BY ELAINE MAGLIARO
Glenn Greenwald and three other journalists who reported last year on “the extent of the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden” have won the 65th annual George Polk Awards in Journalism. Along with Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras of The Guardian and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post will receive the award for national security reporting for the stories they wrote “based on secret documents leaked by Snowden, a former intelligence analyst.”
SOURCE
Glenn Greenwald Among Four To Win Polk Award For Snowden Stories (Huffington Post/AP)
Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 
Hmmm……..I wonder how all those Washington “Wise Men” and the intelligence community will take this. It is kind of hard to portray Greenwald and by extension Snowden as “traitors” when their work is so well recognized as performing a service. Methinks there is much teeth gnashing over at the NSA.and CIA.
Mike,
The following article was just posted at The Intercept:
Intercept Editors Win Polk Award for Coverage of Snowden Documents
By Ryan Devereaux
17 Feb 2014
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/02/17/intercept-editors-win-polk-award-coverage-snowden-documents/
Excerpt:
Intercept editors Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras have won the George Polk Award, one of the highest prizes in journalism, for revealing expansive National Security Agency surveillance programs detailed in documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden. They shared the national security reporting award with the Guardian‘s Ewen MacAskill and the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman.
Whether Greenwald and Poitras will return to the U.S. to collect their prize remains to be seen, however, as senior government officials have repeatedly employed rhetoric equating the journalism the Polk Award is recognizing to criminal activity. Greenwald is currently living in Brazil; Poitras in Germany. Both are American citizens.
House intelligence committee chair Rep. Mike Rogers – who once jokingly offered to help former NSA Director Michael Hayden add Snowden to a U.S. kill list – called Greenwald “a thief selling stolen material” earlier this month. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has repeatedly referred to journalists reporting on the Snowden documents as “accomplices.”
Long Island University announced the winners of the 65th annual George Polk Awards in Journalism on Sunday evening.
The announcement praised Greenwald, Poitras, MacAskill and Gellman for using “their extensive backgrounds covering national security to explore the purloined files and reveal their stunning import, describing how the NSA gathered information on untold millions of unsuspecting — and unsuspected — Americans, plugged into the communications links of major Internet companies and coerced companies like Yahoo and Google into turning over data about their customers.”
This is an honor hard earned and well deserved and I wish they were able to appear in person to accept it but one must be realistic and I would rather have them alive and well and writing from a foreign desk than disappeared in some strange and mysterious way while visiting the United States.
I also noted that one of the other recipients was the reporter who dug into the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge.
Good for polk and good for Glenn.
As much as I hate to disagree with Blouise, given that Greenwald’s stories seem to turn out to be less consistent with the facts than one would like (too little truth and too much truthiness for my taste) and his obvious intent to harm the US, coupled with what I see as a complete lack of positive and substantive change as a result of the Snowden disclosures—in part due to Greenwald, in my opinion—I don’t see him as deserving of an award for journalism (or anything else for that matter). I hope Greenwald lives a long and healthy and most of all obscure life far from this country.
Slarti,
We need that info you promised! I am willing to be persuaded if the facts and conclusions are solid.
Blouise,
Sorry. Life has kind of happened to me for a bit but I’m working on it…
Like It or Not, Glenn Greenwald Is Now the Face of the 1st Amendment
Freedom of the press will be weakened if his critics succeed in branding him a traitor or a thief as opposed to a journalist.
CONOR FRIEDERSDORF
FEB 6 2014
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/like-it-or-not-glenn-greenwald-is-now-the-face-of-the-1st-amendment/283606/
Excerpt:
Among the dozens of reporters, editors, and commentators who have worked on articles sourced to Edward Snowden, just one, Glenn Greenwald, has been subject to a sustained campaign that seeks to define him as something other than a journalist. NBC’s David Gregory asked him why he shouldn’t be prosecuted for aiding and abetting a felon. Representative Peter King declared that “legal action should be taken against him.” Representative Mike Rogers charges that he is a thief who sells stolen material. The New Republic published a piece alleging that he has a nefarious, secret agenda. Why this unique effort to discredit him in particular?
Countless American journalists have published classified documents in the modern era. All were paid for their work, and in a world with Bob Woodward, it’s unlikely that Greenwald has been paid the most for revelations of classified material. Greenwald isn’t even unique in writing about secrets stolen by Snowden, or in being paid as a freelancer for his work upon the publication of those articles. Nor has Greenwald authored the Snowden articles denounced most bitterly by the national-security establishment. That distinction goes to the talented Barton Gellman.
So what is different about Greenwald?
The news organizations he works with are different. Rather than publishing in the Washington Post or the New York Times, institutions that have particular, unique, and often cozy relationships with America’s ruling class, he started out with a personal blog, later moved to Salon.com, started publishing stories sourced to Snowden at The Guardian’s U.S. edition, and has worked with the foreign press.
His approach to journalism is different. Rather than trying (or purporting) to be objective, he is transparent about his opinions and explicitly argues for their validity. He criticizes fellow journalists for being insufficiently adversarial. Unlike most mainstream-media reporters, he voices contempt for certain American officials. And when he believes that they have broken the law, he doesn’t shy away from urging that they be prosecuted and imprisoned for their crimes. It is no accident that there is no love lost for him in the national-security state.
Because he doesn’t write for the outlets that the government considers most legitimate, because he is outspoken with highly polarizing opinions, because he can be abrasive, and frankly, because he’s a gay man who lives in a foreign country, U.S. officials and some journalists correctly sense that they can get away with trying to delegitimize Greenwald in a way that would spark a backlash if they attempted it on Gellman or Woodward or any New York Times reporter.
That is unjust and dangerous. And journalists had better get wise to its most serious implications.
One reason to stand up for Greenwald is that there is no evidence suggesting that he’s acted as anything other than a journalist on the Snowden story. Another reason to defend Greenwald is that whatever one thinks of him personally, or his politics, or his attacks on various mainstream-media figures over the years, prosecuting him as a criminal would set a precedent affecting all journalists.
The U.S. officials smearing Greenwald are well aware that a precedent would be set. They sense that, among the journalists reporting on the Snowden leaks, prosecuting Greenwald would cause the least backlash; they know that many journalists at the New York Times and the Washington Post would be reluctant to publicly state that, for all relevant purposes, what they do and what Greenwald does are the same; they know that Greenwald has made lots of enemies in the press, that he has no movement of loyal ideological hacks to rally around him, and that enough Americans think living abroad and being gay are suspicious to make a difference on the margins. So they chose Greenwald as their target in what may be a trial balloon for an effort to delegitimize national-security journalism.
You’ll never hear about this in the US corporate media.
Elaine,
I don’t care if he’s the face of the first amendment or not—either his stories are factual and accurate or he lacks integrity. If it is the latter (and I suspect that is the case) then he doesn’t get a pass for being the “face of the 1st Amendment” any more than Nixon should have gotten a pass because he was the president. Even if I’m wrong about Greenwald’s journalistic integrity, I think he’s a bad choice for the poster boy in this debate due to his animus and egotism. But hey, it could be worse, you could have an ethically challenged birther with a history of vexatious litigation as the face of the legal side of this movemen… um… *whisper* [aside]: Larry Klayman? Really? Oh my… …er… well, at least it’s not Orly Taitz.
I realize that I haven’t provided any evidence of my claims, but if I were on your side of this issue the ethics of principals like Greenwald and Snowden and Klayman would trouble me greatly and I also think that they are wrong on the technology and the law. I’ll support all this in a post of my own since I’m making what (in this community) is a pretty extraordinary claim and thus need to provide sufficient evidence if I wish anyone to reconsider, but I wanted to state my position and ask people what it would take to convince them that I was correct.
Slart: You have missed the point of that story. Do we care if Greenwald is a fine journalist or a hack? Should animus and egotism be outlawed? Do I give a shit if a journalist lacks integrity?
I think not. We afford free speech to the likes of Limbaugh and O’Reilly without pause (I do anyway), and I cannot imagine journalists with less integrity.
I am unaware of any lies told by Greenwald, and I have financially supported Greenwald and purchased his books. But being the “Face of the First Amendment” isn’t a good thing, for Greenwald, which seems to be your inference. It is a bad thing, the government is trying to criminalize reporting on national security. Whether Greenwald is an ethical journalist or not is beside the point, the question is whether we as a country want to restrict freedom of the press with some collection of conditions that would, ultimately, protect the government’s ability to classify absolutely everything and then imprison and disappear anybody that leaked it.
I am opposed to any such conditions. The Face of the First Amendment is about being on an unconstitutional Wanted Poster circulating in the halls of justice. It is about being the target of an unconstitutional witch hunt, and I am quite glad Greenwald has managed to align himself with a billionaire willing to protect him. This is journalism. Nobody is forced to listen or agree, and unlike a blog thread, Greenwald’s voice cannot drown out all others. Those that dislike him can avoid him. Unlike a blog thread, Greenwald cannot suck up all of a finite resource, any more than Limbaugh can or Fox News can. I see no reason to impose any additional integrity rules on journalism, and the lynch mob of literally lethal people gunning for Greenwald should be a frightening prospect to anybody in the profession of journalism.
Slart,
Why is it that the government has decided to go after Greenwald when it has no problem with the Washington Post reporter? Why accuse Greenwald of being a traitor and not Barton Gellman? I prefer journalists who aren’t members of the corporate media/courtier press and who cozy up to politicians. I’d take Greenwald any day before someone like Bob Woodward.
Excerpt from David Drumm’s post “Our Courtier Press” at the Turley blog:
Our Courtier Press
June 29, 2013
While the NSA is, perhaps unconstitutionally, intercepting your electronic data, our media is focusing on whether Snowden should be charged with treason. One of reasons Snowden was charged with espionage is so the media would follow that meme. While James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, is getting away with lying to the Senate, our media is playing Where’s Waldo with Snowden. Instead of a debate on the constitutionality of the NSA programs out media is focusing on insignificant details regarding the private lives of Snowden and Greenwald.
One of the most outrageous performances of our lapdog press came on Meet The Press when host David Gregory asked Glenn Greenwald:
“Final question for you…. To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?”
Snowden had passcodes, tank clearances, and thumb drives. To think that Greenwald could have possibly assisted Snowden in removing the classified data is pure fantasy. Nobody’s lapdog, Greenwald responded:
“I think it’s pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies. The assumption in your question, David, is completely without evidence, the idea that I’ve aided and abetted him in any way. The scandal that arose in Washington before our stories began was about the fact that the Obama administration is trying to criminalize investigative journalism by going through the e-mails and phone records of AP reporters, accusing a Fox News journalist of the theory that you just embraced, being a co-conspirator in felonies, for working with sources.”
In Bartnicki v. Vopper (2001), a 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a radio station was not liable since it did nothing illegal in obtaining an illegally taped conversation. In United States v. Stevens (2010), an 8-1 U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Stevens’ selling of dog fight videos should not be added to the list of First Amendment restrictions. Although Senator Dianne Feinstein, in a feat of empty threat misdirection, wants Greenwald prosecuted, the law is not on her side.
The Snowden Effect, Continued
By Charles P. Pierce
February 17, 2014
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/glenn-greenwald-polk-award-021714
Release the hounds.
“The reporters conferred with Snowden to negotiate release of the material and then used their extensive backgrounds covering national security to explore the purloined files and reveal their stunning import on the Website Guardian US, describing how the NSA gathered information on untold millions of unsuspecting – and unsuspected – Americans, plugged into the communications links of major Internet companies and coerced companies like Yahoo and Google into turning over data about their customers,” the university said in a press release.
Twitter turned to a hellspout almost immediately. But, as much as it may pain some people to admit it, actual journalism was committed here by all involved. The methods were unconventional, at least for the moment, but there’s no question that newsgathering was going on. The public — in several countries — knows more about what its government is doing than the public did before all of this occurred. If there’s another definition for the craft, I don’t know what it is, and I Hate Glenn Greenwald is not an argument.
And actual journalism was committed this weekend in the New York Times, when we discovered that attorney-client privilege is another thing that we all agree will have to be declared obsolete because We Have Real Enemies and because Everybody Spies Anyway and because the all-too-human but curiously error-prone heroes of our intelligence community have our lives in their hands. And because Glenn Greenwald is a putz.
“A top-secret document, obtained by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, shows that an American law firm was monitored while representing a foreign government in trade disputes with the United States. The disclosure offers a rare glimpse of a specific instance in which Americans were ensnared by the eavesdroppers, and is of particular interest because lawyers in the United States with clients overseas have expressed growing concern that their confidential communications could be compromised by such surveillance.”
The argument against this latest revelation has been made that this was the Australian intelligence heroes doing the monitoring, as though the NSA doesn’t have any connection with foreign intelligence services, and was completely unaware that the Aussies were spying on a law firm in midtown Manhattan. If the latter is true, the NSA is even more incompetent than I think it is. I rather choose to believe that the NSA knew this was going on but, what the hell, secret courts and congressional oversight are my buckler and my shield.
Anyway, the Polk people got this one right.
Question…
Has Greenwald been indicted? Is there a warrant for his arrest?
I agree that he is a very unpopular guy within the DoJ, NSA, the administration and other corridors of power, and all kinds of people have offered their opinions as to the consequences he should suffer and they would be happy to deliver. But the fact that the insufferable Clapper has shot off his mouth as well as other innumerable other jerks in the Pentagon, the NSA, the congress,and the media does not mean that if he arrives in the US he will be arrested.
I fervently hope the administration is not stupid enough to arrest him, but at the same time I think it serves Greenwald very well if we believe he faces that kind of danger and is “hunted”.
Nobody here needs to be reminded that propaganda can be used by both sides.
I’m not a fan of Greewald but perhaps he is the kind of aggressive journalist we need today. And I would take a thousand Greenwalds over one Woodward. But I sure am looking forward to Sarti’s blog.
pdm,
We’ve always needed aggressive journalists like Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill. Unfortunately, these days we have too many “beltway-type” journalists/stenographers who feed the public what they are told by the powers that be.
Matt Taibbi:
“Let me just say that I’m always suspicious when I see articles about the motivations of journalists. I think they often reflect a misunderstanding of what journalism is all about. Journalists are supposed to be assholes. The system does not work, in fact, if society’s journalists are all nice, kind, friendly, rational people.”
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/09/28/in-defense-of-zero-hedge/
Elaine,
I’m not calling Greenwald a traitor (although I certainly see why people in the government would consider him an enemy and think they have every right to attack his credibility on the merits), I’m questioning his journalistic integrity and I’m not attacking others as I don’t see them crossing the line between journalism and propaganda in the same way Greenwald seems to. To be clear, as I said above, I don’t want him arrested, I want him ignored.
pdm,
I’ll try not to disappoint.
Slart,
I’ll repeat two questions that I asked you in an earlier comment:
Why is it that the government has decided to criticize/castigate Greenwald when it has no problem with the Washington Post reporter? Why accuse Greenwald of being a traitor and not Barton Gellman?”
*****
We have had people who work/worked for presidential adminstrations who have disclosed “classified” information to members of the press. Some critics have said that too much government information is labeled “classified” these days.
*****
Barton Gellman Hits Back At Bob Woodward For ‘Insult’ About Snowden Coverage
By Michael Calderone
Posted: 11/21/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/21/barton-gellman-bob-woodward_n_4317547.html
Excerpt:
NEW YORK — Barton Gellman fired back Thursday at Washington Post colleague Bob Woodward over Woodward’s remarks that former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden should have come to him first with documents “instead of others, particularly The Guardian.” Woodward also said he doesn’t consider Snowden a hero.
Gellman has led The Washington Post’s recent coverage of the National Security Agency, with Snowden as his source.
“I can’t explain why Bob would insult the source who brought us this extraordinary story or the exemplary work of his colleagues in pursuing it,” Gellman said in an email to HuffPost Thursday.
“The ‘others’ he dismissed include [The Washington Post’s] Greg Miller, Julie Tate, Carol Leonnig, Ellen Nakashima, Craig Whitlock, Craig Timberg, Steven Rich and Ashkan Soltani — all of whom are building on the Snowden archive with me to land scoop after scoop,” Gellman continued. “I won’t get into why Snowden came to me or didn’t come to Bob. But the idea of keeping Snowden anonymous, or of waiting for one ‘coherent’ story, suggests that Bob does not understand my source or the world he lived in.”
In an interview with Larry King posted to Hulu on Wednesday, Woodward said Snowden should have come to him first, and explained how he would have handled the story differently. “I would have said to him, ‘Let’s not reveal who you are. Let’s make you a protected source and give me time with this data and let’s sort it out and present it in a coherent way,’” said Woodward, who is an associate editor at the Post.
He added: “I think that people are confused about whether it’s illegal, whether it’s bad, whether it’s bad policy.”
It’s one thing for Woodward to take a shot at The Guardian, which has extensively covered the surveillance story since June. They’re a competitor. But Woodward’s remarks were striking considering that the Post has also aggressively reported on the NSA documents from the beginning, with Gellman one of the three journalists who communicated early on with Snowden. (Snowden also provided documents to Glenn Greenwald, formerly of The Guardian, and filmmaker Laura Poitras).
Gellman, who won two Pulitzer Prizes with The Washington Post before leaving in 2010, returned on contract to work on the NSA stories. Gellman and Poitras first wrote on the agency’s PRISM program, and the Post has published a number of deeply reported stories related to the Snowden documents, including one detailing the “black budget” that funds U.S. intelligence agencies.
Elaine,
Yes, the beltway types are useless. Unless, of course, if I agree with them. And then, if they are aggressive assholes I’ll cheer them on. I like Tiabbi a lot, but his criteria is much too simple and I sure as hell am not ready to do away with rational – especially if the Zero Hedge he defends is Oky’s Zero Hedge. I suppose there is a place for crazy azzhatery, but it is way down on my list. My list starts with truth, trustworthy, honest, and no hidden agenda. And too often I think Greenwald has his own agenda.
Elaine,
My question wasn’t rhetorical. Has Greenwald been indicted? Is there a warrant for his arrest?
Elaine,
The amount of data being labeled as classified is not relevant to this dispute (Snowden stole many documents that would have been classified under any reasonable system and that problem has been around for decades). As to your questions, I am not the government nor am I acting as an apologist for them, but I would look for differences between Greenwald and Gellman, et al. My suspicion is that Greenwald’s articles have displayed more animosity towards the US government causing the government to treat him in a more adversarial manner than the rest in combination with it being much easier to make the case that Greenwald overstepped the bounds of journalism on its merits. In other words, there is both more motive and more opportunity to go after Greenwald because, at least in my opinion, his work displays less integrity than that of the others.
Let me reverse your question: Why shouldn’t we expect the government to treat Greenwald differently if Greenwald treats the government differently?
Elaine,
I’m stealing pdm’s list too…
If Greenwald has his own agenda (and I believe he does), isn’t it reasonable to question what that agenda is and how it should effect our perception of his work?
Slarti,
Have you read both Greenwald’s and Gellman’s Snowden articles? How has Greenwlad’s work shown less integrity than that of the other journalists?
Edward Snowden Is Not a ‘Traitor’ and Glenn Greenwald Is Not an ‘Accomplice’
If anything, reporting on the NSA’s overreach has revealed just how dangerous to our freedoms the agency’s surveillance practices really are.
Robert Scheer
February 18, 2014
http://www.thenation.com/article/178421/edward-snowden-not-traitor-and-glenn-greenwald-not-accomplice#
This story originally appeared at Truthdig. Robert Scheer is the author of The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street (Nation Books).
Excerpt:
The tide is turning. Yesterday’s traitor is today’s hero, and the brave journalists who helped Edward Snowden get the word out are at last being honored for their public service. Or so one hopes.
On Sunday it was announced that the prestigious George Polk Award for National Security Reporting would be given to the four journalists—Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill, Laura Poitras and Barton Gellman—most active in reporting about the content of the NSA documents leaked by Snowden. The award, named after a CBS News correspondent killed in 1948 while covering the civil war in Greece, is intended to honor journalists who “heightened public awareness with perceptive detection and dogged pursuit of stories that otherwise would not have seen the light of day.”
That is, of course, the very purpose of the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press, an indelible standard of freedom subverted by figures like James R. Clapper Jr., the president’s director of national intelligence, who condemned those reporters as “accomplices” to Snowden’s disclosures and suggested that telling the truth should be treated as a serious crime. Of course, Clapper’s own blatant lies to the Senate Intelligence Committee, denying mass-scale surveillance of the American public under his direction, are to be presumed virtuous.
In reality, the documents Snowden shared with the reporters from The Guardian, The Washington Post and other news organizations with well-established records of journalistic integrity were reported on in a manner that was mindful not to reveal the sources and methods used to ferret out terrorists. There is no evidence that this reporting has weakened the US government’s ability to protect the nation or that the NSA’s mass surveillance of the private communications of Americans has made us safer.
On the contrary, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, concluded, after an exhaustive investigation in the wake of the Snowden revelations, that the NSA surveillance program should be ended, as it is ineffectual and dangerous to our freedoms. Defenders of the program, implemented under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, have argued that if that NSA program had been in operation, one of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar, would have been caught because of a call he made from San Diego to Yemen. But the board concluded in its majority report: “We do not believe the Mihdhar example supports continuance of the NSA’s Section 215 program. First, the failure to identify Mihdhar’s presence in the United States stemmed primarily from a lack of information sharing among federal agencies, not a lack of surveillance capabilities. As documented by the 9/11 commission and others, this was a failure to connect the dots, not a failure to collect enough dots.”
I think one reason that the government has focussed on Greenwald is that he has made it so. So much of what he does is all about Glenn. He has a much higher profile than Gellman. He has been very aggressive, threatening, and in your face towards the government (and the UK) in his reporting. Well now he has their attention. Why is he surprised? .
I haven’t heard from anyone about Greenwald being indicted. I don’t think he has. I don’t think there has been a grand jury and I don’t think there is a warrant out for his arrest. Oh yes, they will make it very unpleasant and a long wait for him at entry if he decides to come to the states. But I think the word “hunted” is out of line (until they indict him) and the fear of him disappearing is akin to the right-wing fearing fema camps.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/42772_Eric_Holder-_US_Doesnt_Plan_to_Prosecute_Glenn_Greenwald
pdm.
I don’t know that he is surprised. I can’t say what he is thinking. I don’t think he has been indicted. His significant other was detained and interrogated in England last year:
David Miranda: ‘They said I would be put in jail if I didn’t co-operate’
Partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald gives his first interview on nine-hour interrogation at Heathrow airport
Jonathan Watts in Rio de Janeiro
The Guardian
Monday 19 August 2013
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/19/david-miranda-interview-detention-heathrow
swarthmoremom,
Can’t say I trust Eric Holder. That said, I think this administration knows they’d come under great criticism if they decided to prosecute a journalist.
I do wish the DOJ would go after the Wall Street banksters who were responsible for the financial meltdown. Don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.
Elaine,
I remember that UK/Miranda deal quite well. IMO, I thought it was just what I expected from Greenwald. The purpose of the trip was to pass Snowdon docs between Greenwald and Laura P (I’m not sure of her last name). Those docs were very important to all of them – so why the hell did he send his partner as courier? I saw an interview with the guy. He is not a bright guy. The flight was through the UK. GG had to know that UK dustoms would not be pleasant. A standup guy would have made the flight himself. But No. And what pearl clutching resulted. I’m no journalist, no spy, no cop, no nothing, and I damn well knew what to have expected at UK customs.
So Miranda spends some very unpleasant hours in small room at Heathrow (all the while thinking he will be “disappeared”) opening up a juicy opportunity for GG to loudly proclaim that the very mean UK guys terrified Miranda and getting himself another four or five days of worldwide coverage all the while threatening the UK that he will release documents that will really hurt the UK.
No. He was not surprised (my previous use of “surprised” was ironic). It was calculated like a lot of stuff Greenwald does.
Elaine,
Fair questions—for now I’ve clearly stated my positions as opinions and I’ll explain how I came to those opinions later.
I hope it’s ok to correct some information that is “out there” that attempts to add to the case of how badly Greenwald is being treated. Someone thought Greenwald is living in Brazil out of fear of the government. That is not the case. Greenwald’s partner is Brazilian and Greenwald has been living down there well before the Snowden affair. It could be that immigration has been difficult, but that has nothing to do with the Snowden case. Further, they have a really great place down there. I’m not so sure that they will be very anxious to give that up for the American dream.
pdm,
Greenwald may be calculating; he may be prickly. That’s not my main concern. What I’m most interested in is finding out what my government is up to.
Elaine,
I don’t argue that point, although I’m conflicted on the release of the foreign actions. But we did venture a little wider when questioning why the government’s focus on GG and not Gellman and provided the link to Tiabbi’s opinion of what is required of a journalist. And I can’t help thinking that it is important to know/understand who is doing the telling, how they are doing the telling, why they are doing the telling and who profits from the telling. And that’s why a story from Glenn Beck is more problematic than a story from Jim Fallows.
SWMom, thanks for the little green footballs link. Besides the Holder statement, it’s kinda nice that the author feels the same way about GG’s MO as I do.
Matt Taibbi Slams David Gregory: ‘I Don’t Know How He Can Call Himself A Journalist’
The Huffington Post
by Katherine Fung
Posted: 02/20/2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/20/matt-taibbi-david-gregory_n_4825247.html
Matt Taibbi called out David Gregory on Thursday while lamenting the media’s treatment of Glenn Greenwald.
Taibbi announced Thursday that he is leaving Rolling Stone for First Look Media, Greenwald’s new venture with Pierre Omidyar. He joined HuffPost Live to preview his plans and the conversation turned to Greenwald, who has been criticized by some journalists and public officials for working with Edward Snowden and revealing the NSA’s secret domestic surveillance programs.
David Gregory, for example, asked Greenwald last June, “To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?”
On Thursday, Taibbi called Gregory’s tone towards Greenwald “outrageous.”
“I don’t know how he can call himself a journalist and talk like that,” he said. “Look, this is the job. The job is we’re supposed to report the truth. If whistle blowers come forward, we’re supposed to take the risk along with those whistleblowers and society long ago decided we should have protections when we do this.”
“Modern journalists just don’t recognize how serious it is,” Taibbi added.
Damn.
Harsh? Oh yeah. True? Every word of it. But I’m not going to mince words. David Gregory isn’t journalist. He is, as the Brits would say, a “news reader”.
Great thread, Elaine.
Gene,
The Brits have another term for people like Gregory: “Twit.”
David Gregory enjoys his perm’s as a Beltway insiders and so knows whose Beninese to smooch and what true patriots to excoriate.
I hate my kindle. That was “behinds” and not “Beninese”. 🙂
On the UK’s Equating of Journalism With Terrorism
By Glenn Greenwald
19 Feb 2014
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/19/uks-equating-journalism-terrorism-designed-conceal-gchq/
Excerpt:
As my colleague Ryan Devereaux reports, a lower UK court this morning, as long expected, upheld the legality of the nine-hour detention of my partner, David Miranda, at Heathrow Airport last August, even as it acknowledged that the detention was “an indirect interference with press freedom”. For good measure, the court also refused permission to appeal (though permission can still be granted by the appellate court). David was detained and interrogated under the Terrorism Act of 2000.
The UK Government expressly argued that the release of the Snowden documents (which the free world calls “award-winning journalism“) is actually tantamount to “terrorism”, the same theory now being used by the Egyptian military regime to prosecute Al Jazeera journalists as terrorists. Congratulations to the UK government on the illustrious company it is once again keeping. British officials have also repeatedly threatened criminal prosecution of everyone involved in this reporting, including Guardian journalists and editors.
Equating journalism with terrorism has a long and storied tradition. Indeed, as Jon Schwarz has documented, the U.S. Government has frequently denounced nations for doing exactly this. Just last April, Under Secretary of State Tara Sonenshine dramatically informed the public that many repressive, terrible nations actually “misuse terrorism laws to prosecute and imprison journalists.” When visiting Ethiopia in 2012, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns publicly disclosed that in meetings with that nation’s officials, the United States “express[ed] our concern that the application of anti-terrorism laws can sometimes undermine freedom of expression and independent media.” The same year, the State Department reported that Burundi was prosecuting a journalist under terrorism laws.
It should surprise nobody that the UK is not merely included in, but is one of the leaders of, this group of nations which regularly wages war on basic press freedoms. In the 1970s, British journalist Duncan Campbell was criminally prosecuted for the crime of reporting on the mere existence of the GCHQ, while fellow journalist Mark Hosenball, now of Reuters, was forced to leave the country. The monarchy has no constitutional guarantee of a free press. The UK government routinely threatens newspapers with all sorts of sanctions for national security reporting it dislikes. Its Official Secrets Act makes it incredibly easy to prosecute journalists and others for disclosing anything which political officials want to keep secret. For that reason, it was able to force the Guardian to destroy its own computers containing Snowden material precisely because the paper’s editors knew that British courts would slavishly defer to any requests made by the GCHQ to shut down the paper’s reporting.
You know I’m not fond of GG. But there is no way that Gregory should consider himself a journalist. What ajoke. The guy exposes himself as a joke every Sunday. The “crime” deal with GG is just another example of his mediocrity. And, yes, that’s from me. The one who is no fan of GG.
A couple of things about Matt Taibbi. Love the guy. I wish him every success with his new job. But I’m sorry he is leaving Roling Stone because it is a big loss for them. Just as good journalists are in short supply – so are good publications. I hope Matt’s move does not signal a very bad outcome from them.
Matt’s announcement does resolve one question I had….why did Matt offer that half-assed, short-sighted definition of what makes a journalist. The one that focused on the importance of being an “asshole”. Well, now it makes sense. The next day Matt planned on announcing his move over the GG’s organization.
Insert a smiley face after “organization”
Blouise,
GG is sounding like he may come to the states for the Polk Award. My hundred bucks says that he makes it back home to Brazil safely (although the nimcopoops may make him count the blocks in a small cinder block room while they search his bags.) All bets are off though if he or David bring along a few joints.
Wanna play?
FFS administrators: Help.
I seem to have lost a comment. See anything floating around up there?
pdm,
Your comment got snagged by the spam filter.
pdm,
Taibbi is going to have his own digital magazine. He won’t be writing for “The Intercept.” He’ll be working for Pierre Omidyar’s First Look Media–just as Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill do at the present time.
Elaine, thanks for the rescue and the clarification, although I’m usure how the “digital magazine” works. I thought GG had a financial stake in First Look. Is that incorrect?
pdm,
Pierre Omydar is providing the financing. I assume Greenwald is being paid by him.
*****
Pierre Omidyar plunges first $50m into media venture with Glenn Greenwald
• First part of $250m investment to fund offices in three cities
• Journalism site to have both nonprofit and for-profit entities
Ed Pilkington in New York
12/19/13
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/dec/19/pierre-omidyar-first-50m-media-venture-glenn-greenwald
Excerpt:
Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, is injecting his first $50m into the new journalism venture he is setting up with former Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald.
The investment represents the first tranche of a total pot of $250m that the billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist has promised for the new operation. A statement released from Honolulu on Thursday said that the money was being used to set up offices in New York, San Francisco and Washington.
The holding company, which has changed its name from NewCo to First Look Media, seeks to build on Greenwald’s growing following in the wake of his work on the Edward Snowden leaks of National Security Agency documents to generate what it calls “robust coverage of politics, government, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, arts and culture, business, technology, and investigative news”.
The venture has revealed new details about its nascent structure. On the one hand, the journalism site – which has yet to be named – will be constituted as a nonprofit organisation with a tax-exempt 501 (c)(3) status and will have, the press release says, editorial independence.
But running alongside it, a profit-seeking company will also be established that Omidyar and Greenwald are billing as a “media technology” concern. Any profits generated by this company will go towards supporting the independent journalism.
pdm,
Yes, it certainly looks like he’s giving accepting the award in person serious consideration. I wonder if he’ll hire security people. Given the nature of the rhetoric spewing from the mouths of people like Clapper, I would think he’d be worried about Clapper-inspired crazies coming at him.
Id be happy to play but I get Slarti on my team.
Blouise. No Fair! Slarti was the one guy who I might claim was on my side regarding GG.
But do you really think Clapper can inspire Anybody? I don’t think he could inspire Tommy Thompson to declare an orange alert. Besides, I think GG will go for no security. You will look foolish if you are in a phalanx of swatmen and Holder doesn’t show. But it wil be Beautiful! if poor tormented, beleagued, oppressed Glenn is pictured (the press will be alerted won’t it?) being dragged off by our nazi thugs.
“Blouise. No Fair! Slarti was the one guy who I might claim was on my side regarding GG.” (pdm)
Exactly 😉
Seriously, I’ve known 2 reporters really well. One worked for the Plain Dealer and the other for the Morning Journal. I also knew 2 editors pretty well, one was a newsroom editor and the other was a general managing editor. I have to say, in all honesty, all four were slightly whacky and nosy (nosey) as hell! In a way they were all like the cops I know … skeptical of everything and everybody.
Once again. Outdone by Blouise. When will I ever learn?
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