From the Washington Post:
The Bush administration, seeking to limit leaks of classified information, has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government sources. The efforts include several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws.
In recent weeks, dozens of employees at the CIA, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies have been interviewed by agents from the FBI’s Washington field office, who are investigating possible leaks that led to reports about secret CIA prisons and the NSA’s warrantless domestic surveillance program, according to law enforcement and intelligence officials familiar with the two cases.
Numerous employees at the CIA, FBI, Justice Department and other agencies also have received letters from Justice prohibiting them from discussing even unclassified issues related to the NSA program, according to sources familiar with the notices. Some GOP lawmakers are also considering whether to approve tougher penalties for leaking.
In a little-noticed case in California, FBI agents from Los Angeles have already contacted reporters at the Sacramento Bee about stories published in July that were based on sealed court documents related to a terrorism case in Lodi, according to the newspaper.
Some media watchers, lawyers and editors say that, taken together, the incidents represent perhaps the most extensive and overt campaign against leaks in a generation, and that they have worsened the already-tense relationship between mainstream news organizations and the White House.
“There’s a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding information, and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public’s business risk being branded traitors,” said New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, in a statement responding to questions from The Washington Post. “I don’t know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it sounds like the administration is declaring war at home on the values it professes to be promoting abroad.”
Leaving aside the description of the White House as “targeting journalists and their possible government sources”—a formulation that subtly marks leakers and their accomplices in the framing and disseminating of leaks as victims against whom the administration is launching an attack that, in the estimation of the NYT’s Bill Keller, is tantamount to an attack on American itself (dissent being the highest form of patriotism and all, and leaks of classified material that problematize the prosecution of a global war attempting to combat a farflung network of Islamic terrorism while bringing democracy to Iraq and protecting us at home being the pinnacle of such love of country)—the phrase that struck me most upon reading this article was this:
Some media watchers, lawyers and editors say that, taken together, the incidents represent perhaps the most extensive and overt campaign against leaks in a generation
Doubtless there is something slightly sinister sounding about the government “launching” an “overt campaign” against the press, but the truth is, such a pushback has been a long time in coming. The press has, on the whole, been relying on a powerful emotional appeal—“the public’s right to know”—to excuse institutional biases that have become increasingly obvious to even the most casual of observers; and over the last generation in particular, that blanket appeal has been used as an all-purpose defense for a culture of leaks and counter leaks that have become all too common inside the beltway, and, when joined to the ideological bent of a mainstream media that is happy to oblige with a particular agenda-driven framing, has had the practical effect of providing undue influence to those who have disagreements with the party in power.
But just because such a dynamic has, by force of habit, become the way business gets done in Washington, doesn’t mean it should get done in such a way. And it is clear, at least to me, that there is a substantive difference between on the one hand, having a healthy distrust of the government, and on the other, allowing those partisans who disagree with the policies of given administration to take advantage of that healthy distrust by manipulating it toward their own ends.
An adversarial press skeptical of the government and its power is a good thing, and a free press that acts as a watchdog is essential to guarding democracy. But a free press that uses its power to drive particular ideologically driven policies by finessing “news” coverage and ginning up controversy out of all proportion to the facts (the missing weapons cache story right before the 2004 Presidential elections, the Willy Pete story, etc) is a danger to democracy insofar as its intent is to “teach” the public “lessons” that it hopes will translate into election victories for those who support its social policy prescriptions.
None of which is to discount the fact that the current press is often driven more by sensationalism than by ideology; but to deny that much of how the media covers a story is driven by a desire to shape the public discourse in its own image—which is decidedly left of center polically (particularly on social issues)—is to deny the obvious.
And when that agenda extends to the leaking of classified information (outside of that covered under whistleblower protections), it has overstepped its bounds and needs to be held to account.
Of the White House pushback against the leaks and leakers, Glenn Reynolds notes:
Members of the press are, for the most part, appalled. But having made a big deal of leaks and their alleged harm to National Security in the Plame case, they’re in a poor position to complain. Bill Keller’s outrage is particularly out of place, and his suggestion that the Bush Administration is “declaring war at home on the values it professes to be promoting abroad” is just a political sound-bite, and not a particularly good one. There’s not even a right of journalists to protect leakers under the U.S. Constitution, despite journalists’ representations, and doing so has hardly been a slogan on the war on terror. The tendency of the press to conflate its own desire for guild-like special privileges with the protections of the First Amendment is one of the reasons for its decline in trust and popularity.
In a free society, when the press comes to be perceived as simply another organ of an identifiable political point of view, the first casualty is trust. And with no anchor to hold the public’s trust, competing and increasingly bitter partisan narratives begin to battle for the right to claim the mantle of “truth.”
And this, it seems to me, is more an instance of “declaring war at home” on the values we profess “to be promoting abroad” than is any pushback against a culture of cynical rhetorical power struggles that necessary follows from a breakdown in the fourth estate.
…but to deny that much of how the media covers a story is driven by a desire to shape the public discourse in its own imageâ€â€which is decidedly left of center polically (particularly on social issues)â€â€is to deny the obvious.
Yet watch the denial of the obvious certain to unfold in ensuing comments, by Valerie Plame Patriots. And, of course, dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
Well, I was a super-patriot from Jan. 1993-2001, but the pre-Kos cultists just thought I was a hater. Neither categorization was accurate, nor is it now that the shoe’s on the other foot.
But they may yet prove to everyone’s satisfaction they are haters; witness their spittle-flecked nonsense in the Katrina thread.
Cordially…
It’s about time we started locking up the leakers. These people are traitors, pure and simple. I do think they should stand trial as usual, though conceivably they could be declared enemy combatants in some cases.
The trust factor will be important in the future. I have noticed with so many leftwingers commenting on my blog that they naturally don’t trust a source that leans right, just as the rightwingers don’t trust a source that leans left.
But the difference in trust should be about who has been proven wrong over and over and where their reporting has been skewed toward their political view. That should be true no matter what side of the fence the story seems to land on.
I quote National Review quite a bit. Not only because they are conservative, but because I have never seen a piece of their reporting that was proven to be totally false. (I could have missed some, I know) On the other hand sources that many of my commenters link to that are liberal seem to drop the ball all the time.
Now, I realize that I am biased here. But facts are facts. It has almost gotten to the point where one side will never trust a source that has even the least bit of partisanship attached to it. No matter what it’s reputation for being correct.
So the division continues until mainstream journalists find their moral compass and report the news fairly.
It has almost gotten to the point where one side will never trust a source that has even the least bit of partisanship attached to it.
It’s pretty hard to trust CBS or ABC or the Washington Post. That’s for sure. But I’ve never seen anything reported on Fox that turned out not to be true, either. Ditto for the Washington Times. But Newsmax, on the other hand….
Give it up, Leonidas.
There’s a cool, chill, somethinorother……
You’re a fucking troll, Leonidas.
But then maybe that’s a misattribution. Maybe Howard Zinnemann said it.
Remember when Bush said something similiar?
Except for the fact that Fox has a few conservative shows its as bad as the others. Mainly because it relies on the AP and nobody with editorial discretion there apparently cares about getting it right. They waited until Friday night for chrissakes to issue a “correction” re the overtopping vs. breaching kerfuffle.
Then the moonbats here say it doesn’t matter anyway, Bush lied.
Not to forget the glint in our eyes when we talk about tar-and-feathering reporters and running them out of town on a rail.
tw: It takes two to tango.
Did someone mention paddling Chris Matthews? Can you feel these nipples?
I actually trust a lot of news sources that have bias. I love many (most?) shows on NPR, I respect Tom Friedman, I think the WaPo is a fine newspaper. Chris Matthews can be wacky but everybody knows where he’s coming from- he doesn’t pretend to be an impartial observer.
I don’t have to agree with the slant of a news source, but I want to hear in the way they present their material that they at least respect the intelligence of those that might disagree.
Barring that, they should just embrace the idea that their own bias shows sometimes and admit it. Let the viewer/listener/reader decide if that makes them more or less credible.
If I were a newspaper editor (ha!) I would tell every reporter to re-read their article as if they disagree with themselves.
Finally, they need to quit whining. They might succeed in making Bush look like a big bad guy, but nobody likes a whiner.
I would consider treason an accurate description for the leak of the NSA intercepts. I hope the resources spent tracking this one down at least equal those of Plamegate. Given equal courage as that shown by Judith Miller, I expect we will have the name of the leaker by Christmas. If, as speculated, the leak comes from the office of a certain Senator, it will be a very Merry Christmas indeed.
J. Bradford Delong regularly discusses their shoddy econ.
Yeah, economics, there’s a field where everyone agrees.
And humans, yours.
Economics is sort of a special case. No one seems to agree on any but the most basic of economic facts (like “some people buy and sell things”). DeLong says NR’s economics is shoddy, but other PhD economists say DeLong’s are shoddy. At that, he’s no Krugman, who has apparently just given up on doing “science” even to the extent that economics qualifies. In any cae, I don’t think “Brad DeLong disagrees with an economic statement in NR” qualifies as a demonstration that NR is wrong in the same sense that asserting Max Mayfield was warning of breeches in the levees is wrong.
My profession can be described as the rational consumption of economic analysis, and action thereon. I’ve learned one thing about economists in the last decade, when my mortgage payment depends on it.
Q: What’s the difference between meteorologists and economists?
A: Metereologists can all agree what happened yesterday.
And yet they manage to still get it wrong. Dow 36,000 type stuff.
From my Crackdown On Leakers Has MSM Panties In A Wad post
actus, you’re starting to pique my interest. You haven’t actually said anything really execrable in a good long time, by my reading. (I note that you appear to be leaning toward inscrutability instead, but whatever… It serves to spark discussion.)
Phil, that’s definitely .sig material. May I use it?
Regards,
Ric
LOL. Help yourself, Ric.