Greenwald has an excellent piece pointing out just some of the hypocrisy surrounding the Snowden revelations. A taste:
The first NSA story to be reported was our June 6 articlewhich exposed the bulk, indiscriminate collection by the US Government of the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans. Ever since then, it has been undeniably clear that James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, outright lied to the US Senate– specifically to the Intelligence Committee, the body charged with oversight over surveillance programs – when he said “no, sir” in response to this question from Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden: “Does the NSA collectany type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”
That Clapper fundamentally misled Congress is beyond dispute. The DNI himself has now been forced by our storiesto admit that his statement was, in his words, “clearly erroneous” and to apologize. But he did this only once our front-page revelations forced him to do so: in other words, what he’s sorry about is that he got caught lying to the Senate. And as Salon’s David Sirota adeptly documented on Friday, Clapper is still spouting falsehoods as he apologizes and attempts to explain why he did it.
There has been a considerable amount of ‘flak’ – efforts to discredit organizations or individuals who disagree with or cast doubt on the prevailing assumptions that are favourable to established power – exhibited throughout the Snowden affair. It demonstrates quite powerfully that the Propaganda Model, written about in the 1988 book Manufacturing Consent remains a powerful tool of media analysis.
Excited Pixels 