Untangling the complex of anger and frustration I feel over the recent contretemps between Glenn Greenwald, John Burns, Julian Assange, and Wikileaks has been fiendishly difficult. In order to bring clarity, I think I need to separate it all out in to several posts. Of course, my stated glee at two gentlemen of relative prominence, both with enormous egos and neither willing to grant even a modicum of good will and honesty to the actions and intentions of the other included my general disgust at the all-too-familiar Greenwaldian pose of principled critic of all things political, journalistic, and whatnot. That Greenwald's usual schtick as media critic seems to include his own infallible sense of what journalism is, or perhaps "should be" would be better, even as he has neither the experience nor training in the field is par for the course. Being critical of factual errors in the press is one thing; being critical of ideological bias, or granting to particular subjects and persons a certain deference - these should be considered fodder for careful consideration in context. Greenwald, however, seems always to insist the pattern of deference and support for Establishment plans and policies, up to and including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is a prima facie case in no need of further elaboration. His attitude disgusts me precisely because it is based on that most absurd assumption one can imagine - that he actually knows what he is talking about.
Part of my anger over this episode is rooted in Greenwald's insistence that Burns' piece on Assange is rooted in the journalist's basic approval of and on-going published support for the attack and occupation of Iraq. He even calls the Iraq conflict "Burns' War". In an attempt to point out either intellectual dishonesty, hypocrisy, or some combination of both, Greenwald writes of a profile of recently disgraced Gen. Stanley McChrystal that Burns wrote it either standing and saluting a life-size portrait of the general, or kneeling before it.* Yet, in the back and forth on Twitter between Greenwald and Michael Cohen, Cohen makes the obvious point that this is not a case proved either in the record of Burns' reporting, and certainly not in the piece on Assange. Indeed, Cohen makes the point that Greenwald imputes to Burns, on no evidence whatsoever, a whole series of motives, including psychological ones. Greenwald ends the exchange by insisting that he has done no such thing - how he can write that I have no idea - and ends the exchange.
Here's the thing. There were a whole series of journalistic failures in both the run-up to the war and during the conflict and occupation. Whether it was the simple failure to ask important questions, to demand evidence for a whole series of claims by Bush Administration officials, or the use of questionable sources for a slew of stories that lay before the American people all sorts of evidence that, it turns out, was bogus from start to finish, there is enough responsibility upon the press, and we await some sort of accounting for these failures.
For all the failings the press corps demonstrated, it was also the press that managed to lay before the American people the varieties of untruths in the Bush Administration's case for the war. It started back in the summer of 2002. At the time, we were deep in the midst of the fallout from the Enron bankruptcy, and its implications on the possibility that a major corporation enjoyed a certain amount of protection, or thought it did at any rate, from the Bush Administration even as it seemed to revel in kleptocracy and fraud on a massive scale. I shall never forget listening to The Diane Rehm Show's weekly news roundup in mid-summer 2002, and hearing a reporter asked why, all of a sudden, the Administration was talking about the serious potential threat Iraq. One of the reporters said, "Well, we aren't talking about Enron anymore." At that moment I knew the entire thing was bullshit. Pure, unadulterated crap.
In February, 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared before the United Nations Security Council to lay out the Bush Administration's case for military action against Iraq, listing the various ways it was in violation of a series of Security Council Resolutions. The general reaction was positive, with some commentators (I honestly don't consider Chris Matthews of MSNBC a journalist) positively gleeful. Yet, even before the invasion began, every single claim made by Powell in that long speech was exposed, by the same press corps ridiculed by Glenn Greenwald as in hock to the Bush Administration, as a lie. Indeed, the sorriest bit - Powell's insistence the night before the presentation that the entire thing be re-written because, looking through the pages presented to him from officials from the CIA, he tossed it across the room and pronounced it "fucking bullshit" - came out within a matter of days.
Similarly, the public was already aware the claims concerning an attempt by Iraq to purchase uranium yellow cake were, quite simply, made up because the press was on to the possibility that an analyst at the CIA had her cover blown by someone yet unknown in the Bush Administration. Both Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice had claimed Iraq had purchased aluminum tubing to be used in the processing of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium; they continued to make that claim even as the press was reporting it was, quite simply, wrong.
In other words, while the press is responsible for certain derelictions of duty during the run-up to the war, during the actual combat and then the occupation, to state simply that this was a congenital defect that ran through the entire journalistic profession in all their written and viewed reports is false. Greenwald's contempt for journalism as a profession, based upon his view of reporters for major print and broadcast outlets as unduly obsequious and subservient to official sources; as not reporting serious problems with the Administration's case for war; as being completely and wholly in hock to the Bush Administration and its desire for war - the whole thing is, simply put, wrong.
Even a story as difficult to tease out and report as the way Dick Cheney set up a clearing house for intelligence, most of which was quite raw and also quite wrong (this was the source for the whole "Iraqi intelligence met with Al Qaeda in Prague so they're gonna kill us all!" business) was made public in exquisite detail before the outbreak of the war. The implications of this particular story alone were pretty staggering; the cumulative effect of press reports on the various lies of the Bush Administration made opposing the war not only easy, but gave war opponents plenty of fodder.
It is one thing to assert rather boldly that particular members of the press corps missed opportunities for clarity in the run up to the war. It is another, however, to hold those instances as indicative of systemic failure.
UPDATE FOR CORRECTION: In my original post, I placed the outing of Valerie Plame by Scooter Libby to Robert Novak as occurring before the invasion. It happened in July, 2003. I have removed that and note the correction here for the record. Oopsie.
*This last is particularly nasty because Greenwald takes offense when others notice that he is gay. Apparently making not-so-veiled references to the sexual habits of others is fine for him because he is both gay and a principled critic of the Universe. It is barred from others because he is gay and a principled critic of others.
Virtual Tin Cup
