One of the more important texts to emerge in the debate over newsroom objectivity. Ever. @ggreenwald and Bill Keller: http://t.co/26Cosf4LHB
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) October 28, 2013
Really, Jay?
Then I see Dan Gillmor warbling about how journalism has to be defined as a verb (!).
People who should know better keep insisting that we have to define who's a journalist. Define journalism instead. http://t.co/3KVpMitPhM
— Dan Gillmor (@dangillmor) October 27, 2013
And that's when I figure out better what this is really about: guild envy. That is, Greenwald has been dying to be accepted into the journalism guild -- it's like he took the job at Wachtell just to prove that he could get into the top law firm --- then quit it, to show that he was "above" that "corporate evil." Both Gillmor and Rosen have always suffered from guild envy. And I think it works in reverse -- Bill Keller at some level is desperate for a kind of street cred -- he doesn't want the activist journalists to call him a sell-out, so he agrees to take ill-advised meetings with WikiLeaks operatives that make him and his employer look bad, and he agrees to put Greenwald in the newspaper, which he shouldn't have done.
I'm not for legitimizing Democracy Now! activism as journalism. Let Omidyar fund it until it collapses of its own weight.
As for the twitterati commentariat, Jay Rosen was a journalist for a brief period before he went into criticizing and teaching journalism and starting a boring politically-correct journalism project for students. Dan Gillmor also is a former journalist who failed with a politically-correct journalism project that had attracted investment before it bombed. Both of them have a grudge. Gillmor in particular is infamous for wanting to change language in order to change thought and make it more politically correct.
These progresses sneer at a liberal like Bill Keller, and so they're rooting for Greenwald, whom they worship.
The exchange between Keller and Greenwald is actually kind of dull -- you wonder if the Times is desperately trying to stay relevant and have traffic by putting in a byline of "the star" of "the journalism". You wonder if in fact Greenwald was edited -- or manicured his usual blistering prose to ensure he wasn't edited with his "journalism." Actually, adversarial journalism, which is what Greenwald now calls it -- which is like martial to music and people's to democracy, you know, if you have to put in an adjective, you're already taking away its true essence.
Here's what I put -- and the Times didn't let it through because commenting on their journalistic craft never get through, even on a meta column like this:
What the Times does most of the time, which I value, is not occupy "the view from nowhere" as Jay Rosen so scornfully calls it, nor does it achieve some mythic impartiality; rather, it presents 4 or 6 perspectives and sources in most stories *so that the reader can judge for herself*. That's really important -- having a variety of perspectives and streams of information to *judge for yourself*. That's how the Times builds up credibility, and it goes below its standards when it fails to put in critics, i.e. on stories about Snowden.
Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald bludgeons the reader with only one perspective -- and makes it a moral imperative to believe -- or else. He picks up the cudgel of Dan Gillmor and others on the use of the word "torture" re: whiteboarding. The Times reported accurately that the Bush Administration did not consider it torture. Yes, human rights groups and UN bodies consider it torture, as I do. But not everyone does, and the Times reflected that. If it were up to the PC, the Times would have to use judgmental language for many phenomena to please this or that constituency.
This long-winded exchange doesn't go to the heart of the matter, which is that WikiLeaks and Greenwald have intimidated the Times, and they feel they have to placate them with exchanges like this. Instead, they should be asking why Greenwald never tells the story of his first contacts with Snowden the same way twice:
http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2013/07/idiot-wind.html
OK, so what's it all about?
Should Greenwald be arrested? Someone asked me the other day if I'd like to see Greenwald arrested, and I said "no," because I'd like to think that reporting about issues -- even controversial ones -- is not going to lead to arrest. I'd like to think Greenwald, for all his offensiveness, has stayed behind that thin membrane, just barely.
Oh, I don't think he gets to be called a journalist at all, however. He's a lawyer-turned-blogger. What could be worse? Oh, I know, a coder-turned-lawyer. They mangle all the professions in this manner.
Journalism is an occupation. It's a guild. It's like plumbers only with words. It does take skill, it can be learned on the job but some people never get good at it. Journalists will go on being recognized and validated in a free society with a free economy in ways that Jay Rosen and Glenn Greenwald and Dan Gillmor hate: by the free market. That means good newspapers that a lot of people read like the New York Times, even with all its insecure hang-ups now, will establish what journalists are by hiring them and publishing them. You can wail and gnash your teeth, but there it is. And that's a good thing. Journalism is a commodity in a free market, and that's a good thing, too. It's the best way to keep its quality up and ensure it is free.
State-run or party-run manufactured news fails, and never sells on its own without state subsidies. And leftist PC journalism doesn't sell either because most people view it as skewed, as a political operation -- that's why the Nation has to keep pestering its readers for donations and subscriptions to cruises with Victor Navasky. I read the Nation, but I read it because it's a political journal, not the news.
So for now -- although this may change and I think it's more than fine to keep debating the question -- I'm not for Glenn Greenwald being arrested for possessing and publishing the Snowden documents, but I'm not for calling him a journalist, either. I think every day in every way we should ask if Glenn's latest antics should lead to arrest because this is how we as a free people can democratically decide our security and maintain our liberties. Otherwise, we're overrun by goons. Glenn thinks this very question is off-limits -- see his famous debates on talk shows i.e. with David Gregory -- but I don't think we can shy away from it at all. Glenn should be challenged every day in every way about what his motives are and why he is doing what he is doing -- and what his end game is. Because he's not reporting all sides of a story, he's making the news itself.
And that's why he shouldn't be called a journalist. He doesn't deserve that. He is a radical activist serving an anarchist agenda. It's a naked struggle for power -- people forget that anarchism isn't about absence of power but about destroying existing power and letting those for whom the ends justifies the means to rush in. Greenwald put it starkly in his interview with Ken Auletta, where he does not deny that he threatened the British government with more disclosures out of spite over his husband's arrest:
The Guardian sent its lawyers to help extricate Miranda, who Rusbridger said was acting on behalf of a news outlet; he claimed that the British authorities were “conflating terrorism and journalism.” Reuters quoted Greenwald saying that British officials would be “sorry” for detaining his partner: “I will be far more aggressive in my reporting from now on. . . . I have many documents on England’s spy system.” Asked what the implications for the British government might be, he said, “I think they will be sorry for what they did.” Greenwald later told me that he had been misquoted and that he never threatened the British government. “I was stressed and angry and tired,” he said. “I was probably not as careful as I should have been.” But he added, “What I said was actually fine.”
He also explained that he was frustrated with due process and wanted to inflict damage:
Gellman and the Post produced some impressive N.S.A. exclusives, including the first account of PRISM, on which Poitras shared the byline. But Greenwald and the Guardian dominated coverage of the leaks. With stories of such complexity, a newspaper often delays publication while it meets with government officials, who try to persuade editors of the harm that would come from publication. The Guardian did seek comment from government officials about the revelations. But Greenwald, outraged by the content of the material, pushed to publish quickly. “I was getting really frustrated,” he told me. “I was putting a lot of pressure on them and insinuating that I was going to go publish elsewhere.” He helped produce five stories that ran on five consecutive days in June. “I wanted people in Washington to have fear in their hearts over how this journalism was going to be done, over the unpredictability of it,” he said. “Of the fact that we were going to be completely unrestrained by the unwritten rules of American journalism. The only reason we stopped after five days was that even our allies were saying, ‘Look, this is too much information. We can’t keep up with what you’re publishing.’ ”
That's not journalism. That's radical, destructive activity. In the name of what? Power over other people who will have fear in their hearts. No one should be having the debate about whether Glenn is a "journalist" after reading Auletta's unwitting disclosures (because it was meant to be a puff piece).
What would be the circumstances whereby Glenn should go to jail? Well, for one, if we could establigh that he didn't just receive leaks from Snowden, but directed them -- gave him ideas for what to steal. That's why I think we have to keep asking lots of questions about him, his organization Foundation for Freedom of the Press, and his accomplices, Jacob Appelbaum and Laura Poitras.
They worked directly with Snowden, and the same question has to be asked of them: did they tell him what to take? Did they give him ideas? Did Appelbaum provide technical expertise to facilitate the swiping, moving and storage of the documents?
How about if any of these parties discuss with Snowden what would be best to select out of his huge trove of 30,000 or 50,000 or however many documents? Hmm, that might qualify as aiding and abetting. It isn't just reporting. But...Obviously, one could use judgement about what to pick and choose, perhaps really leaving unpublished things like lists of agents' names. But what if Snowden has the access to the files and knows what is in them, but the others don't understand or don't see the significance, and he keeps giving them tips?
It seems to me that those helping steal and move the documents are liable to arrest and that's where Jacob Appelbaum's activities bear more scrutiny -- and he's already been questioned precisely because of this kind of relationship to WikiLeaks -- which isn't just about publishing, but is about getting, moving, and storing files.
But if a journalist did his own moving and storing, then would he be exempt? And if someone playing a secondary role in the adversarial journalism just gets and moves files, why should they be the only ones to get arrested? Or is moving and storing files a secondary activity? I ask these questions because they need discussion.
Greenwald will always remain a blogger and an activist. Not only because he threatened the US and UK and choose the most damaging files at strategic times to inflict the most damage -- that's making the news, not covering it.
Of course, the job of a journalist, according to the old aphorism, is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. So again, Greenwald's work is just behind the membrane. And BTW, I'm for free speech that applies to bloggers as much as journalists, which is why it doesn't matter to me if he is defined as a journalist.
However, what is the limit? And what about the manner in which these disclosures are made, so as to inflict maximum damage?
For example, we don't get the full story of the Merkel telephone -- we get part of a story, and then the White House is left to scramble to compensate. But what about what John Schindler is saying, that bugged phone wasn't the one Merkel used as head of state, but used for party business, which was less secure?
I have to wonder about James Risen -- if he deliberately ran a story based on a CIA source disclosing a program against Iran, that's not just news, that's a political action on his part. Why? Because clearly this isn't just "news reporting" but he belongs to that concerted lobby of people who want to take Iran's side in the nuclear dispute, who dislike Israel and don't wish to support it on this issue, and think America should make peace with Iran, even with accommodations. This is a very political view, and not just merely covering news. The people in the White House who have leaked stories about Iran are in the same camp. This is a very aggressive and angry lobby which is really convinced they're right and simply don't see what they're doing as wrong or as a betrayal. They think the real betrayers are those backing Israel. They are vehement -- obsessive -- on this point and you can't reason with them. I know these types in the State Department; in Embassies; in multilaterals. "We have to make friends with Iran," I've been told extremely earnestly and fervently by more than one foreign service officer.
So if Risen or other journalists have weakened our country's defense by leaking things about Iran to bolster their lobby inside and outside of government and defeat the pro-Israel lobby, should they be required to reveal their source? I'm leaning towards that perspective now. That's because I think it wasn't news judgement to cover this Iran story, but part of a fervent ideological stance which is politics, not journalism. I think it's no accident that Risen then moved on to cover the Snowden story so blindly.
So why isn't ensuring the status quo of the pro-Israel lobby on Iran policy "activism"? Because it is part of maintaining the liberal democratic state and ensuring that it is not overrun by enemies of liberal democracy. That's why.
Well, why can't he fight a lobby he doesn't like, though? He can, but then, I don't think he can also demand that he remain employed at a mainstream newspaper. I think there is a public trust that the corporate media has - and that's more than fine for it to be corporate, and to have that mass trust. It doesn't bother me in the slightest that there is a liberal establishment, and one that draws the line at Amy Goodman and Glenn Greenwald. They can publish in their little publications. Pierre Omidyar's short-lived project is going to be one of those little publications. Money thrown at holes in the Internet called publications does not make people come to them -- leftist talk radio and its failures should help you understand that, and the sagging finances of Huffington Post should tell you that (I also wonder when the Grumman Northrop ads are going to help put TNR into the black, as it has been operated on a deficit in the past, too.)
So what about David Miranda? Well, he wasn't a journalist. He took the files from two other people who are activists and at best bloggers who merely got themselves bylines because they played gatekeeper -- Appelbaum and Poitras. I think it was right and proper for Miranda to be stopped with the files and to have them confiscated.
But then, what if Greenwald went around picking up and dropping off his own files? Would he be exempt? And then I circle back to wondering again if Greenwald should be arrested -- merely because of the massive size of this leak and its mega damages.
Greenwald himself is no arbiter of what constitutes damage -- and the NSA itself is never going to tell us the real extent of the damage because to do so would aid the enemy -- and I'm fine with that. But we can see the damage to foreign relations and public trust already in all kinds of fallout from the Brazilian president canceling meetings to the EU in an uproar to UN resolutions. Maybe this is a lot of froth that may die down, but maybe not. I'm waiting to see if the cloud revenue is really down or not, as the haters predict. I bet it isn't because I bet most people take the Snowden thing in stride. But perceptions can move markets and this may be all about perception and not logic.
I think journalists and editors can't endlessly demand shields and protections and covers and then use them to behave as partisan guerillas in political warfare. There has to be a limit? Where is it? Probably only actual court test cases will determine this because I'm not sure. I don't think Greenwald deserves a blank check and a certain point, is dancing around the line between journalism and partisan warfare, and the sheer massiveness of these leaks and his very opportunistic selection and deployment of them at strategic moments -- coupled with blackmail and threats -- does beg the question. What do you think?
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