© AP/NBC/AP/Nam Y. Huh/AP/Chris PizzelloDavid Gregory, David Brooks, Andrew Sorkin
The clique of media figures outraged when news outlets challenge power has a new member: Washington Post
higher-upsFrom
David Gregory to
Andrew Ross Sorkin to
David Brooks, the ranks of Washington's hottest new club continues to swell. Call it Journalists Against Journalism - a group of reporters and pundits who are outraged that whistle-blowers and news organizations are colluding to expose illegal government surveillance. To this club, the best journalism is not the kind that challenges power or even merely sheds light on the inner workings of government; it is about protecting power and keeping the lights off.
Before today, this club could be seen as a collection of individuals. But not anymore, thanks to the hard-to-believe house editorial of the
Washington Post titled "
Plugging the Leaks in the Edward Snowden Case." Inveighing against the disclosures of NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the paper wrote that "the first U.S. priority should be to prevent Mr. Snowden from leaking information" and then fretted that Snowden "is reported to have stolen many more documents, encrypted copies of which may have been given to allies such as the WikiLeaks organization."
What's so utterly revealing about this editorial is not merely that it reads like hard-boiled talking points given to politicians by their surveillance-industry campaign donors. No, what sets this
Washington Post editorial apart - what vaults it into the annals of history - is how it is essentially railing on the
Washington Post's own source and own journalism.
Yes, that's right, the
Post was one of two news organizations that Snowden originally contacted and that subsequently began
breaking the NSA stories. That means the
Washington Post editorial represents the paper's higher-ups issuing a jeremiad against their own news-generating source and, by extension, the reporters who helped bring his leak into the public sphere.