You obviously aren't familiar with Glenn Greenwald. He's been extremely critical of the Obama administration on a variety of issues. What your claiming makes zero sense. There is a reason why Edward Snowden sought out Greenwald.
PS I think you are reading something I didn't write.
I'm claiming that it makes sense for The Guardian/Greenwald to hold back because they can drip feed information that creates a long running 'scandal'. That has two effects: it keeps The Guardian itself in the news and it prolongs the story.
Perhaps you think that I am equating Obama as a "Democrat" and The Guardian's notion of "Left Wing" as the same thing. I am not.
For example, The Daily Telegraph did a similar thing with revelations about MP's expenses in the UK. They had all the information but over a period of days let out different bits of information. This is the sort of thing newspapers will do, and, for The Guardian, Snowden's leaks are a massive story. They'll milk it as much as they can.
[1] http://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/drug-decriminal...
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPok-FIKGgc
[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PabkB4RnGJQ
[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjuvXdqKM0M
Here's some of his articles criticizing the use of the obama administration, use of drones, etc.
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/27/obama-wa...
- http://www.salon.com/2012/04/19/americas_drone_sickness/
- http://www.salon.com/2012/04/20/obamas_dismal_civil_libertie...
- Here's a speech of him criticizing Obama's awful civil liberties record http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rN5Nl...
Without a doubt the Guardian is taking a specific approach to leaking the documents, but I think a big part of it is that they have a lot to process. That's something that Greenwald has continually said on his Twitter feed. I guess what made me so angry about your comment is that it's often used as a smear against Greenwald. Greenwald doesn't prescribe to the left/right paradigm. He is both vilified and exemplified by both the left and right wing media all the time.
Then I apologize for that. I was not attempting to smear Greenwald. I was attempting to point out that the reason we don't have the 'full story' is that The Guardian/Greenwald are likely sitting on information for the reasons I've outlined elsewhere in this thread.
In the UK there was a scandal when a low end tabloid 'hacked' in to the voice mail of a raped + murdered school girl. They were looking for some story no doubt hoping to hear that she had gone to meet someone.
This was a scandal that ultimately would lead to the closing of the tabloid. It was a shame though, because the Guardian made a claim too many, they asserted that the tabloid journos deleted voice mail messages, as the mailbox was full, and they wanted to hear more gossip. According to them at the time this lead to the family being given false hope about their daughter been alive.
Now, when you consider the questionable value that this untruth added to the story (it is frankly immoral and shocking enough that the tabloid hacked the phone) and ask how was it acquired? Why was no standards of integrity followed, but mostly, why did they not think of the effect it would have on the friends and family of the murdered school girl. I mean come on, is it helping things to print such speculation?
Anyway, the retraction: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/dec/20/correction...
This is the most shocking example I can think of, and why I always take that news outlet with a grain of salt, expecting them to be full of hypocrisy (See auto trader sale and tax campaigning).
The Guardian retracted the claim about NI deleting the messages because it could not be proved, not because it was shown to be false. The police's opinion as given in the Leveson Inquiry report was that "It is not possible to state with any certainty whether Milly's voicemails were or were not deleted," [1][2]. The Guardian team originally believed, based on police sources, that messages had been deleted. When it couldn't be proved they retracted the claim. How is this not "moral"? Did it really shock you so much?
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/may/09/milly-dowler-deleti...
[2] http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/...
Did you read the linked document?
"These events support the suggestion that the voicemail box was full with the 10 messages that could be left, and that on 24th March, some 72 hrs after Millys last sighting, messages could be left again. Mrs Dowler’s call is likely to have been made when one of the previous messages from 21st March had been automatically deleted."
So they probably didn't delete it. People here (including the guy below) have gone to a frankly worrying guilty until innocent mode. If I write something about your firm, I have to be able to prove it, not you disprove it.
Which is my point, they had a scoop, by questionable means they had found out that NoTW had been doing very immoral things. Why not leave it at that, why did they have to crank it up a sensationalist gear?
Oh of course, because when The Guardian does it, it is for the greater good! [1] When anyone else does it, its 'titter tattle'.
This is why I treat the Guardian with a pinch of salt, its not like Sun or Mirror or News of the Screws, they sometimes get some good stuff correct before other sources. It's just often they are very hypocritical, and not quite 100% with the truth. This bugs the crap out of me. Most newspapers are like this. This is why I hate most newspapers. Hell if anyone can recommend something more frequent than the economist I'd be interested!
But on this context of phone hacking, it is funny that their defence is similar to an NSA one isn't it? Intercepting private communications is bad, but when we do it, we have only good motives.
[1] - http://metro.co.uk/2011/08/04/guardian-journalist-phone-hack...
The vast majority of the UK public believe this to be the case.
As long as the story is out, so long will the US government have to play defence rather than offence. And that's never good in politics.
Does sound like Snowden was shopping for a journalist who "wanted to believe" to borrow a line.
Greenwald has only worked as a Journalist for a couple of years.
I think 72 hours is hardly a reasonable deadline demand for fact-checking from a reputable publication.
Anyway, it's fairly common for WP to publish articles describing events of the last several hours. Presumably a shorter fact-checking interim is required in such cases.
This isn't talking about news reporting about a current event, this is talking about a major scoop of highly secret government programs.
In the event both Guardian and WaPo had to backtrack to various degrees on what they claimed of PRISM, so obviously there was more "fact-checking" yet to do.
When is that ever not the case? News media retractions are not a bad thing in and of themselves. Occasionally a flawed story will harm a private citizen, but that isn't possible here, as we are talking about the activities of public servants.