Glenn Greenwald: Everything that is rancid and corrupt with modern journalism: The Nutshell

[babylonsister]

Tuesday November 27, 2007 18:46 EST
Everything that is rancid and corrupt with modern journalism: The Nutshell


Time Magazine has done a superb service for the country by illustrating everything that is rancid and corrupt our political media. After I emailed Time.com Editor Josh Tyrangiel asking why the online version of Joe Klein's column remains online uncorrected given that -- as Managing Editor Rick Stengel claims -- the article contains a "reporting error," this is the "correction" Time has now posted to the article. Seriously -- this is really it, in its entirety:

In the original version of this story, Joe Klein wrote that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would allow a court review of individual foreign surveillance targets. Republicans believe the bill can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don't.

Leave aside the false description of what Klein wrote. He didn't say "that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would allow a court review of individual foreign surveillance targets." He said that their bill "would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court" and "would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans." But the Editor's false characterization of Klein's original lie about the House FISA bill is the least of the issues here.

All Time can say about this matter is that Republicans say one thing and Democrats claim another. Who is right? Is one side lying? What does the bill actually say, in reality?

That's not for Time to say. After all, they're journalists, not partisans. So they just write down what each side says. It's not for them to say what is true, even if one side is lying.

In this twisted view, that is called "balance" -- writing down what each side says. As in : "Hey - Bush officials say that there is WMD in Iraq and things are going great with the war. Some people say otherwise. It's not our false if what we wrote down is a lie." They write down what each side says and then go home. That's what they're for.

more...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/?last_story=/opinion/greenwald/2007/11/27/the_correction/