Another longtime TPM Reader, DG, questions the tone of my writing on Snowden …
I am a long time reader of TPM, an early joiner to TPM Prime, and a huge admirer of your work and TPM Media, which I recommend to all my friends for its excellent coverage and analysis of American politics. When I returned from a recent family vacation in Yosemite I used the Livewire to catch up on news. It’s the first site I read every day after the daily paper and my go to for short breaks in between work.
I am sure I am not the first long-time reader and fan to make note of my displeasure with TPM’s coverage of the Snowden case. I agree that to say “you have a problem with Snowden because he’s a punk” is a caricature of your position, and I think you’ve written quite eloquently about Snowden in the context of your belief in the necessity of military secrecy. Still, I get why JO thought to describe your position that way – there’s a snarkyness in the editorial tone to TPM that conveys certain disgust with the person beyond a disagreement over the efficacy of his actions and the extent to which we should or should not tolerate government secrecy. Personally, I find the mocking tone towards Snowden off-putting. And I write that as someone who is not a huge fan of the man himself – the kind of knee-jerk libertarianism he seems to represent does not appeal to me.
Nor am I inclined to support the journalists should always support the underdog line of John Cassidy. If I want that I can read The Nation. What I want in journalism is a commitment to the truth and a belief in the general efficacy of transparency over secrecy. That doesn’t mean a total commitment to the lack of any secrecy or some kind of anarchist stance toward the state. But in a democratic system, I want the press to be the on the side of openness and truth. I want the press holding the government accountable for the secrets it chooses to keep and asking hard questions of those choices.
Yes, Snowden revealed military secrets. But has he endangered American lives? Has he threatened American national security? I don’t see it, and I haven’t read anything (TPM or elsewhere) that’s made a convincing evidence-based argument to the contrary. I’d be more persuaded by your position if Snowden had, for example, revealed the location of American troops in a war-time situation, or revealed the identity of foreign assets or American covert agents. What Snowden did was reveal the extent of a legal yet secret government surveillance program. I have an open mind, but I can’t see how knowledge of this program and the ability to debate its merits is anything but a positive for our democratic process and the ability to hold our representative government accountable.
I wonder, if Snowden had approached TPM with his trove of documents, if it had been TPM who had the chance to break this story and not The Guardian, would TPM have turned Snowden down? I get there might be very good legal reasons why a small outfit like TPM could not afford to break a story like this. But that’s not my question. All things being equal, would TPM have taken the position that out of respect for the American surveillance program, which it believed it should have a right to continue operating in secret, it could not in good conscience be the news organization to break this story? If the answer is yes, that does not diminish my respect for the work TPM does but it does sadden me to know what there is a limit to TPM’s muckraking, that on questions of national security TPM defers to the state a bit more than I would prefer. If the answer is no, then how would your coverage of Snowden differ if he were a TPM source?
All the questions about whether Snowden should or should not have fled, the quality of his character, his consistency or inconsistency with respect to government secrecy, etc., are of minor importance. The central questions are: Has Snowden’s actions (whatever their intent) strengthened our ability to hold our government accountable in ways that could potentially strengthen our democracy? Have Snowden’s revelations fundamentally put Americans at risk? And what is the role of journalists in reporting on the national security state?
