Who Helped Overturn the “Pentagon Papers Principle”? The Washington Post and New York Times

The Burisma Leak exercise predicted many elements of the real response to the New York Post s coming Hunter Biden story, including complaints from influential Democratic congressman Adam Schiff about its source and veracity, and public statements from former senior intelligence officials falsely raising the specter of a Russian operation.

Newly uncovered documents show the war-gamed, choreographed response to the New York Post piece in October, 2020 which included temporary suppression by those tech platforms Twitter and Facebook may have been part of a broader plan to re-think basic journalistic standards in general, beyond just the one incident. This included junking what experts involved with the tabletop exercise referred to as the Pentagon Papers Principle, under which journalists since Daniel Ellsberg s 1971 leak had operated under a single rule: Once information is authenticated, if it is newsworthy, publish it.

The break from the age-old standard was endorsed by multiple current and former figures from the Washington Post and New York Times, the two papers most associated with the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Neither of the press offices of the two papers would comment, nor did individual figures named in the #TwitterFiles leaks.

The genesis of this idea appeared to come from a paper co-authored by two Aspen tabletop attendees, both from Stanford: longtime journalist Janine Zacharia and former Obama and Trump Cybersecurity Policy Director Andrew James Grotto. Their How to Report Responsibly on Hacks and Disinformation: 10 Guidelines and a Template for Every Newsroom included the idea of ditching the Pentagon Papers Principle, insisting, authentication alone is not enough to run with something.

via www.racket.news

So Berkeley had the Free Speech Movement and now Stanford has the Anti-Free Speech Movement. It’s just one more thing about Stanford to hate, one could say. They do have the Hoover Institution, though.