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posted by martyb on Thursday May 29 2014, @02:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the anyone-who-expects-to-give-up-freedom-for-security-will-get-neither dept.

Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept writes A Response to Michael Kinsley

Kinsley has actually done the book a great favor by providing a vivid example of so many of its central claims. For instance, I describe in the book the process whereby the government and its media defenders reflexively demonize the personality of anyone who brings unwanted disclosure so as to distract from and discredit the substance revelations; Kinsley dutifully tells Times readers that I "come across as so unpleasant" and that I'm a "self-righteous sourpuss" (yes, he actually wrote that). I also describe in the book how jingoistic media courtiers attack anyone who voices any fundamental critiques of American political culture; Kinsley spends much of his review deriding the notion that there could possibly be anything anti-democratic or oppressive about the United States of America.

But by far the most remarkable part of the review is that Kinsley--in the very newspaper that published Daniel Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers and then fought to the Supreme Court for the right to do so (and, though the review doesn't mention it, also published some Snowden documents)--expressly argues that journalists should only publish that which the government permits them to, and that failure to obey these instructions should be a crime.

I can't say I want my government to have its fingers in what is and what is not reported.

See also: Cory Doctorow's review of Greenwald's book at BoingBoing

 
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 29 2014, @05:04AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 29 2014, @05:04AM (#48570)

    "You turn on the TV, and you see very bland interviews. Journalists in the United States are very cozy with power, very close to those in power. They laugh with them. They go to the [White House] correspondents' dinner with them. They have lunch together. They marry each other. They're way too close to each other. I think as journalists we have to keep our distance from power."

            "I'm not seeing tough questions asked on American television," he added later. "I'm not seeing those correspondents that would question those in power. It's like a club. We are not asking the tough questions."

    - Jorge Ramos

    http://www.mediaite.com/online/jorge-ramos-reporte rs-cozy-with-power-act-like-theyre-in-a-club/ [mediaite.com]

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