\u201cInstead of being adversaries to government power \u2026 [the media of Washington, D.C., are] \u2026 servants to it and mouthpieces for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
So said the Guardian\u2019s Glenn Greenwald, who broke the story of Edward Snowden\u2019s disclosure of NSA spying on the American people, after Greenwald\u2019s confrontation with Meet the Press\u2019s David Gregory. Greenwald needn\u2019t have limited his observation to the D.C. media. Plenty of reporters and cable-news talking heads are playing the same role in the NSA drama.<\/p>\n
Indeed, if they spent half the time investigating Obama\u2019s Big Brother operations that they spend sneering at Snowden and Greenwald, Americans might demand that the government stop spying on them.<\/p>\n
But to much of the mainstream (and not-so-mainstream) media, Snowden and Greenwald \u2014 not the NSA, the Obama administration, and the supine Congress \u2014 are the story \u2014 a story of villainy.<\/p>\n
The examples are endless. The day after Snowden revealed himself as the whistleblower, Joe Scarborough, the former Republican congressman and host of MSNBC\u2019s Morning Joe, ordered his director to take the image of \u201cthat weasel\u201d off the screen. The other day, his sidekick, Mika Brzezinski, asked, \u201cIs there anything we can do to track him down?\u201d (Emphasis added.) She meant the government.<\/p>\n
Brzezinski went on to accuse Snowden of taking the job with NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton \u201cto screw over our government.\u201d That\u2019s how one who speaks power to truth spins it. Snowden\u2019s service to the American people is hardly undercut by his having taken the job intending to expose government violations of the Fourth Amendment.<\/p>\n
MSNBC\u2019s self-identification as a progressive network is hard to square with its unrelenting assaults on Snowden and Greenwald, and its de-emphasis of NSA surveillance. Andrea Mitchell, who functions as the network\u2019s chief diplomatic stenographer, wondered why the NSA was hiring contractors when it could be recruiting people with the \u201cright value system\u201d from the military. (She\u2019s forgotten that whistleblower Bradley Manning is in the military.) Chris Matthews of Hardball says that any foreign government that won\u2019t turn Snowden over to the U.S. government is \u201cno buddy of ours.\u201d<\/p>\n
MSNBC personnel routinely describe Greenwald as \u201cdefensive,\u201d which apparently is their code word for people who push back at stupid questions. For example, when Gregory asked Greenwald if he could be indicted for \u201caiding and abetting\u201d Snowden, and Greenwald asked in return how a journalist could equate reporting with criminal activity, he was treated with disdain. Gregory even questioned Greenwald\u2019s journalistic credentials, as did Paul Farhi of the Washington Post.<\/p>\n