That statement is a perfect example of the real problem with the US government and many journalists. They don't see the actual spying as the cause of all the backlash - it's all Snowden's fault for telling the world.
Even history is taught like this.
Teaching is a narrative.
Media is a narrative.
Examining the root causes rather than the narrative fabric is rational. Most governmental actors are either intentionally or ignorantly not rational in this respect.
When put that way it is quite clear that Snowden is not anymore at fault than media or people.
That would be consistent with their rationalization for muzzling the tech companies who give up our data.
After all, the bad guys now know where not to store their data. Heck let's just have the government take over internet and shut down all private websites. Total information control. That'll stop terrorism!
There, full circle.
The fact that the US can and has used its warrant powers to force US companies to comply with spying directives is a bigger problem.
The fact that the US is stopping US companies talking about how often secret warrants are served is a bigger problem.
The fact that the US has subverted security processes put in place by US companies is a bigger problem.
The only thing these companies weren't allowed to report was the number of NSLs and FISA requests they received, but now they can in broad ranges of 1000.
The statement contains no judgement either way.
Sounds like you're the target market for Glenn Greenwald's new news organization.
This is essentially the same as the Creationist's stated desire to "teach the controversy". Rubbish. Show the evidence and say what it adds up to.
To even decide to report on an issue in the first place is to take a stand on its value. News organizations are doing the public a disservice in stopping there.
The entire notion of journalism without any sort of position, biases, or editorialize is absurd. Nothing but a completely raw and unfiltered datastream of everything that I receive could possibly qualify, except that of course would not longer be journalism of any sort.
To ignore that ideal is where journalism turns into "entertainment" and "propaganda".
Take global warming, for example. Many media outlets seek to present an "unbiased viewpoint" on that issue by reaching out to climate-change deniers in addition to climate-change scientists who believe in global warming. But that ignores the fact that climate-change scientists who support global warming outnumber climate-change scientists who deny it by something like 400:1. But that ignores the fact (principle, actually, technically this isn't a fact) that science isn't decided by majority vote, it's decided by looking at the data and the evidence.
The actual facts in the global warming debate is that we've recorded these temperatures at these locations across the globe, and they appear to be rising over the last century. But that's not what people are interested in: the "story" is "Are humans causing it? What can we do about it? What will happen next?"
To be clear - the only fact involved is the measurement of at a particular time at a particular station. The temperature of the world as a whole, and trend in temperature over a century, is a matter of interpretation and analysis, not pure fact. All sorts of statistics needs to be applied to clean the data, adjust for changes in station location, adjust for the growth of urban heat islands, etc. To see an example of the debate over these adjustments - http://climateaudit.org/2010/12/26/nasa-giss-adjusting-the-a... - changes in adjustments can have a large impact on the resulting graph.
Because every story has exactly two viewpoints, with the truth somewhere in between?
It's certainly easy to end up thinking that, and that's yet another reason reporting "both sides" is actively harmful.
That doesn't mean there is no editorial slant.
What we typically hear on modern mainstream media is reprinting of PR. Regardless of agenda, there is no understanding.
Even calling it a story is well, telling a story. Presenting in terms of two sides further frames as a kind of dramatic fiction.
There is nothing wrong with all this and it makes news interesting and sometimes even edifying. Adam Curtis is an example of somebody who very blatantly selects and uses dramatic technique in order to shine light and show new perspectives on contemporary history.
The danger is in kidding yourself that it could be any other way and that there is some kind of objective and balanced position which reasonable folk hold - that's how people get manipulated, usually against their interests and sometimes in awful ways.
By that logic it is logically impossible to ensure fairness in a judicial system. Should we then just give up and tell judges to do what they want instead of striving for the ideal of due process under the law?
Since you bring it up, that a court can't be completely certain is of course one of the main arguments against the death penalty - plenty of faulty convictions that we know of to back that up.
There's a much bigger difference though and that is that news outlets are mostly in private hands and usually quite openly run an editorial line. How would you feel about Murdoch or the Koch bros running the judicial process if you are certain the press are and will remain so even-handed? N.B. I'm not even saying this is necessarily a bad thing wrt journalism, just not to be fooled that it is something else (and which it often purports to be). Any adult should know that it's both foolish and dangerous to believe what you read in the press.
http://pressthink.org/2010/11/the-view-from-nowhere-question...