NYT Reviewer Hits Back At Public Editor Over Greenwald Book

US American journalist Gleen Greenwald speaks with journalists of the German Press Agency (dpa) in Berlin, Germany, 10 April 2014. Glennwald stated that the German Bundestag parliament needed to question informant Sn... US American journalist Gleen Greenwald speaks with journalists of the German Press Agency (dpa) in Berlin, Germany, 10 April 2014. Glennwald stated that the German Bundestag parliament needed to question informant Snowden in order to achieve a complete clarification of the NSA bugging scandal. Photo by: Britta Pedersen/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images MORE LESS
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The New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan on Tuesday bashed the paper’s review of Glenn Greenwald’s book, “No Place To Hide.”

Kinsley took issue with Sullivan’s characterization of his review, and shot back on Wednesday.

“Sullivan accuses me of a ‘sneering tone’ because, among other reasons, I call Mr. Greenwald ‘a go-between.’ I assure her that I can sneer a lot worse than that if called upon to do so,” he wrote in a statement published by Sullivan.

He also defends his take on journalists and leaking government information.

In his original review, he discussed when a journalist should leak a government document, arguing that it’s not a “straightforward” issue.

“So what do we do about leaks of government information?” Kinsley wrote. “Lock up the perpetrators or give them the Pulitzer Prize? (The Pulitzer people chose the second option.) This is not a straightforward or easy question.”

Sullivan wrote that Kinsley believed “that news organizations should simply defer to the government,” which Kinsley rebutted on Wednesday.

“The government sometimes has legitimate reasons for needing secrecy but ‘will usually be overprotective’ so the process of decision ‘should openly tilt in favor of publication with minimal delay,'” he wrote in his defense. “Does that sound like I’m saying that news organizations ‘should simply defer’? Do the people on the other side of this argument believe that the government never has a legitimate need for secrecy?”

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Notable Replies

  1. ARRRRGGGHHH!

    I’ve been abstaining from Greenwald related posts.
    Why must you tempt me?

  2. Because TPM needs clicks, and Greenwald needs to keep this little tempest in a teapot going to try to sell more books. I wonder how many of Greenwald’s books Omidyar will buy; mass purchase is the way most Tea Party libertarians force themselves on the best seller list, so I’d expect the same from emoprog libertarians and predatory capitalist libertarians…

  3. Wow, Kinsley’s quite the pouter:

    Next question?
    Sullivan says my review is “unworthy of the Book Review’s high standards.” That is meant to sting, and it does. You might even call it a sneer, if the public editor weren’t above such things.

    No Mikey…that wasn’t a sneer, just an accurate description of your attack-cloaked-as-review hackery.

    And this is just lame:

    Do the people on the other side of this argument believe that the government never has a legitimate need for secrecy? (Standard example: the time and location of the D-Day invasion.) Or do they believe, as I do and as I say, that occasionally the government is right to want secrecy and in those instances it should not “simply defer” to the press?

    Yeah, because unconstitutional 24/7 domestic surveillance is JUST LIKE D-day.

  4. No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State Hardcover

    Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (121 customer reviews)
    Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #42 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

    Wow, Omidyar must be buying an awful lot of books to put it at #42 on the top 100 list. Not to mention paying off all of those reviewers!

    Clever, clever Omidyar!

  5. Oh, I’m sure we’ll one day get the back room story on how Greenwald got a Pulitzer, and it will probably involve more money changing hands. Omidyar gave Greenwald a lot of money to play with, maybe he’ll buy his own book in bulk, call it a promotional expense for Intercept.

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