Author: George Salamon

Who is a journalist? The New Republic tickles but does not tackle the question

By Media

“Glenn Greenwald Is Greenwald, and That’s Enough,” was the headline of Marc Tracy’s column on the New Republic website June 25. It should have given readers a clue to stop right there. Tracy suggests that the ongoing story of Edward Snowden’s leaks of NSA surveillance to the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, formerly a First Amendment lawyer and blogger, have ignited a debate about “What is a journalist – and who is one?” Trying to figure out why such a debate is “raging” in Tracy’s column reduces you to feel like the blind pig that finds a truffle now and then.

Journalism and the powers that be: What’s scandalmongering got to do with it?

By Media

What’s scandalmongering got to do with journalism and the powers that be? Maybe far less than most of us who give a hoot about journalism care to admit. “Media Gets Targeted by Obama, Discovers No One Cares Except the Media,” wrote Bethania Palma Markus, a Los Angeles-area reporter, on the left-wing blog Counterpunch. She claimed the media “never cared about (the government’s) abuse of power until it hit them in the face,” as in the recent scandals involving the Associated Press and Fox News. She’s not hit the bull’s eye, but she makes a good point. Who indeed should be concerned about what Obama officials did when they seized AP telephone records and spied on a Fox News correspondent?

When reporters and editorial writers live in different worlds: The New York Times confronts the IRS scandal

By Media

New York Times reporters did not mince words when they described how the Internal Revenue Service had, during the last two years “singled out dozens of Tea Party-inspired groups that had applied for IRS recognition” as nonprofits and therefore tax-exempt organizations for special scrutiny, including rounds of questioning about their political activities. The federal agency did not apply similar treatment to liberal groups and the big spenders on either side of the political fence. While President Obama denounced the IRS conduct as “outrageous,” an editorial in the Times May 14 described it as “the stumble by the IRS,” and so arrived at its very own moment of Clintonian linguistics. You remember the testimony about his platonic relationship with Monica Lewinsky when Bill Clinton said the hilarious line: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”