Discussion: WaPo Tells Obama Administration To Leave New York Times Reporter Alone

TPM Article Topics
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Discussion for article #226759

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“If Mr. Risen is forced to reveal the identity of a source, it will
damage the ability of journalists to promise confidentiality to sources
and to probe government behavior.”

Christ, don’t encourage them!

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Tapper: “how do you distinguish between the “gutsy” reporters and the one the administration is threatening to put in jail?”

Well, that’s pretty easy, isn’t it? Don’t reveal confidential state secrets.

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When pretty much everything is classified as a state secret, you’re left with a pretty empty argument.

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amazing what one mo do column can do

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.[quote=“marcelshale, post:3, topic:8983”]
Don’t reveal confidential state secrets.
[/quote]

You would have done well in the former Soviet Union.

A Free Press

(The following one-pager is taken from the U.S. Department of State publication Principles of Democracy.)

In a democracy the press should operate free from governmental control. Democratic governments do not have ministries of information to regulate content of newspapers or the activities of journalists; requirements that journalists be vetted by the state; or force journalists to join government-controlled unions.

…

• Democracies foster a never-ending struggle between two rights: The government’s obligation to protect national security; and the people’s right to know, based on journalists’ ability to access information. Governments sometimes need to limit access to information considered too sensitive for general distribution. But journalists in democracies are fully justified in pursuing such information.

Technical Difficulties

You should read the whole thing. You will learn a lot of things that you should have learned in ninth-grade civics
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Nonsense. Study a little history and get back to us about what whistle blowers have done to expose corruption and crimes committed by people within our government.

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It’s a shame that the primary “accomplishment” of Obama through a historic lens will be his war on whistle blowers and journalism in general, and his ratcheting down of the surveillance state - even as it’s mask slips noticeably.

Not exactly the greatest legacy.

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Journalistic solidarity much? Wasn’t Risen the one who got a Korean guy to commit treason and then got someone killed for being outed as a CIA guy? or am I thinking of someone else. I only recall that I automatically do not have any sympathy for Risen on this.

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To a certain extent, but revealing things that are classified with good reason, and don’t show any criminal acts or other malfeasance, simply because you call yourself a journalist and believe in “openness”, doesn’t get any sympathy from me. To go back to the Bush administration, it’s the difference between revealing the warrantless wiretapping program, and Robert Novak and Scooter Libby outing Valerie Plame.

It seems that a disturbing number of journalists think that they should be immune from the consequences of revealing any classified information, regardless of its value to the public interest or the degree to which it could be considered whistleblowing, simply because they’re “journalists”. Us little people, of course, would not receive such privileges.

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Do you have any concrete examples of a journalist releasing classified info which was clearly, inarguably not in the public’s interest to know?

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Sure. Edward Snowden releasing 1000s of documents about how the NSA spy agency works.

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Well, if you’re going to release classified info from the CIA or NSA, you ought be ready for the consequences. That’s a bit a different from a reporter on the street covering Furguson, MO, which is what confused Tapper … and you, too, apparently.

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Sorry, that is clearly in the public interest. You’ll have to try again.

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Like midnight rambler said, what about Valarie Plame? Outing a secret agent whose job was to stop the proliferation of WMD’s seemed not in the public interest. Also, isn’t it treasonous to out an undercover spy?

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Ed Snowden was ready as he could be. As was Daniel Ellsberg.

What does their “readiness” have to do with anything?

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I don’t think outing an agent is comparable to releasing classified info which reveals unconstitutional acts by our government - which are of value to the public.

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Awwwwwwwwwww

It’s all right.

His source is the highly regarded Fox source

‘somewhere’…

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Glenn Greenwald admitted to Steven Colbert that a lot of the information he and Ed Snowden made public was of no interest nor benefit for the public.

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That’s exactly my point. I’ve yet to hear a justification for what Risen’s leaks showed of value to the public. At best it claims to have showed the CIA screwed up several times, but that’s not illegal or unconstitutional.