James Goodale has a message for journalists: Wake up. In his new book, Fighting for the Press (CUNY Journalism Press, 2013), Goodale, chief counsel to The New York Times when its editors published the Pentagon Papers in 1971, argues that President Obama is worse for press freedom than former President Richard Nixon was.
The Obama administration has prosecuted more alleged leakers of national security information under the 1917 Espionage Act than all previous administrations combined, a course critics say is overly aggressive. Former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller wrote in a March op-ed that the administration “has a particular, chilling intolerance” for those who leak. If the Obama administration indicts WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act, Goodale argues, the president will have succeeded where Nixon failed by using the act to “end-run” the First Amendment.
Goodale spoke with CJR about why he chose to write about the Pentagon Papers now and what he sees as the key threats to press freedom today. The conversation has been condensed and edited for length and clarity. Fighting for the Press comes out on April 30.
Why did you write the book now?
I was really curious as the 40th anniversary of the Pentagon Papers came about, to take a look at the claims the government made of breaches of national security in a composite form.
One, I wanted to have a look at the stuff and reach a conclusion. Two, I want to issue a clarion call to the journalistic community and others, and thirdly, I wanted to see if I could create a drama that would interest readers and so they could learn about the First Amendment. Journalists particularly.
Let’s talk about some of the challenges to press freedom now.
The biggest challenge to the press today is the threatened prosecution of WikiLeaks, and it’s absolutely frightening.
Investigative reporting, particularly on national security matters, cannot be effective unless the reporter’s able to ask the source and talk the source into giving out the information. Journalism is hard. They’re not just going to tell you everything. They’ll tell you whether the sun is shining, but when there’s something that involves malfeasance, they’re going to play you for a sucker for 100 days before they give it out.
And therefore, you have to wheedle that information out of the source. Now if Assange is convicted, it might be a conviction for wheedling — for gathering the news, for asking questions, for getting stories. So he’ll go to jail for doing what every journalist does.
The other thing that is bad on the press scene is reporter’s privilege and the ability to force reporters to divulge their sources. It has not gone away. There haven’t been any big stories of journalists going to jail recently, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen.
The one case that is troublesome and is still out there as we speak is the case of James Risen, who was a journalist who was leaked national security information in respect to the warrantless wiretapping program, which was disclosed by The New York Times.
He’s won his case, but most people are going to be surprised if he can win it on appeal. It’s been sitting on appeal for a year. Now what’s going to happen — if the shoe drops and we’re back to Judy Miller, it means Risen goes to jail. And if in fact it doesn’t turn out that way and it turns out well, we’ll have the question of whether the government will go to the Supreme Court and we will always have the question whether it will turn out well for the next Risen. And who’s behind this one? Obama.
Could you talk a bit about President Obama’s approach to classified information and press freedom?
Antediluvian, conservative, backwards. Worse than Nixon. He thinks that anyone who leaks is a spy! I mean, it’s cuckoo.
Could you compare what we see in the Pentagon Papers and what we see in WikiLeaks?
I would have titled this one: James Goodale to Press: Wake Up!!!
Everything he says is correct, and it's been crazy to me to watch the Obama administration vigorously prosecute leaker after leaker -- 100% of the time the leaker was exposing government malfeasance or wrongdoing -- and the press just shrugs. They don't seem to care. What does it take to get alarmed by what is going on? It should be instinctive -- the government is messing with the public's right to know, but because it's Obama they don't even complain.
#1 Posted by Brett, CJR on Tue 19 Mar 2013 at 05:22 PM
The Obama administration argued explicitly in the 'Citizens United' case that the government had, in the name of campaign finance reform, the right to prosecute any producer of a polemical book, pamphlet, documentary, or other media deemed (a) a 'corporate' product, and (b) an endorsement of a candidate or cause in the run-up to an election. This was the most breathtaking dismissal of the First Amendment I've seen. Even Nixon didn't adopt that angle. Yet journalists outside the conservative media ghetto are, with a few honorable exceptions, quiet as mice and docile as sheep - they probably think such restrictions would never be applied to them.
The New York Times has explicitly endorsed the idea, editorially, that it has free-speech rights not available to other corporations, which gets us closer to the reason for this weeniness - free speech for me but not for you, a pretty sleazy position. So the lamestream press does not steadily rake the Obama administration and its apologists over the coals on this issue, as is the case with many others in which lamestreamers have a double standard for the two political parties and their constituencies. Except for the right of women to have abortions, I can't think of anything this administration is pro-choice about. The First Amendment is dismissed, the Second Amendment is under attack, and the Commerce Clause is interpreted to extend governmental power beyond anything yet seen over an individual's economic choices. This has nothing to do with 'social democracy'. It is the remorseless aggregation of power by the State and its aspiring administrators, for self-aggrandizing reasons. The impulse is closer to Louis XIV than to the progressive era. And the mainstream press, for reasons of its own (seven or eight of the richest counties in the US are in the DC area) is part of the problem.
#2 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 20 Mar 2013 at 12:46 PM
Let's not forget that the Risen "case" was gathering dust on the shelf when big O came along, dusted it off, and said "yeah, I like this guy for this".
#3 Posted by Steve, CJR on Thu 21 Mar 2013 at 01:37 AM
It's almost like nobody realized who they were electing.
#4 Posted by JD (@Psudrozz), CJR on Mon 15 Apr 2013 at 09:14 AM
This is the Columbia Journalism Review. And the comments are just from conservatives and likely not journalists. Where is the journalism profession?
Crickets
#5 Posted by Al iMiller, CJR on Mon 15 Apr 2013 at 09:30 AM
People need to realize that those who remain silent about Obama's tactics are not journalists, they're cultural warriors.
"I just learned that Obama killed my grandmother with a drone strike....well, Nana probably had it coming."
#6 Posted by Mark, CJR on Mon 15 Apr 2013 at 09:51 AM