Russia Today, now featuring Dumb and Dumber

Kremlin shill Max Blumenthal and his mini-me protégé in journalistic failure Benjamin Norton have published a 3,500-word Alternet diatribe allegedly exposing CNN’s attempt to cover up its relationship with an Al-Qaeda propagandist named Bilal Abdul Kareem. Why Salon republished this — they fired Norton after all — is anyone’s guess.

“CNN Hired Top Al-Qaeda Propagandist for Award-Winning Syria Documentary and Wants to Cover Its Tracks” screams their clickbait headline.

Problem: there is no evidence that CNN attempted to “cover its tracks.” The main webpage that hosts the documentary in question has Bilal Abdul Kareem’s name on it at the top of the story, right after the author bylines. The text in question says:

“CNN Senior International Correspondent Clarissa Ward and Producer Salma Abdelaziz went undercover in rebel-held Syria, where few Western journalists have gone for more than a year. They worked with Syria-based filmmaker Bilal Abdul Kareem on a series of exclusive reports.”

If CNN was trying to cover its tracks, it would delete this text the way Benjamin Norton deleted all of his ‘pro-regime change/pro-Al-Qaeda’ Syria tweets and blogposts and the way Max Blumenthal deleted his own website after he switched sides on Syria in exchange for a few kopeks.

If CNN was trying to cover its tracks, it would remove Kareem’s desperate “final message” from Aleppo from its December 13, 2016 story which explicitly noted:

“Bilal Abdul Kareem, a Syria-based journalist trapped in eastern Aleppo, shared a “final message” on Monday. Kareem, who reports for On The Ground News and has worked with CNN in the past, condemned the Muslim community for failing to help the people of Aleppo.”

If CNN was trying to cover its tracks, it would remove similar references and quotes from Kareem from two other stories about Aleppo, one posted on December 14, 2016 and the other on December 19, 2016.

Charging CNN with airbrushing Kareem out of a press release celebrating Clarissa Ward winning the Peabody Award for the Undercover in Syria documentary is ridiculous because the award is given to journalists for storytelling. The Peabody Award is not given to cameramen or video editors for filming footage, to fixers responsible for procuring food and lodging for journalists, to soundmen in charge of making sure microphones work, or to people who make travel arrangements. None of the 12 winners in the Peabody Award’s documentary category in 2016 were given to persons who performed the tasks Kareem did. Ironically, Blumenthal and Norton are echoing and amplifying the gripes of someone they label an ‘al-Qaeda propagandist’ — so what does that make the two of them? Al-Qaeda propagandists, logically.

But the biggest lie Max Blumenthal and Benjamin Norton push in their joint screed isn’t about CNN but something far more serious — the Assad regime’s April chemical weapons attack:

“More than 30 people were killed in that attack under circumstances that were shrouded in mystery and which remain hotly debated and subject to critical reporting.”

Both hyperlinks lead to Seymour Hersh’s thoroughly discredited fake news claim that there was no sarin involved in the incident. The use of sarin has been established as a fact by a team of scientists and professional investigators working for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons based on samples provided by the Assad regime (or as Blumenthal and Norton prefer, “the Syrian government”).

There is no ‘debate’ and there is no ‘mystery’ surrounding the April chemical weapons attack. That’s just another stupid lie from two men hell-bent on making careers out of peddling stupid lies to niche audiences addicted to deceptions about what is happening in Syria.