Thursday, June 25, 2009

More on PuffHo's Nico Pitney

Before you read this post, you should scan the one below, which discusses how Huffington Post's Nico Pitney played the "Jeff Gannon" role at a recent Obama news conference.

Apparently, Obama called on Pitney knowing that he (Pitney) was going to ask a question based on "tweets" information from Iran. Many of those Twitterings, it seems, are false -- disinformation. (Check out the links in the previous post, especially this one.)

A discussion of this affair on an NYT site evinced this interesting comment by someone called Jirati. Since Pitney got onto my radar screen only recently, I don't know if everything Jirati has to say is true -- in fact, I think that he (presuming Jirati is male) goes seriously off-track. I offer these words not as hard facts but as grounds for discussion. If you can confirm or deny, please share...
The trouble here lies in the fact that Pitney was writing puff pieces for Sen. Joe Lieberman with Sam Stein in Huffpo prior to his stoking Iran mayhem gig; and, hit pieces against Obama’s health care reform initiatives.

The recent change of HuffPO CEOs right at the time of the Iranian elections were taking place, and the fact that ‘liberal’ HuffPo’s new CEO donated to Bush-Cheney 2004 primary campaign creates a lot more questions.

Not to mention the mysterious 25 million cash infusion to HuffPo recently for an proven, unprofitable information business model.

Many seriously consider Pitney to be neocon potted plant to stoke agitation and violent regime change in Iran.

Many believe he is responsible for deaths and injuries, albeit a second hand and eye for miscreants and vandals to communicate and to avoid law enforcement to restore order on the streets.

Imagine what Washinton’s mayor would do if bus burning and rock-throwing and shooting was happening on Constitution avenue? He’d bring out the cops to restore order and arrest vandals and criminals. There’s no pass for unpeaceful protesters and criminal acts by protesters in Tehran. They should be prosecuted.

Pitney should never have been allowed near the White House or the President, but of course regime change is never a matter of “policy” until yesterday’s press sham..
The third paragraph is definitely true; I've been wondering about that business myself.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some of the tweets I've seen had a phony feel about them. Nothing I could prove, just a feeling.

Looks like my instincts may have been correct.

Anonymous said...

The tweets were all too english and text rich not to be fishy

Anonymous said...

A fair amount of the tweets are likely coming from ex-pats. Hell, I know of one doing that who still has his parents in Iran, and is largely getting information from friends and family in Iran and posting it from here. Thus, I don't think it's as easy to blow off. Personally, I don't really care what Pitney's intentions are, since the video clips he's aggregated on his blog have been real. Is there anyone here who feels that people in Iran expressing frustration are simply illegitimate? From the indirect contacts I have, it seems to be about a lot more than a choice between two candidates. A lot of it appears to be younger based (under 30) where people are tired of morality police setting up checkpoints and feel genuine frustration in having no honored say in the direction their country goes. But, I've not heard any grumblings from the people I know about how the US should be going in there with force.