@ggreenwald on Tucker Carlson NSA spying claims | Hacker News Reader

@ggreenwald on Tucker Carlson NSA spying claims

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40 pointsnickysielicki21 comments

I think the first response has it right:

"I don’t think the NSA should be spying on any journalist but forgive me if I don’t take the claims seriously from a guy whose defense in court was literally, “no reasonable person would believe me.” If he has hard proof, let’s see it. Until then, I’m extremely skeptical." - https://twitter.com/mikey__football/status/14128069043682754...

Why should we skeptical that the NSA is doing the same thing that it's been doing for the last decade or longer? We already KNOW that the NSA spys on everyone.

At the end of the thread, Greenwald made the comparison specifically to Rachael Maddow. This seems appropriate, because I think she occupies the same space on the other side of the political spectrum, and I think there would be more outrage generally. Ironically, Greenwald wrote an article recently about Maddow relying on this same legal argument successfully prior to Carlson using it [1].

[1] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/a-court-ruled-rachel-maddow...

I do think there's a slight difference between MSNBC and Fox News. MSNBC is marketed as a progressive political talk network, Fox News calls itself a "Fair and Balanced" news network. The main thing people critique about Tucker Carlson and others on Fox News is their inability to separate talking points from journalism.

Carlson and Maddow are both polemics that tend to spew nonsense, they are both main personalities for their respective networks (and political spheres) and both lead in ratings. Maddow also shows a well-developed ability to mash up opinion and fact, and I don’t accept that her distortions are somehow less bad.

Whether the rest of MSNBC is slightly less awful than the rest of FOX is irrelevant to that point.

This doesn't address my point at all.

Perhaps I misunderstood: what is the point you were making? I don't think broader criticisms of Fox News and MSNBC are relevant. Rachel Maddow obviously also demonstrates an "inability to separate talking points from journalism".

Simple. Both Carlson and Maddow are claiming they aren't journalists reporting for news programs as a legal defense for failing journalistic standards. My point was on air, Tucker Carlson is represented as a journalist on a supposedly non-partisan news network. Rachel Maddow has made no such claims.

Have you seen these shows? To me, Tucker Carlson comes off more as a talk show, and Rachel Maddow’s show is styled as news and analysis. Heck, Wikipedia agrees with this perception: the description and genre of Maddow’s show both begin with news, which is not true of Carslon’s show.

Now I don’t think either of them count as news, although I don’t doubt that a lot of both of their audiences treat them as news anyways. (However, even the most clueless don’t think they are “non-partisan” news networks… they just believe their side is the “fair and balanced” one.)

So I simply don’t understand the claims you’re making. The opposite seems true to me, but I figure it’s just a wash.

Look at the Flynn fiasco, same thing in the name of fighting the evils of orange man.

This is just the equivalent of being in fear of the KGB.

It baffles me that Tucker Carlson is taken seriously by a large chunk of US population. This is not the first time he pulls this sort of stunt.

MSNBC has claimed in court filings that they (specifically the Rachel Maddow show) are purely entertainment and that the public should not expect their broadcasts to be statement of fact.

Why would you expect any of the other cable news networks to act differently? In fact, they don't, because Fox did the same for Tucker's show.

I propose we follow the lead of wrestling and rebrand them (all) as "News Entertainment."

It's an insult to actual entertainment.

Is most video entertainment really that much better?

The tweet is basically right: if Tucker Carlson lives in the US then the NSA is almost certainly spying on him.

Did he just recently hear about Mark Klein, Edward Snowden et al.?

Key Quote:

>Everyone should want to see the evidence about whether NSA spied on Carlson's emails and leaked them.

Yep, I'll be waiting but won't be holding my breath.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if we find out that NSA, CIA, FBI, etc. are all spying on United States citizens.

Maybe not _directly_ but through work-arounds like purchasing/subpoenaing aggregate user information from places like ad agencies, Nest (and comparables), etc. etc.

This is why the NSA's claim to have only a foreign purview was such an obnoxious response. Part of the revelations from Snowden's leaks was that the Five Eyes alliance is used to circumvent these jurisdictional limits, allowing countries to spy on their own citizens. It's not surprising that they're lawyering past an admission, but it's still galling.

We already know via the Snowden revelations that this is true.

Additionally, we route domestic communications or their logs/metadata through international links to be collected by other five eyes nations and shared back to us to skirt legal restrictions.

All of the above.

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