War on Leaks Is Pitting Journalist vs. Journalist | Hacker News Reader

War on Leaks Is Pitting Journalist vs. Journalist

nytimes.com

61 pointsjoshfraser16 comments

The mud-slingers and paid character-assasinators of the world call themselves journalists, and the real journalists go by the names of assange, and greenwald.

You'd be surprised how many of our officials are elected solely on the basis of mud-slinging and character-assassinating. Presidential elections are notably limited to "he's better than the other guy."

"Would you have preferred McCain over Obama in '08? No? Then shut up."

"Would you have preferred Romney in '12? No? Then shut up."

Ad nauseum.

There are plenty of journalists in the world.

This is the beginning of the predictable blowback from the tactics against The Guardian.

Everyone within the United States press is now starting to realize that they could be potential targets in future leak prosecutions. Watch as they push back, hard.

Except that it seems a lot of those in the press are actually against the leaks, and against the press that report upon the leaks. They have good relations with their government 'sources' and want to protect that relationship.

I think they should just leave 'independent' journalism and just sign on the government payroll as PR reps.

There's a complex symbiotic relationship between the government and high level journalists, especially with regard to national security issues.

It's not simply that they're government shills. Rather, there's a strong appreciation for the sensitivity national security stories inherently possess amongst traditional journalists. Often, these stories could cause war, regime collapse, and loss of life in ways remote and unconsidered by the journalist.

The ad-hoc system worked out by United States media outlets is to approach government officials prior to publication of certain sensitive stories. If anything could seriously damage national security or cause immediate loss of life, the officials will lobby the newspapers to remove certain pieces of information.

In most circumstances, journalists only agree to these edits when there is both immediate danger to specific persons, usually military or intelligence assets, that would be caused by the information, and the information requested to be redacted is ancillary to subject of the story.

The reason so many in the media have had a viscerally negative reaction to Assange and Snowden is that they completely ignored this delicate back and forth, skipping straight to full scale publication. In essence, they did not follow the media establishment's rules for responsible journalistic disclosure.

The actions taken against The Guardian by the UK government marked a real sea change in the way the United States media is treating this story. Going after Greenwald? Sure, he was fair game, just a blogger with little to no editorial oversight from the paper that bore his brand.

But The Guardian is a full-fledged newspaper, and most certainly not fair game. United States journalists are now scared stiff. Smashing those hard drives suddenly invoked the narrative of attempted control and oppression that every professional journalist had drilled into them for years at university.

The blowback was immediate, swift, and severe. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post all plastered stories to their front pages about Miranda's detention within a few minutes. Overnight editors shifted their attitudes, and opinion pieces like this one spiked. Most significantly, The New York Times is now spearheading a series of stories based upon the Snowden disclosures, which will likely become the definitive investigation. This shift will take time to trickle down, since American establishment journalism is very elite-mediated, but the impact will be massive.

That's not really true of Greenwald working with the Guardian, the Guardian editors have run each story past the authorities prior to publication, according to Alan Rusbridger and Janine Gibson. And the stories have been heavily redacted by them and Greenwald. I think they've been quite responsible, and Greenwald certainly has had editorial input from the Guardian, and is far from the only reporter there on this story, I think I've seen at least 10 other bylines. See this interview with Charlie Rose for details from the editors on their process:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7pdzzZB7Xgo

I think it's more that the traditional press sense the end of an era and with it a huge erosion of their power and prestige - their monopoly on news is simply vanishing, and that creates some hostility to these upstarts who don't understand the rules of the game like Greenwald, wikileaks bloggers etc. and who are willing to completely forgo any access to government sources, and thus are in many ways more independent than the White House press pool.

It'll be great to see the nytimes running with this now that the guardian is giving them access, they did a really detailed synopsis of the story so far anchored on Laura Poitras recently which is really worth reading. I'm also really interested to see what she does with her film, perhaps it'll come out just in time for the elections!

Good points, I hadn't realized how involved the Guardian's editors had been in Greenwald's recent stories, especially since he retained sole editorial control over his publications in the past.

The way my friends in the journalistic world have explained it me was in terms of "breaking unwritten rules." The anti-leaker reaction seems very extreme for simple sour grapes, although I suppose it isn't wise to underestimate the reactionary posturing of an industry in decline. I have heard pretty detailed confirmation that the recent events at the Guardian have really altered the US press's attitude thus far.

It's odd to me they didn't redact the program codenames. Since the codenames are legal to know, as long as you don't say the underlying program to which they refer, they're commonly plastered all over unclassified presentations. Once you know the underlying technology, the combination of codename and context gives away a lot of information.

I've seen people spidering based upon the program names that were leaked so far. With a little bit of googling and clustering of results, they can figure out which programs relate to e.g. upstream collection.

That seems like a bonanza for hostile intelligence agencies, especially since they can add all of those codenames to KWS, and wait until someone accidentally slips and describes them in an open channel.

It's worth stating again that wikileaks did not simply do as you say, and release, or if you prefer, publish the documents sourced from Manning without editorial constraint, at least until the cables were themselves public. The Iraq logs they certainly did. With the cables however Wikileaks published cables synchronously with their, to use their term, publishing partners. These partners were The Guardian, The New York Times, Der Speigel, Le Monde and El Pais. Initially Wikileaks only published cables that conformed with editing and redaction processes performed by The Guardian. After the insurance pass phrase was published in a confusion by someone connected to The Guardian and the cable file was compromised, Wikileaks published them all. This act received much criticism, but is far removed from an implication of unconsidered mass release. [1]

As to The New York Times spearheading anything, this is something of an article of faith. The Guardian has arranged this with the NYT to dissuade the UK government from a course of action that could result in a complete halt in reporting based on this leak. There is no first amendment protection in the UK. Strictly speaking, this protection is already provided by the relationship with the Washington Post. But the agreement with the NYT is designed to rebut the proposed intention of the UK government by deliberate journalistic revolt in symbolic union with the paragon of first amendment defence. Which is best exemplified by the NYT. A strategic expression of journalistic power.

The NYT can certainly be admired for its principles in joining in that defence, as it did in defence of Fox reporter James Rosen. Spearheading? Well we shall see.

[1]http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomatic_cabl...

I'll make it easy for you: those arguing against leaks are not real journalists. If they were real investigative journalists, they'd know the importance of leaks.

That's true for people arguing against all leaks, not for people arguing against these leaks.

Many people think Manning was irresponsible in leaking what he did - I'm a supporter of his, and even I do to an extent.

On the Snowden/NSA side, I'm completely on his side, and think his leaking was a great thing to do. But that's still subjective. It's perfectly possible to hold the opinion that the NSA is doing the right thing, and that Snowden was wrong to leak it, without being against the concept of leaks.

I don't get it - How does the decision process of what leaks are OK go? Ultimately that's a paternalistic "I know better what's right" type approach. It also has a lot of "security by obscurity" type of arguments builtin.

I think a better approach would be to get a minimal set of "we agree this should be secret" approach and have everything else be open or leak-able. Support for what a group is doing should not depend on it being unknown, such support seems weak and abusable.

Journalist vs. Hack

I think they mean "Journalist" vs. Journalist.

edit: in fact they outright say it in the article, except the opposite way:

"The larger sense I get from the criticism directed at Mr. Assange and Mr. Greenwald is one of distaste — that they aren’t what we think of as real journalists. Instead, they represent an emerging Fifth Estate composed of leakers, activists and bloggers who threaten those of us in traditional media. They are, as one says, not like us."

This is honestly shocking to read in the nyt. I've been commenting to my friends that the nyt has been going down hill over the last couple of years, but this is kind of absurd. The idea that some how recording everyone's communications, or war crimes in iraq and afghanistan, is not news worthy is really sickening.

I'm a bit confused by your comment. What is shocking about the author's observation of those against the leaks? Are you shocked the observation came from someone in the NYT, or are you shocked that "real journalists" actually hold those beliefs in the first place?

> The idea that some how recording everyone's communications, or war crimes in iraq and afghanistan, is not news worthy is really sickening.

I also don't think anyone is saying this, specifically, even the targets of the author's criticism. It seems more that there are a few that are against the means of the message, rather than the message itself. That sounds crazy, but it's likely a self-interested tactic to keep their lines of information open (insert "Government PR employee comment" here). Or maybe they genuinely believe classified leaks are dangerous, which I'm sure can be true but I'd like to think they would have a little perspective on where the real danger lies.

Of course there are also a few who probably think the domestic spying is a net positive so it was morally wrong to reveal anything, and shame on them.

I think i understand what you are saying. Let me rephase...

That the likes of Gregory and Toobin are acting as they are is disheartening. Suppose David Gregory had been put in the position of Greenwald. I realize he was probably given his position as a "readjustment" from his predecessor, and perhaps he feels the need to play that role, but what kind of self respecting journalist would sit on the story that every american was having every communication recorded and saved. It seems a bit shocking, and frankly, unbelievable that one would pass up an almost certain pulitzer because... not even sure why.

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