{"id":1850779,"date":"2023-02-17T09:51:16","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T14:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1850779"},"modified":"2023-02-17T09:53:01","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T14:53:01","slug":"the-sy-hersh-effect-and-the-media-killing-the-messenger-ignoring-the-message","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-sy-hersh-effect-and-the-media-killing-the-messenger-ignoring-the-message\/","title":{"rendered":"The SY Hersh Effect and the Media: Killing the Messenger, Ignoring the Message"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-sy-hersh-effect-and-the-media-killing-the-messenger-ignoring-the-message%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1850779&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47-->\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<div id=\"modal-ready\">\n<h2 class=\"modal-title has-text-align-center\">Sy Hersh Effect: Killing the messenger and ignoring the message<\/h2>\n<div>\n<p>Absolute crickets. That is the sound in the major mainstream media \u2014 both foreign and domestic \u2014 following the charges by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that the United States led a covert operation to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022.<\/p>\n<p>The story. <a href=\"https:\/\/seymourhersh.substack.com\/p\/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream\">released on Hersh\u2019s new Substack last week<\/a>, unleashed a Twitter war between Hersh\u2019s defenders and detractors, but a simple Google search betrays a dearth of mainstream coverage, with only brief reports by<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2023-02-09\/russia-blames-us-for-nord-stream-blasts-threatens-consequences#xj4y7vzkg\"> Bloomberg<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.france24.com\/en\/live-news\/20230208-white-house-rejects-report-that-us-was-behind-nord-stream-sabotage\">Agence France Presse<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.co.uk\/article\/us-bombed-nord-stream-gas-pipelines-claims-investigative-journalist-seymour-hersh-s730dnnfz\">The Times (UK).<\/a> The <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2023\/02\/08\/seymour-hersh-claims-us-navy-behind-nord-stream-2-pipeline-explosion\/\">New York Post<\/a> (a conservative holding of Rupert Murdoch\u2019s media empire). The Washington Times editorial board, which is also very right-leaning, wrote sympathetically on Monday. Newsweek <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/nord-stream-attack-senator-raises-alarms-about-alleged-us-involvement-1780192\">It has also been covered by the media.<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>All other newspapers of record \u2014 the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal \u2014 and European outlets \u2014 BBC, the Guardian, and most German newspapers (an interview on <em>Berliner Zietung <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.berliner-zeitung.de\/politik-gesellschaft\/seymour-hersh-im-interview-joe-biden-sprengte-nord-stream-weil-er-deutschland-nicht-traut-li.317700\">dropped late Wednesday<\/a>\u00a0) \u2014\u00a0 have ignored it. Tucker Carlson and other hosts covered it on FOX News, another Murdoch staple, but the rest of the cable news circuit \u2014 CNN, MSNBC \u2014 are seemingly on board with what appears to be a total MSM blackout.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not a complete blackout, Business Insider <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/russia-embraces-hersh-claims-biden-blew-up-nord-stream-2-2023-2\">published an unflattering report<\/a> topped with this unwieldy headline: \u201cThe claim by a discredited journalist that the US secretly blew up the Nord Stream pipeline is proving a gift to Putin.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Moving outside of this relative void to social media and Substack, there appears to be two primary lines of open attack against Hersh\u2019s reporting, which details the story of a covert unit of expert U.S. Navy divers, directed from the very top of the Biden administration, engaged in sabotage plans that were set into motion \u201cin December of 2021, two months before the first Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>First, critics are seeking to discredit Hersh, who has spent the last 50 years embarrassing the U.S. government with myriad exposes (many of them published in major outlets like the New York Times and New Yorker). His most prominent revelations include the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/1972\/01\/22\/coverup\">My Lai massacre<\/a> by U.S. troops in Vietnam, the massive CIA spy program against Americans called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1974\/12\/22\/archives\/huge-cia-operation-reported-in-u-s-against-antiwar-forces-other.html\">Operation Chaos<\/a> (for which the New York Times called him the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1975\/07\/10\/archives\/the-teller-of-truth.html\">\u201cTeller of Truth\u201d<\/a>) in 1974, and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2004\/05\/10\/torture-at-abu-ghraib\">Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses<\/a> in 2004. Nevertheless, detractors accuse him of engaging in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2015\/5\/11\/8584473\/seymour-hersh-osama-bin-laden\">conspiracy theories<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tabletmag.com\/sections\/news\/articles\/sy-hersh-swings-big-misses-lee-smith\">sloppy reporting<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/slate.com\/news-and-politics\/2015\/05\/seymour-hershs-unreliable-london-review-of-books-investigation-the-national-security-reporters-account-of-the-bin-laden-raid-has-familiar-flaws.html\">bad sourcing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Second, they point to what appears to be \u201csingle sourcing\u201d in Hersh\u2019s Substack report (though he is much more ambiguous about this in his interview with<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/posts\/radio-war-nerd-78596220\"> Radio War Nerd<\/a> this week). Additionally, Twitter and Substack <a href=\"https:\/\/oalexanderdk.substack.com\/p\/blowing-holes-in-seymour-hershs-pipe\">sleuths<\/a>, using OSINT (open source intelligence,) say they\u2019ve found holes in the details (like the class of minesweeper ship involved and where it was located the day Hersh claims the explosives were planted) that cast doubt on his entire story.<\/p>\n<p>But the questions raised about Hersh and his reporting (appropriate or not) do not explain the lack of mainstream coverage of his extremely detailed, 5300-word article, which under any other circumstances should have opened the floodgates of journalistic inquiry. Here remains an extraordinary mystery: Who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, which run from Russia to Germany, are<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nord_Stream_AG\"> majority owned<\/a> (51 percent) by Russian Gazprom, along with German, Dutch and French stakeholders, and had at one time accounted for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-europe-60131520\">35 percent <\/a>of the energy the EU was importing from Russia (via Nord Stream 1)?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, is Hersh correct in highlighting statements from U.S. officials, from Biden on down, as possible tell-tale signs that they wanted to take down Nord Stream 2 long before the Russian invasion? Did Washington have an interest in cutting it off, and would it have gone so far as to sabotage it and then blame the attack on Russia? Why did top State Department official Victoria Nuland <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kO_MclI15YA\">say she was \u201cgratified\u201d <\/a>it was now \u201ca hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea\u201d?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Germany, Sweden, and Denmark are reportedly conducting separate investigations into the pipeline explosions. Last fall the Swedes confirmed it was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/europe\/traces-explosives-found-nord-stream-pipelines-sweden-says-2022-11-18\/\">\u201cgross sabotage\u201d<\/a> and that the attack had the markings of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-ca\/news\/world\/sweden-sees-deliberate-act-of-a-state-actor-in-nord-stream-sabotage\/ar-AA12r4Ff\">\u201cstate actor.\u201d <\/a>After a flurry of elite media and official Washington figures <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2022\/10\/04\/gas-pipeline-sabotage-russia-ukraine-response\/\">pointed fingers <\/a>in Russia\u2019s direction, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/national-security\/2022\/12\/21\/russia-nord-stream-explosions\/\">the Washington Post<\/a> published an unusually off-script report two months ago quoting \u201cEuropean officials\u201d asserting that there was \u201cno evidence\u201d that Russia was behind the attack.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But that was in December, and, until Hersh\u2019s explosive allegations, the story had been languishing in news cycle purgatory. Now, following his claims, the absence of any real reporting on the subject seems even more striking.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf anyone has a more convincing story then come out with it, show us the goods,\u201d charged Mark Ames, co-host of the Radio War Nerd, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/posts\/radio-war-nerd-78596220\">which on Monday hosted Hersh<\/a> in his first interview since the article was posted.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In an on-air exchange about the lack of media coverage, Ames, co-host Gary Brecher, and Hersh criticized what they said was a compliant media that unquestioningly supports U.S government aims in regard to the war in Ukraine. It\u2019s that deference that accounts for the apparent lack of curiosity over the story and the urge to attack the messenger rather than grill officials over Hersh\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe mainstream media, they have decided on their own that we are at war and by \u2018we,\u2019 that means the Acela corridor, the expensive suburbs of the East Coast\u00a0 \u2026 and that means the rules (of journalism) have changed,\u201d Brecher offered.<\/p>\n<p>Ames went a bit further. \u201cI\u2019m not surprised that they\u2019re so incurious about who blew up the pipelines, but I am sickened,\u201d he told Responsible Statecraft in a subsequent exchange.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe corporate media is ignoring Hersh\u2019s story because they\u2019re deeply invested in the U.S. empire and don\u2019t like stories that make the U.S. empire look bad.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>For their part, government officials are flatly denying Hersh\u2019s reporting as an absolute falsehood. When reached, a spokesperson for the National Security Council called the story \u201cutterly false and complete fiction.\u201d Same for the State Department press office: \u201cthis is totally false and complete fiction. We can say categorically that the United States was not involved in any way and we continue to work with Allies and partners to get to the bottom of what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The State Department confirmed that the U.S. is not investigating the pipeline explosion but is aiding its \u201cEuropean partners\u201d as they pursue their own probes into the incident.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHersh\u2019s report does not close the case on who attacked the Nord Stream pipelines. But it does highlight the need for a serious congressional investigation into what happened,\u201d says George Beebe, former veteran CIA analyst and Director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute. He also lamented that the press appears uninterested in the questions raised by Hersh\u2019s reporting.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf the U.S. engaged in what many would regard as an act of war, destroying the critical infrastructure of a NATO ally, without notifying Congress, that raises profound issues of executive-legislative relations, and intra-alliance management, let alone what it might mean for the possibility of Russian retaliation on American infrastructure,\u201d Beebe told RS.<\/p>\n<p>Media critic, author, and podcaster <a href=\"https:\/\/nonzero.org\/\">Robert Wright<\/a> suggests the media blackout is part of an ongoing trend of one-sided and incurious Ukraine War coverage. He pointed to <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2023\/02\/ukraine-russia-war-naftali-bennett-negotiations-peace\">explosive, yet little-reported claims<\/a> by former Israeli prime minister Neftali Bennett earlier this month that the West had killed a tentative peace deal between Russia and Ukraine last March.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn some ways I think MSM\u2019s more or less ignoring Naftali Bennett\u2019s comments on aborted early-March Ukraine negotiations is even less excusable than ignoring the Hersh story,\u201d Wright said in an email exchange with RS. \u201cMSM can always say Hersh is now just a freelancer and was relying basically on a single anonymous source, etc \u2014 but Bennett is an eyewitness to what he\u2019s describing, and he\u2019s the former prime minister of Israel!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think these two data points together \u2014 MSM basically ignoring the Bennett story and not even using the Hersh story as an occasion to revisit the question of who blew up the pipeline (which they could have done even while treating the Hersh story skeptically) \u2014 are more evidence of how committed much of the elite media now is to serving the official American narrative,\u201d said Wright. \u201cAnd in the long run this kind of journalism isn\u2019t good for America.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>RS reporter Connor Echols contributed to this story<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/responsiblestatecraft.org\/2023\/02\/17\/wakanda-forever-scene-triggers-french-defense-minister\/\" title=\"\u2018Wakanda Forever\u2019 scene triggers French defense minister\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"240\" height=\"140\" src=\"https:\/\/responsiblestatecraft.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Screen-Shot-2023-02-16-at-4.55.15-PM-240x140.png\" class=\"attachment-240x140 size-240x140 wp-post-image\" alt=\"\"   style=\"display:none\">\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Sebastien Lecornu took a swipe at the Black Panther film, but perhaps instead he could have learned something about France\u2019s colonial past.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/responsiblestatecraft.org\/2023\/02\/16\/on-ukraine-is-biden-signaling-that-as-long-as-it-takes-may-have-an-end-date\/\" title=\"On Ukraine, is Biden signaling that \u2018as long as it takes\u2019 may have an end-date?\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"240\" height=\"140\" src=\"https:\/\/responsiblestatecraft.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/52019176965_8fa3af048f_k-240x140.jpg\" class=\"attachment-240x140 size-240x140 wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>There seems to be a lot of talk today about scaling back territorial expectations, and moves toward the negotiating table. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/responsiblestatecraft.org\/2023\/02\/15\/how-super-bowl-whitewash-of-tillman-cover-up-was-a-helpful-reminder\/\" title=\"How a Super Bowl whitewash of Tillman cover-up was a helpful reminder\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"240\" height=\"140\" src=\"https:\/\/responsiblestatecraft.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/with-a-banner-displaying-pat-tillmans-40-jersey-cardinals-vice-president-michael-7060b9-1600-240x140.jpg\" class=\"attachment-240x140 size-240x140 wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>20 years later, have we really come to terms with how far the government went to manipulate public opinion into war?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/responsiblestatecraft.org\/2023\/02\/15\/this-diplomat-tried-to-tell-us-saddam-didnt-have-wmd\/\" title=\"This diplomat tried to tell us Saddam didn\u2019t have WMD\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"240\" height=\"140\" src=\"https:\/\/responsiblestatecraft.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/shutterstock_73343545-240x140.jpg\" class=\"attachment-240x140 size-240x140 wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Former UN inspector Rolf Ek\u00e9us wants you to know that the Bush administration blew off a plan that might have avoided the war in Iraq.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sy Hersh Effect: Killing the messenger and ignoring the message Absolute crickets. That is the sound in the major mainstream media \u2014 both foreign and domestic \u2014 following the charges by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that the United States led a covert operation to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022. The &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1899535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[18920,11979,4992,4188,5776,11324],"class_list":["post-1850779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report","tag-hersh","tag-ignoring","tag-killing","tag-media","tag-message","tag-messenger"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1850779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1899535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1850779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1850779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1850779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}