Media

Thank you for the posts, these are all interesting, I'll start with the first reply:

That is pretty true, in fact, there was an article posted on the NY Times a day before the one I linked that is very similar to the original article, however, in this previous article they are more blunt about the suggestion that these payments were supposedly merely a reflection to supposed "similar" iranian payments: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/world/asia/cia-delivers-cash-to-afghan-leaders-office.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Also in this article are more tantalizing suggestions of policy debate amongst US power elites. Quoting a section: "It is not clear that the United States is getting what it pays for. Mr. Karzai’s willingness to defy the United States — and the Iranians, for that matter — on an array of issues seems to have only grown as the cash has piled up. Instead of securing his good graces, the payments may well illustrate the opposite: Mr. Karzai is seemingly unable to be bought."

This is either the tip of the iceberg on a major policy debate between power elites, or a simple deflection that bad things in Afghanistan were not a result of underground cash payments to Afghan power elites, rather, as America's intentions are always great, the money failed to properly buy influence. That's a pretty good deflection…

As far as this long being known before the NY Times reported on the story, that's assuredly true (I've seen Wikileaks documents on payments to Venezuela, I'm sure there's some that detail US-Afghan power relations as well..) I have no doubts that the US has to massively pay off the government of Afghanistan to prevent public opinion in the region from going its own course. That does weaken the NY Times supposed moment of clarity, it seems like this issue simply got too much world-wide publicity and the NY Times simply had to comment on it, but now I have discovered a whopping 3 articles on the topic (look down in this post to see the third), which too me is overkill from the standpoint of the propaganda model. I'm still pretty amazed something like this has been reported and is continuing to be reported in the NY Times..

And thanks for welcoming me to DU Indeed I'm pretty new here, it's an interesting forum, though it's kind of confusing because there is really quite a range of people here. Basically as long as you're not republican… But that's really quite a range of people from simple party platformed democrats to more advanced users (pretty much anybody who's heard of Chomsky)

In response to the second post:

It's true, as the previous poster implied, that the reporting about CIA money so late after other sources reported on the same topic weakens the authenticity of the NY Times pieces. It could be simply the filter that is relying on the "official word" as "news" rather than spending the time and money to authenticate other sources of news that have previously reported on Afghanistan (btw does anybody have any links where I can find details of America's CIA payment involvements in Afghanistan prior to this?)

It does prevent excessive criticism of the media as being simply one giant monolithic iron voice. I think this story might have just gotten so big they simply could no longer ignore it without arousing suspicion.

In response to the third post:

That's all very true, at the end of the day I guess it is simply a statement of the relative likelihood of events to appear in the major news outlets. Quoting from Manufacturing Consent: "It requires a macro, alongside a micro- (story-by-story), view of media operations, to see the pattern of manipulation and systemic bias." It's interesting though, that they keep on with the topic, another article was posted on the NY Times today: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/world/asia/karzai-said-he-was-assured-of-cash-deliveries-by-cia.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hp

Of course, this story really should be on the front page of all newspapers in the country…




I'm still thinking about how to address the issue of the article's appearance in the NYT, though I'm quite sure there are many possibilities as I have stated. I'm going to keep looking into it and make make my own definitive post in the near future. Again, thanks for the replies everyone It's good to know that at least some of the people on this forum would be interested in a topic like this. Rarely do I find similar company, it's great.