4 ms·

Wasn't this entire thing started by "corporate funded" journalists at the Guardian and Washington Post?

meepmorp 13y ago
Don't interrupt rant. It serves no purpose and makes them cranky.
foobarqux 13y ago
Note that the Washington Post went to the government to cooperate with them. It is not clear if WaPo would have published the same story if there wasn't a competitor (the Guardian) who had access to the same material. Snowden may have shared material with the Guardian purposefully either before or after he found out the WaPo was working the government in order to ensure this. Note also that Greenwald has special circumstances which reduce his influence from corporate and US interests. First he works for a subsidiary of a UK corporation and does not report on UK issues. I also don't think he reports on corporate issues that would affect Guardian advertising. Finally, he lives in Brazil which may reduce US influence on him. All that said no one is saying that corporate journalists never break stories that are critical to government or corporations, only that they are under strong influence not to and the effect is that few such stories are produced.
- tptacek 13y ago
  If the US media is inhibited from running stories about sensational overreaches by NSA, how did James Risen and Eric Lichtblau manage to get the SOLARWIND story published?
  - foobarqux 13y ago
    They are not inhibited, they are positively and negatively incentivized. To say that the government and high-level government officials are a powerful influence is hardly contentious. If you talk shit about your boss (even if it is true and done politely) it will probably negatively affect you. If you support your boss you will probably reap rewards. The result is a system where people are influenced not to criticise their boss not a system where no one ever does.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      I'm not sure this is really responsive to my point: I gave a specific example of a bombshell story the NYT ran that was arguably more harmful to "national security" than any revelation about spying on Barack Obama.
      - foobarqux 13y ago
        In that case you are going to have to make your point explicit. My understanding is that you are trying to say that the media outlets are not influenced by the government because there exist significant critical stories of the government. But as I said "The result is a system where people are influenced not to criticise their boss not a system where no one ever does."
        tptacek 13y ago
        I guess I'm just asking why today's story, about NSA spying on Obama, which is viscerally more interesting than the Risen story but less impactful to national security, would be "frozen out" of the mainstream media where Risen's story clearly wasn't.
  - legutierr 13y ago
    The NYT had the SOLARWIND story in 2004, and were going to publish it right before the 04 election (October) but sat on it under pressure from the administration. It was over a year before they decided to publish. The story is told by Eric Lichtblau here: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/1/exclusivebushs_law_eric_lichtblau_on_exposing http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/1/exclusivebushs_law_eric... Key quote: > AMY GOODMAN: Is it right, Eric, you were still — the Times wasn’t going to run this story until to your colleague Jim at the New York Times was going to publish his book, and that put the Times in a tremendously awkward position? It’s going to come out anyway, and their reporters are not the ones who are going to reveal it. > ERIC LICHTBLAU: Yeah, that’s true, for the most part. I don't know if this is the right example to support your argument.
  - notsofast 13y ago
    The incident of the story about STELLARWIND (what is SOLARWIND?) being held back from publication by the NYT for one year at the urging of the Bush administration[1] is the evidence of the US media being inhibited from running stories about the security follies. The question is not why they were able to publish, it's why did they have to wait one year to do so? They could (and should have?) published immediately. That one year delay is what Snowden referred to when he was asked why he didn't go the NYT. That's why he gave the leaked docs to a heavily biased blogger turned journalist instead of a "legitimate" news outlet. 1. I believe the words of the Bush people to the NYT were that if they published they would "have blood on [their] hands".
wpietri 13y ago
The Guardian is, by their own admission, a center-left paper. That's in Britain, which means they are somewhere between "radical" and "terrorist mooslim communisocialifascist" here in the US. The person who broke the stuff for them is very strongly political. [2] US corporate media, on the other hand, subscribes to the "view from nowhere" style [3], which they mistake for objectivity. It makes them easily manipulated; when you create a controversy, they are obliged to move away from it. That gets you the classic, "Opinions on Shape of Earth Differ: Round or Flat?" journalism. [4] This is compounded by the way newspaper journalism has been in decline for years, and was even before the Internet drank their milkshake. [5] Now, major newspapers feel very vulnerable, and one of their few remaining assets is that people in power will talk to them. That makes them basically stenographers to power. [6] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Political_stance_and_editorial_opinion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Political_stance_a... [2] http://pressthink.org/2013/06/politics-some-politics-none-two-ways-to-excel-in-political-journalism-neither-dominates/ http://pressthink.org/2013/06/politics-some-politics-none-tw... [3] http://pressthink.org/2010/11/the-view-from-nowhere-questions-and-answers/ http://pressthink.org/2010/11/the-view-from-nowhere-question... [4] http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/08/opinions_on_sha.html http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/08/opinions_on_sha.html [5] http://davidsimon.com/do-you-know-who-i-am/#comment-6754 http://davidsimon.com/do-you-know-who-i-am/#comment-6754 [6] http://billayers.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/our-media-stenographers-for-power-re-posted-from-fair-fair-org/ http://billayers.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/our-media-stenogra...
- brown9-2 13y ago
  So yes, US journalism's objectivity is often horrible, but the owners of The Guardian are overseeing an enterprise with revenues of £254.4 million a year, according to Wikipedia. That still seems like a corporate enterprise the owners of whom would want to protect. I believe it is still be possible to be a muckraker (or employ those who are like Greenwald) and have a sizable "corporate"-ness.
  - makomk 13y ago
    The Guardian is entirely owned by the Scott Trust, which is a trust set up specifically to safeguard their editorial independence. It doesn't have owners in the usual corporate sense of the word.

Don't interrupt rant. It serves no purpose and makes them cranky.

Note that the Washington Post went to the government to cooperate with them. It is not clear if WaPo would have published the same story if there wasn't a competitor (the Guardian) who had access to the same material. Snowden may have shared material with the Guardian purposefully either before or after he found out the WaPo was working the government in order to ensure this. Note also that Greenwald has special circumstances which reduce his influence from corporate and US interests. First he works for a subsidiary of a UK corporation and does not report on UK issues. I also don't think he reports on corporate issues that would affect Guardian advertising. Finally, he lives in Brazil which may reduce US influence on him. All that said no one is saying that corporate journalists never break stories that are critical to government or corporations, only that they are under strong influence not to and the effect is that few such stories are produced.

tptacek 13y ago
If the US media is inhibited from running stories about sensational overreaches by NSA, how did James Risen and Eric Lichtblau manage to get the SOLARWIND story published?
- foobarqux 13y ago
  They are not inhibited, they are positively and negatively incentivized. To say that the government and high-level government officials are a powerful influence is hardly contentious. If you talk shit about your boss (even if it is true and done politely) it will probably negatively affect you. If you support your boss you will probably reap rewards. The result is a system where people are influenced not to criticise their boss not a system where no one ever does.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    I'm not sure this is really responsive to my point: I gave a specific example of a bombshell story the NYT ran that was arguably more harmful to "national security" than any revelation about spying on Barack Obama.
    - foobarqux 13y ago
      In that case you are going to have to make your point explicit. My understanding is that you are trying to say that the media outlets are not influenced by the government because there exist significant critical stories of the government. But as I said "The result is a system where people are influenced not to criticise their boss not a system where no one ever does."
      - tptacek 13y ago
        I guess I'm just asking why today's story, about NSA spying on Obama, which is viscerally more interesting than the Risen story but less impactful to national security, would be "frozen out" of the mainstream media where Risen's story clearly wasn't.
- legutierr 13y ago
  The NYT had the SOLARWIND story in 2004, and were going to publish it right before the 04 election (October) but sat on it under pressure from the administration. It was over a year before they decided to publish. The story is told by Eric Lichtblau here: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/1/exclusivebushs_law_eric_lichtblau_on_exposing http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/1/exclusivebushs_law_eric... Key quote: > AMY GOODMAN: Is it right, Eric, you were still — the Times wasn’t going to run this story until to your colleague Jim at the New York Times was going to publish his book, and that put the Times in a tremendously awkward position? It’s going to come out anyway, and their reporters are not the ones who are going to reveal it. > ERIC LICHTBLAU: Yeah, that’s true, for the most part. I don't know if this is the right example to support your argument.
- notsofast 13y ago
  The incident of the story about STELLARWIND (what is SOLARWIND?) being held back from publication by the NYT for one year at the urging of the Bush administration[1] is the evidence of the US media being inhibited from running stories about the security follies. The question is not why they were able to publish, it's why did they have to wait one year to do so? They could (and should have?) published immediately. That one year delay is what Snowden referred to when he was asked why he didn't go the NYT. That's why he gave the leaked docs to a heavily biased blogger turned journalist instead of a "legitimate" news outlet. 1. I believe the words of the Bush people to the NYT were that if they published they would "have blood on [their] hands".

wpietri 13y ago

The Guardian is, by their own admission, a center-left paper. That's in Britain, which means they are somewhere between "radical" and "terrorist mooslim communisocialifascist" here in the US. The person who broke the stuff for them is very strongly political. [2] US corporate media, on the other hand, subscribes to the "view from nowhere" style [3], which they mistake for objectivity. It makes them easily manipulated; when you create a controversy, they are obliged to move away from it. That gets you the classic, "Opinions on Shape of Earth Differ: Round or Flat?" journalism. [4] This is compounded by the way newspaper journalism has been in decline for years, and was even before the Internet drank their milkshake. [5] Now, major newspapers feel very vulnerable, and one of their few remaining assets is that people in power will talk to them. That makes them basically stenographers to power. [6] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Political_stance_and_editorial_opinion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Political_stance_a... [2] http://pressthink.org/2013/06/politics-some-politics-none-two-ways-to-excel-in-political-journalism-neither-dominates/ http://pressthink.org/2013/06/politics-some-politics-none-tw... [3] http://pressthink.org/2010/11/the-view-from-nowhere-questions-and-answers/ http://pressthink.org/2010/11/the-view-from-nowhere-question... [4] http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/08/opinions_on_sha.html http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/08/opinions_on_sha.html [5] http://davidsimon.com/do-you-know-who-i-am/#comment-6754 http://davidsimon.com/do-you-know-who-i-am/#comment-6754 [6] http://billayers.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/our-media-stenographers-for-power-re-posted-from-fair-fair-org/ http://billayers.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/our-media-stenogra...

brown9-2 13y ago
So yes, US journalism's objectivity is often horrible, but the owners of The Guardian are overseeing an enterprise with revenues of £254.4 million a year, according to Wikipedia. That still seems like a corporate enterprise the owners of whom would want to protect. I believe it is still be possible to be a muckraker (or employ those who are like Greenwald) and have a sizable "corporate"-ness.
- makomk 13y ago
  The Guardian is entirely owned by the Scott Trust, which is a trust set up specifically to safeguard their editorial independence. It doesn't have owners in the usual corporate sense of the word.