Greenwald's Views On Journalism

Greenwald is known to be one of the journalists who first published Edward Snowden’s documents. Snowden is a now famous “whistle blower” who supplied top secret NSA documents to several journalists, one of them Glenn Greenwald.

Is the price of safety worth the loss of privacy? In June of 2013 civil rights lawyer and journalist Glenn Greenwald published on The Guardian the first of numerous articles containing files he’d received from former NSA sub contractor Edward Snowden. These files revealed unbeknownst to the American public details about multiple global surveillance programs currently being used by the United States NSA to collect their private data. Greenwald’s speech on “Why Privacy Matters,” during the TEDGlobal 2014 conference was compelling & deeply insightful. By providing the audience with credible knowledge of his research in addition to the use persuasive emotional and logical reasoning, Glenn Greenwald effectively argues the importance of privacy.

Greenwald achieves his intended purpose that is to persuade and inform the reader that the actions of the NSA are beyond reasonable, and they should be held accountable. His tone is clear, concise, and confident. But, throughout the book, the reader senses a bitter tone in the writing. For example, Greenwald grants his belief on freedom of expression and journalism, he states, “Nobody need the US Constitution to guarantee press freedom so that journalists could befriend, amplify, and glorify political leaders; the guarantee was necessary so the journalists could do the opposite” (p.230). Hence, it means that Greenwald requires the reader to think and act in a way that would possibly trigger some sort of revolt against the violation a citizen’s

In the Guardian article, Committee to Protect Journalists issues scathing report on Obama administration, authored by Glenn Greenwald, he and others depict the Obama administration as the most secretive and the worst “ever on issues of national security and press freedom’” (Greenwald, 2013, np.). Yet, the United States government’s aggressive efforts to control information, thwart accountability reporting, maintain national security secrets, and the persecution of government whistleblowers, is not new, nor is it unique to the Obama administration. The practice of attempting to expand and concentrate power in the executive branch of government is historically consistent with past administrations.

Edward Snowden “is the world’s most famous spy, whistleblower, and fugitive, responsible for the biggest intelligence breach in recent US History” (MacAskill 2013). Snowden leaked documents to journalist that exposed the partners of the United States, it’s spy agencies, and domestic surveillance of citizens out of the country. He leaked the information because he believed the public people should be the voice on whether or not the policies were moral or immoral. Just like Henry Thoreau, Snowden believed that the people should do what they believe is right for themselves and not follow the orders of the government if they believe the laws and policies are unjust.

Greenwald, G. (2015). No place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the surveillance state.

In my opinion, Billionaires’ Tea Party does not meet the journalistic norms of objectivity and separation of reporting from advocacy. The producers of this movie have a clear agenda, which is to expose the Tea Party as an organization full of ill-informed and extremely biased Americans who are hypnotized by some of America’s wealthiest businessmen into believing that liberals in American government are seeking to limit their constitutional rights. The director inserts his own political bias into the film, asserting that “most people, myself included, are naturally suspicious of government”. Toward the end of the film, the director states “my only message to them is to be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.” The director clearly states his purpose for producing the film, and does not film this documentary from a third-person perspective. The director defies the norms of objectivity not through his investigative work, such as going undercover at a rally, but by explicitly stating his suspicion.

Edward Snowden exposed NSA’s illegal surveillance in June 2013, this brought about controversial discussions inside America and all around the world. However, we stay oblivious how this thirty-year-old school dropout advanced to become one of the world's most noticeable critics of the government. Snowden is considered a hero and a patriot of the country, human rights movements like ACLU and Amnesty International advocate that Edward Snowden did great deeds to champion for the privacy rights of the citizens. (Greenwald, 2014) On the contrary, some people and the US intelligence consider Snowden a traitor to the state, the way he exposed the NSA was dubious and brought great risk to the international relationship between the US and other countries. Moreover, the state government accused him of breaching of information of the state.

In early 2013 a man by the name of Edward Joseph Snowden began leaking classified National Security Agency (NSA) documents to media outlets, which in turn ended up in public ears. These documents, mainly involving intelligence Snowden acquired while working as an NSA contractor, are mostly related to global surveillance programs run by the NSA. This has raised multiple ethical issues ranging from national security, information privacy and the ethics behind whistleblowing in general. The reach and impact of these leaks have gone global and have put in question the very government that protects us as well as the extent of the public’s rights on privacy. Various foreign

Greenwald employs superlatives to evoke the responder’s sympathy for Snowden’s plight, describing him as a powerless freedom fighter, bereft of resources, hunted by “biggest and most secretive surveillance organisation in America” and the “the most powerful government on the planet”. By employing tricolon to assert that his silence would be tantamount to allowing “the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties”, Snowden persuades the audience to support his cause by portraying his adversaries as malicious and irresponsible. Greenwald’s low modality, anaphoric predictions regarding Snowden’s fate further prompt his audience to perceive Snowden as a vulnerable, stateless individual, persecuted by the powerful “Chinese government (who) might whisk him away…Or he might end up being grabbed and bundled into a plane bound for US territory.” Thus, both Levinson and Greenwald employ acts of representation which reveal the capacity for composers of narratives to represent political situations in ways which distort and manipulate the public’s perspective.

Howard Kurtz, dubbed by many as the top media critic, was a reporter at The Washington Post at that time when Webb’s story broke. He took the easy route by mocking Webb stating, “Oliver Stone, check your voicemail.” On the other hand, Robert Parry pointed out the “double standard” with how “Webb was held to the strictest standards of journalism” while Kurtz can “make judgments based on ignorance. Kurtz would face no repercussions for ridiculing a fellow journalist who was factually correct.” As you may remember, Robert Parry, an award winning journalist, was one of the Associated Press reporters who first broke the story of Contra cocaine trafficking. Parry has faced this kind of criticism, but on a much smaller scale because his story didn’t

Australian writer/journalist Karl Karus said it best when he said, “corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.” For decades, the United States has been one the most notable countries to come under fire with reports of government corruption. During the dawn of the new millennium the Transparency Corruption began to publish their Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), a culmination of assessments and opinion surveys by experts which rank countries based on their perceived corruption. In 2012, the U.S ranked 19 out of 174 countries. Its often questioned how this report would vary had it been published decades before when whistle blowers and journalist were striving to shed light onto government corruption in the 50s , 60s, and 70s.

The belief that journalism is in decline has triggered major alarms, because society needs an informational environment that is easily available to all citizens such as newspapers. There is a large body of journalist that suggests that if television has taken over from the press as our main source of news this may limit our capacity to learn about public affairs; newspapers are believed to be far more effective than television at conveying detailed information necessary to understand complex and detailed issues. There is also widespread concern that if journalism fails as a profession it will not be able to reach large sections of the community, particularly younger or less educated readers. This may reinforce a growing gap among citizens between the information that they receive.

The media and the public have had a relationship that has existed for centuries. Through the media, people become aware of events and issues occurring around them. As a result, they make educated decisions. Therefore, the media serve as witnesses of the events happening within our societies and then report them to us. That said, could journalism have a significant political impact in our societies? It is through the media that governments and their citizens communicate. For instance, people communicate by protesting and voting, governments respond by amending the issues affecting the public. It is also through the media that potential political leaders gain recognition. Therefore, the answer is yes, because, journalism causes the spread

In a contemporary society, the role of journalism is a varied one that covers many different aspects of people’s lives. As more and more outlets spring up around the world, many more stories are able to be covered by different outlets, and this means that journalism takes on a more and more important role in a contemporary society. Much of our lives centre on political and social happenings, and journalistic outlets are the public’s way of finding all the information on these event. Journalism also provides us with a way of finding out which of these stories are important and deserve our attention, and which stories can be ignored. The important role of journalism can be well observed in the recent coverage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) in both New Zealand and around the world. This is a ground breaking economic deal, and holds a great deal of importance for the 800 million citizens of the countries involved, as well as the rest of the world. With worldwide coverage of this deal, it is inevitable that different types of reporting occurs, and that different outlets will provide different accounts. With so many different journalism outlets around the world and locally, many have to have a way of standing out from the crowd. This means that some extremely different coverage of very similar stories can occur. However it can also simply be down to different ownership, differing political views, and different socio-economic environments. Two outlets with