But that's not the story that Eichenwald started pushing. He went on something of a Twitter rampage making a bunch of claims that were not supported at all by the story, claiming variably that (1) the leaked emails were doctored (2) that Wikileaks was responsible for this (3) that the Russians and Wikileaks are in cahoots and (4) that Trump and the Russians are in cahoots. Now, any of these might actually be true. But none of them are actually supported by any actual evidence. Eichenwald just makes the logical leaps from what's written above, assuming that only the Russians could have given Trump that news -- ignoring that the story on Sputnik was getting passed around on social media (again: real story: Trump relies on unreliable sources for news). Here are just a few of Eichenwald's many, many tweets promoting his own article (and note how most have tons of retweets): Note that he insists that the only way Trump could have gotten this is from the Russians. But that's clearly not true. The Sputnik story was up and lots of people saw it, and it was discussed on Twitter and elsewhere. It makes perfect sense that someone who saw it either works for the Trump campaign or knew someone there and sent it over. Again: that's the real story: Trump relies on sketchy sources found online.

This morning lots of people were pointing out the problems with Eichenwald's exaggerations about his story, including the Washington Post, NY Magazine and Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept. Greenwald's account highlights that many Hillary Clinton supporters keep saying that the Podesta leaks include faked emails, but no one has pointed out a single one.

Eichenwald, for his part, keeps insisting that the original Sputnik report involved a "manipulated" email, which implies that the email was faked or doctored. This is flat out wrong. The email was misrepresented. It's entirely possible that it was misrepresented on purpose to make Clinton look bad. But misrepresented is different than doctored. Here, let me prove it to you: Eichenwald misrepresented who could have possibly seen the Sputnik piece. He did not doctor that information.

I don't think -- as some are claiming -- that this is evidence of "media bias" on Eichenwald's part. I honestly think that he's guilty of the same thing that probably happened with Sputnik. He saw what seemed to be a really great story, and oversold it. Sputnik did the same. Both look bad.

And, honestly, almost everyone comes out of this looking bad. Eichenwald and Newsweek oversold a story. Various Clinton supporters look bad for buying the claims in the story without reading them or checking them carefully. Trump, of course, looks bad for relying on a Russian government site for unreliable news. And, basically, everyone looks at this story and sees from it what they want. Trump supporters can see more examples of media bias. Clinton supporters believe there's more support for the idea that Russia is supporting Trump. Wikileaks haters get more ammo claiming that the site is working with the Russians and/or that it's releasing fake emails (though it does not appear to be doing so). Again: many of these things may actually be true, but this story only supports the single claim of Trump relying on bad info.

But this is the state of things today. 2016 can't end fast enough. Hopefully 2017 is better.

Filed Under: benghazi, donald trump, hillary clinton, john podesta, kurt eichenwald, media bias, misrepresentation, politics, russia, sidney blumenthal
Companies: wikileaks

Wikileaks Exaggerates Story About State Department Working With Google To Block Video

from the slow-down-folks dept

Just to be clear on a few things before I get into the meat of this post. (1) I tend to be a supporter of Wikileaks and its goals to help whistleblowers reveal important information, (2) I'm flabbergasted that Hillary Clinton would use a private server for her emails, (3) I think YouTube made a big mistake in blocking the ridiculous Innocence of Muslims video in various countries, and (4) I'm very concerned about public officials meddling in the affairs of companies in telling them to block certain content.

Given all that, I was quite intrigued when Wikileaks tweeted out a story this morning claiming that a recently released Clinton email "reveals that Hillary worked with Google's CEO to keep" the "Innocence of Muslims" video blocked on YouTube. That seemed like a big deal -- especially as I remembered, clearly, Google putting out a statement about all of this and rejecting the White House's request to censor the video. The problem, though, is that Wikileaks' tweet is vastly overstating the reality.

Clinton email reveals that Hillary worked with Google CEOs to keep #Bengazhi video blocked https://t.co/UWCbZarhWi pic.twitter.com/jcLklzM7Z3

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 18, 2016

The emails, which are also embedded below, don't seem to reveal nearly as much as Wikileaks would like them to say. First off, it's important to understand the timeline. The attack in Benghazi, Libya, happened on Tuesday September 11, 2012. By Wednesday, September 12, people were already (probably inaccurately) blaming the YouTube video which purported to be a "trailer" for a movie called "The Innocence of Muslims," which was a stupid and ridiculous video that mocked Islam (and eventually led to a whole different kind of legal fight involving copyright).

By Friday September 14th, there was widespread discussion about what Google/YouTube should do about this video, when (1) the White House confirmed that it had asked Google to "review whether the clip violated its policies" and (2) Google had announced that it would not block the video in the US, but would restrict access in Libya, Egypt, India and Indonesia. At the time, we argued this was a mistake by YouTube to take the video down at all.

So, by September 14th, it was now publicly known that the White House had asked Google to review the video and that Google had agreed to take it down in some countries, but leave it up in the US.

That brings us to the emails in question. The first is just an email from Denis McDonough, who was then the Deputy National Security Advisor (prior to becoming Obama's Chief of Staff), emailing a few people the phone numbers of both Google CEO Larry Page and then YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar. That email is on September 27th -- or basically two weeks after everything above had been confirmed.

The second email, sent an hour later, is from Nora Toiv, who worked for Clinton, responding and saying that "Sue just called back and the block will stay through Monday. They will not/not be unblocking it before then." It's not entirely clear who "Sue" is, but obviously someone who works at Google/YouTube. As a guess, it may have been Susan Wojcicki who is the current head of YouTube. She wasn't back then, but she was still a high ranking Google exec who had been involved with Google Video and the purchase of YouTube at the beginning, so it's possible she is the person in question.

Still, for all of the hubbub about this email, it doesn't seem to come even remotely close to revealing anything along the lines of what Wikileaks is implying. Again, this email was two weeks after it had already been confirmed that the White House had asked Google to review the video and Google had already publicly discussed its decision. At most, the email just reveals that people in the government were wondering if Google was planning to remove the geoblock in places like Libya and Egypt in order to be ready in case anything happened because of it.

I still think it was wrong for the White House to reach out and ask YouTube to review the video in the first place. And that it was wrong for Google to block the video in some places. But this email doesn't appear to be a smoking gun of Clinton "working with Google CEOs to keep Benghazi video blocked" as Wikileaks claims. It seems to be someone from the State Department reaching out to find out when the block might be lifted -- which, if anything, suggests that Google was making the decision on its own, rather than at the White House's request.

I'm all for revealing officials meddling in internet platforms and trying to get content blocked. That's bad news and we should discuss it and highlight it. But raising false alarms over things that aren't really there just makes you look like a tinfoil hat wearer. It's not worth it.

Filed Under: benghazi, blocks, censorship, denis mcdonough, first amendment, innocence of muslims, nora toiv, state department, videos
Companies: google, wikileaks, youtube

Sharyl Attkisson Sues Justice Department For Hacking Her CBS Laptop Over Benghazi Reports Even Though That Didn't Happen

from the crazypants! dept

Let's dispense with the formalities and get right to the heart of this matter: Sharyl Attkisson, former CNN and CBS journalist, appears to be losing control. Sharyl, purportedly a human, thinking person, has filed a lawsuit against Eric Holder and the justice department for hacking into her computer a few years back, ostensibly because she was reporting on the Benghazi attacks.

Investigative Journalist Sharyl Attkisson has filed administrative claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act against the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Postal Service, and certain unnamed employees and/or agents of the federal government. Attkisson has also filed a lawsuit in the District of Columbia alleging certain violations of her constitutional rights based on information implicating the federal government in illegal electronic monitoring and surveillance of her home and business computers and phones from 2011 to 2013.

Now, look, the United States government's horrific domestic surveillance policies have done it no favors in this instance. After all, the trust the average American places in our DC-based overlords has fallen measurably over the past few years. That said, the evidence Attkisson has been offering up these past several years, first in a book she wrote and now in a lawsuit, isn't so much evidence of government surveillance as it is jumping at technological shadows. First, the claims in her book make no sense. Robert Graham from Errata Security broke them down to demonstrate the problems:

Attkisson says "My television is misbehaving. It spontaneously jitters, mutes, and freeze-frames". This is not a symptom of hackers. Instead, it's a common consumer complaint caused by the fact that cables leading to homes (and inside the home) are often bad. My TV behaves like this on certain channels.

She says "I call home from my mobile phone and it rings on my end, but not at the house", implying that her phone call is being redirected elsewhere. This is a common problem with VoIP technologies. Old analog phones echoed back the ring signal, so the other side had to actually ring for you to hear it. New VoIP technologies can't do that. The ringing is therefore simulated and has nothing to do with whether it's ringing on the other end. This is a common consumer complaint with VoIP systems, and is not a symptom of hacking.

It goes on like that. What most of this appears to amount to is the everyday technological hiccups that most of us recognize as "that machine acting funky, so I'll just reboot or try again", unless we're the type to don a hat made of stuff that is supposed to keep the meat fresh in the fridge. Like so many of these types of conspiracy claims, the entire thing rests on a logical criss-cross: the goverment is so all-powerful that they have managed to get into all my tech and are personally screwing with me because I'm so important, but they're also so completely terrible at it that I can see all the signs of their nefarious deeds around me. You can actually see this fallacy at work within her book, as she goes on to quote the "experts" she's "consulted" but won't name.

Attkisson quotes one expert as saying intrusions of this caliber are "far beyond the the abilities of even the best nongovernment hackers", while at the same time quoting another expert saying the "ISP address" is a smoking gun pointing to a government computer.

Both can't be true. Hiding ones IP address is the first step in any hack. You can't simultaneously believe that these are the most expert hackers ever for deleting log files, but that they make the rookie mistake of using their own IP address rather than anonymizing it through Tor or a VPN. It's almost always the other way around: everyone (except those like the Chinese who don't care) hides their IP address first, and some forget to delete the log files.

Notable as well are the lack of technical details within the book's claims. Also notable was the awesomeness of this video that Attkisson released. Oooooh, spooky! What could possibly explain this if not MiB h4x0rs?

Computer security experts who reviewed the video suggested to Media Matters that it seemed to show the results of a stuck backspace key rather than hacking, and said the government and other sophisticated hacking enterprises were unlikely to use such methods.

Matthew Brothers-McGrew, a senior specialist at Interhack Corp. in Columbus, Ohio, said that sometimes computers "malfunction, a key can get stuck, sometimes dirt can get under a keyboard and a key will inadvertently be held down." He explained that sometimes there can be software issues "where the computer will think a key is held down in fact it is not," and said that his firm tested holding down the backspace key on a computer in their offices, and found "if you have Word open it will continually backspace text at about the same rate we are seeing in the video."

Not that any of this has slowed Attkisson down, of course. She has since moved forward with her lawsuit against the government, in which she would like $35 million dollars, please. Most everyone covering the story are equally as unimpressed with the lawsuit as they were with the book. Here's one nice summary.

Let’s break this down. Attkisson supplied her laptop to an unnamed “government forensics computer expert in the intelligence community”—via an unnamed “contact”—who later asserted “clear evidence” of an “intrusion” from “sources” that appeared to be “state-supported” because of the “the nature of the technology used.” Later, Attkisson received her laptop and the expert’s report through another unnamed “intermediary.” Believing that any of this is true, or even slightly true, requires faith in the judgment and ability of three individuals that Attkisson refuses to name—one of whom she apparently has never met in person.

Seems legit. Actually, no, no it doesn't. What this seems like is a sensational lawsuit aimed at self-aggrandization. Now, I know what you're thinking: But, Tim, all this means is that you're part of the lizard-people Benghazi-death conspiracy, too! Maybe I am and maybe I ain't, but that doesn't change the fact that Sharyl Attkisson's lawsuit is a big bucket of unsubstantiated nonsense.

Filed Under: benghazi, cybersecurity, doj, eric holder, hacking, sharyl attkisson

CNN Reporter Reveals CIA-Benghazi Connection: Is He 'Aiding The Enemy'?

from the it's-called-journalism dept

Between the Ed Snowden and Bradley Manning situations, we keep hearing claims that those two are guilty of violating the espionage act but that also those who helped published what they leaked are guilty too. There's still an ongoing investigation into Wikileaks, and various government supporters have suggested that reporter Glenn Greenwald should be arrested as well. So, with CNN's Jake Tapper breaking some news about CIA operatives on the ground during the Benghazi attacks, Matt Yglesias makes an important, if satirical point: is this "great journalism" or is it "aiding the enemy"?.

Obviously, it's the former, but how can people argue that the reporting on the CIA revelations is great journalism, while the reporting on NSA surveillance or US military excesses are somehow "aiding the enemy"? All are disclosing secret or confidential information about the US government and its actions. All are very much in the public interest. But, for whatever reason, many people seem to want to pretend that Greenwald writing about the NSA is somehow different from Tapper revealing what the CIA was up to.

Filed Under: aiding the enemy, benghazi, bradley manning, cia, ed snowden, jake tapper, journalism, leaks, whistleblowing