Wired Conveniently Forgot to Ask Edward Snowden a Single Tough Question
Defenders of Edward Snowden routinely accuse the American media of being too cozy with the government. Major newspapers have grown complacent, these critics insist, and mainstream journalists no longer ask the tough questions or play the adversarial role that has long made a vibrant free press the protector of American democracy. This failure of the media is what ultimately justified Snowden’s cosmic leak of National Security Agency documents to a handful of private journalists and anti-government crusaders.
Perhaps that critique is right. But it’s precisely because of that critique that anyone remotely committed to intellectual integrity ought to be flabbergasted by the recent James Bamford profile of Edward Snowden that appeared Wednesday on Wired's website. The profile reads like a release from a Snowden PR press office, replete with fawning asides and subject-serving mischaracterizations. Unwittingly, Bamford demonstrates one of the central problems with the new push for relentless advocacy journalism: In seeking to combat a media that they claim resembles a government press office, these critics have become a far more slanted public relations operation for their own antigovernment heroes.
Bamford must be congratulated on even getting this interview. Edward Snowden is a very difficult man to find; he suspects that he is the target of unceasing capture and eavesdropping attempts by American intelligence agencies, and he relies on a small circle of associates to screen attempts to contact him. Even Bamford, a longtime NSA critic who Snowden must have known would be an immensely sympathetic interviewer, needed nine months of back-and-forth with Snowden’s lawyers and associates before he was able to set up a meeting. Nevertheless, a responsible journalist wouldn’t allow the difficulty of access to permit a controversial subject to completely hijack the narrative. Unfortunately, this is precisely what Bamford does.
Early in his profile, Bamford explains that he has come to Moscow to identify Snowden’s motivations, to uncover “what drove Snowden to leak hundreds of thousands of top-secret documents.” But Bamford spends very little time actually engaging this question. He doesn’t probe Snowden’s politics, general ideological outlook, or psychological profile. Instead he unhesitatingly accepts Snowden’s claim that his transformation from aspiring marine to anti-government mole was purely a product of encountering surveillance programs that he found disturbing. Of course, he hardly needed to travel to Moscow for that; he could have simply read anything by Glenn Greenwald. The reader is thus left wondering: Is Bamford really trying to understand “what drove Snowden,” or did he make up his mind before he ever sat down?
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119074/wireds-edward-snowden-profile-public-relations-not-journalism
= new reply since forum marked as read
questions".
In any event, whatever Snowden says will be disbelieved or ripped apart by those who have decided they know what Snowden was thinking - they believe Snowden is a Russian spy who did all of this in order to make Obama look bad, or something along those lines - so - interesting interview, just does not fulfill some expectations/needs. Just maybe there was a set list of areas to ask about or something, too.
I don't think that some will accept any "truth" about Snowden, from Snowden, unless it fits their own narrative.
Is Bamford really trying to understand “what drove Snowden,” or did he make up his mind before he ever sat down?
Oh, like many many people have not already made up their minds about what drove Snowden, and refuse to accept anything that does not fit their conclusion!
eta - the comments at the site are interesting. Evidently it is Snowden's fault that Boko Harem has not tweeted or Facebooked or emailed the location of those kidnapped girls, and also now Boko Harem surely is aware that the NSA records every phone call it can possibly get access to. So - not finding the girls? Snowden's fault. At least there is an awareness that the NSA records phone calls, to be searched through or listened to later, and the jeer that there are not enough guys to sit around and listen to phone calls, so the NSA is so not listening to phone calls, seems to have gone away. That was always a stupid meme, basing the privacy of phone conversations on a manpower issue. I can record and search my phone calls, for the low low price of $9.99 a month!
