Media Follies

My mom regularly gets her letter (usually anti-Biden or such) printed in the NY Daily News. Quite seriously. Her grandson gave her a calendar for Christmas with ten of the months having different letters. And, he might have missed at least one. I myself have had a handful this century.

I had one printed the other day after noticing a cover involving Assemblywoman Yuh-Lin Niou, my senator (Biaggi) bestie and great liberal advocate. She is active on Twitter, at times voicing her love of food. The cover had various things on it, but she was dominant, with her photo and noting she liked a tweet comparing police to Nazis.  Prime N.Y. Senate race fodder later, I'm sure.

The article was more nuanced.   It noted controversy arising from her criticism of police for not wearing masks, arguing police was turning mourning for an officer's death into "a frightening show of intimidation” and “a massive health risk to every New Yorker.”  

Someone on the thread compared the police to Nazis.  She at first liked it but when asked about it by the News, said it was a mistake, she didn't mean to, and that she unliked it.  By then, the PBA president pushed back on Niou's criticism and we have an issue.  Valid article.

If you don't want to believe her, okay, but it's a reasonable claim.  But, putting her on the cover and citing the 'like' suggests she intentionally did it.  She has in the past noted she received ugly comments as did if I recall members of her staff.  There has also been anti-Asian (she's an immigrant) comments on the street.  This just invites this sort of thing.  

All and all, it is not really a shocking thing for a New York tabloid (if one at least somewhat better than the NY Post) to put on its cover.  I also have not paid much attention to the covers (pass them from time to time in the supermarket) for years.  The paper itself is a ridiculous $3 a day with a lot less content than it once had.  Luckily, I can get the content for free online.

Anyway, I basically wrote a letter saying this -- the cover reference was not fair, the article was, but the cover was dubious and inflammatory.  

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Earlier in the week, news broke that an ISIS leader was killed, his own bomb killing him during a raid to take him.  Women and children were killed during the raid, but the official U.S. report blamed this the leader:

John F. Kirby, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, addressed the casualties associated with the raid in a news conference on Thursday afternoon. “To the degree there’s loss of innocent lives, it’s caused by Abdullah and his lieutenants,” he said, using a nickname for Mr. al-Quaryshi. He said the U.S. forces were able to evacuate 10 civilians from the building, including several children.

It is still early, and we already had an attack in Afghanistan during the Biden Administration where preliminary reports turned out to be misleading.  And, the "fogs of war" also was shown in the past as well. So, we should be careful about this.  But, Just Security suggests a credible case can be made that efforts were made to reduce casualties.

Reporters asked about the situation at the "Press Gaggle" with Jen Psaki, and as she does, she got a bit sarcastic.  This can work when deserved, but she went too far this time.  

Here's a basic back and forth:

MS. PSAKI:  Skeptical of the U.S. military’s assessment when they went and took out an ISIS terror- — the leader of ISIS?

Q    Yes.

MS. PSAKI:  That they are not providing accurate information —

Q    Yes.

MS. PSAKI:  — and ISIS is providing accurate information?

Q    Well, not ISIS, but, I mean, the U.S. has not always been straightforward about what happens with civilians.  And, I mean, that is a fact.

When one reporter cited this on Twitter with a "whoa" sort of comment, Jen Psaki butted in and basically repeated the information she gave.  She really should have lead with this and cleared the air the next day. Instead, it was the subject of the first question.  To wit:

Do you really believe that journalists are repeating Russian and Islamic State propaganda in pursuing those questions, first of all? 
 
And second of all, will you be offering evidence of your claims with respect to what happened in Syria when they become available?

Psaki genuflected about the right of reporters to ask questions and then provided a long answer to repeat the information available.  Come on.  There was no follow-up, so she got away with this.  She could have simply apologized about her phrasing that suggests reporters asking for clarity and citing past (with some reason) skepticism of official lines was suggesting ISIS is more believable than the U.S. government. Cheap shot. 

The question referenced a statement by a State Department spokesman (Ned Price, who like Jen Psaki, is very good at his job), making a comparable remark when someone asked about the idea Putin might do a "false flag" type operation related to the Ukraine.  He later apologized on Twitter, noting he also talked to the reporter. That's how you handle it. 

[I think he had more of a reason than Psaki, given past military issues, to be a bit aggrieved.  A reporter, on remote from Ukraine, actually told Stephen Colbert earlier this week that a false flag approach was likely.  Russia used that approach before.  "Proving" he would do it is rather hard, but it was a quite reasonable assumption.  Being wary about United States military official reports is to me more "earned" so to speak.]

I respect Jen Psaki, and she as a whole is a straight shooter (if at times doing the "official line" on certain issues in a lame way), but not here. The pushback (if not enough on Friday at the press conference itself) is appreciated. You need to keep these people honest, and again, they are overall decent, and when the people calling her out aren't the usual trolls, I think she will get the message to some degree.  

A final word on the action itself.  It is put out by the Biden Administration as a positive move.  But, we killed leaders before, directly or indirectly. There is a sort of whack-a-mole effort here.  I surely don't know the exact value of this specific leader and so forth. Still, I am wary. As one commentary noted:

“I don’t think anyone should be under the illusion that removing him from the organization is a death blow to Islamic State,” said Daniel Milton, director of research at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center. “This hopefully will hamper the organization, but I don’t think it will eliminate the threat in the future.”

I look on warily.