Glenn Greenwald

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Glenn Greenwald

/ Jack Marshall / 55 Comments

“Every journalist has an agenda. We’re on MSNBC now where close to 24 hours a day the agenda of President Obama and the Democratic Party are promoted, defended, glorified. The agenda of the Republican Party is undermined. That doesn’t mean that the people who appear on MSNBC aren’t journalists. They are.”

—-Libertarian blogger, pundit and activist Glenn Greenwald, defending himself in an MSNBC interview against allegations that he has become a “spokesman” for fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden.
Journalism!

Journalism!

Remember, this is an ethics quote, not necessarily one that expresses an ethical point of view. With that caveat, I find it fascinating in many respects:
  • Greenwald is technically correct: journalists who use  their position to distort the news, express their biases and serve as advocates rather than objective critics, as most of the journalists do on MSNBC (and the way many too many journalists do elsewhere) are still journalists. They are unethical and unprofessional journalists. Continue reading →

Journalism Ethics: David Gregory’s Impudent Question

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

potandkettleHere’s a revolutionary suggestion: Maybe one should only be accorded the special rights of a journalist if one abides by principles of journalistic ethics.

Yesterday on his CBS Sunday Morning program “Meet the Press,” host David Gregory incited the ire of right, left and center by daring to ask Glenn Greenwald, the pugnacious left-leaning libertarian blogger and advocate who first published the NSA leaks from Edward Snowden, this question:

GREGORY: Final question for you…. To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?

Greenwald’s answer, essentially, was “How dare you?”… Continue reading →

Dear Nobel Committee: How Does That Peace Prize Look Now?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

An uninvited Pakistani funeral guest...

I am hardly a pacifist. Wars can be necessary, and I am usually supportive of American uses of military power abroad. Nor do I believe that civilians, of our nation or others, can claim ethical immunity from the perils of armed conflict. Wars are waged between peoples, not governments, and the people whose governments make war or provoke it are accountable. Citizens of warring countries cannot be fairly called “innocent,” unless they are actively opposing the war and working to bringing it to a peaceful end. I believe that Truman was right to drop the first atom bomb.

Still, for a nation to intentionally target civilians in warfare, or to recklessly endanger them for a questionable military purpose, is indefensible. For a nation to do so in another nation with which it is not at war is…murder. And this, it appears, is what the United States is doing in Pakistan. Continue reading →

Super-Soaker Ethics at Joe Biden’s Party

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I don’t think I can do a better or more thorough job than Salon’s Glenn Greenwald at making crystal clear what is so ethically wrong with members of the Washington press corps happily frolicking with Vice President Biden, Rahm Emanuel and other administration Obama officials at Biden-hosted party, so read his column here. Not that what Greenwald says shouldn’t be immediately obvious, especially to the journalists themselves, but it obviously isn’t. I just heard Judith Miller, the former New York Times reporter turned Fox flack, laughingly say that she used to share an Amtrak car with Biden when he was a Senator to get inside information, and she didn’t see why accompanying him on a water slide was any different.

Oh, come on. Continue reading →