UPI editor: dissent is like soviet propoganda

[jamesd at echeque.com]

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On 11 Dec 2001, at 12:20, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> Well, by your standards, any journalist who makes an
> innocent mistake would be a liar.

CNN edited interviews with people so as to make them appear
to admit to war crimes commited against civilians during the
Vietnam war, when the full transcript showed no such
admissions.  Those people threatened to sue.  CNN then paid
those people large sums of money in settlement of threatened
libel suits.  Under America's extremely liberal libel laws,
CNN would not have done so unless those defamed had a good
case of malicious libel.

> I think the truth is that the reporters honestly believed
> they had a solid story

If they believed that, why then did they falsify the
interviews?

The reporters may well have honestly believed that the US
used nerve gas to massacre civilians during the Vietnam war,
but they did not believe they had evidence for this that they
could show to the public.  So their perhaps honestly held
beliefs justified them in their own minds, in lying to the
public, in fabricating evidence that they did not possess.

If that was their rationalization then this was a classic
example of the vision of the anointed. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
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