Is Glenn Greenwald the Future of News?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The discussion of journalism in the abstract here is missing the relatively quick changes that Snowden's leaks highlighted. A journalism with ties to the established parties can still be "real journalism" if you have a strong democracy in general. American "democracy" has degenerated into a circus the permanent government uses to decide which frontman serves its interest better. As this degeneration has proceeded, journalism as a part of loyal opposition has become more or less impossible.
I mean, Obama's message of "I welcome this debate and I intend to put the person who began it in solitary for the rest of his life" is par for the cynically demagogic course on both sides of the aisle.
Thus, it seems like journalism in the sense of open debate and airing dirty laundry is mostly going to live based on the soft opposition between various states, each of which may find housing it's opponents dissents to it convenience (with the truth depending on this thin and dubious reed).
Edit: isn't there a sociological theory that basically says that an organization tends to be controlled by the people who care about the continuity of the organization, instead of the goals it represents? Like any bureaucracy, or unions. Omidyar's common pool of expertise will not have the same goals and incentives as the journalists. I'm curious how they're planning to address that issue.
Yes, what you describe is the Iron Law of Bureaucracy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Iron_Law_of_Bur...
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2010/04/the_shirky_pr...
Systemantics has something to say about that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics
It's superficially funny and subversive at first glance, until you start thinking about its observations applied to large systems that you have worked on, and that you work and live within like BigCos and the government.
Can you actually point to a period of time when things were better?
Framing the problem as one of degeneration, rather than as one of inadequacy, is in my opinion one of the most critical problems with our approaches to change. It makes us look for ways to repeal implemented changes assuming that we'll regain a golden era by doing so, rather than actually looking at the situation, operating from first principles, and building something actually effective.
Yesterday.
And yesterday, the answer would have been, yesterday. And so on.
Literally, day by day it gets worse. So, the day before was clearly a time when things were better.
If you tell me that "day by day it gets worse", then you need to explain day by day how it gets worse, in concrete and specific detail. Otherwise you're just spouting empty rhetoric and doomsaying.
Another factor is that changing external circumstances and changing degrees of sophistication of internal actors in exploiting the system can produce misleading apparent shifts in how broken or not the underlying system is.
This is the smartest sentence I've read on any topic so far this week. It's an insightful comment with applications in many other domains as well (e.g., IT, data security, etc.).
Perhaps a better way to think of this is that journalism will cut its dependence on, and allegiance to, a nation state. When the internet came along, many national newspapers tried to become global papers, but without losing their geographic ties to one location, and their connections with government in that location.
A journalism with ties to the established parties can still be "real journalism" if you have a strong democracy in general.
I think the strong ties to established parties are exactly the problem with mainstream outlets, particularly in the United States - they inevitably lead to spiked stories, damage control via official leaks off the record, and the management of the news cycle by politicians. This has been the case for a long time, in every country, and is not limited to the current state of the US (though it has perhaps reached an extreme form there). Establishment journalism simply can't afford to take on government of the nation it primarily covers.
To take a couple of examples of established news outlets - the NYT and the Guardian, despite their best efforts, are still quite parochial in their view of events across the globe. The NYT is reluctant to significantly and persistently challenge the US administration, because it would make it far more difficult for them to cover domestic news, and because for domestic consumption it's not acceptable to criticise wartime activities (for example) too heavily. The Guardian still vilifies local Conservative right-wing politicians (in the pictures they choose, in the language they use when covering them), and goes easier on those from the Labour or LibDem party - policy is actually irrelevant to this kind of partisan outlook, apparently it's simply engrained in their editorial outlook - it's like a badge of honour, an unquestioned allegiance. It is also reluctant to criticise UK forces abroad or GCHQ involvement in spying (as opposed to the US, which they're more than happy to criticise). These old labels of left and right etc don't mean much, or shouldn't mean much, to citizens, who should be looking at the actual policies. Personally I find the jingoism, nationalism and partisan reporting inherent in national news annoying and distracting.
It's far harder for these newspapers to drop their existing ties to physical space, local politics, and a nation state, than it will be for newer companies founded on the internet to ignore national affiliations and become truly global organisations. A new international news won't care what the established political parties and pundits have to say on a particular issue, but does care what reporters on the ground and citizens on the ground in that country have to say, and how it contrasts with the governing party's narrative (and often the stories our governments tell us via news organisations, presented without question or fact-checking, are clearly a constructed narrative, with bad guys and good guys, for example on the killing of 16 year old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki (reported as 21 one year old terrorist), or the cruise missile strike on al-Ma'jalah (women and children reported as a terrorist training camp, cruise missiles reported as Yemeni air force)). It's very difficult to make that kind of news if you also want to be part of the White House press pool (or equivalent in other countries), have limited access, and rely on simply reporting verbatim the unreliable statements of US allies like Yemen. Compare and contrast these reports:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/world/middleeast/18yemen.h... http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2013/6/7/witness_to_a_massa...
The lie was printed right after the events, based solely on US and Yemeni gov statements, but the truth was almost the exact opposite of the story relayed by the NYTimes here. They do not often simply relay stories from the North Korean, Russian or Chinese government without question like this.
I'm sure there will have been an nytimes article correcting this at some point when the truth came out, though I can't find it specifically, and by then it's too late. Much of the criticism of the administration in the nytimes is written by outsiders (not journalists), relegated to the op-ed pages, and labelled as 'opinion', when it in fact contains more truth than the official reporting.
As far as I can see, in the UK we have a wide spectrum of "editorial outlook" in newspapers while the TV news channels (much to the disgust of Murdoch) are legally required to provide neutrality and impartial, unbiased coverage (and I know some people think the BBC is the last stronghold of communism).
Yes Prime Minister explained the newspaper market in the UK pretty well:
As far as I can see, in the UK we have a wide spectrum of "editorial outlook" in newspapers
I think we should move on from 'editorial outlook' based on allegiance to domestic political parties, and support a new sort of journalism which does not have allegiance to any one party or political state, does not have a predefined outlook, but instead feels free to attempt to publish the truth, however uncomfortable that may be for whatever party is in power. Opinion backed by strong reporting and facts should not be separated from news (because in reality even supposedly neutral or impartial reporting has strong biases and is often not based on verified fact but on relaying government statements), and it should not be based on which country your news org covers, what the government of that country wants to hear, or indeed what the people of that country wants to hear.
Re TV news, I don't accept it is any less constrained by issues of ownership and nationality than newspapers. The ban on Sinn Féin reporting in the 80s, the breathless coverage of the Falklands war and then the Iraq wars, the lack of coverage of the GCHQ scandal, the backing of one political party by Sky News, the embedding of journalists like Rebekah Brooks with politicians in their social life, all point to news services which are far too closely connected to the governments they cover in the UK. In the case of the BBC, they are regularly threatened with cuts in funding by whatever government is in power, and they simply can't afford to criticise the government in a sustained way. They have not for example reported significantly on the GCHQ stories, except to repeat government statements and reporting in other news outlets. I suspect a truly international news organisation would have no such qualms and would have covered it extensively.
How do you even define neutral in a way that does not simply justify a specific set of biases?
Something as simple as which news items you choose betrays huge biases: Do you write about the US government shutdown, or about the thousands of people dying of preventable diseases every day.
Word choices: Do you call something a coup, or a revolution? Do you call someone terrorists, or freedom fighters?
In many cases, there are many seemingly "neutral" choices, and many word choices that are technically correct, and what will seem "neutral" to you will be hopelessly politically slanted to others.
I'd much rather have media organizations of a variety of viewpoints that are honest about where they stand than someone that pretend to be objectively neutral.
To be completely neutral would mean you only state facts that have real meaning in the physical world, not in our heads.
For instance, the mere mention of a "nation" is a bias, because nations do not have a real physical existence, they are merely ideas created by man, and which many other man has decided to go along with, but there are a few who disagree. Our entire social structure is built around ideas, but all reporting talks about these ideas like they're real, irrefutable concepts. You can't be impartial until you're open minded enough to reject any idea and accept possible alternatives.
In the example you give, we have lots of terms for the participants in asymmetric warfare, all employed to taint debate before it starts:
liberators, freedom fighters, rebels, guerrilla fighters, insurgents, terrorists
IMO the acronym or name chosen by the fighters/armies themselves would be best in each case, rather than a label dreamed up by the military which opposes them - it also stops lazy reporting which groups disparate groups together as one enemy.
I'd rather news didn't have a pre-decided viewpoint/agenda which they try to cut the facts to fit, which is often what partial news or 'op-ed' turns out to be when written by professional columnists. We should not have a liberal view or a right-wing view, we should have journalists who approach each story with an open spirit and actually do the journalism required to come up with an informed opinion and transmit that. That hard work should come before they have an opinion on any story.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Live-From-Downing-Street-Robinson/dp...
Edit: At home we've been getting free Guardians from Waitrose - this has actually resulted in us buying some "right wing" newspapers to try and get a bit of perspective, my wife liked the Daily Telegraph but did concede she had gone too far by buying a Daily Mail (the Scottish edition) - which she described as "utter trash".
This is what I think is wrong with an attempt to choose a side - reporting should attempt to get to the truth on every topic, consulting experts in the domain (i.e. not politicians), going to sources, not an attempt to reflect the party political position or editorial line - that leads to distortion, and to people trying to somehow even out their news by getting two equally invalid opinions. The Guardian should be applauded for what it gets right (say the NSA reporting), but sometimes it's as distorted as RussiaToday when it comes to certain topics, and on some topics (Britain at war) it is just as parochial as its counterparts.
Yeah, like Edward Snowden ... except wait, he depended on the willingness of Russia and China to host (which I am glad for even if I understand them pretty egregiously oppressive in other ways).
So no, no we won't live in some cyberpunk utopia. Your whole argument reminds me of the 1990's soft-focus view of the "Internet future". Journalists are if anything more dependent on some nation state today than previously (RT, Al-jazeera, Glen Greenwald and fricken US-state-sponsored Democracy Now, all are dependent some on some state, some more directly than others). That is because if Snowden stuff says anything, it says that anyone with a (information) "pipe" running through their "yard" had start tapping that pipe for their benefit because that's what the largest actors are doing).
It's not that I wouldn't want a lovely world but
To go out and find facts independent of these actors is considered "activist" and therefore unbiased.
In his world, there are no facts -- just assertions made by interested players. His job as a reporter is simply to record the stage managed argument.
This is the standard defence for a reporter who has built a career out of never offending anyone powerful.
IMHO this is also why journalism has had so much trouble recently monetizing their product, they are a middlemen pushing a message from someone that wants it disseminated as widely as possible onto people whom they expect to pay for the privilege. They are asking for money to the wrong side of the equation.
Like another user said, I've been reading most everything he writes and tweets -- starting months before the Snowden leaks. I just trust that they're relevant to me as a US citizen 99% of the time. Few journalists are worthy of such trust.
In my opinion, GG's strength lies in his clear-mindness, research skills, and instinctual opposition to bullshit.
He has tremendous weaknesses in terms of hostility though. NOT that he calls a lie a lie, but instead he frequently both uses insults, and assumes malice.
In writing for the public, especially if you hope to convince anyone of anything, those are huge mistakes.
Glenn consistently calls things and people "stupid" (very little on earth is stupid, when it looks that way there are factors influencing the behavior you aren't accounting for, and addressing those factors has a far more persuasive effect than cursing the person who behaves under their influence as 'stupid').
Secondly, Mr Greenwald _very_ frequently implies people are behaving with malice. Malicious action is the worst thing you can accuse someone of; if a person is truly malicious they are beyond reason (because their reasoning ability tells them to hurt you.) Very few people on this planet operate with malice outside of the moments they're passionately enraged. Instead, tons of us hurt each other because we've been conditioned to do some action that has effects we don't acknowledge, because we're faced to choose between hurting ourselves or offloading it onto someone else and don't know how to do it better, or a similar reason.
I believe Glenn will end up an editor, or in some senior position where his instinct informs other journalists where to look for stories, but as for the actual research and writing? To maintain the relationships you need with sources and the public, you have to understand the points I've written above, and Mr. Greenwald doesn't seem to show any tendency to move in that direction. (As an aside, I think this might be because of his courtroom training, where it's an adversarial system, or he is incredibly stressed out)
Someone should really explain this to him so he can make some corrective efforts on this.
I guess it's too much to expect Julian Assange levels of stagecraft from everybody.
He seems very willing to make enemies of entire countries which is an odd personality trait to say the least. I would think most westerners would be extremely distraught if, for some reason, they realised they could no longer visit the USA, UK, and numerous other major Western nations because of something they had done wrong.
What has he done wrong?
Let's look at perhaps Greenwald's biggest article critical of a single individual in recent times, his roast (let's call it) of Sam Harris [1]. He starts by asserting that Harris "[has] increasingly embraced a toxic form of anti-Muslim bigotry masquerading as rational atheism" -- that "he and others like him spout and promote Islamophobia under the guise of rational atheism." He then goes on to observe that "Harris does far, far more than voice criticisms of Islam as part of a general critique of religion" and presents quotes by Harris himself. He explains that "Harris has used his views about Islam to justify a wide range of vile policies aimed primarily if not exclusively at Muslims, from torture [...] to steadfast support for Israel," that "Harris sided with the worst Muslim-hating elements in American society by opposing the building of a Muslim community center near Ground Zero." Greenwald writes: "In sum, he sprinkles intellectual atheism on top of the standard neocon, right-wing worldview of Muslims"...
Yes, he labels the rhetoric that Harris "spews" as "bile".. Yes, his own rhetoric is often of the pointed sort ("That is the Harris worldview: obsessed with bad acts of foreign Muslims, almost entirely blind to - if not supportive of - the far worse acts of westerners like himself"). But when it counts, his criticisms of people he disagrees with are usually maintain a careful composure, afaik.
In the comments section of his Guardian articles, it's a different story. "Do you know how to read?" from a month or so before Snowden is the example that sticks out in my mind. Wish he'd find another stress-relief activity.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/03/sam-har...
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a3sAet_dQA [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-sno... [3] http://news.yahoo.com/us-disappointed-yemen-journalists-rele...
Do I get a Pulitzer now?
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped...
"I once saw some opinion research in which Times readers were asked whether they regarded The Times as “liberal.” A majority said yes. They were then asked whether The Times was “fair.” A larger majority said yes. I guess I can live with that." emphasis added
Excuse me but isn't this entirely consistent with the NYT in fact being biased?
He is the exact opposite of that. He's pro civil liberties and the rule of law -- consistently. People think he's a partisan because his writing sometimes makes Democrats look bad. His positions didn't change when Bush was in office.
One passage (from Greenwald, which Keller does not argue with), sticks out: The climate of fear that has been deliberately cultivated means that, as The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer put it, the newsgathering process has come to a “standstill.” Many Times national security reporters, such as Scott Shane, have been issuing similar warnings: that sources are now afraid to use the traditional means of working with reporters because of the Obama administration’s aggression. Ubiquitous surveillance obviously compounds this problem greatly, since the collection of all metadata makes it almost impossible for a source and journalist to communicate without the government’s knowledge.
This is the sort of BS that's destroying journalism. You can argue for a side either honestly, presenting all you know, recognizing you opponent's valid points, but using your knowledge to debunk the other side, or you can be mischievous, ignore and distort facts, resort to fallacies, and generally achieve the effects of empty rhetoric.
Opinionated people are not the problem. Fallacious people and talking heads are.
From that list, the stand-out failure of the mainstream press is unquestionably "inattention". The decay of in-depth reporting of stories that will impact society in exchange for focusing the spotlight on more-marketable content is a self-inflicted wound that shows no signs of remission. One of the most talked-about pieces of content that's come out of the NYTimes in recent years was their Snow Fall piece. It explored a new way of communicating a story, and may serve as a model for how they present some content in the future - but ultimately, a story that provided the Times with some of its greatest exposure in recent memory was just a story about an avalanche that affected an infinitesimally small percentage of the world.
Broadcast news has decided to follow a formula. Evening news dumps the real news out in a half-hour, usually capping the 24-minutes left over after their pharmaceutical or insurance commercials run to finish their show off with something to make viewers feel good about the world - maybe an inspirational story about some kid that got to score a touchdown, or a new baby animal at the zoo. But that touchdown, or that baby animal video, or the story about the royal "whatever" comes at the expense of inattention to something that impacts a whole lot more people than the puff piece.
But maybe they have no choice. If the NYTimes runs a piece on a subject on their cover every-day for a year, a majority of their readers might stop reading. If broadcast news started their evening newscast with a story about the environment every night maybe people would change the channel or turn them off completely.
Greenwald, and others have the advantage that they currently can take a story and carry it for days, weeks, months, or years if that's what it takes to tell the story. The NSA story is big enough, and apparently the source material is numerous-enough, that 5 months later there's still enormous repercussions for the revelations just-now being published. The attention he's giving to this one story must be unsettling to a business setup to cover NSA revelations in the same publication as a story about twerking. Makes you wonder how many other stories of this magnitude are just waiting to be revealed - but aren't due to lack of focus by those entrusted to report.
But even here on Hacker News, where a lot of us count on having thoughtful readers of the comments we post and the stories we submit, the demand for shorter, less attention-demanding comments and submissions, and tl;dr summaries of blog posts that are only about five paragraphs long, still continues. So if news organizations aren't serving up stories that are based on close attention to important issues, maybe that is because the news organizations know what most news consumers are looking for.
Isnt there a saying about money and corruption? Its been going on a bit of a while now, right?
And will we heed this and make changes? Hell no. Just as per usual small "mavericks" going up against the money, ultimately changing very little in the great scheme of things, while the interests of money roll on.
THAT is why folks like Glenn Greenwald are the future, because they won't hide behind foolish paywalls.
Honest question. If you have something brilliant there's obviously a market opportunity here.