June 25, 2013 by David K. Sutton
Meet the Press: Add Lack Of Disclosure To The Fail List
As if host David Gregory’s question to Glenn Greenwald wasn’t bad enough.
Now The Nation’s Lee Fang reports that Meet the Press failed to disclose that Mike Murphy, a “Republican strategist” pundit, and critic of NSA leaker Edward Snowden, has close ties to the National Security Agency.
The Nation — Mike Murphy, one of the Meet the Press pundits, mocked Snowden’s attempt to seek asylum, calling him a “so-called whistleblower,” and charging that “it’s never been easier in human history to be a whistleblower” through official means.
[M]urphy himself has a stake in this debate that arguably ought to have been disclosed. Though Murphy was introduced only as a “Republican strategist,” he is also the founding partner of Navigators Global, a lobbying firm that represents one of the NSA’s largest contractors. Disclosures show that Navigators Global represents Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) on issues before Congress. For at least a decade, CSC has won major contracts from the National Security Agency (NSA). Murphy’s firm has lobbied on behalf of CSC for bills that would expand the NSA’s reach, including the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act or CISPA, which passed the House of Representatives earlier this year.
Just another example of the beltway media establishment and how it caters to powerful interests? Maybe Fang is making too much of this, and maybe I’m guilty of playing along. But if we choose to watch a “news” program like Meet the Press, and I don’t recommend it, shouldn’t we at least have some basic disclosure of who these guests are?
