Legitimate questions about sources (2 of 3): Robert Fisk, Max Blumenthal, and Ben Norton

Two journalist-activists whose reporting that I have appreciated in the past, Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton, have recently come under fire for basing some of their antiwar claims on dubious information and bad sources.

For instance, Sulome Anderson, the daughter of Terry Anderson, explains Why I’m Suing Max Blumenthal and Benjamin Norton Medium 12/20/2018:

The very few times in my career there have been substantive errors in my reporting, I immediately issued corrections, which is standard procedure. And yet, like so many journalists, whether I make mistakes or not, every time I publish a story that counters Russian interests in Syria, I am met with a barrage of insults and accusations on social media — all of which I can handle, as an adult and a professional.

What I cannot handle is having my personal safety and that of other reporters endangered when Mr. Blumenthal, Mr. Norton and their associates accuse us of being spies or government propagandists. I won’t tolerate my contacts being put at risk when those attacks prompt people close to Hezbollah to report me for my “lies” and “invented sources.” I refuse to watch as their targeted campaigns threaten the lives of rescue workers and doctors in Syria, the safety of freelance journalists in Nicaragua and the careers of reporters and academics who dare to investigate their own unsavory associations and ties to Russia.

Controversies like these are another illustration of why we need reliable, professional media. Which doesn't mean that they can't be engaged media with particular social or foreign policy concerns.

I haven't followed the White Helmet controversy closely enough provide any particular insights on that issue. From what I do know, I'll stick with the general picture conveyed by Janine di Giovanni in one of the articles Anderson links, Why Assad and Russia Target the White Helmets NYRDaily 10/16/2018:

... the White Helmets’ financial backing is not the real reason why the pro-Assad camp is so bent on defaming them. Since 2015, the year the Russians began fighting in Syria, the White Helmets have been filming attacks on opposition-held areas with GoPro cameras affixed to their helmets. Syria and Russia have claimed they were attacking only terrorists, yet the White Helmets have captured footage of dead and injured women and children under the rubble. According to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, as well as eyewitness accounts, Putin’s bombers have targeted civilians, schools, hospitals, and medical facilities in opposition-held areas, a clear violation of international law. “This, above all, is what the Russians hated,” Ben Nimmo, a fellow at the Atlantic Council specializing in Russian disinformation, told me. “That the White Helmets are filming war crimes.”

Di Giovanni specifies the funding sources:

Part of the White Helmets’ funding comes from the British government’s Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, which oversees various global projects such as building dams in Central Asia and preventing sexual violence during war. Le Mesurier confirmed that the total UK government funding of the White Helmets had been about £38.5 million ($51 million) over a five-year period to March 2018. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) provided about $33 million over a similar period. The Qatari Red Cross has made a donation of about $1 million to the White Helmets, and other funding comes from the German, Canadian, Danish, and Japanese governments. These funds support the group’s budget of approximately $30 million a year, much of which is spent on equipment such as ambulances, fire trucks, and heavy diggers to recover bodies from collapsed buildings, and stipends for individual White Helmet volunteers, which are $150 a month.

Here is where longer memories can complicate things. USAID, for instance, was often used in the 1960s as cover for CIA operations. Supposedly, they stopped doing that. But the thing about secret services like the CIA is that a lot of what they do is secret. Which is why people are well-advised to keep in the back of their minds the ironic saying, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you."

But plain good sense and serious concern for evidence also means that government funding can't be assumed without evidence to mean that the organizations receiving it are acting as propaganda arms of the US government. As Donald Rumsfeld notoriously said about the "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But 15 years after the US and its "coaliton of the willing" took over Iraq and thoroughly searched for those WMDs, none at all were ever found. So any evidence-based judgment at this point would have to conclude with a high degree of confidence that they weren't there.

In any case, the White Helmets have been doing life-saving work. So it's reckless and irresponsible for anyone to accuse them of spying or government propaganda work without very good evidence. Which is the point that Sulome Anderson stresses for journalists, as well.

Di Giovanni discusses concerns about the positions Max Blumenthal has been taking. And she mentions others, as well, including British journalist Robert Fisk, who in 2018 questioned reports blaming the Syrian government for a gas attack in Douma, Syria, in a controversial report, The search for truth in the rubble of Douma – and one doctor’s doubts over the chemical attack Independent 04/17/2018. But what Di Giovanni cites is a 2012 "government-sponsored mass killing in the town of Daraya".

Her comment about Fisk is confusing. She writes:

In 2012, after I went undercover and reported a government-sponsored mass killing in the town of Daraya, which was later verified by Human Rights Watch and “characterized by the UN appointed Independent International Commission of Inquiry as a ‘massacre,’” according to Amnesty International, my government visa was revoked and I was told I would be thrown in an “Assad prison” if I tried coming back. (Robert Fisk, who entered the town accompanied by government forces the day after I reported, denied any atrocities on their part, and continues to enjoy access to government-occupied Syria.)

But Fisk's report of the time says (Inside Daraya - how a failed prisoner swap turned into a massacre Independent 08/29/2011):

Being the first western eyewitness into the town yesterday was as frustrating as it was dangerous. The bodies of men, women and children had, of course, been moved from the cemetery where many of them were found; and when we arrived in the company of Syrian troops at the Sunni Muslim graveyard – divided by the main road through Daraya – snipers opened fire at the soldiers, hitting the back of the ancient armoured vehicle in which we made our escape. Yet we could talk to civilians out of earshot of Syrian officials – in two cases in the security of their own homes – and their narrative of last Saturday’s mass killing of 245 men, women and children suggested that the atrocities were far more widespread than supposed. [my emphasis]

Fisk is a very experienced Britsh Middle East reporter who has lived for years in Beirut and has extensive contacts there. He earned the hostility of American and British war fans for his critical reporting on Afghanistan and Iraq. But it was because of their accuracy and his normally well-founded critical judgments, not because he was a sucker for propagandists or scamsters. His book The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East (2005) provides excellent recent historical background on Western policy in the Greater Middle East.

His apparently thinly-sourced article of 04/17/2018 on Douma was questioned as being too credulous. For example: Bethania Palma, Snopes Critics Slam Viral Stories Claiming Douma Chemical Attack Victims Died from ‘Dust’ 04/20/2018, where Fisk's report is mentioned in this way (internal links omitted):

Many of the stories have been published by the Russian state-controlled propaganda network RT and conspiratorial sites such as ZeroHedge, regurgitating a report by storied war correspondent Robert Fisk writing for the Independent. The stories focus on a claim that first appeared in another Kremlin-controlled outlet, Sputnik, which featured two Syrian medical responders telling the Russian military that scores of people who convulsed and died on 7 April 2018 outside Damascus did so as a result of dust or smoke inhalation, not from a chemical attack, as is widely suspected.

The reader can compare that paragraph to Fisk's report linked above to see whether it reasonably characterizes what Fisk wrote. My own view: not very well.

But see also: OPCW finds ‘chlorinated compounds’ in Syria’s Douma BBC News 07/07/2018; Syria war: What we know about Douma 'chemical attack' BBC News 07/10/2018.

According to the latter report, "Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia had 'irrefutable evidence that this was yet another attack, staged with the participation of special services of one state that is striving to be at the forefront of the Russophobic campaign'." But Fisk's July 7 report doesn't lay blame, it reports on what he saw. And, in any case, that is not the Fisk report that Di Giovanni references. And additional news on the Douma attack since this past summer seem to be remarkably scarce, according to Mr. Google.

In the cases of Blumenthal and Norton, without hashing through the charges against their creditbility further, I'll just say here that I've found their past reporting to be helpful. Blumenthal's investigative reporting detailed in Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party (2009) was a perceptive analysis of the state of the Republican Party's radicalization up to that point. He also did additional reporting after that on Radical Republicans that also seemed solid to me. I blogged on one such instance in Religion and politics: Sympathy for the exorcist 02/27/2009.

I've been more cautious on his Middle East reporting, in part because he sounds a bit too dogmatically certain in some of his polemics. In his case and in Ben Norton's, I try to keep in mind that some of their less cautious claims may be due to an excess of zeal in their opposition to US military interventions they consider unwise. But I do find their continued willingness to appear on RT, especially after 2016, a reason to be reserved about their arguments, both factual and analytical.

The SPLC caused a ruckus with an article that seemed to suggest that Blumental, Norton, and others seemed were particularly influenced by Russia propaganda: The Southern Poverty Law Center Took Down An Article Trying To Connect "Left-Wing" People And "Fascists" After Getting Complaints BuzzFeed News 03/12/2018. The SPLC took the unusual step of withdrawing the article: (Explanation and apology: The multipolar spin: how fascists operationalize left-wing resentment Hatewatch 03/14/2018):

...while the intent of the article, which we thought was clear at the time of publication, was to show only that individuals on the left share some policy views with respect to multipolarism that are also held by the far right and/or appear on far-right media and conferences advocating them, the article did not make that point as clearly as it could or should have.