Glenn Greenwald Takes An Axe To Michael Kinsley's Review Of His Book

[struggle4progress]

52. Let's look at what MK actually wrote. The article was about signing statements

Here's a link to MK's 2006 bit in WaPo, which I'm providing because the link at The Intercept didn't work for me

Here's part of MK's conclusion:

... who wants to live in a society where every citizen and government official feels free to act according to his or her own personal interpretation of the Constitution, even after the Supreme Court has specifically said that this interpretation is wrong? President Bush would actually top my list of people I don't want wandering through the text and getting fancy ideas ...

I don't find that terribly alarming: it's a plea for constitutional government, and constitutional government seemed to be slipping away in those years. And MK acknowledges that explicitly earlier in the piece:

... Legitimate outrage comes when the president acts in flagrant violation of the Constitution, defending his actions unconvincingly, disingenuously or not at all. And Bush has offered plenty of grist for this mill in his assertion of the right to kidnap people off the streets, keep them locked up for years without a trial or even a public acknowledgment of their existence, to torture them, and so on ...

Nor is MK unaware of the threat of signing statements:

... What was dangerous about the Reagan administration's signing statements initiative was the claim that a president is entitled to govern according to his or her own interpretation of the Constitution even after the courts have ruled. This is a recipe for near-dictatorial executive power, not to mention governmental chaos in which no fundamental issue can ever be resolved ...

In the context of his discussion of the importance of constitutional government, MK makes a connection to the on-going controversy about leaks:

... Many in the media believe that the Constitution contains a "reporter's privilege" to protect the identity of sources in circumstances, such as a criminal trial, in which citizens ordinarily can be compelled to produce information or go to jail. The Supreme Court and lower courts have ruled and ruled again that there is no such privilege ... Last Sunday, same day as the Globe piece, the New York Times had a front-page article about the other shoe waiting to drop in these leak cases. The Bush administration may go beyond forcing journalists to testify about the sources of leaks. It may start to prosecute journalists themselves as recipients of illegal leaks. As with the Globe story, this turns out to be a matter of pugnacious noises by the Bush administration. Actual prosecutions of journalists for receiving or publishing leaks are "unknown" ...

The 2006 MK article is not well-written. He tries to do too much, and he fails because he didn't rewrite it enough times. He tries to argue, overall, that eeking and shrieking about what might happen at some future time is poor journalism and that we need reporting about what actually happens. He's aware of the concerns about Bush's views on constitutional government, and he illustrates that by noting concrete examples; he's also aware that the signing statements can send a bad signal. But he wants reporting, not hysterical speculation. He notes that the Bush administration is threatening to charge reporters over leaks, but he identifies it as pugnacious noise: again, he wants to be told what actually happens rather than what might happen. He also tries to argue the importance of constitutional government: he sees a threat not only from the noise of the Administration but from the noise of its critics. And I think he raised legitimate concerns: if we devote worry too much about what might happen we have no energy left to address what actually happens; and if the signals from an Administration cause us concern about constitutional issues, do we really improve the situation by convincing ourselves that everyone can decide for oneself what the constitution means?

I can identify two aspects of the 2006 piece that might have irritated Greenwald: the first is the suggestion that a society where every citizen .. feels free to act according to his or her own personal interpretation of the Constitution is undesirable -- likely to irritate Greenwald because that, at present, seems to be Greenwald's view. The second is the view, never quite directly stated, that reporting what might happen as if it were what actually happens is unhealthy journalism -- likely to irritate Greenwald because that seems to be Greenwald's common practice

Greenwald, in his Intercept comment, is unfortunately up to his usual games. MK never says anything like journalists should be treated as criminals for publishing information the government does not want published: he simply criticize the NYT as reporting the speculation -- that the Administration may start to prosecute journalists themselves as recipients of illegal leaks -- as if it were actual fact. Similarly, MK never says anything like journalists themselves .. might be the actual criminals, due both to their refusal to reveal their sources when ordered to do so and their willingness to publish information without the permission of the government: he simply notes that the courts have repeatedly rejected the view that the Constitution contains a "reporter's privilege" to protect the identity of sources in circumstances, such as a criminal trial, in which citizens ordinarily can be compelled to produce information or go to jail -- and the fact that MK is paraphrasing the NYT is shown clearly by the remainder of that paragraph

Greenwald is a literate man, perfectly capable of reading carefully, and it is rather sad to see him use his talents to misrepresent what others say. If one double-checks Greenwald's quotes carefully, one frequently finds him engaging in such misrepresentation, and as he never apologizes or backtracks when corrected (even by the original source of the quote), the conclusion is that he misrepresents deliberately. And here, again, he is doing just that