Hats off to our so-called free press

This post first appeared on Russia Insider

Even with our pragmatic worldview, the western media consistently performs well below our already extremely low expectations.

It's now been roughly 24 hours since Wikileaks released more than 8,000 documents detailing the CIA's "global covert hacking program".

Too many breaking stories about celebrities to bother with such a petty disclosure...

And the leaks (known as "Vault 7") haven't even finished yet. As the Independent notes, "when taken together, Vault 7 will make up the biggest intelligence publication in history."

Considering how much the U.S. media loves to gossip about spies and hacking, you would expect around-the-clock coverage and analysis of these leaks.

After all, they detail how:

CIA has espionage division more powerful than NSA with no checks and balances.

CIA’s secret hacking division produced a huge about of weaponized malware to infest iPhone, Android phones — and lost control of it.

CIA loses control of entire cyber weapons arsenal due to negligence.

Obama’s CIA built most powerful cyber attack arsenal, costing U.S. taxpayers $100+ billion. Lost it due to negligence.

CIA illicitly hoarded “zero day” attacks, putting business and government at risk.

Obama admin used their advanced cyber attack arsenal against private citizens.

CIA inserted CIA coders in major U.S. tech companies to implement backdoors directly.

CIA can turn smart TVs, iPhones, gaming consoles and many other electronicc devices into open mics.

CIA can spy on you through your smart TV.

CIA can turn all internet-enabled consumer electronic devices into listening devices.

CIA has backdoors to every PC running Microsoft.

Skype voice conversations are converted into text and stored in CIA spy cloud.

CIA has backdoor access to basically anything produced by Microsoft, Apple, Cisco and Google.

CIA can remotely control cars, planes, and hospital devices — a useful technique for assassinations.

CIA malware is used to spy on journalists, discover sources of leaks.

U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt is a covert CIA hacking center.

CIA uses Russian malware, leaves fake “fingerprints” to “misdirect attribution” of cyber attacks.

The documented criminality is quite extensive.

CIA has tools to remote control chips in cars, trucks, planes, medical devices and hospital tech with assassination potential. pic.twitter.com/RvFonUphUg — Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) March 7, 2017

And yet, here are some screengrabs we took early this morning (Moscow Time) — around 18 hours after the leaks were released.

Unless you look hard, you would never know that we are witnessing a historic public disclosure about an intelligence agency's vast criminality:

Well done, Fox. The only mention of the leaks is in the form of "how do we punish leaks?" That's reassuring.

MSNBC took a similar route. A former CIA director says that CIA leaks showing CIA crimes are dangerous!

NPR was too busy reporting on Hitler's cocaine use. (They have an article about the leaks, if you scroll down past their latest scoop on the Dakota Access Pipeline.)

CNN WINS! CNN actually alluded to possible wrongdoing by the CIA!

Nothing surprising here. Why would the CIA want to report about its own crimes?