“Prisoners of Donald Trump.” That’s how longtime NBCreporter and analyst William Arkin described the mainstream media in a scathing letter last week announcing he would be leaving the network, accusing the media of warmongering while ignoring the “creeping fascism of homeland security.” He issued the blistering critique after a 30-year relationship with NBC, calling for “Trump-free” media days and a reckoning about how the network encourages a state of perpetual warfare. We speak with Arkin, whose award-winning reporting has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post. He is the author of many books, including “Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State.”
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: “Prisoners of Donald Trump.” That’s
how longtime NBC reporter
and analyst William Arkin described the mainstream media in a scathing letter last
week announcing he would be leaving the network, accusing the media of
warmongering while ignoring the, quote, “creeping fascism of homeland
security.” Arkin issued the blistering critique after a 30-year relationship
with NBC,
calling for Trump-free media days and a reckoning about how the network
encourages a state of perpetual warfare.
In the memo, he writes, quote, “I find it
disheartening that we do not report the failures of the generals and national
security leaders. I find it shocking that we essentially condone continued
American bumbling in the Middle East and now Africa through our ho-hum
reporting.”
He continues, quote, “Of course [Trump] is
an ignorant and incompetent impostor. And yet I’m alarmed at how quick NBC is to
mechanically argue the contrary, to be in favor of policies that just spell
more conflict and more war.”
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined by William Arkin, longtime NBCreporter and
analyst. His award-winning reporting has appeared in The New
York Times, the Los
Angeles Times, The
Washington Post. He’s the author of many books, including Top Secret America: The Rise of the New
American Security State.
Welcome to Democracy
Now!
WILLIAM ARKIN: Thanks, Amy, for having me on.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you left NBC with
this explosive memo, that not only indicts NBC, your network, says basically NBC, they might
not like this, but doesn’t stand out among the crowd of corporate networks in
dealing with this issue of perpetual war.
WILLIAM ARKIN: Everything I said in this letter, which was a goodbye letter to
my colleagues at NBC,
applies to all of the mainstream networks, applies to CNN and Fox, as well. So, I’m
not really singling out NBC.
I was just most familiar with it.
And my decision not to renew my contract
was really one of thinking to myself that I wanted to stand back and think more
about what we needed to do in order to change our national security policy.
We’ve been at war now for 18 years. I don’t think anybody could argue that
there’s a country in the Middle East that’s safer today than it was in 2001.
The generals and the national security leadership that runs the country, and
now also is the commentators and the analysts who populate the news media,
really are not people who we can look to as saying, “Wow! They won a war. They
avoided a war. They achieved some magnificent objective.” In fact, they are the
custodians and the architects of perpetual warfare. And it seemed to me like
there needed to be both a different voice and a solution. And I want to step back
myself and think about how we can end this era of perpetual war and how we can
build some real security, both in the United States and abroad.
Please continue this transcript, or to watch the full video interview, please go here: https://www.democracynow.org/2019/1/9/longtime_reporter_leaves_nbc_saying_media?fbclid=IwAR2AjkVAvCIewpNvct3O6kcK8P9EE2D7LzOfBEj7wNE-GId33dsvT9FWpYU
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