Hacker Cinema
Dirty Wars
2013 · Film · documentary · 87 min
Directed by Rick Rowley
Investigative journalist, Jeremy Scahill is pulled into an unexpected journey as he chases down the hidden truth behind America's expanding covert wars, and examines how the US government has responded to international terrorist threats in ways that seem to go against the established laws of the land.
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4 comments on Hacker News
> Journos think they have everything all figured out before they even investigate.
Matt Taibbi didn't have a story before he began investigating the financial sector corruption leading up to and following the 2008 crash.
Jeremy Scahill didn't know the details of the Gardez massacre until he got a contact to actually drive him to the scene. (An act so dangerous I believe he called "incredibly stupid" in his documentary "Dirty Wars.")
I have no idea what David Barstow thought he had figured out when he wrote the Pulitzer-winning "Pentagon Pundits" story for NYT. But the evidence he uses in the story clearly backs up the meat of his claims, and a GAO report corroborates it. So why would it even matter in this case?
For Seymour Hersh's Abu Graib abuse story his pre-conceived notions are similarly irrelevant due to the photographic evidence.
Ronan Farrow's preconceived notions about the Harvey Weinstein case are similarly irrelevant.
Hell, consider the leaker to Project Veritas who somehow got the footage of Amy Robach talking about ABC shelving her story on Epstein. What's the relevance of Project Veritas' goal or political bent given that was a genuine video of Robach passionately discussing the shelved story?
> I'll just say if you notice how dumb journos are when they cover subject matter you're a unrelated professional in, being the "who" in receiving end of news coverage lets you see just how much they want to draw conclusions for the rest of the world unless you work on visibility to counter their obvious narrative angles.
But for the most impactful ones it's almost certainly not the same "dumb journo" from your area of expertise writing the story. Given that newspapers hire writers with as varied talents as Barstow and, say, Thomas Friedman, your shortcut seems quite likely to lead to a flurry of "dumb journo" false positives.
The patterns of drone strikes and raids points to JSOC as processing an ever-growing kill list directed by the POTUS. Feel free to peruse Dirty Wars docu.
The oscar nominated documentary Dirty Wars is good background on this program (basically about Jeremy Scahill & his investigation into JSOC).
The documentary Dirty Wars suggests that the Obama administration added an increasing number of names to JSOC's kill list based on variable confidence intelligence. Isn't this the definition of mission creep?