Well, I think it’s very much the same thing. We have a leak of classified information. And by the way — you’ve got to remember [Bradley] Manning’s the leaker. Everyone says Assange is a leaker. He’s not a leaker. He’s the person who gets the information.
So why we’re so concerned about the prosecution of Assange is what he did is the same as what the Times did in the Pentagon Papers, and indeed what they did with WikiLeaks. The Times published on its website the very same material WikiLeaks published on its website. So if you go after the WikiLeaks criminally, you go after the Times. That’s the criminalization of the whole process.
Why aren’t more people angry about what they see as Obama’s aversion to press freedom?
They don’t believe it. I actually have talked to two investigative reporters who are household names, and I said, “Do you realize what’s happening to you if this goes forward?” And I talk, I get no response, and the subject shifts to other parts of the book. No one seems to care.
So you think that if John McCain or Mitt Romney were the president and doing this, there would be a different response?
We’d be screaming and yelling and the journalists would be going crazy. And that doesn’t speak well of journalists.
The FBI destroyed its file on Punch Sulzberger, the former publisher of the Times. What are your thoughts on that?
I think it’s absolutely outrageous that there was a file on the publisher of The New York Times, most probably for publishing the Pentagon Papers. The Pentagon Papers did nothing to damage national security. The claims that they did damage national security have turned out, in retrospect, to be so much hot air.
Is there anything I’ve missed that you’d like to talk about?
My conclusion is that not one claim has — after 40-plus years — ever been proved to damage national security, and one of the most ridiculous claims was that the Papers broke the [communications intelligence] codes, even though the government knew very well that it had not.
When you pull it apart, it’s baloney. And the president of the United States held the country in the palm of his hand saying the world’s coming to an end, and it was all baloney.
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