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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHodding Carter III: "Glenn Greenwald, I’m sorry: Why I changed my mind on Edward Snowden"
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/23/glenn_greenwald_im_sorry_why_i_changed_my_mind_on_edward_snowden/SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2015 10:29 AM EDT
Glenn Greenwald, Im sorry: Why I changed my mind on Edward Snowden
HODDING CARTER III
- snip -
When Edward Snowdens breathtaking leap off the high board made its first splash, most public and media reactions featured shock and outrage, even among those appalled by the scope of the governments electronic eavesdropping that he revealed. A minority applauded. A smaller minority yawned. But public ambivalence all but vanished within a month. Consecutive polls showed growing numbers giving emphatic thumbs-down. You werent acting on my behalf, they seemed to roar.
- snip -
As for the three reporters he entrusted with portions of the material, were they chosen because he trusted them to use it wisely? They were enablers of the unthinkable or traitors themselves. It was a hard position to maintain, since they were varied in background and outlook. Snowden apparently picked each because of what he saw as their unsparing coverage of governments rogue activities. They include Laura Poitras, a left-wing freelance television producer whose previous work had stirred waters, and Barton Gellman, a mainline journalist who had won two Pulitzer Prizes while working for The Washington Post. The most prolific was Snowdens tireless Boswell, Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for the British newspaper, The Guardian. He was, and is, unrestrained in his free-swinging indictment of what he considers to be mainstream medias absence without leave from the fray. Major press heavies returned the compliment, labeling him a radical nouveau whose rants outran reason. To reread their snide fulminations is to realize that the best antidotes to arrogance are looped replay or a long memory.
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think
(11,641 posts)Glad he changed his mind....
deurbano
(2,895 posts)grasswire
(50,130 posts)Great essay! And I love this quote:
"There gets to be a point when the question is, whose side are you on? Now, Im Secretary of State of the United States and Im on our side."
Secretary of State Dean Rusk
Our side. The side of the people. Amazingly simple.
grasswire
(50,130 posts)The horde of talk show reactionaries came baying from their ideological kennels to snap and snarl across the land. Snowdens sympathizers were useful idiots, to use the former Soviet phrase, just as Foxs propagandists had been saying all along. The terrorists had a fifth column within America. Debate over; gong-show commentary, interminable.
It is easy to understand their overwhelming nastiness. Whether they knew better or not, they knew their employers and they knew their audience. It is a defense unavailable to those segments of the establishment press who ducked when the hard balls came in high and close. Perhaps it was too much to expect that they would suddenly fall off their asses on the road to Damascus.
The relatively pallid media reaction stung. While government service and politics have consumed decades of my life, journalism, my first and last great love, has consumed even more. Short form, long form, television or print, and now the world of the Internet, I have seen them as the great bedrock and protector of American liberty and freedom. Small town and big city, reporter, anchor, editor, publisher, or columnist, all taught the same lesson. The Bill of Rights gave the press, like every citizen, previously unthinkable freedom to speak truth to power. As the Founders saw it, without the media, the public would be forever blinkered. Without it, government could do as it invariably prefers: conceive, organize, and implement policy decisions untrammeled by the opinions of those it is supposed to serve.
grasswire
(50,130 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Any questions?
carolinayellowdog
(3,247 posts)not holding my breath, but this is an indication of who is and is not on the right side of history
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)zeemike
(18,998 posts)In this post...but it is early.
Cryptoad
(8,254 posts)Comrade Snowden is still a traitor to this country in my book!
m-lekktor
(3,675 posts)bigtree
(85,996 posts)...and elsewhere.
"Small town and big city, reporter, anchor, editor, publisher, or columnist, all taught the same lesson. The Bill of Rights gave the press, like every citizen, previously unthinkable freedom to speak truth to power. As the Founders saw it, without the media, the public would be forever blinkered. Without it, government could do as it invariably prefers: conceive, organize, and implement policy decisions untrammeled by the opinions of those it is supposed to serve."
...precisely. "Whose side are you on?"
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)this was all "old news". Nothing to see here. Run along! (But he still deserves to get put away forever under the Espionage Act)!
Cant wait for the authoritarian crowd to show up and slam Hodding Carter. When ya got nothing fall back on personal smears...
bvar22
(39,909 posts)Avoid any and all discussion of Issues or Policy and the History of Bad Policy,
and go directly to Attack the Messenger.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)pa28
(6,145 posts)You get the feeling the Washington media's behavior, at least in part, stems from their own embarrassment at being exposed for the hopelessly compliant lapdogs they really are.
Poitras and Greenwald are the persistent iconoclastic reporters working the story of a lifetime and that's what a Washington reporter is supposed to be doing.
That's the way it works in fiction anyway.
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)ronnie624
(5,764 posts)Perfect.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)uponit7771
(90,336 posts)... like it hasn't been stated 234234 times already and nothing Snowden or Glenn has posted to this point negates that
Scuba
(53,475 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)to stand on but their blind allegiance to authoritarianism. They want to kill the kid that announces the king has no clothes.
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)and Greenwald in the face of the continuously growing support by legal and political experts.
Nobody's ignoring you - I'm not. I find it truly amusing.
There must not be much dirt on Hodding Carter since this thread isn't loaded with the usual smear jobs...