I can't ever remember agreeing with anything Glenn Greenwald has written ever before, but as strange as it is for a guy best known for creating comment avatars to flatter himself on other people's blogs (sock puppets), he's dead on about the professional ethics of Washington journalists.
David Gregory explicitly and proudly defends the role of the press in the Bush era generally, and the role the press played in the run-up to the Iraq War specifically, and then gets elevated to one of the most visible and prominent positions at NBC News. That's obviously not a coincidence. Rather obviously, that's the kind of "journalist" which NBC wants -- the kind that respectfully refrains from scrutinizing and pointing out official state lies because to do so is "not their role," thereby ensuring that NBC and its various corporate appendages maintain good relations with high government officials, a vital goal for them for countless reasons.
This is true as far as it goes, but as usual with left-wing harangues I deign to read--they miss the larger point. Deliberately or not I cannot say.
Yes--Greenwald describes the intersection of government and media perfectly, but how else could it be? Journalist rely on administration sources and sources leak what they will for their own purposes. It is a system tailor-made for manipulation, but ultimately, the administration is held to account for its claims (as the Bush administration was).
What the media's role is--the only one possible--is to reveal the truth as it becomes available. Yet this isn't really what Greenwald wants:
In fact, it remains to be seen what the media behavior will be towards Obama -- whether they will be guided by their hostility towards Democrats in power (as reflected by their bottomless obsession with the Lewinsky scandal, demands that Al Gore concede, campaign contempt for Gore and John Kerry, etc.)
Don't you just love it when a fifty something President gets oral sex from a 22 year old intern and the name the scandal for her, and not the President? Isn't it better termed "Clinton's intern scandal"?
Is Greenwald really suggesting that the media should have ignored the story? Even after it was broken by Drudge? Herein lies the hypocrisy of the moonbat contingent--they want a vigorous media when it suits their political agenda, and not when it doesn't.
I don't have a problem with the media reporting that no WMD were found in Iraq--they were doing their job. I don't even have a problem with the "obsession" over Abu Ghraib--it was a legitimate, even important story--governments need to be held accountable for their actions.
What I do have a problem with is the notion that the media gets to choose which agenda it supports.
In my view, the 2008 award for committing actual journalism should go to Mayhill Flower, who in spite of her clear sympathies with the Democrat party and the Obama campaign, faithfully reported Obama's bitter-clinger remarks and set off a firestorm of protest, criticism and some thoughtful discussion.
This is where citizen-journalism gets very fuzzy. Traditional journalists learn or hear things all the time that, under the rules of journalism, they can't use, because they heard or learned them in an off-the-record context. A journalist invited into a closed fundraiser - this doesn't happen often, but does from time to time - will be told by aides very clearly that everything is off the record and will presumably abide by that. So if a New York Times or San Francisco Chronicle or Guardian journalist had been inside that event under the terms I describe, the remark in all likelihood would never have become public.Ah, but Fowler is a citizen! And as a citizen, she did something that no reporting journalist would do - she donated money to Obama's campaign. These donations are what got her in the door. Now isn't that a convenient definition of citizen-journalist? Put on a citizen hat, and donate enough money to be sure that you get invited into private affairs as a citizen - something no journalist I know would do. Then, once inside the door, put on the journalist hat and report private remarks! And finally, to absolve yourself of the standard journalistic responsibility of going to aides and getting on-the-record quotes about the comment, which most any working journalist would do, toss the journalist hat back in the closet and become a citizen again! Nice work if you can get it.
Once again, there is this inability to see over the lid of the box.
Talking about tactics divorced from strategy is pointless. In chess, to lose a pawn is bad, unless of course losing that pawn delivers a more valuable strategic advantage.
This is the theory behind off-the-record remarks. A journalist allows it because the context such remarks provide could prove more strategically valuable that reporting the remarks themselves, or the source may deliver important on-the-record remarks later on.
Ultimately, journalism has to be defined not by its rules, but by its aims. Does journalism serve the political agenda of a single political party, or does it serve the public interest? I think the answer is obvious, but clearly not everyone does.
