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This is an important article and adds some real context to Washington Post's editorial. This quote sums it up. But still, if the Post editorial page editors
by eadz 10y ago
This is an important article and adds some real context to Washington Post's editorial. This quote sums it up.
But still, if the Post editorial page editors now want to
denounce these revelations, and even call for the
imprisonment of their paper’s own source on this ground,
then they should at least have the courage to acknowledge
that it was The Washington Post — not Edward Snowden — who
made the editorial and institutional choice to expose those
programs to the public.
The Washington Post's editors decided these stories were in the public interest and should be published, not Snowden.
- lisper 10y agoIndeed, it must be emphasized that Snowden deliberately did not disclose any of the information he had collected publicly. He specifically wanted someone else to make the decision about what (if anything) should be disclosed, and he specifically wanted journalists to make that decision. For the Post to stab Snowden in the back this way is the worst treachery, cowardice, and hypocrisy that I have ever witnessed.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 10y agoThe worst. Really? Are you sure you don't mean "the most cognitively available"?
- unethical_ban 10y agoWell, he wasn't there for Caesar, so perhaps. re-edit: I did originally call it a throwaway comment, which while I still kind of feel to be the case, recanted when I saw he put effort lower in the thread.
- tptacek 10y agoIt's not a throwaway comment. I do think we've lost some perspective about this issue. You're free to disagree with me!
- engi_nerd 10y agoThe parent said it was the worst they had ever witnessed. Perhaps hyperbolic, perhaps not. Who is to say? Certainly not you or I.
- lisper 10y ago> Really? Yes. http://blog.rongarret.info/2016/09/the-greatest-traitors-in-american.html http://blog.rongarret.info/2016/09/the-greatest-traitors-in-...
- tptacek 10y agoCan you simultaneously be a traitor and correct in both your original, faithful actions and your later, treacherous ones? Could Baron have done the right thing given the ambit of the Post's newsroom, and the Editorial Page also the right thing in putting forward the argument against blanket clemency? Clearly, the Post's Editorial has quietly excused a lot of its own conduct. I'm less interested in the argument about the Post's hypocrisy --- because I'm sure I'll end up agreeing with you about that.
- jsmthrowaway 10y ago> Could Baron have done the right thing given the ambit of the Post's newsroom, and the Editorial Page also the right thing in putting forward the argument against blanket clemency? No. There is no dissonance here whatsoever. Editorial just cost WaPo an unfathomable number of sources. If you're playing the right move game and consider solely the masthead's interest, carpetbombing loyalty to sources is an extremely stupid move for a masthead to make. I think this is something Greenwald missed given his characterization of WaPo acting in its own self interest; the editorial is inexplicable in that frame of reference. There is more to it, without question. I bet Barton Gellman is having a good day.
- tptacek 10y agoI'm even less interested in the argument about whether it was in the Post's best interests to publish this.
- jsmthrowaway 10y agoEditorial exists to advocate for the interests of the paper. That's the key.
- 20yrs_no_equity 10y agoI worked at Amazon, I interacted with Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post doing this does not surprise me. It is effectively his political blog, where he gets to push his agenda while being abstracted away from responsibility. (EG: Amazon PR can continue its campaign of BS propaganda without WashPo articles hurting them or Bezos.)
- nitrogen 10y agoWhat does Amazon gain from an anti-Snowden article? Should we be worried about the privacy of our purchase history and AWS instances even more than we already were?
- dalke 10y agoI think it's more about the political influence Bezos might get by showing that he supports the established political system.
- jackmott 10y agoI would wager it is just that this is what Bezos believes is right.
- 20yrs_no_equity 10y agoWhat Jeff believes is right is what accrues to Jeff more power. The founders of Google, Bill Gates and Steve Balmer, Jobs and Wozniak, the early Sun people, they all made mistakes and might have done bad things. Generally I think people running businesses are doing so because they want to make a dent in the universe. I don't buy the idea that CEOs are sociopaths (which seems to be a common perception). But if you told me you believed Bezos was a sociopath I would suspect you were right. I only worked there a couple years but I had more interaction with him than I would like (though he never chewed me out) and usually, I'm eager to get close to the CEO and learn what I can.
- 10y ago
- rayiner 10y ago> treachery, cowardice, and hypocrisy WaPo is D.C.'s paper after all. That describes business as usual here.
- novaleaf 10y agoThe Post's Article is saying that Snowden is responsible for leaking legal and secret information. As you say, the Post is responsible for publishing it, but the Post's actions do not absolve Snowden of his responsibilities. I didn't know that PRISM was legal, and in that light I guess I'd agree with the Post Editorial. Howerver, I do respect and admire Snowden for releasing what he did.
- themartorana 10y agoYour respect and admiration absolve him of his responsibilities. This is something I'm seeing more and more - "Snowden is a hero, but should stand trial and face his responsibilities." It's an oxymoron as far as I can figure, and I'm deeply disturbed by it. Either we should know what was revealed, and our government needs checking, or not. But if so, outing that information is heroic and extralegal. If you truly want no one to ever take the same risk Snowden took for the citizens of the US, let the citizens be the ones to throw him to the dogs.
- jcranmer 10y agoWhen Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, he didn't immediately flee to a foreign country to avoid prosecution. Indeed, he willingly submitted to arrest (under the same law that Snowden is charged under). That Snowden appears to be trying to run away from the consequences of his actions makes him less of a hero in my eyes.
- AYBABTME 10y agoIt's a weird argument. Not only do US people want a hero, but the hero must suffer.
- eropple 10y agoNo, the "hero" (and I don't think Snowden is one, but I am biased from personal experience) should, if he believes himself to be in the right, defend himself in front of a jury of his peers. That's not the same thing as "suffering"; that's how the judicial system works.
- ramblenode 10y agoI agree, but I also see the situation as more nuanced than Greenwald. Columnists and staff writers working for the same paper can have divergent opinions, and in the case of WaPost, this editorial was not written by the same group of people responsible for breaking the leaks. With some caveats, journalistic autonomy within a paper is a good thing--it helps push back against top-down bias from editors and owners (although, as others have pointed out, maybe WaPost isn't a good example). So there is a tension between Greenwald's monolithic indictment of WaPost and the ideal of journalistic integrity, where an individual journalist can freely publish an informed opinion without outside influence, including from the paper hierarchy. But this still doesn't excuse the Washington Post. Publicly disagreeing with a colleague is categorically different from protecting a colleague's source. Usually this means protecting anonymity, but in the case of Snowden it's about protecting his safety and well-being: things indirectly threatened by calling for his prosecution if he returns to US soil. Protecting a source should be considered transitive and inherited by the parent publication, taking precedence over the above-mentioned journalistic autonomy. While maybe not an ethical universal, WaPost being one of four publications to receive the leaks, then publishing them extensively, then winning a Pulitzer for having done so does not make for an exculpatory edge case.
- wallace_f 10y ago>there is a tension between Greenwald's monolithic indictment of WaPost and the ideal of journalistic integrity, where an individual journalist can freely publish an informed opinion without outside influence, including from the paper hierarchy. You think so? I disagree - I don't see such a problem with Greenwald's indictment of the post. The editorial column was written by the Post's editorial board--not an individual journalist as you wrote.
- timv 10y ago> Publicly disagreeing with a colleague is categorically different from protecting a colleague's source The infuriating part is that they're not admitting to the fact that they're publicly disagreeing. Sure, it's obvious if you know the facts - their paper published the details of PRISM. If publishing those details was wrong, then the editors who chose to run that story were wrong. But they never say that. If this editorial said "Snowden should be charged, and those journalists from this paper who chose to publish the details of programs such as PRISM should be fired and be investigated by the relevant authorities" then it would at least be honest (and also a horrible betrayal of both the paper's source and its staff) But they won't admit that when they claim Snowden caused ' “tremendous damage” to national security', that they need to level that same charge at their own colleagues. If Snowden acted against the national interest in providing documents to journalists, then an even stronger claim can be brought against the journalists who published those stories to the public. That The Post chooses to ignore that is pure cowardice.