Granted, the online comments don’t mean that Ray Nagin, or the Danziger defendants or Renee Gill Pratt are suddenly innocent. But they raise the question of whether those figures — and numerous others — received a fair trial. If the Danziger defendants were right that the government waged “a secret public relations campaign” on the internet— in other words, if the “lone wolves” did in fact operate as a pack — we’ll have to steel ourselves for a flurry of (grueling) retrials and re-sentencings.And I think I've figured out the real reason the political media is so concerned about these activities. It's territorial. Usually promoting the unquestioned benevolence of federal prosecutors while smearing their targets in the news is their job.
Friday, March 21, 2014
Hey that's our job!
Moseley's description suggests we think about the "comments" scandal at the US Attorney's Office as a coordinated plan to run a sort of online propaganda campaign against federal prosecution targets.
Labels:
Jan Mann,
Jim Letten,
media,
New Orleans,
politics,
Sal Perricone
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1 comment:
Is the media "so concerned," though? I've seen reporting on courtroom developments, and a few waves of news rehash "analysis" and "tsk tsk" punditry… However, outside the blogosphere, there's been scant few investigations in this 2 year old mega-story. For example, the nola.com comment archives are the main (semi-accessible) evidence in this scandal, but there has been scant "news-gathering" from mainstream outlets. What new facts have been unearthed outside the courtroom? We just seem to wait until a defendant identifies a new username or two, and then wait again until the next motion, decision, or judicial investigation… and report what happened. What if, say, there are dozens more usernames? What if it was an unofficial propaganda campaign? That's mind-blowing, on several levels.
Commentgate brings up some very large questions and issues, the largest of which involve basic notions of justice, freedom of speech, privacy and government transparency and accountability.
If the media is "so concerned," like you say, why do we know so little about the breadth, depth and implications of Commentgate?
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