resist?

[Robert Mahnke]

I read the Risen story and I have a lot of sympathy for him, and
appreciation for the work he has done. But I did see two big problems which
seem pretty fundamental to me and which he seems to have missed.

First, Risen blames his recent experience for eliminating a reporter's
First Amendment privilege to protect his or her sources. I don't have the
article in front of me, but my recollection is that there is some sentence
where he says that in about so many words. But that's not what happened.
What the courts decided is that that law recognizes no such privilege. A
lot of people (like me) think it would be a good idea, but Congress has
never passed such a law, and the courts have never created that protection.
I see this again and again when these issues are covered, and it really
bothers me (although unlike many people Risen has paid a price here). Media
sanctimony and entitlement are a barrier to the kind of work it would take
to change the law. And notwithstanding that the law did not give him a
privilege not to testify, in the end Risen was called to the stand but was
not pushed very far and did not have to do any time.

Second, a big problem that Risen faces is that there isn't much competition
for the New York Times. He touches on this when he talks about interviewing
with another news organization, which expresses even less willingness to
publish something if the White House asks it not to. If there were more
places publishing the sort of stories he works on, he would have had more
leverage with his editors, both in the sense that they would be more likely
to publish his stories if they worried about getting beat to the punch, and
also in that he would have had more options to leave and take his work
elsewhere (which, in a sense, is what he did by publishing a book). I'm not
saying he defends concentration in the media market, but I got the sense
that it contributes to his status and that he likes it.

Thinking just about the warrantless search program, it seems to me that if
the tradeoff between privacy and protection is put to a vote, most people
are going to trade away their privacy for the promise (illusory or
otherwise) of more protection every time. You can blame Bush or Obama or
other politicians for that, but aren't they responding to what people want.
It's too bad that the Fourth Amendment doesn't seem to do much. I am pretty
suspicious of the NSA's ability to learn much from the electronic
communications they suck up (using "NSA" in a broad sense, and just pausing
here to say hello to anyone in Fort Meade who might be reading this),
leaving us with the worst of both worlds: A national security apparatus
that could be listening in all the time, but can't process what it absorbs.


On Sat, Jan 13, 2018 at 7:21 PM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:

> So, what’s the take on the Risen story? I’ve refrained from bringing it
> up, but there it is. I started reading Scahill’s Dirty Wars, and right
> away, I feel something ain’t right. Am I wrong? WTF!
>
> Www.innergroovemusic.com
>
> On Jan 13, 2018, at 10:02 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Notice that the purity pigs over at The Intercept don't even TRY to give
> the "other" side of the story. It's just "Dems bad as GOP Big Brother blah
> blah WAAAAH!!!"
>
> Greenwald's Wikileaks-loving rag is porn for pseudo-woke political purity
> punks.
>
> J
>
> On Sat, Jan 13, 2018 at 9:53 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Bothsiderism is a contagious plague.  "Congress" isn't to blame for
>> anything. That kind of reporting is media's way of escaping responsibility
>> for reporting, for doing its #1 job.
>>
>> RESIST!
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 13, 2018 at 8:40 PM Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks for calling me on it. Of course, it’s a cop out. A way of not
>>> taking responsibility for paying attention to who is helping and who is
>>> not. You dig? Of course you do.
>>>
>>> Www.innergroovemusic.com
>>>
>>> On Jan 13, 2018, at 9:32 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> No.  Stop spreading the cancer of Bothsierism.
>>>
>>> Are *WE* all the same?  Neither are *THEY.*
>>>
>>> David Morris
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jan 13, 2018 at 6:40 PM Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> They’re all the same.
>>>>
>>>> Www.innergroovemusic.com
>>>>
>>>> On Jan 13, 2018, at 5:25 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> https://theintercept.com/2018/01/12/the-same-democrats-who-d
>>>> enounce-trump-as-a-lawless-treasonous-authoritarian-just-vot
>>>> ed-to-give-him-vast-warrantless-spying-powers/
>>>>
>>>> Resist my ass.
>>>>
>>>>
>
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