the ashen lady

January 8, 2018 8:47 AM

James Risen writes about My Life As A New York Times Reporter In The Shadow Of The War On Terror

AXIOS has some key takeaways.
CJR: The media today: James Risen’s press freedom battles with Bush, Obama, and The New York Times

2014: The Government War Against Reporter James Risen
2015: For seven years, Risen lived under the threat of jail for refusing to reveal a confidential source. When the government backed off, some saw a victory for freedom of the press. But Risen’s fight shows how little that concept means in post-9/11 America.

'New York Times' Editor: Losing Snowden Scoop 'Really Painful'

He says the experience has proved that news executives are often unduly deferential to seemingly authoritative warnings unaccompanied by hard evidence.

"I am much, much, much more skeptical of the government's entreaties not to publish today than I was ever before," Baquet said in a wide-ranging interview.

Snowden's choice was the bitter harvest of seeds sown by the Times almost a decade ago. In the fall of 2004, just ahead of the November general elections, the Times' news leadership spiked an exclusive from Washington correspondents James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, disclosing massive warrantless domestic eavesdropping by the NSA

posted by the man of twists and turns (8 comments total)

That morning in Alexandria, my lawyers and I learned that the prosecutors were frustrated by my writing style. In “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,” I didn’t include attribution for many passages. I didn’t explicitly say where I was getting my information, and I didn’t identify what information was classified and what wasn’t. That had been a conscious decision; I didn’t want to interrupt the narrative flow of the book with phrases explaining how I knew each fact, and I didn’t want to explicitly say how I had obtained so much sensitive information. If prosecutors couldn’t point to specific passages to prove I had relied on confidential sources who gave me classified information, their criminal case against Sterling might fall apart.

I find this amusing in the context of the full-throated exhortations against the use of constructions like passive voice, particularly in journalism, and particularly to avoid the identity of the actors.

Passive voice as a pillar of the fourth estate, who knew?
posted by bonehead at 9:22 AM on January 8, 2018 [7 favorites]

Jeremy Scahill did a long interview with Risen on the Intercepted podcast. Quite good!

One thing that stood out to me was that, while the Times was forcing Risen to sit on the revelations that would have preempted the Snowden leaks, his editor was thoroughly and directly co-opted by the Director of the NSA (I think this was Alexander but it could've been Hayden, don't remember). This guy was getting personal off-the-record tours of warrantless wiretapping -- not for any journalistic purpose but so that he would go back to the Times and shut down Risen's stories.
posted by grobstein at 10:13 AM on January 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

It's important to note that statistic about the number of prosecutions for this increased markedly under Obama. I voted for the man twice and this disturbed me greatly.
posted by nevercalm at 10:57 AM on January 8, 2018 [8 favorites]

US persecution of whistleblowers is nothing new.
Long before Edward Snowden went public, John Crane was a top Pentagon official fighting to protect NSA whistleblowers. Instead their lives were ruined – and so was his.
Many also consider that Obama`s legacy was A Historic War On Whistleblowers.
posted by adamvasco at 1:07 PM on January 8, 2018 [6 favorites]

As an addendum, we have Marcy Wheeler: “Why I Left The Intercept: The Surveillance Story They Let Go Untold for 15 Months”

Glenn Greenwald is rightly touting [the Risen piece], suggesting that the NYT was corrupt for acceding to the government’s wishes to hold the Stellar Wind story. But in doing so he suggests The Intercept would never do the same.
That’s not correct.
One of two reasons I left The Intercept is because John Cook did not want to publish a story I had written — it was drafted in the content management system — about how the government uses Section 702 to track cyberattacks. Given that The Intercept thinks such stories are newsworthy, I’m breaking my silence now to explain why I left The Intercept.

posted by Going To Maine at 1:30 PM on January 8, 2018 [5 favorites]

Yeah, between spiking that story, fucking up Reality Winner's confidentiality and my long-standing suspicion that Laura Poitras did all the work on Snowden and Glenn Greenwald collected the byline, I'm willing to write off The Intercept.
posted by Merus at 4:28 PM on January 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

Yeah, between spiking that story, fucking up Reality Winner's confidentiality and my long-standing suspicion that Laura Poitras did all the work on Snowden and Glenn Greenwald collected the byline, I'm willing to write off The Intercept.

Idk like the New York Times looks really bad in this story but I'm not sure I would say I'd "write off" the New York Times. They're an organization with tons of problems, but they have a lot of good reporters, and they're the only organization that can report a lot of stories, or one of a few.

It's good to be critical of press outlets and read them critically, but if you choose to ignore outlets because of the kinds of problems you're citing with The Intercept, you just won't be able to get the news. The Intercept has definitely made some editorial blunders, but I don't think it undermines most of their coverage.
posted by grobstein at 4:54 PM on January 8, 2018 [4 favorites]

US persecution of whistleblowers is nothing new.
Long before Edward Snowden went public, John Crane was a top Pentagon official fighting to protect NSA whistleblowers. Instead their lives were ruined – and so was his.

Fantastic! Thanks adamvasco. The Inside Reality Winner thread (on a must read article!), had me wondering about who some of the other war on terror security-state whistleblowers were. This was a great addition to the list.

Jeremy Scahill did a long interview with Risen on the Intercepted podcast. Quite good!

Thanks, great stuff! I guess I'll have to read the article now :)

As an addendum, we have Marcy Wheeler: “Why I Left The Intercept: The Surveillance Story They Let Go Untold for 15 Months”

Needs a complete re-write, way too 'inside baseball'. For example, what's a 702? Yes, I can google, yes, I now know it is part of FISA, but the author needs to tell the story before anyone can possibly care about it being buried. I'm interested enough in the notion of a class distinction along the lines discussed in there--seems similar to the distinction between experimental and theoretical physicists--but the piece reads as blogish, not journalistic.
posted by Chuckles at 5:13 PM on January 8, 2018