Greenwald: "The Sunday Times’ Snowden Story Is Journalism at Its Worst"

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/14/sunday-times-report-snowden-files-journalism-worst-also-filled-falsehoods/

by randomname2 • 11 years ago

252 33 11 years ago

firstlook.org

randomname26• 11 years ago

Meanwhile, Greenwald in a tweetstorm:

"Dear pro-govt BBC journalists: even NSA admits it has no idea how many docs Snowden took. Is this too complicated?"

"Could the journalists who a) attacked Sy Hersh for using anon sources but b) accepted this Sunday Times report please identify yourselves?"

"Next in the Sunday Times RT @DieZauberer Next they'll be telling us he has chemical weapons that could reach Britain in 45 minutes."

classicsnoot4• 11 years ago

The second tweet [Could the journos...identify yourselves?] is my question. In fact, wouldn't it be slick to have a simple table of journalists/publications, major world events, and a simple list of check boxes whether they were for, against, or indifferent/agnostic? Maybe even some indicator of when they change their initial position. Might be useful to see which organizations consistently have to/chose to switch their positions over time...

Moocat87• 11 years ago

This is an interesting idea. An information management tool like git could accomplish this, but it would be really interesting to see this automated or self-reported or something like that. Although... the kind of company that you would use a tool like this to "discover" is not the kind of company that would self-report this data.

aagha• 11 years ago

The NSA probably has such a table.

vonklaus• 11 years ago

Greenwald just printed the US gov propaganda playbook.

randomname26• 11 years ago

Well, the UK government in this case.

Just goes to show the playbook doesn't really differ between governments, even Russian government propaganda employs the exact same techniques.

classicsnoot4• 11 years ago

Is there a government that does not use propaganda to forward their own agenda?

randomname26• 11 years ago

No, which is why these "journalists" should know better.

lyudmil• 11 years ago

No, but in societies with more freedom like the US and the UK there generally tends to be more propaganda, because in those societies the government can't use force to coerce the population. They need people to agree with the official line, so they have to use the media to print stories like the Sunday Times'.

phaedryx• 11 years ago

Meanwhile: http://www.wired.com/2015/06/opm-breach-security-privacy-deb...

Anyone else think this is meant to distract from the Office of Personnel Management breach and hacked SF-86 documents?

higherpurpose• 11 years ago

It's not a distraction in the "hey look over there!" kind of sense. It's more like "it's totally Snowden's fault all our spies are exposed now...like a week after the OPM and SF-86 hacks."

caryhartline• 11 years ago

I'm not sure why it's credible to say that just because two events are happening in the news at similar times that one is a distraction from the other. You could say that about a hundred different news items throughout the day.

TillE• 11 years ago

Mixing up Berlin/Laura Poitras with Moscow/Snowden is so incredibly sloppy, especially when it's being misused in an attempt to make a point. It's really basic stuff for anyone following this case, especially a British journalist who would have been aware of the court case involving Miranda.

ougawouga• 11 years ago

I'm glad Greenwald called then put for using the term "boyfriend" for his 10-year old spouse. Something didn't sit well with me about that term, but I couldn't have vocalized it. It seems meant to evoke sexual connotations, when they played no part in the story.

venomsnake• 11 years ago

Well ... he is his boyfriend and due to his relationship with Glen was more potent tool for putting pressure. So it is relevant.

randomname26• 11 years ago

The point is, if he were married to a woman, they would probably have called her "his wife", and not "his girlfriend".

classicsnoot4• 11 years ago

I think the solution here is universal adoption of the term partner.

ams6110• 11 years ago

"spouse of ten years" might be a better phrasing.

mathgenius• 11 years ago

At first my lighter side responds by thinking these newspapers are just shooting themselves in the foot. But then I realise that there really is a market for this kind of trashpaper. Fortunately, there is also a market for movies [1], that expose the slime behind these publications.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/sep/03/george-clooney-f...

clamprecht• 11 years ago

One question though: If Snowden had everything stored on USB "thumb drives" rather than laptops, why did he lug 4 laptops to Hong Kong?

riskable• 11 years ago

In his situation finding a "safe" laptop that hasn't been backdoored or vulnerable to known (to spies) vulnerabilities is difficult. He has a much higher risk than the average person.

It is likely that he brought as many laptops as he could because sourcing new ones (should one get compromised) is difficult.

the8472• 11 years ago

A userscript replacing all paragraphs containing the phrases "sources familiar with the matter", "officials speaking on the condition of anonymity" and "anonymous government sources" with a lorem ipsum of the same length might help.

TazeTSchnitzel• 11 years ago

I'm reminded of the current s/millenials/snake people/ fad. How about "according to snake people"?

muglug• 11 years ago

A bit of useful background here: The Guardian scooped The Sunday Times for one of the most impactful news stories of the decade, and I'm sure some of the Sunday Times article is just a somewhat bitter attempt at retribution.

randomname26• 11 years ago

Just out of interest, why did this just submission just plunge in the news ranking? I assume due to flagging for being too controversial?

dang• 11 years ago

Yes, there are lots of user flags, and also a moderation downweight—not for being controversial but for being a quasi-duplicate.

Since front page space is the scarcest resource on HN, we try not to have more than one major thread about a story unless there's significant new information. In this case there had already been three: one on the original report [1] and two debunking it [2,3]. To prevent many incarnations of the same story from dominating the front page (a common complaint about HN in the past), we sometimes penalize these, though never as much as actual dupes.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9714072

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9714321

3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9715062

jlebar• 11 years ago

Does anyone else feel like this is too angry?

I want to like GG, but this sort of reporting turns me off, even if I agree with his substance. I feel like you cede a substantial portion of the journalistic high ground when you rant and call people names like this.

randomname26• 11 years ago

The Sunday Times has now quietly deleted the key lie about Greenwald's husband (which the whole article depended on) from the online article, with no note.

It will still be in the print edition, which means it needs a retraction.

graycat• 11 years ago

As I noticed many years ago, it's easy to notice that journalism commonly, correction, nearly always, is a long way short of the commonly taught high school term paper writing standards of using primary sources, identifying sources, quoting accurately, etc.

So, we can ask, why is that? Journalism has too few college graduates who majored in the humanities and wrote stacks of term papers? Nope.

So, why? Sure: "Follow the money". The media is ad supported. They are in the ad business. For that they want smelly bait for the ad hook.

Okay, how to get lots of smelly bait, easily? Sure: Have one newspaper write a smelly story, and then do two things:

First, have other newspapers write much the same story with much the same smelly content and, for credibility, maybe quoting the first newspaper.

Second, with such a good thing, so much smelly bait all on just one or two days, of course, sure, keep it going! So, write more such stories. Then with so many stories, maybe the readers will conclude that with so much smoke there has to be at least a little fire in there somewhere. So, all the media just does a gang up, pile on, get on the band wagon, have a case of some implicit collusion, get on the big wave and ride it, and, better to fit in with the gang and, thus, get the security from being one of the gang, don't tell the truth, contradict, or rock the boat and, instead, just to along with the gang -- mob.

So, create lots of smelly bait across lots of newspapers for lots of days.

Now that ad revenue is really adding up. All from a seed of nothing, zip, zilch, zero, nichts, nil, nada. Easy money!

There is a lot in common between the OP and the movie Absence of Malice (1981) written by knowledgeable newspaper guy Kurt Luedtke. To paraphrase from the movie, "If we only published stuff we really knew, then we'd publish monthly" and nearly all of that would less important than Mrs. Murphy's cat Fluffy crying high in an oak tree.

There really is a lot of important information the newspapers could publish, but they won't consider doing that, apparently because it is just not part of their traditions. Or, really, in the grand new standards of intellectual safety, efficacy, and relevance of the ascent of man from mathematics and science, the newspapers are still back in the days of superstition, phlogiston, Chaucer, and the techniques of formula fiction.

E.g., what is the definition of GDP? Okay, now, to be more relevant, how is it actually measured? Are there some critiques of that measurement technique? If we are going to pay any attention at all to GDP, then we at least should discuss how the heck it gets measured.

Yesterday Hillary claimed that some of the best paid 25 hedge fund guys pay a lower tax rate than kindergarten teachers. Okay, address that issue: Give us some solid answers. True or false? If true, then how do they do that? I.e., what parts of the tax law are they using?

I can toss off such questions faster than I can type, and so can nearly anyone interested in government, but such will nearly never be addressed in the mainstream media.

One of the points in common in the OP and the movie is the defense by the newspaper that "We have no evidence that the story is false". Of course, neither did they have any "evidence" the story was true!

It's old stuff, e.g., back at least to the movie Citizen Kane.

That's just what the newsies -- newspapers, news magazines, TV news, news Web sites, etc. -- do. It's a very old story.

Greenwald's point is solid: Can't believe what you read in the newspapers. Indeed, that remark is so common and so readily believed by the public that it is in an old Andy Hardy movie from the 1930s. Did I mention "old"?

Some years ago, I really, really wanted to be a well informed citizen and subscribed to more and more news publications trying to know more. One day I added up I was receiving 22 publications a month. Earlier, I spent a summer with my parents in DC and each day read The Washington Post fairly carefully. Net, I finally concluded I wasn't learning much. Now I subscribe to nothing on paper and very little on the Internet.

I still want to be informed, but the media is junk. Maybe I'd take The New York Times, but I (A) have no dead fish trimmings to wrap, (B) need no packing materials (besides, all that ink creates a mess), (C) have no need for kitty litter, (D) for my fireplace already have plenty of fire starter paper from all the phone books that are left, etc.

So, media? Sure, light entertainment following the rules of formula fiction with good guys, a problem, bad guys, etc. Any connection with actual reality is thin and incidental.

The media would be less harmful if people would just ignore it, and I'm getting good at that.

Greenwald: "The Sunday Times’ Snowden Story Is Journalism at Its Worst"

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