{"id":369842,"date":"2018-07-18T02:42:05","date_gmt":"2018-07-18T01:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/we-need-robust-debate-in-reporting-on-russia-not-suffocating-consensus\/"},"modified":"2018-07-18T02:42:05","modified_gmt":"2018-07-18T01:42:05","slug":"we-need-robust-debate-in-reporting-on-russia-not-suffocating-consensus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/we-need-robust-debate-in-reporting-on-russia-not-suffocating-consensus\/","title":{"rendered":"We Need Robust Debate in Reporting on Russia, Not Suffocating Consensus"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>President Trump drew bipartisan outrage from lawmakers and media outlets Monday after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and lashing out at his own intelligence agencies over the investigation of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, calls the Trump and Putin press conference \u201cbizarre and surreal,\u201d but says the media reaction lacked perspective: \u201cI think that people kind of lost their bearings.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span><span>\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong><span>\u00a0<\/span>Katrina vanden Heuvel, you\u2019re the person who credentialed Sam Husseini, or your news organization,<span>\u00a0<\/span>The Nation \u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">KATRINA<\/span><span>\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"caps\">VANDEN<\/span><span>\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"caps\">HEUVEL<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0The Nation.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span><span>\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong><span>\u00a0<\/span> \u2014 credentialed Sam. Can you talk about what happened yesterday?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">KATRINA<\/span><span>\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"caps\">VANDEN<\/span><span>\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"caps\">HEUVEL<\/span>:<\/strong><span>\u00a0<\/span>Well, I can talk about the importance of a journalist like Sam Husseini or a journalist like Amy Goodman or Juan Gonz\u00e1lez in a culture in which tough questions are rarely asked, whether at press conferences or in other formats. These are times when the comfortable should be afflicted by tough, tough questions. I remember \u2014 dates me \u2014 the run-up press conference with George W., the run-up to the Iraq War. There was not a single tough question. Maybe Helen Thomas tried. And I think the idea of journalists as lapdogs or stenographers to power is a failure, a malfunction of our democracy, which is already, as we\u2019ve learned, under siege.<\/p>\n<p>So I think Sam Husseini has a long record of asking tough questions. He goes to State Department conferences. He also does something quite clever. I don\u2019t think he does it anymore, but Stakeout.com, a project he started. He would go to the studios, where, as you know \u2014 you\u2019ve done those shows, Amy, the Sunday talk shows, where you don\u2019t learn much. You get talking points. And he would ask \u2014 try to ask tough questions outside. I believe he got suspended from the National Press Club in 2011 for asking pointed questions of a Saudi foreign minister or Saudi&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/video\/we-need-robust-debate-in-reporting-on-russia-not-suffocating-consensus\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Trump drew bipartisan outrage from lawmakers and media outlets Monday after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and lashing out at his own intelligence agencies over the investigation of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, calls the Trump and Putin press conference [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-369842","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369842\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}