Glenn Greenwald objected to this premise:
"No, you're absolutely wrong because the New York Times used its sources all the time and take classified information that they are not authorized to disseminate...good investigative journalists, maybe CNN doesn't do this, but good investigative journalists work their sources all the time to convince them to give them classified information to inform the citizens of the United States about what the government is doing."
In a free country, the government cannot, should not and does not have unlimited power to determine what publishers can publish and what the public can read.
Tell us America, is there a First Amendment in our Nation? If the answer is yes then why hasn't our elected government heard about it? Our guess is self interest not public interest which is the American Dilemma. Too much secrecy does not serve the interests of the people of our Nation and is the cancer of democracy.
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ReplyDeleteEmail Comments 58 CNN's Jessica Yellin and blogger Glenn Greenwald got into a sparring match about whether WikiLeaks can be placed in the same category as media outlets such as the New York Times and CNN.
Yellin was hosting "John King USA" on Monday, and brought on Greenwald and former Bush administration official Fran Townsend to discuss WikiLeaks. She asked Greenwald if WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should have expected the aggressive response he has received from the American government, given the nature of the secrets he was exposing. She also asked if Assange "should be prepared to go to jail for what's he's done, as other revolutionaries have."
"Well, see, you're a journalist, so you should understand better than anybody that publishing classified information about what governments do is not actually a crime," Greenwald responded. "Every day, media outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post and CNN publish government secrets."
"Right, we would draw distinction between publishing information that comes to you by -- and then publishing information that's stolen by somebody," Yellin said.
Glenn Greenwald objected to this premise.
"No, you're absolutely wrong because the New York Times used its sources all the time and take classified information that they are not authorized to disseminate...good investigative journalists, maybe CNN doesn't do this, but good investigative journalists work their sources all the time to convince them to give them classified information to inform the citizens of the United States about what the government is doing." Glenn Greenwald
ReplyDeleteAmerican law is well settled on these issues: the First Amendment strongly protects publishers' right to distribute truthful political information, and Internet users have a fundamental right to read and debate it.
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