Andrea Mitchell: Domestic spying a choice between civil liberties & safety

NBC's Mitchell framed domestic spying as a choice between civil liberties and safety



http://mediamatters.org/items/200512210004

On the December 20 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews and on the December 21 broadcast of NBC's Today, NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell framed the debate surrounding revelations that the White House had authorized domestic wiretapping of U.S. citizens as a choice between privacy and civil liberties on the one hand and protection from terrorist attacks on the other. Mitchell's characterization echoed arguments put forth by Vice President Dick Cheney and President Bush and forwarded by NBC Today host Katie Couric, as Media Matters for America noted.

During a Hardball segment focusing on Bush's authorization of secret wiretaps of American citizens without court approval, Mitchell asked former Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), "What do you think Americans really need to be worried about more? A terror attack or someone going into their hard drive and intercepting their emails?" Similarly, Mitchell began a Today report also focusing on the secret wiretaps by asking rhetorically, "Are Americans willing to give up their privacy to help track down terrorists?" After interviewing former presidential adviser David Gergen, who asserted that the revelations of Bush's wiretapping program would negatively affect the American public's trust in government, Mitchell stated: "But the White House is betting that people are willing to pay any price if they think it will avoid another 9-11."

From the December 20 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews:

MITCHELL: What do you think Americans really need to be worried about more? A terror attack or someone going into their hard drive and intercepting their emails?

GRAHAM: Well, I think they need to be more concerned about the effect of the United States seeing a retreat from our basic values at the same time we are trying to ask the countries from which the terrorists come to adopt principles of democracy and liberty. Wouldn't it be ironic if at the same time, through our initiative, we were able to establish a democracy in Iraq, but we were losing our basic liberties and freedoms here at home?

n/t

:kick:

She's so scary......done up to look so young...and she's clearly not. She frightens me. More women should resist the culture and age gracefully.

...and I'm thinking "mantis"...



Andrea Mitchell (born October 20, 1946) is an American journalist, television commentator, and writer.

She covers burgeoning international issues for all NBC News broadcasts, including NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, Today, and MSNBC. She is also often a guest on Hardball with Chris Mathews.

Mitchell graduated with a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. She joined Philadelphia NBC affiliate KYW radio and TV as a reporter that same year.

After several years at KYW, she moved to CBS affiliate WTOP in Washington, DC in 1976. Two years later, Mitchell moved to NBC's network news operation, where she served as a general correspondent. In 1979, she was named NBC News’ Energy correspondent and reported on the late 1970's energy crisis and the Three Mile Island nuclear incident. Mitchell also covered the White House from 1981 until becoming Chief Congressional Correspondent in 1988.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Mitchell

She gets in bed with Alan Greenspan. If that isn't enough reason to be afraid of her, I don't know what is.

Risk a terrorist attack, or lose your right to privacy.

:wtf:

We're a constitutional democracy, last time I checked. We have to try to do both. But given the choice, I'd rather live with the possibility of terrorist attacks than in the grim security of a police state. You?

...especially the "ignorant slut" part.

No, Andrea, it's NOT a choice between civil liberties and safety. Since fucking WHEN is denying the pretzeldent the "right" to spy on his POLITICAL ENEMIES a compromise of our safety?

And it is abundantly clear that that is the reality behind the pretzeldent's secret, extra-legal, spying. There is absolutely no other reason why he could not go through the generous FISA channels.

Wish Dan Akroyd was an anchor.

Would you rather die on your feet or live on your knees? Freakin' cowards. And anyhow, the notion that they have to do warrantless eavesdropping to Protect America is BS. They've always been able to get FISA warrants retroactively.

their hand to identify themselves as true pimps for the right wing PNAC cabal. Makes you wonder if they also pick up a salary from one of the intelligence agencies of our administration or if they just get some money slipped to them from a 'slush' fund.

Bob Graham - great answer! Bravo! Thank you!

I love the way that Graham REMINDED Mitchell what our country is all about!:headbang:

for the first 224 years of our nation, until the Dunce took over.

"They that can give up an essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."—Benjamin Franklin

once again, a logical fallacy: the false dilemma. its not one or the other. we can have both freedom from unwarranted spying & freedom from fear of a terror attack, easily & legally.

i, for one, am not afraid of a terror attack. the odds are astronomical, and its a waste of time.

That same $300 million to buy the press is being spent here to pay off the news networks to either keep quiet or take Bush's side.

She tries to act impartial but she's not a good actress so her right wing bias bleeds through constantly.

Fuck MSNBC for continuing to believe that it's more important to stack their network with right wingers. They keep emulating FOX and Fox News' ratings are starting to spiral downwards. Keith Olbermann is the best thing on their dumb station and they treat him like the bastard child of the network.

Fuck them.

Rp

...that her "Coast to Coast" show got squeezed out of prime time because of MSNBC's deliberate intention to use Hardball as a vehicle to win "red state" favor.

I think Crowley failed in prime time because she's Monica Crowley, but her "insider's" take on Hardball seems reasonable.

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I'm on the West Coast. If I remember correctly (I might be wrong) MSNBC was not showing Hardball 2 and repeating it at 4. I thought that Crowley premiered in the 2 PM (West Coast) spot and got moved.

She got moved from SOME later-in-the-day spot...maybe not 2, but she got moved to make room for double shots of Tweety. At least that's HER story.

is how totally compromised our media are: fat-cat whores for fascism, pure and simple.

illegal wiretaps on journalists who might be doing a story on al queda...

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

...."Are Americans willing to give up their privacy to help track down terrorists?"....

....let me see if I understand what you're saying....Am I willing to give up my Constitutional rights so you and your corporatist friends can spy on everyone including me?....

....hmmmm, I'm going to have to think about that for a while....

thanks to FISA....which Bush did not follow and ignored!

out the irony if Iraq should become a Democracy(yeah right) and the USA is losing their liberties at home.

It's all a red herring because as Eric Alterman writes in The Nation..

snip~
"Our leaders promise us over and over that the next catastrophic attack is imminent. Yet not only do they do nothing to prepare for such an eventuality, they actively seek to sabotage those who do. Again and again the Bush Administration has slashed Congressionally mandated funding for precautionary measures in the areas of port security and nuclear and chemical security. They withdrew troops and intelligence agents from Afghanistan, where they were tracking Osama bin Laden and a reconstituted Al Qaeda, in order to throw them into Iraq, where no terrorist threat existed. Together with the Republican majority in Congress, they have treated "homeland security" as a pork distribution program. What money is appropriated receives little or no oversight. Columbus, Ohio, is free to spend homeland security funds on bulletproof vests for fire department dogs; Newark, New Jersey, on air-conditioned garbage trucks; and the District of Columbia, on leather jackets and self-improvement seminars for sanitation workers."


http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060102/alterman

a life without liberty and freedom is not a life worth living. It's that simple for me. Losing freedom affects every single one of us. An attack by a terrorist is not a sure thing, it's a possibility. We can still guard against attacks while maintaining our freedom. If we have to surrender liberty, what difference does it make whose boot is on our necks?

The thing the Freepers seem to have forgotten, or never knew, is that with each freedom taken away, for each liberty denied, others will follow. In a tyrannical government, no matter how much you give up, it's never enough. Why spy, if no action is taken? Action WILL begin to follow the spying, count on it. Do people who think it's ok, under the guise of protecting us, really understand why they might stand to lose?

Why is she such a Republican mouthpiece?

Doug D.

...just like Allison Stewart is always on for Keith Olbermann (although there have been one or two exceptions)...

I'm not an Andrea Mitchell fan at all. She does not seem genuine. Of course, if you're married to Alan Greenspan, you've already had a few sips of the Kool-Aid, so what difference will a few more make...

:patriot:

civil rights

If the Bush junta was truly held responsible for ignoring & impeding our use of the thousands of existing information channels, our fellow citizens might understand that they don't need to give up more rights. They just need better leaders. Because, throughout 2001, we had lots of intelligence reports that an attack was coming. I remember reading about some of those in the media. We did not need any further wiretaps or violations of our constitutional rights. Totally unnecessary. We already had mountains of wiretap data that lay untranslated. What we did need was more translators and and administration that took action when headlines screamed "Bin Laden determined to attack within the US" and when several foreign intelligence agencies issued warnings throughout the months before 9-11-01. And an administration that would not schedule war games for the month after the PDB warning of impending attacks so that our air defenses would be free and clear and ready to spring into action as they usually do when planes veer off course. And etcetera etcetera about our stupidity since then when the world was ready to bundle its intelligence capabilities and dismantle Al Qaeda cells everywhere and the Bush Junta said no thanks, we've gotta get Iraq instead, so here's some fake evidence you've got to accept. If we had pushed for the truth about why warnings were so blatantly ignored, we could't be lying about needing more and more invasive practices.

that her husband loves for her to wear?