{"id":35774,"date":"2013-11-04T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2013-11-04T12:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=35774"},"modified":"2015-05-05T22:21:15","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T21:21:15","slug":"former-nyt-editor-fears-glenn-greenwald-is-the-future-of-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/11\/former-nyt-editor-fears-glenn-greenwald-is-the-future-of-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Former NYT Editor Fears Glenn Greenwald Is the \u2018Future of News\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the opinion pages of The New York Times on Sunday [27 Oct 2013], columnist and former executive editor Bill Keller sought<\/a> to defend his view of \u201cobjective\u201d reporting against Glenn Greenwald\u2019s \u201caccountability journalism grounded in rigorous factual accuracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The debate proceeds as an exchange of letters. Keller begins: \u201cDear Glenn, We come at journalism from different traditions. I\u2019ve spent a life working at newspapers that put a premium on aggressive but impartial reporting, that expect reporters and editors to keep their opinions to themselves unless they relocate (as I have done) to the pages clearly identified as the home of opinion. You come from a more activist tradition\u2014first as a lawyer, then as a blogger and columnist, and soon as part of a new, independent journalistic venture financed by the eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Your writing proceeds from a clearly stated point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keller concedes that the \u201cpursuit of\u201d what he calls \u201cfairness\u201d\u2014but which according to Greenwald is better understood as a \u201creportorial ban on \u2026 making clear, declarative statements about the words and actions of political officials out of fear that one will be accused of bias\u201d\u2014is \u201ca relatively new standard in American journalism.\u201d Greenwald contends that the cost of this pursuit is \u201ca glaring subservience to political power,\u201d which in the case of The New York Times, led to \u201claunder[ing] false official claims about Saddam\u2019s W.M.D.\u2019s and alliance with Al Qaeda on its front page under the guise of \u2018news\u2019\u00a0\u201d to help the U.S. government start the latest Iraq War; \u201croutinely [giving] anonymity to U.S. officials to allow them to spread leader-glorifying mythologies or quite toxic smears of government critics without any accountability\u201d; printing \u201cincredibly incendiary accusations about American whistle-blowers without a shred of evidence\u201d; and enabling \u201cthe American people to re-elect George Bush while knowing, but concealing, that he was eavesdropping on them in exactly the way the criminal law prohibited.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a fundamental difference between Keller and Greenwald. Keller is a defender of journalism led by the interests of institutions. Greenwald on the other hand wants journalists respected for their dogged opposition to power leading the reporting of stories. \u201c[E]ditors should be there to empower and enable strong, highly factual, aggressive adversarial journalism, not to serve as roadblocks to neuter or suppress the journalism,\u201d he writes. (Exceptions to this view, he says, include instances where publishing would put innocent lives at risk.) The difference is fascinating because compared with the history of Greenwald\u2019s reporting, the Times\u2019 track record shows that large, bulky institutions operate in a complex web of interests that have mainly to do with their owners\u2019 connections to political and financial elites (or the fact that their owners are among the elites), and which compromises Keller\u2019s own view of the mission of journalism, to let \u201cthe evidence speak for itself.\u201d Individual reporters unentrenched in those interests, as Greenwald has so far advocated, are professionally agile and free to follow evidence and abuses wherever they lead.<\/p>\n

Everywhere in the exchange Keller admits that his institution has made mistakes. He signs off with a maddening act of condescension that is not a criticism of any particular thing Greenwald has done, but rather a platitude that functions to buoy Keller\u2019s reputation as a sagely authority. \u201cSelf-criticism and correction,\u201d he advises, \u201care no fun, but they are as healthy for journalism as independence and a reverence for the truth. Humility is as dear as passion. So my advice is: Learn to say, \u2018We were wrong.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

Greenwald ends with a precise insight into the disposition of giant news institutions like The New York Times, which was quoted<\/a> on Monday morning\u2019s episode of \u201cDemocracy Now!\u201d \u201cEmbedded in The New York Times\u2019s institutional perspective and reporting methodologies are all sorts of quite debatable and subjective political and cultural assumptions about the world,\u201d he writes. \u201cAnd with some noble exceptions, The Times, by design or otherwise, has long served the interests of the same set of elite and powerful factions. Its reporting is no less \u2018activist,\u2019 subjective or opinion-driven than the new media voices it sometimes condescendingly scorns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 truthdig.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAnd with some noble exceptions, The Times, by design or otherwise, has long served the interests of the same set of elite and powerful factions. Its reporting is no less \u2018activist,\u2019 subjective or opinion-driven than the new media voices it sometimes condescendingly scorns.\u201d –Greenwald<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-whistleblowing-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}