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Again the conversation shifts away from the bureaucracy and towards those who threaten it. While TFA brings up an important and interesting subject, we would as

by revscat 13y ago

Again the conversation shifts away from the bureaucracy and towards those who threaten it. While TFA brings up an important and interesting subject, we would as a nation be better served by focusing energies on the NSA and the various other intelligence agencies.

msg 13y ago
Ezra Klein you might call a government watchdog. The Wonkblog is dedicated to data-driven investigative journalism of government policy and programs. I think you could read the article better as Ezra Klein wondering if Ezra Klein can be charged with a crime for doing his job (maybe it's more of a calling than a job, I don't know). My view, the journalists are in a self-centered way raising the question of whether Greenwald should be charged with a crime because they see their faces in the mirror of his face. The boundaries the national security state is setting on journalism are still very fluid. The Obama administration, unfortunately, has changed the status quo of what kinds of leaks and sources will be prosecuted. It is having a chilling effect on insider journalism. Naturally all the insiders are curious about who will be called an outsider and what the fate of the outsider will be.
pyre 13y ago
| Again the conversation shifts away from the | bureaucracy and towards those who threaten it. Journalism is about presenting both sides of a story so that the reader can make up their own mind. It's also worth noting that you're bringing up a single article to show that "the conversation is shifting." By this logic, I could bring up any story in any publication that doesn't have anything to do with the NSA and claim that the MSM is trying to bury the story by reporting on Hollywood gossip or something else. I agree that the focus should be on the NSA, but hopefully all of the stories about the subject matter keep the topic in the public's thoughts. Possibly enough for some people to do more research and change their minds (from "All the way NSA!" to "Hmmm. Maybe they went too far").
- ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
  Incorrect. Fair and balanced does not mean you have to mix facts and conjecture; that's what editorials are for. The problem is that journalism today blurs the lines between the two. Halfway between the truth and a lie is still a lie.
- toyg 13y ago
  "Both sides"? What about Rashomon? Please don't fall in the bipolar disease typical of modern politics. All sides in a story should be covered. Still, you have to agree that the MSM way too often derails the conversation towards personalism and unrelated issues and away from actual policy topics, usually following this or that agenda, just because novels sell better than political essays. This should be taught in journalism school, nowadays, but it's clearly not the case.
  - PavlovsCat 13y ago
    In a way it's off-topic, but your comment very much reminded my of something Tony Benn said in an interview ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_lYGyIaK80&t=2h36m47s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_lYGyIaK80&t=2h36m47s ): "Nowadays, all you do is hear the media's description of what the candidate is saying, and one of the strange things about it is that politics is now presented in terms of politicians and not politics. I don't think the media is interested in politics, they're interested in politicians, which is a wholly different subject... who's doing this, about their private life, about their background, about what they must be thinking, might be thinking when they said something, why did they say it; but what they say is very, very hard to hear. And I think this is, in a sense, indeed quite deliberately, destroying the genuine democratic base on which people are elected."
  - rtpg 13y ago
    >All sides in a story should be covered. So I should let creationists speak on stage on the same level as everyone else? There was an editorial by (I think) the EIC of Nature. In it he talks about how giving people the floor for discussion in some way validates their positions, no matter how absurd, so the best solution is simply not to give them the floor. If someone knows what article I'm talking about , please link it, it was extremely interesting read.
    - glenstein 13y ago
      That's not what I took toyg's meaning to be. All legitimate sides of a stories should be reported. Sometimes that's two sides. Sometimes it's one. There might be times when it's thirteen and there might be other times where it's zero. The disease of modern politics is assuming it's always two.
- ynniv 13y ago
  Journalism is about presenting both sides of a story so that the reader can make up their own mind. This is the same line of reasoning that leads to fringe opinions being overrepresented in the name of "equal time". Journalism is about presenting facts in order of apparent importance, the channel editor picks the cutoff point, and the audience (vaguely) picks the seeds for the next iteration. Lately there has been relatively less talk about what the security apparatus has done, and more about the people involved in the revealing of it. History won't care where Snowden is today, or whether Greenwald is successfully tarred and feathered. The only thing on the page is going to be that the third use of the Internet (after media delivery and catalog shopping) was spying on the entire world in a way that only a decade ago was inconceivable.
- jellicle 13y ago
  > Journalism is about presenting both sides of a story Not at all. Journalism is about presenting the truth. You're talking about journamalism.
  - pyre 13y ago
    The definition I found of 'journamalism' is: An attempt to report the news marred with shoddy research, fact suppression, or a mere retyping of the press release/talking points Giving fringe views and wild theories equal space doesn't seem to apply to this definition. I'm not saying that it's good journalism, but I'm not seeing it at 'journamalism.' On the same token, not reporting facts like, "some people are Holocaust-deniers," just because their views might be wrong seems to fit with the 'fact suppression' definition of 'journamalism.'
    - TheCraiggers 13y ago
      I think that depends on how it's done, and the context. For example, I believe reporting things like "some people think Obama is a Muslim spy" or, worse yet, "Is Obama a Muslim Spy? Find out at 11" fits that description fairly well. At best, it's extra noise in the signal. At worse, it's a annoying way of "reporting" by appealing to the emotions and fears of the lowest common denominator. It's no more journalism than tabloid trash in my opinion. Actually, I'd say it's worse as the unwashed masses latch on to arguments like this and may ignore more important topics either because their minds are full of crud, or because their emotional response has already been tweaked- i,e,. "I can't trust this guy, he's a muslim spy!"
- glenstein 13y ago
  You got a bunch of replies already, but I think it's worth piling on. There aren't always two sides; if you always report there being two sides chances are you're doing irresponsible journalism. Whether or not there are multiple legitimate sides to a debate that are best left to the discretion of the reader is something that depends on the facts of each particular story and is not something that can be assumed as some sort of metaphysical principle of journalism.
  - pyre 13y ago
    Golden Rule of the Internet: Someone will always be pedantic unless you write your post to be airtight and have copious amounts of text covering all edge-cases. People always have a compulsion to evaluate what you wrote while ignoring the current context. Did I say somewhere here that all articles on the Holocaust require an equal amount of time presenting the views of Holocaust-deniers? If not, then why assume that I'm making some sort of absolute statement?
    - glenstein 13y ago
      There's nothing "edge case" about this. Attempts to articulate the "other side" of the NSA scandal have been amongst the worst instances of reporting and the greatest sources of misunderstanding we've had to deal with, and they can be found right in the bullseye center of the NSA conversation. I'd say a better candidate for Golden Rule of the Internet is the tendency of people to collapse meaningful distinctions, and think that policing those distinctions is pedantry relating to far-off hypotheticals, but not to instances of their own behavior.
mtgx 13y ago
I agree, but at the same time these journalists should be defended - sadly, I think only by us, because most of the media won't defend their own in this case, and they'd rather side with the government.
GHFigs 13y ago
I think that's a misread. The purpose of the story is to make it appear that WaPo is on the case and to keep you on the edge of your seat, even though nothing has actually happened, and the article itself strongly suggests that nothing will. It's not supposed to shift the conversation anywhere, but to keep you talking and reading the news, even though there isn't any news to talk about.

by revscat 13y ago

msg 13y ago

Ezra Klein you might call a government watchdog. The Wonkblog is dedicated to data-driven investigative journalism of government policy and programs. I think you could read the article better as Ezra Klein wondering if Ezra Klein can be charged with a crime for doing his job (maybe it's more of a calling than a job, I don't know). My view, the journalists are in a self-centered way raising the question of whether Greenwald should be charged with a crime because they see their faces in the mirror of his face. The boundaries the national security state is setting on journalism are still very fluid. The Obama administration, unfortunately, has changed the status quo of what kinds of leaks and sources will be prosecuted. It is having a chilling effect on insider journalism. Naturally all the insiders are curious about who will be called an outsider and what the fate of the outsider will be.

pyre 13y ago

| Again the conversation shifts away from the | bureaucracy and towards those who threaten it. Journalism is about presenting both sides of a story so that the reader can make up their own mind. It's also worth noting that you're bringing up a single article to show that "the conversation is shifting." By this logic, I could bring up any story in any publication that doesn't have anything to do with the NSA and claim that the MSM is trying to bury the story by reporting on Hollywood gossip or something else. I agree that the focus should be on the NSA, but hopefully all of the stories about the subject matter keep the topic in the public's thoughts. Possibly enough for some people to do more research and change their minds (from "All the way NSA!" to "Hmmm. Maybe they went too far").

ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
Incorrect. Fair and balanced does not mean you have to mix facts and conjecture; that's what editorials are for. The problem is that journalism today blurs the lines between the two. Halfway between the truth and a lie is still a lie.
toyg 13y ago
"Both sides"? What about Rashomon? Please don't fall in the bipolar disease typical of modern politics. All sides in a story should be covered. Still, you have to agree that the MSM way too often derails the conversation towards personalism and unrelated issues and away from actual policy topics, usually following this or that agenda, just because novels sell better than political essays. This should be taught in journalism school, nowadays, but it's clearly not the case.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  In a way it's off-topic, but your comment very much reminded my of something Tony Benn said in an interview ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_lYGyIaK80&t=2h36m47s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_lYGyIaK80&t=2h36m47s ): "Nowadays, all you do is hear the media's description of what the candidate is saying, and one of the strange things about it is that politics is now presented in terms of politicians and not politics. I don't think the media is interested in politics, they're interested in politicians, which is a wholly different subject... who's doing this, about their private life, about their background, about what they must be thinking, might be thinking when they said something, why did they say it; but what they say is very, very hard to hear. And I think this is, in a sense, indeed quite deliberately, destroying the genuine democratic base on which people are elected."
- rtpg 13y ago
  >All sides in a story should be covered. So I should let creationists speak on stage on the same level as everyone else? There was an editorial by (I think) the EIC of Nature. In it he talks about how giving people the floor for discussion in some way validates their positions, no matter how absurd, so the best solution is simply not to give them the floor. If someone knows what article I'm talking about , please link it, it was extremely interesting read.
  - glenstein 13y ago
    That's not what I took toyg's meaning to be. All legitimate sides of a stories should be reported. Sometimes that's two sides. Sometimes it's one. There might be times when it's thirteen and there might be other times where it's zero. The disease of modern politics is assuming it's always two.
ynniv 13y ago
Journalism is about presenting both sides of a story so that the reader can make up their own mind. This is the same line of reasoning that leads to fringe opinions being overrepresented in the name of "equal time". Journalism is about presenting facts in order of apparent importance, the channel editor picks the cutoff point, and the audience (vaguely) picks the seeds for the next iteration. Lately there has been relatively less talk about what the security apparatus has done, and more about the people involved in the revealing of it. History won't care where Snowden is today, or whether Greenwald is successfully tarred and feathered. The only thing on the page is going to be that the third use of the Internet (after media delivery and catalog shopping) was spying on the entire world in a way that only a decade ago was inconceivable.
jellicle 13y ago
> Journalism is about presenting both sides of a story Not at all. Journalism is about presenting the truth. You're talking about journamalism.
- pyre 13y ago
  The definition I found of 'journamalism' is: An attempt to report the news marred with shoddy research, fact suppression, or a mere retyping of the press release/talking points Giving fringe views and wild theories equal space doesn't seem to apply to this definition. I'm not saying that it's good journalism, but I'm not seeing it at 'journamalism.' On the same token, not reporting facts like, "some people are Holocaust-deniers," just because their views might be wrong seems to fit with the 'fact suppression' definition of 'journamalism.'
  - TheCraiggers 13y ago
    I think that depends on how it's done, and the context. For example, I believe reporting things like "some people think Obama is a Muslim spy" or, worse yet, "Is Obama a Muslim Spy? Find out at 11" fits that description fairly well. At best, it's extra noise in the signal. At worse, it's a annoying way of "reporting" by appealing to the emotions and fears of the lowest common denominator. It's no more journalism than tabloid trash in my opinion. Actually, I'd say it's worse as the unwashed masses latch on to arguments like this and may ignore more important topics either because their minds are full of crud, or because their emotional response has already been tweaked- i,e,. "I can't trust this guy, he's a muslim spy!"
glenstein 13y ago
You got a bunch of replies already, but I think it's worth piling on. There aren't always two sides; if you always report there being two sides chances are you're doing irresponsible journalism. Whether or not there are multiple legitimate sides to a debate that are best left to the discretion of the reader is something that depends on the facts of each particular story and is not something that can be assumed as some sort of metaphysical principle of journalism.
- pyre 13y ago
  Golden Rule of the Internet: Someone will always be pedantic unless you write your post to be airtight and have copious amounts of text covering all edge-cases. People always have a compulsion to evaluate what you wrote while ignoring the current context. Did I say somewhere here that all articles on the Holocaust require an equal amount of time presenting the views of Holocaust-deniers? If not, then why assume that I'm making some sort of absolute statement?
  - glenstein 13y ago
    There's nothing "edge case" about this. Attempts to articulate the "other side" of the NSA scandal have been amongst the worst instances of reporting and the greatest sources of misunderstanding we've had to deal with, and they can be found right in the bullseye center of the NSA conversation. I'd say a better candidate for Golden Rule of the Internet is the tendency of people to collapse meaningful distinctions, and think that policing those distinctions is pedantry relating to far-off hypotheticals, but not to instances of their own behavior.

mtgx 13y ago

I agree, but at the same time these journalists should be defended - sadly, I think only by us, because most of the media won't defend their own in this case, and they'd rather side with the government.

GHFigs 13y ago

I think that's a misread. The purpose of the story is to make it appear that WaPo is on the case and to keep you on the edge of your seat, even though nothing has actually happened, and the article itself strongly suggests that nothing will. It's not supposed to shift the conversation anywhere, but to keep you talking and reading the news, even though there isn't any news to talk about.