NYT Book Reviewer Wonders If Glenn Greenwald Should Be Locked Up

[DonViejo]

TOM KLUDT – MAY 22, 2014, 12:30 PM EDT

If a book critic questions whether the author he's reviewing should be thrown in prison, that's probably a sign the review is going to be negative.

But Michael Kinsley went there on Thursday when he reviewed journalist Glenn Greenwald's book about the National Security Agency spying revelations, "No Place To Hide."

Writing for the New York Times, Kinsley criticized Greenwald for treating the disclosure of the agency's top secret surveillance programs as a "straightforward" issue.

"But it’s not that simple, as Greenwald must know," Kinsley wrote. "There are laws against government eavesdropping on American citizens, and there are laws against leaking official government documents. You can’t just choose the laws you like and ignore the ones you don’t like. Or perhaps you can, but you can’t then claim that it’s all very straightforward."

Kinsley went on to criticize the Pulitzer Prize winner for cherry-picking sources in the book, arguing that Greenwald "quotes any person or publication taking his side in any argument." Moreover, Kinsley, a columnist for Vanity Fair and a longtime liberal commentator, wrote that Greenwald's citation of those sources "undermines his own argument that 'the authorities' brook no dissent."

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/glenn-greenwald-michael-kinsley-new-york-times-lock-up-snowden

[MannyGoldstein]

1. What's Kinsley's handle on DU? nt

[woo me with science]

2. It's so much simpler when government and media are owned by the same people.

All that "holding accountable" stuff is so messy.

[ellie50]

3. Kinsley should remember Orwell

"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”

― George Orwell

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. And, Thomas Jefferson.

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

 Thomas Jefferson

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. Sounds like Kinsley's about as "liberal" as Joe McCarthy.