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There's a complex symbiotic relationship between the government and high level journalists, especially with regard to national security issues. It's not simply

by s_q_b 13y ago

There's a complex symbiotic relationship between the government and high level journalists, especially with regard to national security issues. It's not simply that they're government shills. Rather, there's a strong appreciation for the sensitivity national security stories inherently possess amongst traditional journalists. Often, these stories could cause war, regime collapse, and loss of life in ways remote and unconsidered by the journalist. The ad-hoc system worked out by United States media outlets is to approach government officials prior to publication of certain sensitive stories. If anything could seriously damage national security or cause immediate loss of life, the officials will lobby the newspapers to remove certain pieces of information. In most circumstances, journalists only agree to these edits when there is both immediate danger to specific persons, usually military or intelligence assets, that would be caused by the information, and the information requested to be redacted is ancillary to subject of the story. The reason so many in the media have had a viscerally negative reaction to Assange and Snowden is that they completely ignored this delicate back and forth, skipping straight to full scale publication. In essence, they did not follow the media establishment's rules for responsible journalistic disclosure. The actions taken against The Guardian by the UK government marked a real sea change in the way the United States media is treating this story. Going after Greenwald? Sure, he was fair game, just a blogger with little to no editorial oversight from the paper that bore his brand. But The Guardian is a full-fledged newspaper, and most certainly not fair game. United States journalists are now scared stiff. Smashing those hard drives suddenly invoked the narrative of attempted control and oppression that every professional journalist had drilled into them for years at university. The blowback was immediate, swift, and severe. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post all plastered stories to their front pages about Miranda's detention within a few minutes. Overnight editors shifted their attitudes, and opinion pieces like this one spiked. Most significantly, The New York Times is now spearheading a series of stories based upon the Snowden disclosures, which will likely become the definitive investigation. This shift will take time to trickle down, since American establishment journalism is very elite-mediated, but the impact will be massive.

grey-area 13y ago
The reason so many in the media have had a viscerally negative reaction to Assange and Snowden is that they completely ignored this delicate back and forth, skipping straight to full scale publication. In essence, they did not follow the media establishment's rules for responsible journalistic disclosure. That's not really true of Greenwald working with the Guardian, the Guardian editors have run each story past the authorities prior to publication, according to Alan Rusbridger and Janine Gibson. And the stories have been heavily redacted by them and Greenwald. I think they've been quite responsible, and Greenwald certainly has had editorial input from the Guardian, and is far from the only reporter there on this story, I think I've seen at least 10 other bylines. See this interview with Charlie Rose for details from the editors on their process: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7pdzzZB7Xgo http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7pdzzZB7Xgo I think it's more that the traditional press sense the end of an era and with it a huge erosion of their power and prestige - their monopoly on news is simply vanishing, and that creates some hostility to these upstarts who don't understand the rules of the game like Greenwald, wikileaks bloggers etc. and who are willing to completely forgo any access to government sources, and thus are in many ways more independent than the White House press pool. It'll be great to see the nytimes running with this now that the guardian is giving them access, they did a really detailed synopsis of the story so far anchored on Laura Poitras recently which is really worth reading. I'm also really interested to see what she does with her film, perhaps it'll come out just in time for the elections!
- s_q_b 13y ago
  Good points, I hadn't realized how involved the Guardian's editors had been in Greenwald's recent stories, especially since he retained sole editorial control over his publications in the past. The way my friends in the journalistic world have explained it me was in terms of "breaking unwritten rules." The anti-leaker reaction seems very extreme for simple sour grapes, although I suppose it isn't wise to underestimate the reactionary posturing of an industry in decline. I have heard pretty detailed confirmation that the recent events at the Guardian have really altered the US press's attitude thus far. It's odd to me they didn't redact the program codenames. Since the codenames are legal to know, as long as you don't say the underlying program to which they refer, they're commonly plastered all over unclassified presentations. Once you know the underlying technology, the combination of codename and context gives away a lot of information. I've seen people spidering based upon the program names that were leaked so far. With a little bit of googling and clustering of results, they can figure out which programs relate to e.g. upstream collection. That seems like a bonanza for hostile intelligence agencies, especially since they can add all of those codenames to KWS, and wait until someone accidentally slips and describes them in an open channel.
gregsq 13y ago
It's worth stating again that wikileaks did not simply do as you say, and release, or if you prefer, publish the documents sourced from Manning without editorial constraint, at least until the cables were themselves public. The Iraq logs they certainly did. With the cables however Wikileaks published cables synchronously with their, to use their term, publishing partners. These partners were The Guardian, The New York Times, Der Speigel, Le Monde and El Pais. Initially Wikileaks only published cables that conformed with editing and redaction processes performed by The Guardian. After the insurance pass phrase was published in a confusion by someone connected to The Guardian and the cable file was compromised, Wikileaks published them all. This act received much criticism, but is far removed from an implication of unconsidered mass release. [1] As to The New York Times spearheading anything, this is something of an article of faith. The Guardian has arranged this with the NYT to dissuade the UK government from a course of action that could result in a complete halt in reporting based on this leak. There is no first amendment protection in the UK. Strictly speaking, this protection is already provided by the relationship with the Washington Post. But the agreement with the NYT is designed to rebut the proposed intention of the UK government by deliberate journalistic revolt in symbolic union with the paragon of first amendment defence. Which is best exemplified by the NYT. A strategic expression of journalistic power. The NYT can certainly be admired for its principles in joining in that defence, as it did in defence of Fox reporter James Rosen. Spearheading? Well we shall see. [1]http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomatic_cables_leak http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomatic_cabl...

by s_q_b 13y ago

grey-area 13y ago

The reason so many in the media have had a viscerally negative reaction to Assange and Snowden is that they completely ignored this delicate back and forth, skipping straight to full scale publication. In essence, they did not follow the media establishment's rules for responsible journalistic disclosure. That's not really true of Greenwald working with the Guardian, the Guardian editors have run each story past the authorities prior to publication, according to Alan Rusbridger and Janine Gibson. And the stories have been heavily redacted by them and Greenwald. I think they've been quite responsible, and Greenwald certainly has had editorial input from the Guardian, and is far from the only reporter there on this story, I think I've seen at least 10 other bylines. See this interview with Charlie Rose for details from the editors on their process: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7pdzzZB7Xgo http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7pdzzZB7Xgo I think it's more that the traditional press sense the end of an era and with it a huge erosion of their power and prestige - their monopoly on news is simply vanishing, and that creates some hostility to these upstarts who don't understand the rules of the game like Greenwald, wikileaks bloggers etc. and who are willing to completely forgo any access to government sources, and thus are in many ways more independent than the White House press pool. It'll be great to see the nytimes running with this now that the guardian is giving them access, they did a really detailed synopsis of the story so far anchored on Laura Poitras recently which is really worth reading. I'm also really interested to see what she does with her film, perhaps it'll come out just in time for the elections!

s_q_b 13y ago
Good points, I hadn't realized how involved the Guardian's editors had been in Greenwald's recent stories, especially since he retained sole editorial control over his publications in the past. The way my friends in the journalistic world have explained it me was in terms of "breaking unwritten rules." The anti-leaker reaction seems very extreme for simple sour grapes, although I suppose it isn't wise to underestimate the reactionary posturing of an industry in decline. I have heard pretty detailed confirmation that the recent events at the Guardian have really altered the US press's attitude thus far. It's odd to me they didn't redact the program codenames. Since the codenames are legal to know, as long as you don't say the underlying program to which they refer, they're commonly plastered all over unclassified presentations. Once you know the underlying technology, the combination of codename and context gives away a lot of information. I've seen people spidering based upon the program names that were leaked so far. With a little bit of googling and clustering of results, they can figure out which programs relate to e.g. upstream collection. That seems like a bonanza for hostile intelligence agencies, especially since they can add all of those codenames to KWS, and wait until someone accidentally slips and describes them in an open channel.

gregsq 13y ago

It's worth stating again that wikileaks did not simply do as you say, and release, or if you prefer, publish the documents sourced from Manning without editorial constraint, at least until the cables were themselves public. The Iraq logs they certainly did. With the cables however Wikileaks published cables synchronously with their, to use their term, publishing partners. These partners were The Guardian, The New York Times, Der Speigel, Le Monde and El Pais. Initially Wikileaks only published cables that conformed with editing and redaction processes performed by The Guardian. After the insurance pass phrase was published in a confusion by someone connected to The Guardian and the cable file was compromised, Wikileaks published them all. This act received much criticism, but is far removed from an implication of unconsidered mass release. [1] As to The New York Times spearheading anything, this is something of an article of faith. The Guardian has arranged this with the NYT to dissuade the UK government from a course of action that could result in a complete halt in reporting based on this leak. There is no first amendment protection in the UK. Strictly speaking, this protection is already provided by the relationship with the Washington Post. But the agreement with the NYT is designed to rebut the proposed intention of the UK government by deliberate journalistic revolt in symbolic union with the paragon of first amendment defence. Which is best exemplified by the NYT. A strategic expression of journalistic power. The NYT can certainly be admired for its principles in joining in that defence, as it did in defence of Fox reporter James Rosen. Spearheading? Well we shall see. [1]http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomatic_cables_leak http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomatic_cabl...