Glenn Greenwald: Politico's understanding of journalistic anonymity

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Glenn Greenwald
Saturday April 18, 2009 08:19 EDT
Politico's understanding of journalistic anonymity

(updated below)


In a Politico article discussing Obama's decision to release the OLC torture memos, Mike Allen granted anonymity to "a former top official in the administration of President George W. Bush" to enable that official to do nothing other than attack Obama's decision and accuse him of handing our critical secrets to Al Qaeda. Those anonymous quotes predictably attracted the only thing of value for Politico: a prominent, screaming Drudge link announcing that Bush officials accused Obama of helping the Terrorists.

Andrew Sullivan was the first to note what an absurd and journalistically baseless grant of anonymity this was. Citing Sullivan's post, I also criticized Allen's use of anonymity both here and on Twitter. At his Washington Post blog, Greg Sargent then printed an email from Allen answering Sargent's request for a response to the criticisms. That response revealed what has long been clear: most establishment journalists do not even pretend any more to have any standards for when anonymity is granted; they'll give it to whoever wants it without needing any real reason for doing so, especially if the person wanting it is politically influential.

After reading Allen's painfully vapid justification for what he did (and after remembering that Allen described the conduct authorized by the OLC memos as "aggressive interrogation practices critics decried as torture"), I was unable to restrain myself (admittedly, I did not try very hard) from launching further Twitter assaults aimed at Allen and Politico. Allen then announced on Twitter that he was, at that very moment, working on an article explaining what he did and why, which only prompted further Twitter outbursts from me, by then almost certainly approaching TOS-violating levels of Twitter-stalking.

Shortly thereafter, Politico published Allen's self-justifying article, headlined: "Story behind the story: The left erupts." It begins this way: "The liberal blogosphere is on the attack about three paragraphs in a story POLITICO posted Thursday on the release of the CIA interrogation memos." Apparently, "the left" and "the liberal blogosphere" means me and Andrew Sullivan, since we're the only ones who objected (or at least were the only ones mentioned by the story). But it's always helpful to be able to dismissively characterize media criticisms as "attacks" from "the left" -- that must mean the criticisms are both shrill and ideologically-motivated -- so Politico went with it.

Allen's article offers a helpful glimpse into the mind of the standard establishment journalist (Allen previously covered the White House for Time and The Washington Post). According to him, all Bush officials other than Karl Rove and Dick Cheney are too cowardly to criticize Barack Obama on the record -- "They have new careers, and they know it’s a fight they’ll never win. He’s popular; they’re not; they get it" -- so what is a poor reporter like him to do other than agree to anonymity? If all senior Bush officials are really such cowards -- too afraid even to criticize Obama because of his approval ratings -- that would be a worthwhile story in its own right.

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