Podcast Show #13

The Boiling Frogs Presents Kristina Borjesson

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Kristina Borjesson relates her experiences and provides analysis of the current state of investigative and enterprise journalism in the US. She discusses the drastic decline in true investigative journalism, the role of the internet and the globalization of reporting, and the clashing of the two cultures: traditional media & independent reporters. Ms. Borjesson presents shocking real life examples illustrating behind the scene realities and pressures involved in Network TV, including HDNet and Dan Rather, and others. She talks about government and ownership pressures, and how these pressures successfully shape presented news, the two significant missing ingredients in news reporting today, and more!


KristinaBorjesson Internationally acclaimed for her work, Kristina Borjesson has produced for major American and European television networks and published two groundbreaking books on the problems of the U.S. press: Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press & Feet to the Fire: the Media After 9/11, Top Journalists Speak out. Her awards include an Emmy and Murrow Award in TV, and the National Press Club’s Arthur Rowse award for Media Criticism and two Independent Publishers Awards for her books.


Here is our guest Kristina Borjesson unplugged!

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State Secrets Privilege: The Puppets & Puppet Masters

It’s Time to Get the Facts Straight

SupremeCourtI want to revisit a topic which happens to be extremely important to me, both personally and politically, and even more important to our civil liberties.

Some of you have already read my brief piece on Richard Horn & the CIA dishing out $3 million to buy silence in this narco scandal. Those of you who have not read it click here and read it – because this story also goes to the heart of a very significant and ongoing issue: The State Secrets Privilege.

My recent heads-up piece on Horn focused mainly on the CIA’s attempt to hush another narco scandal where the agency was directly and actively involved. Although I introduced Horn as ‘another recipient of the government’s State Secrets Privilege invocation’, I didn’t delve into the significance of this case on this repeatedly used and abused draconian privilege. This was partly due to wrongly assuming that the media, at least the alternative media, would have gotten all over it since lately the SSP has been a quite fashionable and talked about topic among the wanna-be progressive community. Well, I was wrong. Despite the scandalous nature of the case, and despite the massive implications to SSP, those who’ve been publicizing themselves and cashing in using SSP did not touch or mention the case.

The last time I wrote about the State Secrets Privilege and how it was being misrepresented and twisted by puppets in the media my blood was very close to reaching the boiling point. This time, with this recent Horn case and its direct SSP implications, my blood actually did reach the boiling point. In fact it is boiling now!

Here are a few excerpts from my previous piece on the State Secrets Privilege, starting with the intro:

During the past few months I have been actively following the latest activity on the state secrets privilege (SSP). First, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this issue of extreme importance to our civil liberties and constitutional rights was finally getting long-over-due and deserved attention from the media. After all, the memories of fighting SSP in the federal courts all the way up to the Supreme Court, holding press conferences together with the ACLU to bring needed media attention to this draconian abuse, making the rounds in Congress to have them address this ‘privilege’ through legislation to restrict its misuse and abuse, are still fresh and vivid for me.

Then I started detecting some troubling common trends showing up in media reports and subsequently in discussions and statements within Congress. The most suspicious of these came in the form of sanitizing major SSP abuse cases from reports put forth by both the mainstream media and some in alternative publications. The first invocation of the SSP by the Bush Administration was in my case. Back then, if you had done a Google search on ‘state secrets privilege’ you would have come up with only ‘7’ results; three of them repeats. After successfully getting away with SSP invocation in my case, the administration opened the flood gates for others. Now I invite you to search all the archived news reports on SSP in the last year or so. As you will see, in every single report in which the abuses of SSP and its history are cited, you will not find this first case; my case. Further, if you were to look for other major abuses of SSP, such as the Barlow Case, you will find none. The valid cases cited are mainly limited to:

I then went on citing the cases covered by the MSM and pseudo-alternative alike: Khalid Al-Masri, Maher Arar, Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, and Binyam Mohamed. Read more

Podcast Show #12

The Boiling Frogs Presents Joe Lauria

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Joe Lauria relates the latest developments in the United Nations, including the controversies involving the elections in Afghanistan, the removal of Peter Galbraith, and the liability of having an American as the second man in office. He discusses the recent UN report on the Taliban’s funding, including heroin related funds and associated outcomes, the chronic and widespread corruption within the Afghan government, and President Obama’s dilemma when it comes to Af-Pak. The interview also includes his perspective on factors contributing to the fading away of the traditional roles of the press in the US, the media blackout on ‘deep politics,’ shortcomings of amateur news blogs, and more!


Joe-LauriaJoe Lauria is an author, foreign affairs correspondent and investigative reporter. He has covered the United Nations for 19 years for numerous newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the London Daily Telegraph, the Montreal Gazette and the Johannesburg Star. Joe is a member of the Sunday Times of London’s investigative unit. He is co-author of A Political Odyssey, a look at America’s defense industry and the false threats it thrives on.

Here is our guest Joe Lauria unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Author & Journalist Joe Lauria Invites You to Support Boiling Frogs Post

Boiling Frogs Post: Filling the gaps in in-depth coverage

JoeLauriaEndorsementThe crisis in journalism was brought on mostly by industry consolidation and by media owners in denial about wasting billions on consultants, who recommended firing reporters and displacing serious news with puzzles and celebrity-worship, even of business and political leaders. The public must depend on the press for protection against abuses of power by those leaders, not to be distracted from them.

Beneath news of political campaigns, bills in Congress and the latest wars is a deep politics that is going largely uncovered: first, because its participants try to keep it secret and second, because Resources for in-depth reporting have been sharply cut back.    

Amateurish blogs, though raising issues the established media doesn’t, can’t be a substitute for serious journalism. This site is an attempt to fill the gaps in in-depth coverage. I appeal to readers to generously support it.

Joe Lauria

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Joe Lauria is an author, foreign affairs correspondent and investigative reporter. He has covered the United Nations for 19 years for numerous newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the London Daily Telegraph, the Montreal Gazette and the Johannesburg Star. Joe is a member of the Sunday Times of London’s investigative unit. He is co-author of A Political Odyssey, a look at America’s defense industry and the false threats it thrives on.

This project is solely dependent on your donations. Your contributions will allow us to:

  • Purchase and publish investigative news stories and exposés
  • Bring to you in-depth commercial free Podcast interviews
  • Present independent editorials and analyses
  • Showcase original editorial cartoons
  • Facilitate lively discussions
  • Maintain & Manage this Website

We need your support to make this project a reality. Please contribute what you can, and many thanks for all you do.

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Peter Lance Invites You to Join & Support Boiling Frogs Post

Boiling Frogs Post Covers “What Lies Beneath

PeterLanceEndorsementIn the last thirty-five years since I’ve worked as an investigative reporter, the “main stream media” (the MSM) has become increasingly narrow in its focus.  While liberal-bashing critics like Bernard Goldberg and Ann Coulter insist that the press is manipulated and controlled by the left, most of the MSM assignment editors use the uber-right, Obama-hating Drudge Report as their home page.

So, just as on Capitol Hill, we’re left with coverage on the extremes or a bland kind of surface gloss of the headlines. The news magazines of what used to be the three major networks: 48 Hours, Dateline and my alma mater 20/20 are filled with safe “true crime” stories vs. the kind of rip-the-lid-off the scandal-of-the-week brand of journalism practiced in the late 1980’s when I was at ABC News.

The province of the investigative reporter is “what lies beneath;” that region below the surface; beyond the major headlines and talking heads. It’s our stock and trade to cover that part of reality that often causes “we the people,” the most harm. Remember, it was the 7/8ths of the iceberg below the surface that sunk The Titanic.

That’s the area where I live and work and I’m happy and honored to say that, from time to time I’ll be reporting my findings here. But to keep Sibel Edmond’s incredibly valuable site up and running, it takes contributions. So please support boilingfrogspost.com

Peter Lance

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Peter Lance is a five-time Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and former correspondent for ABC News. He has covered hundreds of stories worldwide for 20/20, Nightline, and World News Tonight. Peter is the author of 1000 Years for Revenge, Cover Up, and the novel First Degree Burn. For more details visit Peter’s website.

This project is solely dependent on your donations. Your contributions will allow us to:

  • Purchase and publish investigative news stories and exposés
  • Bring to you in-depth commercial free Podcast interviews
  • Present independent editorials and analyses
  • Showcase original editorial cartoons
  • Facilitate lively discussions
  • Maintain & Manage this Website

 
We need your support to make this project a reality. Please contribute what you can, and many thanks for all you do.


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James Bamford Endorses Boiling Frogs Post

‘Help Wake up the American public before the water gets too hot to climb out of the pot’

JamesBamfordMy congratulations to Sibel Edmonds on the launch of “Boiling Frogs”!  At a time when most mainstream news organizations are constantly following the beat of the same few drummers, there is a critical need for independent, alternative, and new media to expand the boundaries of thought.  For nearly a decade, Sibel has fought against excessive government secrecy, built up an organization of more than one hundred national security whistleblowers, and exposed government attempts to cover-up abuses.

Now with BOILINGFROGSPOST.COM, Sibel is taking the next step and establishing a beautifully designed website to give voice to these ideas, opinions, and viewpoints that are largely missing from the narrow stream of daily journalism. It is an appropriate metaphor.  Like frogs slowly boiling as the water temperature gradually increases, many Americans have slowly grown to accept as normal increasing governmental abuse, from torture to warrantless wiretapping to wars based on lies. 

Supporting Boiling Frogs is an important way to wake up the American public before the water gets too hot to climb out of the pot.

James Bamford

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James Bamford is one of the country’s leading writers on intelligence and national security issues. His books includeThe Puzzle Palace,” “Body of Secrets,” “A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies,” and most recently “ The Shadow Factory”. Mr. Bamford coproduced NOVA’s “The Spy Factory”, which was based on his latest book. He has written for many magazines, including investigative cover stories for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine and The Los Angeles Times Magazine, and is a contributing writer for Rolling Stone. His 2005 Rolling Stone article “The Man Who Sold the War” won a National Magazine Award for reporting. He also spent a decade as the Washington investigative producer for the ABC News program, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, and taught at the University of California, Berkeley, as a distinguished visiting professor.


This project is solely dependent on your donations. Your contributions will allow us to:

Purchase and publish investigative news stories and exposés
Bring to you in-depth commercial free Podcast interviews
Present independent editorials and analyses
Showcase original editorial cartoons
Facilitate lively discussions
Maintain & Manage this Website

 
We need your support to make this project a reality. Please contribute what you can, and many thanks for all you do.


PLEASE DONATE NOW