Jeremy Scahill:"The article my magazine, The Nation, published about John Tyner is a shameful smear"

This is so sad. I used to have so much respect for The Nation. I never thought they would sink to the level of Fox News for political partisanship reasons. But they have and kudos to Jeremy Scahill, one of the few journalists left in this country with ethics, for calling them out on it. Scahill tweeted his comment on the article, deceptively titled:

TSAstroturf: The Washington Lobbyists and Koch-Funded Libertarians Behind the TSA Scandal today.

You can see his tweet HERE



I read the article from The Nation that Jeremy Scahill is referring to tonight on DU. If you have not read it, you can find it here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9631199

The article makes the claim, without a shred of evidence, that the blogger, John Tyner (if you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested!) who became an internet sensation after he posted video of his encounter with TSA agents on his blog, might be part of an astro-turf effort by the right. Here's a sample of that article, yellow journalism at its worst:



The rush to accept these 'feelings' and the authors' 'sense' that something seems 'fishy' about John Tyner's experiences, by a few on the left, without any evidence at all, was revealing of something I always hoped we on the left would never be guilty of. The kindest word for it I can think of is 'hypocrisy'. IOKIYAD!

That was THEM, the Rightwingers. Hypocrites, defending every wrong decision made by their party even when they were presented with irrefutable evidence. Are we now becoming a mirror image of THEM? I think it's a question people need to start asking themselves frankly.

The fact that the issue of these revolting scanners has long been an issue for Liberals who rightfully viewed their emergence as a further erosion of our rights under the Bush administration seems to have gone down the memory hole. Democrats are now defending them. And for the worst of reasons. Because a Democrat is responsible for getting them installed after nearly six years of successful push-back by Civil Rights organizations.

The ACLU, always fighting to protect our Constitutional Rights were right in the middle of the battle and it was one of the few victories we had against the Bush administration's march toward totalitarianism that court challenges managed to keep them out of our airports, until last year.

The ACLU and its members have now, apparently, become 'rightwing trolls' 'astro-turfers' for the Koch brothers, or whatever other smears that are coming from, incredibly, the 'left'!

That the Nation would sink to this level of yellow journalism, worthy of Fox News, almost makes me lose hope that there is anyone in this country, left or right, who actually cares about PRINCIPLES. Is it all about party loyalty after all?

I expected the corporate media to do this, and as expected, with CNN leading the way, they did. I was not disappointed in them, I have zero respect for them. But, THE NATION?? Et Tu??

If it weren't for the few honest, sincere, ethical and truthful people like Jeremy Scahill, I believe I would lose all hope.

In this article, Glenn Greenwald takes apart the Nation's story. How embarrassing that Greenwald was able to find the information on John Tyner that apparently Mark Ames and Yasha Levine, the authors of The Nation article, didn't bother to look for. If they had, they could have spared that, up-to-now, highly regarded magazine the embarrassment it has been exposed to not to mention the loss of credibility.

Anatomy of a journalistic smear job




Yes, the article fantasizes that anyone who cares enough about our Constitutional rights MUST be a Koch funded astro-turfer. I can't say this often enough. They WERE FANTASIZING! In fact, it seems The Nation itself, joined the astro-turfing that has been growing over the past few days in an effort to defend the indefensible, Democrats switching sides from DEFENDING Constitutional rights, to now, supporting Bush-era encroachments on our Civil Rights.

We should wonder at this point who is behind THIS astro-turfing, but I am not going to sink to the level of these two authors and even try to guess.



John Tyner

But who IS John Tyner, and why would these two even begin to assume that he could be representing the Koch brothers or the Tea-Party at all? What did Mark Ames and Yasha Levine know about him that could possibly have caused to make such an assumption? Apparently they didn't bother to get to know anything about him. They actually made it all up as the record shows:

Some of the political positions taken by John Tyler which surely couldn't cause anyone to believe he was a tea-bagger??

Again from Glenn Greenwald:



John Tyner, a Tea-bagger who stands up for Gay Rights? A Tea-bagger who defends Muslims? I should laugh, but for the past several days on this forum, I have seen similar baseless charges, fantasizing that anyone who stands up for our Constitutional rights is a Koch-funded tea-bagger.

The Nation has now been condemned for this article by several other respected liberal publications. My faith is being restored and I hope The Nation fires these two astro-turfers posing as Democrats.

Democrats are NOT hypocrites. We do not abandon important issues just because our team is going down the wrong road. We stand up and tell them we will NOT defend them, we will NOT go there with them. These two authors, Mark Ames and Yasha Levine, are imposters. The only way The Nation can restore its reputation is to fire them.

An UPDATE from Greenwald lists the publications that have condemned The Nation article so far:



The truth is there is no defending the overturning of years of work by Civil Liberties organizations to stop this government's march towards totalitarianism.

If it was wrong under Bush, it is wrong under a Democrat. And we who are Liberals, Democrats, Progressives along with ethical Independents, Conservatives, Libertarians and just plain citizens, should never, ever walk away from our principles just because our team has decided to abandon them. And I really believe we do not.



I am proud of 'our team' tonight. They defended an innocent citizen about to be thrown to the wolves by one of their own for political reasons, stopping the smear before it became 'fact'.

EDITED again, to add that I am also proud of DU. I just noticed that The Nation article was not well received by DUers, many of whom were apparently suspicious enough to denounce it, not influenced by the fact that The Nation is normally considered a very credible source here. :applause: :applause: for DUers

David Corn kept his job though clearly a gate keeper.

Katrina Vaudevillian(after clicking spell check,slightly Freudian) on the Sunday Morning talk shows. Nobody gets on those shows/ is allowed to talk unless they are compromised.

Call me Paranoid. Go ahead, I can take it. LOL

who will criticize the party when it needs criticizing. They are defenders of the party no matter what they do. Same thing with a lot of online bloggers. Once they get on the inside, a lot gets compromised.

that it has to suck up to the current administration to keep getting stories, it will do and say almost anything. Remember the NYT scandal? How they whored themselves (literally) to keep those all important "White House sources" talking? If the NYT will do it, any news outlet will do it.

This is why we need a BBC style truly public news organization.

keep it. I know nothing about those two, but I would have thought that the editors at The Nation would have checked it out before publishing it. Unless they too wanted to please the WH. I never thought they would sink this low. The NYT and CNN yes, but they are beholden to Corporate America. The Nation depends on its readers, most of whom are not going to be happy about this. Unless they receive funding from elsewhere.

The irony is that they were pointing fingers at tea-biggers and the Koch brothers, while doing exactly what those entities do themselves.

Part of it probably is hiring people who are so partisan they allow their own emotions to influence their work. Real journalists can set aside emotion and publish facts no matter how harmful they may be to their political party. I think these two are the left's equivalent of the right's Beck followers. They have no place in a magazine like The Nation.

IOKIYAD?

Kudos to Glenn Greenwald mostly, but also to all the others who independently condemned the smears.

IOKIYAD = 'It's okay if you are a Democrat'.

Remember how frustrated we used to be when Republicans would excuse Bush for things they would never excuse in a Democrat? And the phrase 'it's okay if you are a Republican' was shortened to 'IOKIYAR' because it happened so often. Never thought back then we would need to apply it to our side ~

I saw your OP on the Italian students earlier, btw. Thank you for all the LBN stories and keeping us up to date on what is going on in the world :hi:

As you may have noticed, I've been a total news junky today. I keep going from one story to another and just can't help myself, lol. In fact, it's got to the stage where it's a bit embarrassing as my username is now dominating LBN. I've just added a couple more and will give it a break for a while. I think you'll find the last 2 very interesting... ;-)

:hi:

I've been reading them and all are very important news. Well, I mean take a break by all means, but your contributions to LBN are very much appreciated is what I meant to say. :-)

But over the years, it started to seem more like the posture of a lefty magazine than the real thing. It's too bad.

The op is right - it's just sad.

even before the recount was in. I don't remember his exact words but they were to the effect that it was undignified and conspiratorial -- and they were directly quoted by people on the right that had no wish for that vote to be inspected. Of course, he was proven wrong. The Ohio vote was a farce.

Questioning authority isn't something The Nation really does any more.

publications that claimed to be 'liberal'. It was eery, one day there was an uproar over election fraud, and people were ready to fight, then as if someone sent out a memo, the topic was actually banned on eg, Daily Kos nd you could get banned for mentioning. I still don't get it. Why?

:)

ETA: Skinner and EarlG. didn't do that. Our Election Reform forum was really busy and it was the place to go to find a rundown on new developments. The archives in that forum are probably the best on the net for that event.

the information there that was not permitted on other democratic blogs.

Whoops.

The Nation really did make a mistake. Maybe I'm dense today. (Or, more dense.)

.. if the Nation goofed (everyone does) and yet is one of the only existing, long-term voices of liberal opinion, should we throw it under the bus for one terrible article?

:)

I guess the thing is, for a long time The Nation has seemed to me to be acting more in service of itself than of vigorous "liberal opinion". But, that's only my take.

I've been disappointed enough by the Nation to have canceled a long-time subscription a while back.

That said, I'm aware of (and worried about) the potential to discredit the remaining liberal voices out here (excluding, of course, that Muslim, socialist Obama) with the goal of eliminating the remaining sources of genuine dissent in this country.

If The Nation is corrupted, despite its admirable, historic role, it should be condemned. But we should be verrrry careful before condemning one of our very few remaining outlets of dissent.

it's counter-intuitive by this point, but you're right. Maybe someone at The Nation will do something productive with this episode.

In effect, it had become a satire of itself.

But if the Nation goes away, who (or what) fills the gap?

all my suggestions will be out here where there be dragons. Except for Gore.

lol

I am happy to see this post, because that article angered me deeply. The Nation wrote a string of arch implications and insinuations, without a shred of fact, and presented their 'feelings' as if they were discovered truths. What they did in that article should not be done to anyone. If a man is in the wrong, show it and say it, but this tap dance routine is unacceptable. Simple slander, and I hope that guy sues them for every dollar they raise on their last 3 cruises, their auctions, in fact, I hope he takes the last designer dress off of that editor's slimy back. I dislike her instinctively, and have tried to put up with her because the Nation has a history, but that history has been burned over the l last few years, and this article is of a nature that means I will not trust them ever, ever again.
They told lies to make their already decided point of view seem true, because they had no facts, and they wanted to sell their opinion, based on nothing, as a replacement for facts, using the credibility of The Nation as a cover.
This is utterly unacceptable.

Liberal journalistic landscape as well as from their contributers and readers, will wake them up. We do not need journalists like those in the MSM in our alternative media, who are beholden to one of the two main political parties, to the point where truth and facts become expendable. That is WHY people subscribe to alternative media, expecting that they are independent enough not to worry about losing their access or an invitation to the Cocktail parties frequented by the likes of Karl Rove.

This hit piece makes The Nation look like they are trying hard to defend the President and are willing to destroy the reputations of ordinary citizens out of a misguided party loyalty. They needed this wake-up call from their colleagues in the liberal media. I hope they pay attention and start once again reporting facts, even when thos facts are not in line with the Party's message.

... but completely on the wrong side of the issue as well. These searches are bogus bullshit and people who accept them are the very definition of sheeple.

And as some dead European said, they deserve neither security nor freedom.

this is attributed to Ben Franklin:

Not something we should expect from The Nation. I expect a publication like that to stay focused on the issue, not on who is supporting it for nefarious reasons etc. That is irrelevant, the issue is an important one, and always has been to Democrats since these obscene scanners first appeared and the 'enhanced pat-downs' were stopped by the outrage from the left, in 2004.

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invalidating every protest. Because the Tea-bagger's protests are so clearly manufactured and manipulated by our corporate aristocracy, many people have come to look upon all protests, all dissent, as produced by our corporate elite.

It's a way of preventing dissent really. By faking grass-roots, spontaneous rallies and protest, our corporate aristocracy has managed to cast suspicions on all protests and dissent.

It seems the writers of this article have succumb to this generalization.

all grass-root movements. But I KNEW it wasn't since I knew this issue of Constitutional rights regarding those odious scanners was a Left issue for six years. I was around the internet when it began and witnessed the outrage on the Left and then the court challenges from the ACLU and the protests from other Civil Liberties organizations.

I was shocked to see people on this site claiming it was some rightwing scam. Because I had never, ever met a Democrat before who supported these totalitarian tactics manipulating support for them using FEAR. We knew better than that.

I agree they fell for it, or WANTED to fall for it since it's our team now abusing our rights.

Helpful and impressive.

and VERY well deserved. Bravo!

to write a similar expose. He appears to be a principled, well-informed, and intelligent Libertarian who holds anti-Establishment, anti-statist views that are similar to many of us here at DU.

Without any real evidence that he's a Koch Bros. send-up or Teabagger operative, it's irresponsible to make any such accusation against him. However, I doubt his action was entirely spontaneous. He does have a fixation on TSA, and wrote several critical articles about what he views as abuses by screeners in the months previous to posting his now-(in)famous video.

Hopefully, the Nation isn't going the way of our party: abandoning its core principles and values to achieve power or corporate favor.

For standing up.

Their tentacle organizations see a privatization opportunity in this as in everything else, it is true.

That justifies nothing about the invasive searches.

The Meg McLain story was bullshit, and it was designed that way so that people could "discover" the inconsistencies (her story v. the surveillance video). The Tyner incident was not and so since Tyner was not "on the payroll" he had to be discredited. The outrage over TSA was shaped and modeled to be used as leverage against the unionization of the TSA, against Government services in general and for privatization of those services. You can look back only as far as yesterday to see how the new narrative was rolled out right here on DU by some members. Grab some search terms and take a look. Note the patterns and the posters.

Jeremy Scahill is meddling with the forces of nature. Expect in a few months for some "scandal" to break out "involving" him. Watch for those who indignantly throw him under the bus on the first day.

:kick:

how The Nation could have made one this egregious. Katrina, we're waiting for an apology.

Rec.

it is so similar to the almost simultaneous response from other 'left' publications over the past few days. I wonder exactly who is responsible for Astro-turfing. The Nation should apologize, this certainly has lost them a lot of credibility with honest people who have been in this fight for a long time.

Every leftwing publication that has taken this defensive position, and moved to the other side of this issue now that a Dem is up to no good, should apologize also.

owned by wealthy individuals or families, so it's not very surprising that they would rush to defend the current administration which is really pro-elites and pro-corporate rather than pro-workers/citizens. That said, I am shocked that The Nation allowed this to happen.

subtly, of these machines from the left, is using the same technique. Not one claiming this must be astro-turfing, has produced a single piece of evidence that this is the case.

As someone who was outraged by these machines since 2004, as another government attempt to subvert our Constitutional rights, I take offense at the suggestion that MY outrage that they finally got into our airports under a Democratic administration, is part of a Koch brothers plot to make this administration look bad.

And again, not a shred of evidence that it is a Koch brothers plot, just the insidious insinuation. That would make the ACLU eg, part of the plot for six years. Shame on Democrats for putting politics and corporate America before our rights.

http://www.thenation.com/article/156679/response-glenn-greenwald

Long response. Looking for their response to Scahill.

But kudos to Schahill for his response to what was a real smear campaign, 'odious' as some have called it, on a decent citizen who was standing up for his rights, and ours. Imo, that kind of journalism belongs on Fox. They should be fired. I will email The Nation today to tell them we will not be subscribing anymore unless they fire these journalists, of make a proper apology for what they did.

They start out by being pretty arrogant:



A badge of honor to be exposed as having smeared an innocent citizen? I really thought that The Nation had far higher standards than that.

Having read their article, it is clear that they either do not know that this has always been a Left issue, or that they did but are so intent on defending this administration's flip flop on Civil Rights, they chose to ignore it.

Mostly what strikes me is the similarity of THEIR article to all the other 'liberal bloggers' who used the same reasons to distract from the main issue, the attack on our civil rights.

What they are missing, either unwittingly or willfully, I can't say, is that it DOES NOT MATTER who else supports or doesn't support these machines, or what their motives are. What matters is that the Left had successfully managed to stop them from being brought into our airports, through court battles etc for five years and now they are there, and we have a Democratic administration supporting them. Iow, Democrats succeeded where Bush failed. And our president, the one we elected, is friends with the CEO of Rapiscan, manufacturer of the machines who have become extremely wealthy as a result of the purchase by Janet Napolitano of these machines out of the Stimulus money.

And they have distracted from the main issues, so congrats to them on that I guess. I'm sure corporate America is more than pleased with their focus on the non-issue of the right now supporting something they have opposed for so long.

But we do not abandon important issues and flip flop when our party wins. At least some of us don't. I will have to think about that in terms of where this party stands on any of the issues they used to believe in.

:)

If we accept their intrusion into our privacy there, it's only a matter of time before scanners and gropers are set up at train stations, bus depots, stadiums, schools, shopping malls...the list of possibilities is endless. And it STILL won't guarantee our safety. Until we address the problems that our presence and involvement in the Middle East cause, we will continue to be at risk.

These measures are at best a simple "security theater" and at worst a gross invasion on privacy and individual rights.

If the actual security of its citizens was the concern of our government (and make no mistake this is not exclusive to the USA), then the government would not conduct policies (e.g. bombing the shit out of other nations) that make our citizens targets and thus put them in danger. The "best" case scenario for these measures puts them as being nothing but a simple show, designed to give people the illusion of safety and thus provide uninterrupted economic activity. So either the government is intruding on our privacy or they care deeply about corporate well being first and foremost even if it intrudes in its citizen's individual interests, take your pick because neither is any good, and what's even worse: it does not have to be an either/or proposition.


If we were being intellectually honest with ourselves, the debate should have evolved to the point where people were asking openly that if the "well being" of the common American citizen seems to be the priority of our government. Then those full body scans and checking of genitalia should be provided by hospitals at no cost for any citizen, not at the airport.

less important to them than that goddam oil.

Good on Greenwald.

Orwellian distortion was something I never expected from The nation. :(

"John Tyner, a Tea-bagger who stands up for Gay Rights?"

When asked the question "When’s the last time you were seriously inconvenienced or injured by something that big government did?" the first thing listed , according to this post, was "gay rights". maybe he was saying big government was IMPOSING gay rights...

From the OP, in a quote from Tyner's own blog (which I had read last week):


As for his standing accused by The Nation of suspicion on the grounds of his avowed libertarianism, consider what he wrote several weeks before the TSA incident. In a post responding to this question -- "When’s the last time you were seriously inconvenienced or injured by something that big government did?" -- Tyner wrote:

"Gay rights , TSA body scanners, highway checkpoints, the PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretaps, extra-judicial assassinations, indefinite detentions, inflation, etc. Don't tell me that (some of) these don't affect me. When one person's rights are trampled, everybody's are, and that's just at the federal level."

"...injured by something that big government did?"............"gay rights, TSA body scanners,"etc..

has done or is doing that trample on someone's rights, and he says that if one person's rights are abused, his are too. All of our rights are. I really love that way of thinking. If everyone thought that way, what a wonderful world it would be.

:grr:

This is just the most revolting example of it.

Thanks for posting.

...after the Nation hit Al Gore in the groin.



I subscribe to Jeremy's feed on FB.

Kudos to Scahill.

While agree with the substance of your essay, and see in the Nation's piece the creeping effects of the Fox Style Manual on the tattered remnants of American journalism, I have a single question:

You wrote of Mr. Tyner "standing up for our Constitutional rights." What constitutional rights do you think are being put at hazard by the TSA Affair?

If you answer, thanks in advance.

part of the Constitution these searches of people most intimate possessions, their bodies, violate. To conduct such a search, the 4th Amendment requires probable cause and then a warrant.

I think the 5th Amendment is also violated as no one is required to help the government implicate them in a crime and we as citizens have a right to 'take the fifth' if and when we believe we are being coerced into doing so. People are not suspects in a crime just because they buy an airline ticket, yet this is how they are being treated. In fact, they are being treated in some cases as if they have already been convicted of a crime.


When Tyner decided to leave the airport, to in effect exercise his 5th Amendment rights and protect his 4th amendment rights, the TSA threatened him. He was threatened with an $11,000.00 fine and/or possible arrest. Although when he asked if he was being arrested because he wanted to leave, it seems neither the agents nor the police were willing to put that into words. So clearly someone knew that they did not have the right to threaten an innocent person with arrest for refusing to forfeit his rights.

This battle has been going on for six years, and there are lawsuits filed against the use of these machines right now with more being filed since they were actually installed. Several of the suits claim that the machines should be banned as they violate the 4th Amendment.

There are other laws that I think may be violated also such as the right to freely travel from state to state with government interference.

The fact that these machines only affect those traveling within the U.S. while people coming from overseas are not subjected to them, is just plain illogical and proves they are not about security.

The ACLU has received over 900 complaints so far and on their site has pointed out that there are no laws governing the use of these tactics, machines/patdowns, only TSA policy. So it looks like it would be hard for the TSA to defend against lawsuits based on the law.

Two pilots have also filed lawsuits about two weeks ago, and the TSA has backed down on forcing pilots to comply with these policies. The pilots fought back and the TSA backed down, that suggests that the TSA realizes it has no standing to force these policies on law-abiding citizens.

And now, NY and NJ are introducing legislation to ban their use in their states. The move is a bi-partisan move in both states, with Democratic legisator, Greenfield saying that 'they set a dangerous precedent' and 'we do not want them in our state'.

When the people stand up, oppressive government tactics can be pushed back, IF they do it before it's too late.

It will be interesting to watch the results of all these lawsuits though. I hope the courts will settle the matter once and for all.

Thanks for your post, I am basing my response on what I have read from experts on Constitutional rights, sorry not to provide links, but I am rushing right now and am responding from memory.