A lot of people didn’t really like Michael Kinsley’s harsh review of journalist Glenn Greenwald’s new book, including an editor for the newspaper that published it.
New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote Tuesday that Kinsley’s review of “No Place to Hide,” Greenwald’s recently released book on the National Security Agency revelations, fell short.
Writing for the New York Times Book Review, Kinsley levied personal insults at Greenwald and wondered whether the newly crowned Pulitzer Prize winner might deserve to be locked up for his reporting of the agency’s surveillance programs.
Greenwald fired back at both Kinsley and the journalists who spoke favorably of the review. Sullivan was not one of them.
“Here’s my take: Book reviews are opinion pieces and — thanks to the principles of the First Amendment — Mr. Kinsley is certainly entitled to freely air his views,” she wrote. “But there’s a lot about this piece that is unworthy of the Book Review’s high standards, the sneering tone about Mr. Greenwald, for example; he is called a ‘go-between’ instead of a journalist and is described as a ‘self-righteous sourpuss.’ (I’ve never met Mr. Greenwald, though I’ve written about his work, as Mr. Kinsley notes.)”
