CNN: We never learned our lesson from the Eason Jordan era.
Washington Post: Hold our beer.
Alternate headline: American Public Finds New Reasons to Hate the Media.
On Friday, the Washington Post accused the US military of a potential war crime. Its reporters in Iran took photos of what were purported to be anti-tank land mines supposedly tossed into residential areas, including in Shiraz, supposedly to deter the movement of mobile missile launchers (via Twitchy):
Images posted to social media Thursday show what experts said are U.S. land mines dispersed across a residential area in southern Iran, in what appears to be the first instance in more than two decades of American forces using the weapons.
The photos show American BLU-91/B anti-tank land mines, which are released from an aircraft as part of the Gator mine scattering system, according to four munitions experts who reviewed the imagery at The Washington Post’s request. The United States is the only party in the Iran war known to possess the system.
The Post claimed that the report came from an "independent" Canadian journalist, after quoting Iran's propagandists about the effect of the mines:
In a Telegram post Thursday, the Iranian State News Agency said at least one person had been killed and others injured as a result of the “explosive packages that resemble cans,” and it warned people to stay away from “any misshapen, deformed, or unusual metal cans.”
Central Command, which oversees U.S. operations in the region, declined to comment.
Images of the land mines were posted on social media platforms by Dimitri Lascaris, a Canadian independent journalist currently reporting from Iran and host of the “Reason2Resist” podcast, and state media outlet Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.
Ahem. For most rational people, all of that would raise a number of red flags on reliability. Just the fact that the IRGC had promoted this narrative is reason enough for skepticism, given its propensity for making absurd AI-based imagery and video to substantiate outlandish claims of Iranian victories or American setbacks. Also, a single glance at Lascaris' Substack should have disabused anyone of the notion that Lascaris is "independent" at all in the editorial sense, with headlines such as:
- Another Israeli War Crime In Iran
- To 'Protect' Iranians From Iran's Police, U.S. and Israel Massacre Civilians
- They're 'Liberating' Iranians By Murdering Them
- Who Engages In More Censorship: Israel or Iran?
- I'm Off To Iran To Cover The Crimes Of The Epstein Regime
The last headline, posted nine days before the Post's headline, should have informed WaPo editors of the reliability of these "independent" reports. The use of the term "The Epstein Regime" doesn't exactly scream independence or objective analysis.
Sometime over the weekend, the Post's editors must have gotten enough feedback to rethink this report ... a little. Rather than retract it, or rewrite it to discuss Lascaris' obvious hostility toward the US and Israel, the editors appended a "correction" at the end. In very small and greyish type, too:
A previous version of this article incorrectly described Dimitri Lascaris, a Canadian independent journalist, as being in Iran with permission from the Iranian government and said that the people accompanying him were government representatives. He said he was invited by the state media outlet Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting and that their employees acted as guides and interpreters.
Basically, Lascaris got invited to disseminate IRGC propaganda. And the Washington Post amplified it without ever questioning its reliability.
That brings us back to CNN's dodge on the "independence" of its reporting. Newsbusters' Nick Fondacaro blasted CNN over this issue on Thursday after PBS revealed that the IRGC had controlled their reporters through interpreters assigned to them, and made it clear that CNN and Sky News had the same issue:
CNN and Sky News have maintained their claims that their journalists in Iran had complete editorial control over where and what they covered. They insisted they weren’t guided or followed by a minder, but they did hire translators. But on Thursday’s Morning Joe, PBS Frontline journalist and producer Sebastian Walker noted that when he was in Iran last year, the “government affiliated translators” he had “essentially act as minders” and made his job more difficult.
Amid an interview about Iran and Walker’s documentary for Frontline regarding the aftermath of the strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities last year, co-host Jonathan Lemire wanted to know:
So what is your sense as best, you know, to the Iranian people? How are they processing all of this? Are they able to get information? Do you think they're even they're aware of what is happening within their own borders?
“So yeah, I mean, during our filming trip, it's, it's very challenging to work as a journalist on the ground in Iran. There are a lot of limitations,” Walker said.
Walker went on to completely contradict the claims CNN and Sky News had been making about how their reporters purportedly didn’t have any minders, calling out his translator as one.
At least PBS disclosed this issue. CNN and Sky News want access badly enough to go the full Eason Jordan to keep it. What the Post did was worse, because their own access wasn't even the issue; instead, they outsourced their amplification of IRGC propaganda. Despicable.
Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.
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