(C) Fairness & Accuracy in Media This story was originally published by Fairness & Accuracy in Media and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . NYT Exposes a Favorite Source as War Industry Flack [1] ['Adam Johnson', 'Presidential Election', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar'] Date: 2016-10-01 17:03:18+00:00 The New York Times (8/7/16) detailed in often scathing terms what media critics already knew: Think tanks are frequently not objective, neutral arbiters of information, but corporate- and government-funded agenda-promoters with an academic veneer. One of the think tanks the Times’ Eric Lipton and Brooke Williams raked over the coals was the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which published a report advocating the expansion of drone sales while being funded by drone makers, namely General Atomics. The Times noted that the study’s lead author initiated meetings with Defense Department officials and congressional staff to push for the recommendations, which also included setting up a new Pentagon office to give more focus to acquisition and deployment of drones. The center also stressed the need to ease export limits at a conference it hosted at its headquarters featuring top officials from the Navy, the Air Force and the Marine Corps. The Times pointed out that CSIS is funded largely by Western and Gulf monarchy governments, arms dealers and oil companies, such as Raytheon, Boeing, Shell, the United Arab Emirates, US Department of Defense, UK Home Office, General Dynamics, Exxon Mobil, Northrop Grumman, Chevron and others. That CSIS would promote the expansion of the military and surveillance state is predictable, since that’s who pays its bills; what the Times revealed was a specific, rather direct example of this, using heretofore secret documents. Since it was the Times that broached the topic, let’s look at what CSIS fellows have written or said in the Times over the past year: CSIS op-ed (12/3/15) hyping the threat of ISIS and by implication calling for more surveillance of Americans CSIS op-ed (2/18/16) calling for an “international precedent” for an encryption backdoor CSIS op-ed (2/23/16) calling for an encryption backdoor CSIS senior fellow (5/17/16) helping the US military with its pro-LGBT (aka “woke imperialism”) rebranding efforts CSIS fellow (5/27/16) saying that Africa was no longer seen by the US through a “peacekeeping lens” but was now a battlefield with enemies that could potentially threaten the US CSIS “military budget expert” (6/10/16) criticizing Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter for not moving fast enough on its new cybersecurity recruitment initiative CSIS op-ed (7/5/16) calling for more biometric security and dismissing privacy concerns as “irrational” “nervous dystopian projections” CSIS fellow (7/8/16) saying the White House hasn’t “fully acknowledged” the shift in Europe and how it could damage NATO CSIS senior fellow (7/9/16) insisting nuclear weapons remain in Europe due to increased threats from Russia CSIS fellow (8/5/16) insisting Boko Haram is “increasingly unstable” One of the starkest examples of CSIS promoting the agenda of its funders—one that FAIR (9/1/15) noted at the time—was a New York Times article (8/20/15) last year, warning about the US “lagging behind” Russia in the Arctic Ocean, that was based almost entirely on a CSIS report warning of “Russia’s strategic reach” near the North Pole. As we noted in September, the piece failed to mention Russia has 14 times the Arctic coast of the US, and thus it made sense it would have roughly that many more icebreaker ships. The “gap” was just asserted, based primarily on US military say-so and a CSIS report that breathlessly insisted Russia was getting the better of the US in the Arctic. The New York Times even helped out, using a wildly deceptive map implying Arctic parity where none existed: In May, the torrent of media articles hyping the “Arctic gap” asserted by CSIS and the US military paid dividends, with Congress allocating an additional $1 billion to the Navy’s budget to pay for icebreaker ships. While the contracts are not awarded yet, Lockheed Martin—one of CSIS’s top donors—is said by market analysts the Motley Fool (7/24/16) to be an “obvious choice” to build the new fleet. Their runner up to build the new icebreakers? Huntington Ingalls Industries, who also donated generously to CSIS. No instances of CSIS calling in the New York Times for defunding or de-escalating the military state could be found by FAIR. It could be a coincidence that CSIS always errs on the side of more military spending, more surveillance, more hyping of threats from Russia and ISIS, and it could be that these conclusions were reached based on a dispassionate examination of the facts. Or the New York Times could read its own reporting, and treat deep-state think tank war boosters as just that. [END] --- [1] Url: https://fair.org/home/nyt-exposes-a-favorite-source-as-war-industry-flack/ Published and (C) by Fairness & Accuracy in Media Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/fair/