Thursday, December 19, 2013

60 minutes on NSA

I never watch US TV news anymore. I wasted enough time in my past on that. I stick to print US news now.  But I made a point to watch 60 minutes on the NSA.  1) I don't fault the critics of the report for objecting to the segments but I fault anyone who ever treated 60 minutes as a news show. It is a lousy propaganda and entertainment show.  The tobacco story should have been enough to get it off the air from a news stand point. 2) the presenter of the story is a man, who aside from his boring delivery and personality, switches regularly between government and media and only because he once arranged for an interview with Bin Laden. 3) the report is so dumb that at one point they take a rubix cube to an NSA employee to solve it in one minute (it took him 1 minute and 35 seconds).  As if this qualifies a person to an intelligence job or as if this proves one's intelligence.  4) not one single critic of the NSA was shown or even cited.  5) the viewer is basically told to just trust the government and that all will be well. 6) I thought to myself, this report on NSA would not be different than a report on Syrian or Iraqi or Saudi secret police if those regimes allow such a report, and they should.