<blockquote>'For years, Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald has argued that journalists in Washington often seem too cozy with the political figures they’re supposed to hold accountable and too quick to amplify the government’s perspective on national security.'
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Glenn Greenwald: 'Meet The Press' Interview Validates 'Incestuous' Washington Media Critique, June 24, 2013</blockquote>
'..incestuous media circles.'<blockquote>Some of what is driving this hostility from some media figures is personal bitterness. Some of it is resentment over my having been able to break these big stories not despite, but because of, my deliberate breaching of the conventions that rule their world.
But most of it is what I have long criticized them for most: they are far more servants to political power than adversarial watchdogs over it, and what provokes their rage most is not corruption on the part of those in power (they don’t care about that) but rather those who expose that corruption, especially when the ones bringing transparency are outside of, even hostile to, their incestuous media circles.
They’re just courtiers doing what courtiers have always done: defending the royal court and attacking anyone who challenges or dissents from it. That’s how they maintain their status and access within it. That’s what courtiers to power, by definition, do.
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Greenwald: Beltway media types are ‘courtiers to power’, June 24, 2013</blockquote>
Context '..various members of the media have failed to challenge the official line..'<blockquote>'At some point the entire career structure of Washington journalism – the kind of thing that makes David Gregory this prominent – needs to be scrapped and started over..'
- Andrew Sullivan,
David Gregory Is What’s Wrong With Washington, June 24, 2013
'Has David Gregory ever publicly wondered if powerful DC officials should be prosecuted for things like illegal spying & lying to Congress?'
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Glenn Greenwald, June 23, 2013
'More unnerving is the way in which various members of the media have failed to challenge the official line. Nobody should be surprised to see the New York Post running the headline: “ROGUES’ GALLERY: SNOWDEN JOINS LONG LIST OF NOTORIOUS, GUTLESS TRAITORS FLEEING TO RUSSIA.” But where are Snowden’s defenders? As of Monday, the editorial pages of the
Times and the Washington
Post, the two most influential papers in the country, hadn’t even addressed the Obama Administration’s decision to charge Snowden with two counts of violating the Espionage Act and one count of theft.
<blockquote>'.. The government is desperate to not deal with the actual exposures, the content of the disclosures. Because they do reveal a vast, systemic, institutionalized, industrial-scale Leviathan surveillance state that has clearly gone far beyond the original mandate to deal with terrorism—far beyond.' - Drake</blockquote>
..I’m with Snowden—not only for the reasons that Drake enumerated but also because of an old-fashioned and maybe naïve inkling that journalists are meant to stick up for the underdog and irritate the powerful. On its side, the Obama Administration has the courts, the intelligence services, Congress, the diplomatic service, much of the media, and most of the American public. Snowden’s got Greenwald, a woman from Wikileaks, and a dodgy travel document from Ecuador. Which side are you on?'
- John Cassidy, <a href="[
www.newyorker.com] Edward Snowden: Which side are you on?</a> June 24, 2013
'“The danger is that supervisors and managers will use the profiles for ‘Disgruntled Employees’ and ‘Insider Threats’ to go after legitimate whistleblowers,” said the second Pentagon official. “The executive order says you can’t offend the whistleblower laws. But all of the whistleblower laws are about retaliation. That doesn’t mean you can’t profile them before they’re retaliated against.” '
- Marisa Taylor and Jonathan S. Landay,
Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S. June 20, 2013
'The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.'
- Dana Priest & William M Arken,
A hidden world, growing beyond control, July 19, 2010
'..suggesting that there is a war on the press is less hyperbole than simple math.' - David Carr (New York Times)</blockquote>