Greenwald Responds to Wired | Hacker News Reader

Greenwald Responds to Wired

salon.com

61 pointszzzeek25 comments

Here is the companion post, which addresses the more substantive issues:

http://www.salon.com/news/wikileaks/index.html?story=/opinio...

I've put in on HN, here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2049449

If you think this is only about "drama", you're sorely misled. This is about journalism, and about whether we have any journalists left that will examine the Wikileaks issues with some rigor, as opposed to grade-school attacks on the messenger and Palinesque distraction tactics.

Putting aside the political slant of your comment, please educate me. Quite honestly it all looks like a drama-of-the-week from where I sit.

What feature of journalism is under attack to warrant all this hub-bub? And in your response, please remember whom the Pulitzer prize was named for.

This is my foray into writing completely speculative theories on a message board, but what the hell, gotta start sometime.

<rant>

1) Not speculative: Manning is gay - the media already made a huge deal out of this.

2) Somewhat speculative - Lamo is gay - from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Lamo - "Lamo was appointed to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Questioning Youth Task Force by San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano"

3) Completely speculative - Manning contacted Lamo on the basis of talking to someone who would understand.

4) Completely speculative - So far, there's no direct evidence that Manning's leaking the documents has anything to do with him being gay, and only complete right-wing nuts (e.g. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/31575) claim that. If there's something in the chat logs that says "I am gay, I leaked the documents because I hate the US and the Army's policy on treating gays, and I hope you (Adrian Lamo) understand", then there's direct evidence. Repealing DADT was already extremely controversial, and if Wired released those chat logs when they first acquired them, it would've made the discussion even more explosive. (never mind the argument that being dissatisfied in the army because of DADT is a reason to repeal DADT.) The repeal of DADT passed. Had Wired released those chat logs, it might not have. Assuming that editors at Wired and their general audience is left-leaning (somewhat speculative - I lean to the left, so do my friends, we read Wired), they wouldn't want to do anything that might interfere with the repeal of DADT, especially something like providing a link between Manning's sexual orientation and him leaking the cables.

<rant>

I think both Wired and Greenwald are operating ethically. Greenwald is right to be, as a reporter, skeptical and demanding of more evidence. Wired, unfortunately, is caught in a position where they may well be acting completely ethically but can't explain why without violating someone's privacy and trust.

They both may be doing the right thing here. I hope I am right and we really do have two pretty good journalistic organizations operating with good intentions.

Can you elaborate on your theory of why Wired is justified in withholding the chat logs? What about the matter of not disclosing all ties to their sources -- do you think there is an ethical reason for that? Why counter-attack Greenwald if they know his accusations are justified, from the public perspective?

No, unfortunately I can't without further eroding someone's privacy if I'm right and if I'm right Wired is in the same position, which is part of why they can't really explain themselves to everyone's satisfaction.

As for disclosing ties, yeah, I agree they might have gotten a bit sloppy there, but reporters cultivate personal relationships with sources all the time. I don't necessarily see that as a dealbreaker. But it seems sloppy at worst.

I think they need to defend themselves from Greenwald's articles because he is making people hate them. Unfortunately to actually defend themselves would be to explain why they have to hold the information private, which they can't really do, without spoiling people's privacy.

I think we need to give Wired some trust on this one.

Imagine the portions of the logs not released by Wired and the Washington Post include Manning discussing his sex life, opinions about other as-yet-uninvolved private individuals or active duty personnel, medical/psychological details, or cable contents even Wikileaks hasn't (and might choose not to) release. Further, that the logs aren't conclusive either way on Lamo's other statements, perhaps because the logs Wired has are only some of the Manning/Lamo communication.

Then Poulsen/Wired's selective disclosure is perfectly reasonable, and there's no journalistic obligation to play '20 questions' confirming/denying every hunch Greenwald has about the logs, or release a meticulously 'redacted' set of logs which could just set off more wild speculation about the redacted regions.

They made a call about what excerpts were newsworthy, and have stuck to it. Even if they erred around the edges, with a few other sentences having some interest to those with a compulsive interest in coloring in every detail — well, opinions vary and errors happen. It wouldn't help to trickle out new marginal details in response to Greenwald's barbs.

What personal private details could outweigh critical info about a huge news story? If they really are compromising their integrity as journalists to be good loyal friends, they can expect and deserve to be criticized as bad journalists.

And if they refuse to even explain themselves then nobody can be blamed for assuming the worst. And I can imagine scenarios worse than just protecting someone's privacy. The "we can't tell you why we can't tell you" excuse is as good as nothing.

Are you suggesting that once a news story is 'huge' it outweighs any claim to privacy involved individuals might have? Neither Wired nor Greenwald believes that.

I gave examples of the kinds of personal info that might justify privscy-preserving selective log publishing: sex life, discussion of uninvolved peers, and medical/psychological details. Your imagination should be able to fill in the rest.

Wired has explained themselves and no part of their explanation talks about being 'good loyal friends'.

Thank you for explaining better than I was able to.

I think after 1 post and 2 exchanges the only appropriate resolution to this debate is a duel between the participants.

I absolutely hate when people respond to a legitimate debate this way.

It's not that debate is bad, it's that debate's duration should be finite.

Unfortunately in this day and age of endless interweb debates, duel does seem like a reasonable idea.

I honestly don't know all the story to comment about the accuracy but one thing I can say though:

After reading Greenwald's original post and his response to Wired's response, he comes off a calm. measured and rational. Wired, on the other hand, comes off defensive and argumentative. Seems like they are more interested in taking shots at Greenwald instead of addressing the issues he raised.

Why do I get the feeling this is going to go on for quite some time?

On the other hand, I'm sure this is doing wonders for both Salon and Wired's visitor numbers.

It should at least be more interesting than a Techcrunch "scandal".

Just get some popcorn and enjoy the show.

I think Wired will get burned by the Manning case..

When a writer gets involved in the story we call it Gonzo Journalism..but usually when that is the case..its claimed upfront...

In this case Wired wants to hide the fact of a writer being fully involved in the story and claim its due to personal privacy..

I tend to agree. It's a tad hard to see how personal privacy concerns require redaction of 75% of the material, unless the people chatting are romantically involved. If that is the case, then I officially withdraw my objections. :)

There's another explanation that is reasonable but Wired can't even talk about without someone's privacy being damaged.

It sucks that they're in this bind. I believe they are acting ethically.

Thanks for your endorsement. How do you square that, then, with the irresponsible attacks on Greenwald? Why don't they just come out and say precisely this? A response saying "Yes, it sucks that we're not releasing more, and we know why it's sensible to ask, but we have other priorities and for now we think we're making a balanced choice." would be a lot more respectable.

It'd be even better if they'd identify in advance some change in the situation which would alter the equation such that they'd be willing to release more. Outsiders could then better gauge what kind of trade-off they're making, and it also gives an accountability horizon such that outsiders can later on assess whether they made the right trade-off. That's a much easier pill to swallow than "We're right, now shut up and go away."

Weren't their earlier responses pretty much that?

There's also a duel of personalities going on and neither side is being terrible graceful. I wish neither side would find need to talk badly of the other, but welcome to modern media? :/

It's interesting how people can read articles yet miss entirely their substance.

Greenwald has noted a number of inconsistencies in Lamo's declarations, inconsistencies which have enormous potential consequences for the evolution of the case, notably whether Assange can be considered an accomplice of Manning. Some of his further investigations also reveal that one of the Justice Department officials which investigated Poulsen has very close ties with Lamo, Poulsen and Wired in general.

All of this raises important questions regarding the validity of Poulsen's reporting and the credibility of Lamo's current public testimony. Hence he demands Wired to publish the parts of the logs which would clear those inconsistencies, redacting away the ones which deal with private aspects of Manning and Lamo's discussion.

There is nothing that would justify Wired to not want to address these inconsistencies by publishing the parts of the lags which contain the corresponding information, yet they refuse.

What could justify this refusal ? Nothing, and that's where the whole "debate" points more and more in the direction of something very fishy smelling going on between the DoJ, Lamos and Poulsen.

If they have nothing to hide, have them publish the logs which explain the factual inconsistencies of _extreme_ relevance to the case that Greenwald has pointed.

That could change radically how Manning and Assange might be (or not at all) indicted, so, sorry, that matters.

The court has the logs, they can use them however they want. How Manning or Assange is indicted is not in the hands of Wired.

I believe there is some sort of deeply personal information in the logs scattered through most of the references. Wired pulled out what they could and posted. They are sticking with their decision on what could and couldn't be published without revealing private unrelated issues.

It may be perfectly reasonable and you really should at least concede that possibility.

D R A M A

Reply on news.ycombinator.com