Frank Ross
BigJournalism.com
7/19/2010
Today the Washington Post published an article from William Arkin, who along with Dana Priest attempts to expose government corruption and waste in the area of intelligence gathering. Regardless of what’s in the piece, serious questions are raised about the credibility of a news piece written by Arkin, who has a lengthy history of activism. According to the Washington Post’s own Howard Kurtz, May 24, 2002:
[Arkin] insists he’s not a journalist.
In fact, he’s an activist who works for the liberal group Human Rights Watch. He also does work for the Air Force. He’s also an academic, an author, a newspaper columnist and a talking head.
From his home in the mountains of Vermont, William Arkin seems to have mastered one of the great juggling acts of the multimedia age — persuading news organizations, advocacy groups and the Pentagon, through sheer smarts and a bulldog personality, to take him on his own terms.
“Sometimes I even write a story and get all of them mad at me at the same time,” says Arkin, 46. “Any institution is uncomfortable with someone they don’t control.”…
Ross’s article continues at BigJournalism.com
Read also at the site, WaPo’s William Arkin Blamed America for 9/11 Attacks
At Breitbart’s BigPeace.com, WaPo: Top Secret America-hating William Arkin
William Arkin along with Dana Priest just released an epic bit of hype and marketing called Top Secret America in the Washington Post. Arkin is relatively undistinguished as a journalist, but he did have one brush with notoriety when he made some truly bone headed and crass remarks about the military. On his Washington Post blog in 2007 he dropped a pile of foolishness entitled “The troops also need to support the American people” which was so sorry that even the Post has flushed it down the memory hole. It was a screed bemoaning the fact that some of our troops serving in war zones had the audacity to complain that the public, and of course the media, were not supporting their mission. Mr. Arkin, who did serve briefly, seemed to think that these ungrateful wretches ought to just shut up and go about their business of getting blown up…