NBC veteran Bill Arkin quits

Rockstar · 01-03-19, 02:30 PM

NBC News Veteran Leaves Network, Says Media Have Become ‘Prisoners of Donald Trump’

https://www.thewrap.com/nbc-news-vet...-donald-trump/

NBC News veteran Bill Arkin made a dramatic exit from his network Wednesday dropping a 2,228-word internal memo to colleagues criticizing NBC and the broader media landscape. In his lengthy missive, Arkin said the industry had becomes “hostages” to President Trump’s news cycle.
“The world and the state of journalism [is] in tandem crisis … And I find myself completely out of synch with the network, being neither a day-to-day reporter nor interested in the Trump circus,” Arkin wrote. “In our day-to-day whirlwind and hostage status as prisoners of Donald Trump, I think — like everyone else does — that we miss so much.”

From: William Arkin <w*******@***.***>
Date: January 2, 2019 at 11:32:20 AM PST
To: Bill Arkin <w*****@***.***>

Subject: My goodbye letter to NBC (link: https://pastebin.com/HGfyzzJ9 )

... I thought then that there was great danger in the embrace of process and officialdom over values and public longing, and I wrote about the increasing power of the national security community. Long before Trump and “deep state” became an expression, I produced one ginormous investigation – Top Secret America – for the Washington Post and I wrote a nasty book – American Coup – about the creeping fascism of homeland security.
Looking back now they were both harbingers for what President Obama (and then Trump) faced in terms of largely failing to make enduring change. Somewhere in all of that, and particularly as the social media wave began, it was clear that NBC (like the rest of the news media) could no longer keep up with the world. Added to that was the intellectual challenge of how to report our new kind of wars when there were no real fronts and no actual measures of success. To me there is also a larger problem: though they produce nothing that resembles actual safety and security, the national security leaders and generals we have are allowed to do their thing unmolested. Despite being at “war,” no great wartime leaders or visionaries are emerging. There is not a soul in Washington who can say that they have won or stopped any conflict. And though there might be the beloved perfumed princes in the form of the Petraeus’ and Wes Clarks’, or the so-called warrior monks like Mattis and McMaster, we’ve had more than a generation of national security leaders who sadly and fraudulently have done little of consequence. And yet we (and others) embrace them, even the highly partisan formers who masquerade as “analysts”. We do so ignoring the empirical truth of what they have wrought: There is not one country in the Middle East that is safer today than it was 18 years ago. Indeed the world becomes ever more polarized and dangerous.

u crank · 01-03-19, 02:47 PM

Do you suppose Morning Joe and Maddow will discuss this?

Mr Quatro · 01-03-19, 03:14 PM

Quote:

Arkin said the industry had becomes “hostages” to President Trump’s news cycle

Wow! Thank you Rockstar I might not have found this on my own

This is really big ... I hope it causes a chain reaction.

Can you imagine someone on the inside telling the truth?

Rockstar · 01-03-19, 05:02 PM

I have and read Albert Einstein's book Mein Weltbild not in German of course. The english version The World As I See It (unabridged). We normally attribute to him only his discoveries in General Relativity and Physics. But there was certainly more too this man than we normally hear about, he was a good fortune teller too!

In 1947 years before the first Atomic bomb test, he wrote about something which he called the Military Mentality (the "dangerous delusion" that all international problems can be settled by military power.)

"The characteristic feature of this mentality is that people place the importance of what Bertrand Russell so tellingly terms "naked power" far above all other factors which affect the relations between peoples. The Germans, misled by Bismarck's success in particular, under went just such a transformation of their mentality - in consequence they were entirely ruined in less than a hundred years.

I must frankly confess that the foreign policy of the United States since termination of hostilities has reminded me, sometimes irresistibly, of the attitude of Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II, and I know that, independent of me , this analogy has most painfully occurred to others as well. It is characteristic of the military mentality that non-human factors (atom bombs, strategic bases, weapons of all sorts, the possession of raw materials, etc.) are held essential, while the human being, his desires and thoughts - in short, the psychological factors - are considered as unimportant and secondary. Herein lies a certain resemblance to Marxism, at least in so far as its theoretical side alone is kept in view. The individual is degraded to a mere instrument; he becomes "human materiel". The normal ends of human aspiration vanish with such a viewpoint. Instead the military mentality raises "naked power" as a goal in itself. - one of the strangest illusions to which men can succumb.

In our time the military mentality is still more dangerous than formally because the offensive weapons have become more powerful than the defensive ones. Therefore it leads by necessity, to prevent war. The general insecurity that goes hand in hand with this results in the sacrifice of the citizen's civil rights to the supposed welfare of the state. Political witch hunting, controls of all sorts (e.g. control of teaching, and research, of the press, and so forth) appear inevitable, and for this reason do not encounter that popular resistance, which, if were it not for the military mentality, would provide protection."

August · 01-03-19, 10:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by u crank

Do you suppose Morning Joe and Maddow will discuss this?

Sadly only if it can be used to slam Trump somehow.

u crank · 01-04-19, 07:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by August

Sadly only if it can be used to slam Trump somehow.

Yea it is truly remarkable how far the MSM and especially NBC/MSNBC has fallen. When a guy who is as far to the Left as Glenn Greenwald is writing about it you know something is wrong.

Quote:

That MSNBC and NBC have become Security State Central has been obvious for quite some time. The network consists of little more than former CIA, NSA, and Pentagon officials as news “analysts”; ex-Bush-Cheney national security and communications officials as hosts and commentators; and the most extremists pro-war neocons constantly bashing Trump (and critics of Democrats generally) from the right, using the Cheney-Rove playbook on which they built their careers to accuse Democratic Party critics and enemies of being insufficiently patriotic, traitors for America’s official enemies, and abandoning America’s hegemonic role in the world.

https://theintercept.com/2019/01/03/...to-stop-trump/

This is particularly damming and disturbing.

Quote:

That an entire generation of Democrats paying attention to politics for the first time is being instilled with formerly right-wing Cold Warrior values of jingoism, über-patriotism, reverence for security state agencies and prosecutors, a reckless use of the “traitor” accusation to smear one’s enemies, and a belief that neoconservatives embody moral rectitude and foreign policy expertise has long been obvious and deeply disturbing. These toxins will endure far beyond Trump, particularly given the now full-scale unity between the Democratic establishment and neocons.

01-03-19, 02:30 PM	#1
Rockstar In the Brig Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Zendia Bar & Grill Posts: 12,614 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	NBC veteran Bill Arkin quits NBC News Veteran Leaves Network, Says Media Have Become ‘Prisoners of Donald Trump’ https://www.thewrap.com/nbc-news-vet...-donald-trump/ NBC News veteran Bill Arkin made a dramatic exit from his network Wednesday dropping a 2,228-word internal memo to colleagues criticizing NBC and the broader media landscape. In his lengthy missive, Arkin said the industry had becomes “hostages” to President Trump’s news cycle. “The world and the state of journalism [is] in tandem crisis … And I find myself completely out of synch with the network, being neither a day-to-day reporter nor interested in the Trump circus,” Arkin wrote. “In our day-to-day whirlwind and hostage status as prisoners of Donald Trump, I think — like everyone else does — that we miss so much.” From: William Arkin <w*****@.> Date: January 2, 2019 at 11:32:20 AM PST To: Bill Arkin <w*@.**> Subject: My goodbye letter to NBC (link: https://pastebin.com/HGfyzzJ9 ) ... I thought then that there was great danger in the embrace of process and officialdom over values and public longing, and I wrote about the increasing power of the national security community. Long before Trump and “deep state” became an expression, I produced one ginormous investigation – Top Secret America – for the Washington Post and I wrote a nasty book – American Coup – about the creeping fascism of homeland security. Looking back now they were both harbingers for what President Obama (and then Trump) faced in terms of largely failing to make enduring change. Somewhere in all of that, and particularly as the social media wave began, it was clear that NBC (like the rest of the news media) could no longer keep up with the world. Added to that was the intellectual challenge of how to report our new kind of wars when there were no real fronts and no actual measures of success. To me there is also a larger problem: though they produce nothing that resembles actual safety and security, the national security leaders and generals we have are allowed to do their thing unmolested. Despite being at “war,” no great wartime leaders or visionaries are emerging. There is not a soul in Washington who can say that they have won or stopped any conflict. And though there might be the beloved perfumed princes in the form of the Petraeus’ and Wes Clarks’, or the so-called warrior monks like Mattis and McMaster, we’ve had more than a generation of national security leaders who sadly and fraudulently have done little of consequence. And yet we (and others) embrace them, even the highly partisan formers who masquerade as “analysts”. We do so ignoring the empirical truth of what they have wrought: There is not one country in the Middle East that is safer today than it was 18 years ago. Indeed the world becomes ever more polarized and dangerous.

01-03-19, 02:47 PM	#2
u crank Old enough to know better Join Date: Dec 2011 Location: Prince Edward Island Posts: 11,744 Downloads: 136 Uploads: 0	Do you suppose Morning Joe and Maddow will discuss this? __________________ “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” ― Arthur C. Clarke

01-03-19, 05:02 PM	#4
Rockstar In the Brig Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Zendia Bar & Grill Posts: 12,614 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	I have and read Albert Einstein's book Mein Weltbild not in German of course. The english version The World As I See It (unabridged). We normally attribute to him only his discoveries in General Relativity and Physics. But there was certainly more too this man than we normally hear about, he was a good fortune teller too! In 1947 years before the first Atomic bomb test, he wrote about something which he called the Military Mentality (the "dangerous delusion" that all international problems can be settled by military power.) "The characteristic feature of this mentality is that people place the importance of what Bertrand Russell so tellingly terms "naked power" far above all other factors which affect the relations between peoples. The Germans, misled by Bismarck's success in particular, under went just such a transformation of their mentality - in consequence they were entirely ruined in less than a hundred years. I must frankly confess that the foreign policy of the United States since termination of hostilities has reminded me, sometimes irresistibly, of the attitude of Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II, and I know that, independent of me , this analogy has most painfully occurred to others as well. It is characteristic of the military mentality that non-human factors (atom bombs, strategic bases, weapons of all sorts, the possession of raw materials, etc.) are held essential, while the human being, his desires and thoughts - in short, the psychological factors - are considered as unimportant and secondary. Herein lies a certain resemblance to Marxism, at least in so far as its theoretical side alone is kept in view. The individual is degraded to a mere instrument; he becomes "human materiel". The normal ends of human aspiration vanish with such a viewpoint. Instead the military mentality raises "naked power" as a goal in itself. - one of the strangest illusions to which men can succumb. In our time the military mentality is still more dangerous than formally because the offensive weapons have become more powerful than the defensive ones. Therefore it leads by necessity, to prevent war. The general insecurity that goes hand in hand with this results in the sacrifice of the citizen's civil rights to the supposed welfare of the state. Political witch hunting, controls of all sorts (e.g. control of teaching, and research, of the press, and so forth) appear inevitable, and for this reason do not encounter that popular resistance, which, if were it not for the military mentality, would provide protection." Last edited by Rockstar; 01-03-19 at 10:19 PM.