
Interview of Glenn Greenwald [video] - mickeyben
http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2013-10-04/the-most-embarrassing-news-interview-ever/
======
joejohnson
In the wake of all this NSA/GlennGreenwald/Snowden coverage, it's been
painfully clear how little the press actually functions as investigative
journalists anymore. Any large organization (BBC, all US cable news, NYTimes,
anything close to this size) is hopelessly broken. They all seem afraid to
speak out against the five eyes' governments.

Seymour Hersh calls out the NYTimes (supposedly the best news source in the
US) for "carrying so much water" and publishing the Obama administration's
press releases[1]. There is no "real" journalism happening on these issues.
The NYTimes is too afraid of losing favor with the Federal government, or
alienating their lucrative big-business sponsors, so they refuse to dig into
even the weakest of tales the Obama administration gives them.

The same is true for the BBC, as seen in this interview. That woman
"journalist" regurgitates the governments talking points.

1) [http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-
blog/2013/sep/27/seym...](http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-
blog/2013/sep/27/seymour-hersh-obama-nsa-american-media)

~~~
js2
Ironically, some of the best journalism in the US is found on tax-payer funded
PBS (I'm thinking of Frontline and Bill Moyer).

~~~
spartango
To be fair, most of PBS' funding does not come from the government, but
instead by donations from members (via local stations). With that said, I'm
glad that there are still grants going to support PBS, as their work is
excellent.

------
nikcub
Related, the interview Greenwald did with David Gregory on Meet The Press a
few months ago:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq2nu0a0kGk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq2nu0a0kGk)

Where Gregory asked:

> To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current
> movements, why shouldn't you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?

Greenwald handles himself well in these situations, and doesn't shy away from
showing up fellow journalists.

------
GeorgeOrr
I was so impressed by Greenwald's ability to keep his calm while being asked
such ridiculous questions.

I can't believe this interviewer is quite as stupid as she comes off. So why
the bizarre attacks, why act like a Government mouthpiece rather than a
journalist?

~~~
diydsp
Some people have an intense desire to be guardians/protectors, but it doesn't
come from a place of experience, wisdom and empathy, but fear of change and
the unknown.

Experienced and evil leaders keep these "panicked protectors" like Wark in
their pocket and deploy them strategically to try to discredit and induce
uncertainty to maintain control.

It's likely she doesn't perceive/assess her own wisdom, just her own loyalty.
She is, in this sense, completely "domesticated." She actually laps up the
fact she's a pet of her government's press.

Ugh, just typing that phrase "her government's press" makes me almost as ill
as I felt listening to her desperate, hiccuping interruptions of Greenwald. I
hope to hell more and more people learn to perceive interviews like this as
the propaganda they are and to discredit those who employ such tactics.
Minority/marginalize idealist leaders, here's your window of opportunity.

~~~
borplk
Yeah she was constantly like "emm...err....uhh..." so annoying.

------
stfu
Am I the only one who thought the headline was suggesting that the one giving
the embarrassing interview was Greenwald and not the interviewer?

~~~
bencoder
The headline has now been changed. For the understanding of future readers,
the previous headline was "Embarrassing Interview of Glenn Greenwald"

------
andybak
Glad to see this picking up some publicity. It was so awful it had me was
shouting at the television.

The desire to create an adversarial interview without the interviewer having
sufficient grasp of the subject to shed any light on it whatsoever. There are
valid areas that could have been probed but she wasn't smart or well-informed
enough to reach them.

~~~
justincormack
I don't think Greenwald really understands much about crypto, judging from
some of his answers. I am glad the Guardian have real crypto experts looking
at the stuff and writing articles now.

~~~
k-mcgrady
It's not really surprising. He's a journalist, not a security engineer. He
doesn't need to know much about it as The Guardian probably has people in
place to take care of things like crypto.

------
frankzinger
Lots of conspiracy theorists here.

Note that this clip ends prematurely. The program proceeded with Baroness
Neville-Jones, a former Security Minister, to whom Wark posed the following
questions, among others:

1) Shouldn't we have been told about this anyway? 2) Did you know this was
going on? 3) When Neville-Jones said Snowden's revelations were helping
terrorists, Wark said that terrorists obviously already knew that their comms
were being monitored 4) What does it matter what the Brazillians are doing at
Petrogas? 5) You might be going after terrorists but there are actually lots
of parties using these channels for business 6) Do you think there is enough
control of these systems? 7) There has been a deliberate undermining by the
Security Services of encryption 8) Would you say, because you think there
should be a review, that Greenwald was right?

Neville-Jones also looked like she thought Wark's questions were ridiculous.
Wark came from both angles and I didn't think she was very biased either way.

~~~
csandreasen
Link to the complete 22-minute interview:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-moGtQFvsVU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-moGtQFvsVU)

------
akjj
Unlike most commenters, I think Greenwald is giving very evasive answers to
perfectly legitimate questions. Any operational details about the NSA could
plausibly be useful those who are trying to evade surveillance. To me the
correct answer is that yes, some details could help terrorists, but only
minimally so, and that needs to be balanced against the right of citizens in a
democracy to understand what their government is doing. Instead, Greenwald
stakes out a completely untenable position that "not one line...could even
possibly be said to damage national security."

After he says this, the interviewer brings up the specific detail of metadata
collection. Now maybe knowledge that the NSA uses metadata will have little
impact on terrorist operations or maybe it will have a lot, or maybe none. I
don't know. But if I wanted to know, I'd ask someone who had "very carefully"
thought about the national security implications of that publication. Instead,
that person changes the subject to other surveillance tools and then says that
of course terrorists knew they were being monitored, but with no mention of
metadata. That's it? I'd certainly hope that the very careful consideration of
national security was more thoughtful than that answer.

It's obvious that Greenwald would rather talk about privacy than national
security implications, but even he admits that national security is relevant
with his "not one line" comment. He can't have it both ways by claiming that
there's no harm to national security, but then treating any question for
details as an insult. I see on Wikipedia that he complained that this
interview focused "almost entirely on the process questions" but I see that as
a natural course for the interviewer to take given his refusal to answer such
questions.

~~~
GeorgeOrr
If you were the interviewer would you have spent any time, at all, on the
substance that he reported on?

If so, you would have been a much better interviewer than she was.

------
junto
Wow, that was stunning. If those questions really were passed from the British
Security Services then they just went out of their way to deliberately
threaten his life.

Britain has possibly passed the point of no return. I speak with far too many
Brits that see Greenwald and Snowden as the bad guys.

The British press is just too controlled to make a real difference in British
politics (flipping between red and blue depending on who visits you before an
election on your super yacht doesn't count).

It is this lack of a 4th estate (which Glen is referring to), that is the core
if Britain's press issues.

~~~
anu_gupta
> The British press is just too controlled to make a real difference in
> British politics (flipping between red and blue depending on who visits you
> before an election on your super yacht doesn't count).

And yet it was The Guardian (a UK paper) that played a huge part in breaking
the Snowden story, and, IIRC, were one of the primary conduits for the
Wikileaks information.

~~~
slashdotaccount
Do you know who controls The Guardian? They have their own interests. This is
some big politics here with major forces involved. Zoom out to see the whole
picture in mass media: follow who controls the particular mass media, what
they report about, what they don't report about, and maybe you can outline
some parts of the Big Game.

~~~
teddyh
Those are awfully vague allusions. If you have something to say and can back
it up, then speak your piece.

------
kyro
And when this interview had finished, when the cameras had been turned off,
when the working day had come to an end, this woman likely forgot about the
entire discussion, had dinner at The Ivy, and returned to her home in the West
End, with unaffected fame and fortune, only to do it all again the following
day.

------
quaunaut
Haven't seen the video yet, but I've gotta disagree with one part of the
preceding article:

> Throughout the interview, Wark abandons even the pretence of doing what
> journalism is supposed to be about: interrogating the centres of power and
> holding them to account.

This is not journalism's role. It isn't even close to journalism's role. It is
a closet perversion of journalism's role. It is some neo-anarchist's view of a
journalist's role. This is not journalism's role.

Journalism's role is to get at the truth and to distribute it as widely as
possible. That does not mean you target only centers of power. If that's all
you do, you're just as much a schmuck for some other asshole's propaganda,
just the difference is, this one can't pay you.

Once again, I haven't seen the video, but making such duplicitous statements
about the role of journalism by someone who is fairly respected in the
community is not the way to go.

~~~
r0h1n
> Journalism's role is to get at the truth and to distribute it as widely as
> possible.

Many a time, that goal is directly related to what you're objecting to,
namely:

>> interrogating the centres of power and holding them to account

Those with power most often have the highest motivation & ability to
hide/obfuscate the truth, which is why journalists need to interrogate and
confront them to get at the truth.

George Orwell summed it up best: _" Journalism is printing what someone else
does not want printed: everything else is public relations"_

~~~
pekk
No, journalism is not simply printing controversial materials. It does require
some amount of investigation and analysis.

~~~
r0h1n
Neither did I advocate for a journalism consisting of "simply printing
controversial materials" nor one bereft of "investigation and analysis". So
you're attacking straw men here.

My comment, as well as Greenwald's publicly stated views, only highlight the
frequently _adversarial_ nature of journalism against those in power.

------
nwh
Bravo. That's some incredible self control not to just tell them to fuck off
and walk out. I feel angry for him just watching it.

------
pjc50
Oh, Kirsty Wark.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirsty_Wark](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirsty_Wark)
(see "Controversies" and "Interview Style"

Almost got fired for going on holiday with the Scottish First Minister (
[http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/wark-
kept-...](http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/wark-kept-on-bbc-
probation-over-bias-fears-1-1409211) ), which is about as far from impartial
as you can get.

And her husband has his own email hacking crime history:
[http://journalisted.com/article/3dko](http://journalisted.com/article/3dko)

------
mikesname
Being quite familiar with Kirsty Wark and Newsnight, my impression of this
segment was that she was playing devil's advocate, almost doing Greenwald a
favour by allowing him to easily rebut some of the more common charges against
his handling of the Snowden leaks.

------
lifeisstillgood
three things came out of this for me (I saw the Newsnight interview a few days
ago)

\- Kirsty Wark represents quite well an old guard. Whilst part of the Scottish
political Establishment she has acted intelligently and well as a journalist
over the years, but it seems that this affair is simply a paradigm shift too
far. In that I think she represents most people and most journalists. The
government spies on everything online has not had the implications sink in
just yet for 98% of the population

\- We have had some truly dumb Ministers for Security "The Russians have
everything" \- really, they can crack AES / whatever in one shot?

\- Just how _did_ Snowden protect the data on one or more USB sticks? I am
guessing he created a new key, mailed that to Greenwald (snail mail?) and then
wiped everything. no point in beating some guy up whilst shouting "tell me the
4096 bytes in order !"

------
kineticfocus
"Comments are disabled for this video."... says it all.

~~~
andybak
Luckily there's always Twitter:
[https://twitter.com/KirstyWark/status/385786002456842240](https://twitter.com/KirstyWark/status/385786002456842240)

~~~
iconjack
Interesting that the responses on to @KirstyWark's tweet are largely pro-
Greenwald, while the responses to @BBCNewsnight's are pro-Wark.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/KirstyWark/status/385786002456842240](https://twitter.com/KirstyWark/status/385786002456842240)

[2]
[https://twitter.com/BBCNewsnight/status/385885262565216256](https://twitter.com/BBCNewsnight/status/385885262565216256)

------
alexholehouse
The positive from this is that it adds such weight to Glenn Greenwald's
integrity and ability.

------
logn
Is this link from the article to the video on youtube-nocookie.com one of
those URLs that the NSA infects my computer with via their spyware server?

Here's the standard youtube link:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1Zvo8N3G94](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1Zvo8N3G94)

------
craigching
Wow, Erin Burnett in 30 years!

Amazing restraint on Glennzilla's part, the harder they try to discredit him,
the more foolish they look.

------
DaveSapien
Lets not forget that in the UK, if you don't pay a TV licence (if you have a
TV) you get fined. Dont pay that fine you get put in prison. Does that sound
like a trustworthy and unbias source for news?

~~~
DanBC
With the falling crime rate, and the shaky economy, the weird situation (non
payment of tv licence is criminal offence, while non payment of other bills is
purely civil) a lot of people go through court for non payment of tv licence.

([http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/10256679/T...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/10256679/TV-
licence-offences-account-for-one-in-ten-UK-court-cases.html))

Despite that, not so many people actually end up in prison for non payment.
("In recent years at least 70 people have been jailed for non-payment of fines
associated with TV licensing offences.") I strongly agree that prison is not
the right place for people who don't pay fines unless there's no other option,
and I don't think that prison was the last resort for all those 70 people.

Here's the BBC report ([http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-
arts-23792388](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23792388))

Note that they make a small sneaky claim here:

> _Most people who own a television set, or who stream live broadcasts through
> their computer, must pay the annual charge._

Compare that to the Telegraph wording:

> _Anyone who watches television as it is being broadcast must have a valid
> television licence for their home regardless of whether they watch it on the
> internet or on a traditional TV set._

You can own a tv with no need to pay a licence - use the set for games
consoles or DVD players or some such.

~~~
DaveSapien
One person going to jail is horrific. Thanks for the links!

