Tuesday, Dec 28, 2010 05:29 ET
The merger of journalists and government
officials
By
Glenn
Greenwald
(updated below)
The video of the CNN debate I did last night about WikiLeaks with former
Bush Homeland Security Adviser (and CNN contributor) Fran Townsend and
CNN anchor Jessica Yellin is posted below. The way it proceeded was quite
instructive to me and I want to make four observations about the
discussion:
(1) Over the last month, I've done many television and radio
segments about WikiLeaks and what always strikes me is how
indistinguishable -- identical -- are the political figures and the
journalists. There's just no difference in how they think,
what their values and priorities are, how completely they've ingested and
how eagerly they recite the same anti-WikiLeaks, "Assange =
Saddam" script. So absolute is the WikiLeaks-is-Evil
bipartisan orthodoxy among the Beltway political and media class (forever
cemented by the joint Biden/McConnell decree that Assange is a
"high-tech Terrorist,") that you're viewed as being from
another planet if you don't spout it. It's the equivalent of
questioning Saddam's WMD stockpile in early 2003.
It's not news that establishment journalists identify with, are merged
into, serve as spokespeople for, the political class: that's what
makes them establishment journalists. But even knowing that, it's
just amazing, to me at least, how so many of these "debates"
I've done involving one anti-WikiLeaks political figure and one
ostensibly "neutral" journalist --
on MSNBC with
The Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart and former GOP
Congresswoman Susan Molinari,
on NPR with The New York Times' John Burns and former Clinton
State Department official James Rubin, and last night on CNN with Yellin
and Townsend -- entail no daylight at all between the
"journalists" and the political figures. They don't even
bother any longer with the pretense that they're distinct or play
different assigned roles. I'm not complaining here -- Yellin was
perfectly fair and gave me ample time -- but merely observing how
inseparable are most American journalists from the political officials
they "cover."
(2) From the start of the WikiLeaks controversy, the
most striking aspect for me has been that the ones who are leading
the crusade against the transparency brought about by WikiLeaks -- the
ones most enraged about the leaks and the subversion of government
secrecy -- have been . . . America's intrepid Watchdog journalists.
What illustrates how warped our political and media culture is as
potently as that? It just never seems to dawn on them -- even when
you explain it -- that the transparency and undermining of the secrecy
regime against which they are angrily railing is supposed to be . . .
what they do.
What an astounding feat to train a nation's journalist class to despise
above all else those who shine a light on what the most powerful factions
do in the dark and who
expose their corruption and deceit, and to have journalists -- of all
people -- lead the way in calling for the head of anyone who exposes the
secrets of the powerful. Most ruling classes -- from all eras
and all cultures -- could only fantasize about having a journalist class
that thinks that way, but most political leaders would have to dismiss
that fantasy as too extreme, too implausible, to pursue. After all,
how could you ever get journalists -- of all people -- to loathe those
who bring about transparency and disclosure of secrets? But,
with a few noble exceptions, that's exactly the journalist class we
have.
There will always be a soft spot in my heart for Jessica Yellin because
of that time when
she unwittingly (though still bravely) admitted on air that -- when
she worked at MSNBC -- NBC's corporate executives constantly pressured
the network's journalists to make their reporting favorable to George
Bush and the Iraq War (I say "unwittingly" because she
quickly walked back that confession after I and others wrote about it
and a controversy ensued). But, as Yellin herself revealed in that
moment of rare TV self-exposure, that's the government-subservient
corporate culture in which these journalists are trained and
molded.
(3) It's extraordinary how -- even a full month into the uproar
over the diplomatic cable release -- extreme misinformation still
pervades these discussions, usually without challenge. It's
understandable that on the first day or in the first week of a
controversy, there would be some confusion; but a full month into it, the
most basic facts are still being wildly distorted. Thus, there was
Fran Townsend spouting
the cannot-be-killed lie that WikiLeaks indiscriminately dumped all
the cables. And I'm absolutely certain that had I not objected,
that absolute falsehood would have been unchallenged by Yellin and
allowed to be transmitted to CNN viewers as Truth. The same is true
for the casual assertion -- as though it's the clearest, most obvious
fact in the world -- that Assange "committed crimes" by
publishing classified information or that what he's doing is so obviously
different than what investigative journalists routinely do. These
are the unchallenged falsehoods transmitted over and over, day after day,
to the American viewing audience.
(4) If one thinks about it, there's something quite surreal about
sitting there listening to a CNN anchor and her fellow CNN employee
angrily proclaim that Julian Assange is a "terrorist" and a
"criminal" when the CNN employee doing that is . . . .
George W. Bush's Homeland Security and Terrorism adviser. Fran
Townsend was a high-level national security official for a President who
destroyed another nation with an illegal, lie-fueled military attack that
killed well over 100,000 innocent people, created a worldwide torture
regime, illegally spied on his own citizens without warrants, disappeared
people to CIA "black sites," and erected a due-process-free
gulag where scores of
knowingly innocent people were put in cages for years. Julian
Assange never did any of those things, or anything like them. But
it's Assange who is the "terrorist" and the
"criminal."
Do you think Jessica Yellin would ever dare speak as scornfully and
derisively about George Bush or his top officials as she does about
Assange? Of course not. Instead, CNN quickly hires
Bush's Homeland Security Adviser who then becomes Yellin's colleague and
partner in demonizing Assange as a "terrorist." Or
consider the theme that framed last night's segment: Assange is
profiting off classified information by writing a book! Beyond
the examples I gave, Bob Woodward has become a very rich man by
writing book after book filled with classified information about
America's wars which his sources were not authorized to give him.
Would Yellin ever in a million years dare lash out at Bob Woodward the
way she did Assange? To ask the question is to answer it
(
see here as CNN's legal correspondent Jeffrey Toobin is completely
befuddled in the middle of his anti-WikiLeaks rant when asked by a
guest, Clay Shirky, to differentiate what Woodward continuously does from
what Assange is doing).
They're all petrified to speak ill of Bob Woodward because he's a revered
spokesman of the royal court to which they devote their full
loyalty. Julian Assange, by contrast, is an actual adversary -- not
a pretend one -- of that royal court. And that -- and only that --
is what is driving virtually this entire discourse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XInz4i6AV8M&feature=player_embedded
UPDATE: At the CNN blog,
Jessica Yellin responds to this post. Standing on its own, the
response is not unreasonable, but I'll leave it to others to decide if
her claims are consistent with her comments and conduct during the
segment.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/28/cnnn/index.html
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- The merger of journalists and government officials MJ
