
‘No Place to Hide,’ by Glenn Greenwald - duck
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/books/no-place-to-hide-by-glenn-greenwald.html?_r=0
======
cryoshon
NYT shows its bias with passages such as

"In one passage, Mr. Greenwald makes the demonstrably false assertion that one
“unwritten rule designed to protect the government is that media outlets
publish only a few such secret documents, and then stop,” that “they would
report on an archive like Snowden’s so as to limit its impact — publish a
handful of stories, revel in the accolades of a ‘big scoop,’ collect prizes,
and then walk away, ensuring that nothing had really changed.” Many
establishment media outlets obviously continue to pursue the Snowden story."

It's trivial to point to CNN, NBC, CBS, NYT, WaPo etc and show that really
they haven't kept up with the Snowden papers in depth and certainly haven't
emphasized any of the relevant points in their stories-- for instance, a
Google search of "JTRIG CNN" or "JTRIG NBC" or "JTRIG New York Times" comes up
with nothing, because they didn't even write stories on that revelation--
perhaps intentionally as a result of collusion with the government to protect
the terms of their access to officials. JTRIG was a super-important reveal
which was not covered whatsoever by the MSM, and is described as "The scope of
the JTRIG's mission includes using "dirty tricks" to “destroy, deny, degrade
[and] disrupt” enemies by “discrediting” them, planting misinformation and
shutting down their communications." by Wikipedia.

In summary: NYT is wrong when they attempt to defend themselves against
Greenwald's claim that they're pro-establishment because they refused to write
stories on the most damaging Snowden files.

EDIT: Out of curiosity, I additionally decided to investigate whether the NYT
and MSM covered Operation Earnest Voice, the NSA's program to sway public
opinion via shilling and sockpuppeting.

They did not cover the story whatsoever. Operation Earnest Voice detailed
extensive false-person based propaganda efforts against the US and
international public.

The NYT is a joke.

~~~
jstalin
Agree with regards to the NYT. I cancelled my subscription when they published
a front-page NYT Magazine story on how wonderful Anthony Weiner was, how he
had reformed, and that he was a real family man running for mayor of NYC. It
was so transparently a propaganda piece that I read it with dismay, seeing
immediately that it was nothing but arranged by a PR machine. Then of course
just a couple months later we found out that he hadn't changed his behavior
one bit. Of course there was no acknowledgement whatsoever by NYT that they'd
either been had or that they participated in a thinly-veiled PR strategy.

~~~
smacktoward
You're assuming that the PR firm put one over on the _Times_ , but it's
entirely possible that they knew what they were publishing and were quite
happy with it.

Journalists have a term for stories like that one: the "beat sweetener."
([http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19570.html](http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19570.html))

The idea is: journalists need sources to be able to do their job. But sources
can be difficult to cultivate relationships with. Enter the "beat sweetener"
\-- a completely uncritical profile of a policymaker, written for the sole
purpose of buttering that person up so they give greater access in the future
to the reporter and/or publication that produced it.

------
pessimizer
It tells all you need to know about the establishment nature of the NYT that
Kakutani, in her defense of establishment media against Greenwald's critique,
writes:

>"Many establishment media outlets obviously continue to pursue the Snowden
story."

Correction - it's not the _Snowden_ story, it's the _NSA surveillance_ story.
The story isn't supposed to be about the whistleblower.

~~~
jefurii
> that Kakutani, in _his_ defense of establishment media

Michiko is a woman's name.

~~~
pessimizer
I quickly clicked back to get the author's surname, and didn't pay enough
attention. Also, I'm subconsciously sexist and have to make an effort to refer
to the unknown and anonymous with gender-neutral pronouns (obviously!)

I'm usually better than that:)

~~~
deciplex
Using 'he' as a gender-neutral pronoun isn't sexist, it's English.

------
grey-area
It's interesting to contrast this article with Greenwald talking about the
content of the book:

[http://www.democracynow.org/2014/5/13/collect_it_all_glenn_g...](http://www.democracynow.org/2014/5/13/collect_it_all_glenn_greenwald_on)

The review fails to tackle allegations of economic espionage for the
department of commerce, interception of hardware to install backdoors,
targeting allies, targeting dissidents not terrorists, and an ambition to
collect all the information on the planet.

Given the lack of engagement with the central allegations of the book, and the
sniping about his character in this review, I think it demonstrates very well
that _media outlets publish only a few such secret documents, and then stop_.
The NYT has just occasionally been brilliant in covering this story (mostly
when involving Laura Poitras), but mostly has avoided the central issues and
has completely avoided challenging the talking points and framing of this
story by the administration as about terrorism and a naif who has put the
country in danger, encouraged by the 'activist' Greenwald.

------
revelation
In this review, the author of a paper that brought you the Iraq war is unhappy
with Greenwalds impression of his and similar media properties.

~~~
cryoshon
On one hand, I think that Greenwald fails to understand the nature of the NYT:
The NYT seeks to turn a profit, and they do so via the formation and
recapitulation of the most middle ground, most mainstream views and opinions.

On the other hand, this kind of "perfectly normal and always palatable fare
for the sake of always being popular" stuff is certainly very weak journalism.
They're so low-brow that they can't even write a story that refutes their
readership's expectations because they're afraid of losing business. When it
comes to the government, the criticism of the NYT will always be pedestrian
and surface-level rather than deep. This ends up serving the government
because it implies that solutions will also be merely surface-level rather
than far-reaching.

~~~
deciplex
>On one hand, I think that Greenwald fails to understand the nature of the
NYT: The NYT seeks to turn a profit, and they do so via the formation and
recapitulation of the most middle ground, most mainstream views and opinions.

Let's make an important distinction here: the NYT does not _merely_ seek to
turn a profit. That is, they do not try to cover their operating costs plus
some extra percentage. Even at their size, they could engage in responsible
journalism and still achieve this goal.

Rather, the NYT seeks to _maximize_ profit, above all else. And, if
responsible journalism does not contribute to that goal, then responsible
journalism will not get done.

------
eyeareque
How can we protect ourselves from this type of interception? It seems
impossible. Why would any non-american customers buy US made devices? Any
protections that are added can/will be bypassed if the US gov gets physical
access (or even remote).

It seems like our US vendors are going to take a hit from this.

~~~
throw_90u1d20j9
Yes, but not immediately, since the NSA thing came as a surprise, so:

a. nobody had a plan to switch at that time.

b. foreign companies did not know they might be able to compete simply for
privacy reasons.

I think this will change over the next decade. People move slowly, but now
that the trust is lost, it will be difficult to restore, even if the US
government would act. (They won't.)

~~~
liotier

      > b. foreign companies did not know they might be able
      > to compete simply for privacy reasons.
    

Tell that to employees of companies such as Airbus... They have always assumed
that they were under constant attack from government-level entities, with good
reason.

~~~
john_b
An exception or two to the rule does not invalidate the rule. Most ordinary
commercial businesses using US-made devices or online services don't deal with
technology their government considers a national asset, and as a result don't
have to be as paranoid as Airbus, BAE, Petrobras, etc.

------
Istof
The "uncompressed" pdf link gives me a 500 error, but not this one:
[http://glenngreenwald.net/pdf/NoPlaceToHide-Documents-
Compre...](http://glenngreenwald.net/pdf/NoPlaceToHide-Documents-
Compressed.pdf)

