Four today

1. Media companies making billions by convincing the masses to whitewash their fences - for free. NYT

2. Glenn Greenwald doesn't like Jim Rainey telling Anderson Cooper not to use the word "liar". Salon

3. Jimmy Orr, former internet strategist for President George W. Bush, was promoted to managing editor, online, at the Los Angeles Times. LAO

4. Huffington Post writer Jason Linkins says he gets a paycheck and has deadlines, so there's no need to pay the bloggers. HuffPo

The Assange conundrum

The U.S. Department of Justice is tangled in knots - that's a good thing, and let's hope it stays that way.

Frustrated at the release of thousands of diplomatic cables on WikiLeaks, an impotent federal government desperately wants to punish Julian Assange and teach a scary lesson to all other would-be whistle blowers and leakers of sensitive information. The problems are the First Amendment and the fact that what Assange did, from all that's been reported, falls outside definitions of criminal behavior. Indeed, to criminalize Assange's actions would be to criminalize investigative journalism, which has a glorious tradition of convincing unhappy insiders to leak secret, sensitive and confidential information for publication.

The arguments that WikiLeaks has no editorial oversight or Assange has a non-journalistic agenda are interesting in the context of what makes good journalism, but have no bearing on the legality of what WikiLeaks did - the press doesn't have to be good to be free.

That said, it is undoubtedly true that professional journalists enjoy extra protection from prosecution because they can point to their editorial standards and oversight. Courts do not operate outside the realm of public pressure and politics. Indeed, prosecutors would be much more abusive of journalists if news institutions didn't have the resources to hire good lawyers to push back, or didn't have the leverage to convince legislators to pass shield laws, or a soap box to call out the abuse. But the WikiLeaks situation will demand the courts deal with fundamental questions about press freedom.

Glenn Greenwald at Salon has summarized what some media observers are saying about the potential for a government case against Assange, including the questionable treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is suspected of being the source of the cable leaks and others.

Blowing up the whistleblowers

The Obama administration has announced that it will prosecute a former NSA official for leaking sensitive information about wiretapping to a reporter. Glenn Greenwald at Salon makes a convincing argument that the decision to prosecute Thomas Drake for exposing "serious wrongdoing" to Baltimore Sun reporter Siobhan Gorman, the administration has shown its priorities to be completely out of whack:

In other words, Drake's leaks to Gorman exposed serious wrongdoing on the part of (a) the NSA and its illegal domestic spying activities and (b) the vast private intelligence and defense industry that has all but formally merged with the CIA, NSA and Pentagon to become the public-private National Security and Surveillance State that exercises more power, by far, than any single faction in the country.

Think about to whose interests the Obama DOJ is devoted given that -- while they protect the most profound Bush crimes based on the Presidential decree of "Look Forward, Not Backward" -- they chose this whistle-blower to prosecute[.]

The pawn shops

The New York Times on Friday reported on a bizarre and troubling "cease fire" arranged by corporate executives at G.E. (owner of MSNBC) and News Corp. (owner of Fox News) to end an on-air feud between two of their companies' biggest stars, Keith Obermann and Bill O'Reilly. For some reason Charlie Rose of PBS was involved, too, as a mediator.

Astonishingly, the reason for negotiating a cease fire had nothing to do with journalistic integrity or bettering the civic dialogue. The discussions were triggered by a fear among top executives that the feud, which was good for ratings in the respective news divisions, would harm the carefully crafted images of the corporate parents. As the NYT writes:

The reconciliation — not acknowledged by the parties until now — showcased how a personal and commercial battle between two men could create real consequences for their parent corporations. A G.E. shareholders’ meeting, for instance, was overrun by critics of MSNBC (and one of Mr. O’Reilly’s producers) last April.

“We all recognize that a certain level of civility needed to be introduced into the public discussion,” Gary Sheffer, a spokesman for G.E., said this week. “We’re happy that has happened.”

Neither Fox's O'Reilly nor MSNBC's Olbermann are traditional journalists, so their bloviations are not bound by the ethics most newsrooms labor under. One could even argue that by letting their feud boil over, the two hosts had poisoned the atmosphere for their newsrooms by attracting more cynical and partisan audiences and crowding out good storytelling.

But the cease fire wasn't about content or responsible journalism. These discussions were because rich and powerful businessmen wanted to protect their profits. They obliterated the wall that separates news from business and meddled with news content. And their meddling didn't stop with Olbermann and O'Reilly, as the NYT found:

Shortly after, Phil Griffin, the MSNBC president, told producers that he wanted the channel’s other programs to follow Mr. Olbermann’s lead and restrain from criticizing Fox directly, according to two employees. At Fox News, some staff members were told to “be fair” to G.E.

If you need more convincing to be shocked, Glenn Greenwald at Salon offers an interesting analysis here. He gets breathless at times, but his outrage is aimed in the right direction.

Critical mourning

An ardent critic of mainstream media standards, Glenn Greenwald contemplates Walter Cronkite's journalistic legacy and concludes with this:

In the hours and hours of preening, ponderous, self-serving media tributes to Walter Cronkite, here is a clip you won't see, in which Cronkite -- when asked what is his biggest regret -- says (h/t sysprog):

What do I regret? Well, I regret that in our attempt to establish some standards, we didn't make them stick. We couldn't find a way to pass them on to another generation.

It's impossible even to imagine the likes of Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw and friends interrupting their pompously baritone, melodramatic, self-glorifying exploitation of Cronkite's death to spend a second pondering what he meant by that.

The preening ponderous might not take the time to reflect on Cronkite's words of regret, but there's an interesting debate about them, the proper role of journalists, and Greenwald's thesis, in the comments section.

On the home front

I first learned of the U.S. Army's plan to deploy an infantry brigade inside the United States from historian, former journalist and former soldier Chris Bray at his historiblogography blog. Now, Glenn Greenwald at Salon has picked up the story and looking at the precedent it sets.

Getting freaky*

The boys at Politico credit SNL and a deft Howard Wolfson for throwing Barack Obama under the media bus in the days leading up to today's Ohio and Texas primaries. But Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com has a different theory, and urges Politico Editor John Harris to go back to the book he wrote about how to win the White House in 2008, titled, creatively enough, "The Way to Win".

Here's the relevant passage from Greenwald's post: The reality is that the Clinton campaign has been complaining bitterly for months and months that the media has not subjected Obama to any real critical scrutiny. For the most part, that fell on deaf ears. The only thing that has changed over the past couple of weeks is that the right-wing noise machine, which now sees Obama as the likely Democratic nominee, began complaining just as bitterly that the media is "in the tank" for Obama. That is what moves them. As Harris himself wrote in his own book, it is Drudge -- not Howard Wolfson or SNL -- who rules their world.

*Speaking of freaky, Clinton must hate Anne Kornblut.