4. Bias as Truth
This is a chapter from News of Devils: The Media and Edward Snowden. The next chapter is linked to at the foot of the page. This can also be read as part of the free ebook Need to Know, which you can download here.
In the 2002 film 8 Mile, Eminem played B-Rabbit, a young man from Detroit who takes part in local rap battles with peers to prove his mettle and attain recognition. In the final round of one rap battle, he cleverly pre-empts all the attacks he thinks his opponent is about to make against him and ends his allotted time by throwing the microphone to the other rapper with the line: ‘Here, tell these people something they don’t know about me.’
When it comes to criticism of his work and approach, Glenn Greenwald has adopted a B-Rabbit approach. Just as he engages in hyperbole in his articles, he often shoots down criticism in overegged terms—or, as he might put it, points out the unbelievable ignorance and dishonesty of unwarranted attacks from drooling national security establishment shills and authoritarian idiots. Occasionally, he’ll refrain from tu quoque accusations and address the substance of criticisms, but even then it’s most often in aggressive and condescending terms, and almost always at such tedious length that nobody will bother to read it all to untangle it to see why the original criticisms were correct. The back and forth becomes so convoluted that few are prepared to take the time and be branded a pedant and/or neo-conservative security state shill for their trouble.
Some people who criticize Greenwald’s work are idiots, and no doubt some are drooling establishment shills. But I think his work has received so much criticism for a broader reason, which is that his view of events is often more extreme than the evidence he draws on for it, because he hasn’t properly researched the topic. A striking statistic dug up by another journalist or organization is sometimes enough for him to draw blunt or even apocalyptic assumptions, and over time this tendency in his work has been noticed. He unwittingly put his finger on the problems in his own approach in a tweet about Sam Harris:
‘Anyone who ever criticizes his writing is either lying, misrepresenting, or too stupid to understand his genuis.’[1]
That Glenn Greenwald is more interested in re-affirming his own prejudices than researching to get at the truth is something he has himself admitted. He told the New York Times shortly after the first Snowden story broke ‘I approach my journalism as a litigator. People say things, you assume they are lying, and dig for documents to prove it.’[2]
The problem with this, of course, is that it’s entirely the wrong way round, and the definition of confirmation bias. If a scientist goes into an experiment already convinced of what the result will be, he or she might end up fudging the data so that result will be produced. It’s healthy to treat new information with scepticism—I wish he’d shown more of his litigator’s side with some of Snowden’s statements. But rather than assuming people are lying and then trying to find evidence to prove your worst suspicions, a journalist should simply be trying to find evidence of the truth. Other journalists who have worked on this story, from The Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post, seem to regard trying to ascertain the truth of statements regardless of their preconceptions as their aim, as professional journalists should.
Greenwald’s litigator approach to journalism is most obvious in discussions on how to gauge the risk to national security. He acts from a position not just of scepticism of government claims—which all journalists should have—but a premise that they are almost certainly lying. On November 5 2014 he tweeted a link to a Reuters report, saying:
‘By the way, U.S. is still killing lots of people via drones in places like Yemen—don’t worry: “suspected militants”’[3]
With no evidence at all—there is none in the Reuters piece—he simply decided that the government must be guilty of wrongdoing here. And not just wrongdoing, but deliberate murder of innocent civilians.
~
Greenwald’s most adept B-Rabbit move has been to head off early criticism that he approached the story with a set of pre-existing biases by not only openly admitting it but attempting to make a virtue of the fact. His argument is that he can ignore the fundamental principles of journalism because, in effect, everyone else does, too, and he’s the only honest soldier prepared to admit it. Here is what he wrote in an exchange in the New York Times with Bill Keller in October 2013:
‘I don’t think anyone contends that what has become (rather recently) the standard model for a reporter—concealing one’s subjective perspectives or what appears to be “opinions”—precludes good journalism.
But this model has also produced lots of atrocious journalism and some toxic habits that are weakening the profession. A journalist who is petrified of appearing to express any opinions will often steer clear of declarative sentences about what is true, opting instead for a cowardly and unhelpful “here’s-what-both-sides-say-and-I-won’t-resolve-the-conflicts” formulation. That rewards dishonesty on the part of political and corporate officials who know they can rely on “objective” reporters to amplify their falsehoods without challenge (i.e., reporting is reduced to “X says Y” rather than “X says Y and that’s false”).
Worse still, this suffocating constraint on how reporters are permitted to express themselves produces a self-neutering form of journalism that becomes as ineffectual as it is boring. A failure to call torture “torture” because government officials demand that a more pleasant euphemism be used, or lazily equating a demonstrably true assertion with a demonstrably false one, drains journalism of its passion, vibrancy, vitality and soul.
Worst of all, this model rests on a false conceit. Human beings are not objectivity-driven machines. We all intrinsically perceive and process the world through subjective prisms. What is the value in pretending otherwise?
The relevant distinction is not between journalists who have opinions and those who do not, because the latter category is mythical. The relevant distinction is between journalists who honestly disclose their subjective assumptions and political values and those who dishonestly pretend they have none or conceal them from their readers.’[4]
This is an extraordinary justification for unprincipled journalism. He is absolutely right, of course, that good reporting should involve stating what is demonstrably true or false without having to create a contrived sense of balance, and it is unfortunately the case that many journalists fall down on that score. It’s perhaps most pronounced in broadcast media: the BBC, for example, is required to present an ‘impartial’ editorial view, and this can lead to precisely the sort of equivocations Greenwald mentions.
But if a claim is false it should be clearly stated as such, whoever makes it. Greenwald’s claim that it’s acceptable for journalists to do otherwise as long as they honestly disclose their subjective assumptions is contrary not just to well-established journalistic tenets, but to common sense. There’s a path between the two extremes of failing to call demonstrable falsehoods lies and approaching a story with a set of assumptions and letting them influence one’s reporting. Scientists are also human beings, and yet are capable of putting their opinions to one side in order to seek out hard evidence. If they weren’t, science wouldn’t advance.
Greenwald’s confirmation bias against the corporate-political establishment is so entrenched he fails to see that his argument doesn’t only apply to it. Biases exist and can seep into work, but this is poor practice whether it’s in support of statements by corporate or political officials or in opposition to them. If a journalist can’t separate their prejudices from their responsibility to report the truth, the problem occurs regardless of what those prejudices are. It isn’t only political and corporate officials who can be dishonest. A willingness to accept the claims of those opposing government or establishment claims is also toxic.
Additionally, as Keller pointed out in his response to Greenwald, reporters rarely produce work alone, and checking for such blind spots is an essential part of preparing a story for any publication valuing good journalism:
‘I don’t think of it as reporters pretending they have no opinions. I think of it as reporters, as an occupational discipline, suspending their opinions and letting the evidence speak for itself. And it matters that this is not just an individual exercise, but an institutional discipline, with editors who are tasked to challenge writers if they have given short shrift to contrary facts or arguments readers might want to know.
The thing is, once you have publicly declared your “subjective assumptions and political values,” it’s human nature to want to defend them, and it becomes tempting to omit or minimize facts, or frame the argument, in ways that support your declared viewpoint. And some readers, knowing that you write from the left or right, will view your reporting with justified suspicion.’[5]
Journalists and their colleagues shouldn’t be embracing their preconceived notions, as Greenwald suggests, but simply trying to find out what is true. If you don’t believe it’s even possible to keep an open mind when researching a story, let alone believe that’s worth doing, you’re in the wrong profession. A journalist’s prejudices can affect the way they report facts, but this is something they should try to avoid.
The hypothetical problem raised by Bill Keller applies in practice to Greenwald, who has a history of omitting or minimizing facts and framing arguments in a way that supports his established views predating the Snowden story.
That Greenwald’s hollow argument has largely been left unchallenged and even praised by some as a valid and bold new direction for journalism is both a depressing indictment of modern journalism and evidence of the problem of confirmation bias. Greenwald claims to despise it in others’ work, but feels it’s justified in his own because he is open about it.
So: a source gives selected journalists an unprecedented number of US intelligence secrets. One of the reporters says that he isn’t trying his best to put his biases aside and looking at the documents with as neutral an eye as possible so he can determine what is properly in the public interest, but admits he is looking at them to see what he can publish that will suit his political beliefs and fit his argument. This simply isn’t an acceptable principle.
Most have ignored this, but I think it’s important to respond to Greenwald’s B-Rabbiting. An argument doesn’t become true simply because it counters received wisdom and is stated boldly. Reporting hard news from a position of bias is the opposite of good practice. All journalists have biases, but good ones try to combat, not pander to them. The Snowden stories are presented as hard reporting, not opinion columns, and need to be as devoid of any agenda as is possible. Journalism isn’t a science, but the idea of looking for evidence and then making your conclusions rather than vice versa is a sound one that, until this story, was widely accepted. Greenwald has admitted he went into the laboratory having already decided the NSA is almost wholly malignant, so his ‘finding’ that all the evidence fits that view should be viewed askance
Greenwald’s self-declared biases are also obvious if one has read his columns in the past couple of years, but despite his claims to transparency his views aren’t stated anywhere in the news reports about the Snowden documents that bear his and others’ bylines. Readers of such articles can’t be expected to be aware of the previously stated political opinions of the articles’ authors in opinion pieces in order to judge how they have spun the information.
But Greenwald’s political position, which is similar in several ways to that of Laura Poitras and Jacob Appelbaum, is a significant factor in his reporting. Greenwald supported the war in Iraq and then had a change of heart. Like many converts, he has leaped with zeal from one extreme to another and has adopted some of the views he once attacked. In 2005, he railed against the ‘anti-Americanism’ of the European Left, which he saw as eager to find fault and evil with the United States to the extent that this had become their primary goal:
‘That goal is then fulfilled by selectively and endlessly highlighting and exaggerating America’s faults and downplaying, ignoring and even defending far worse flaws in others. In its most virulent (and quite common) form, this extends to making common cause with the most abusive and genuinely evil regimes and movements around the world, whose only virtue—the only one the European Left needs—is that they are opposed by the U.S.
This is a deeply dishonest and manipulative syndrome, having nothing whatever to do with the principles to which its adherents claim fidelity. Indeed, their supposed “principles” (human rights, the sanctity of human life, individual liberty) are simply weapons, pretexts, used to promote the only real principle they have—that the U.S. is a uniquely corrupt and evil country. And the reason one knows that to be the case is because these same individuals systematically overlook and even excuse far more severe violations of their ostensible principles when perpetrated by the countries and governments with which they inexcusably sympathize (sympathy which itself can be explained by a desire to sit in opposition to any and every American interest).’[6]
Greenwald’s views have changed so much since he wrote this that it’s odd to read these words from him. While he would no doubt strenuously object to being called anti-American, his current focus on highlighting the faults of the US government is one he admits to and defends robustly. In the last couple of years, he has repeatedly cited Noam Chomsky’s argument for focusing on abuses by United States administrations, in interviews[7], on Twitter[8] and in two of his Guardian ‘Comment is Free’ columns, one from 2012 on Julian Assange, Ecuador and Pussy Riot[9] and one from April 2013 on Sam Harris, ‘New Atheists’ and Islamophobia[10]. In the latter, he wrote:
‘…I find extremely suspect the behavior of westerners like Harris (and Hitchens and Dawkins) who spend the bulk of their time condemning the sins of other, distant peoples rather than the bulk of their time working against the sins of their own country. That’s particularly true of Americans, whose government has brought more violence, aggression, suffering, misery, and degradation to the world over the last decade than any other. Even if that weren’t true—and it is—spending one’s time as an American fixated on the sins of others is a morally dubious act, to put that generously, for reasons Noam Chomsky explained so perfectly:
“My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it.
“So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.”
I, too, have written before about the hordes of American commentators whose favorite past-time is to lounge around pointing fingers at other nations, other governments, other populations, other religions, while spending relatively little time on their own. The reason this is particularly suspect and shoddy behavior from American commentators is that there are enormous amounts of violence and extremism and suffering which their government has unleashed and continues to unleash on the world. Indeed, much of that US violence is grounded in if not expressly justified by religion, including the aggressive attack on Iraq and steadfast support for Israeli aggression (to say nothing of the role Judaism plays in the decades-long oppression by the Israelis of Palestinians and all sorts of attacks on neighboring Arab and Muslim countries). Given the legion human rights violations from their own government, I find that Americans and westerners who spend the bulk of their energy on the crimes of others are usually cynically exploiting human rights concerns in service of a much different agenda.’
Greenwald’s position in 2005 and his position today are two sides of the same coin: people who only ever criticize US actions and minimize those of authoritarian regimes aren’t to be trusted, but neither are people who only criticize other states and turn a blind to American abuses. It is, of course, possible to have a more balanced view of world affairs. One can condemn the US for the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay and also object to, say, Russia’s oppression of gay people and murder of journalists and dissidents.
Binary positions can seem attractive in their purity, but the real world tends to be much messier. Greenwald’s hyperlink for the Chomsky quote in that Guardian piece takes readers to a ‘Noam Chomsky Quotes’ Tumblr, but the passage is in fact from a lecture Chomsky gave in March 1986 at the Universidad Centroamericana in Nicaragua—the lecture series was later printed as a book, On Power and Ideology. The full lecture is worth reading, because Chomsky couldn’t even maintain his own position over the course of a few minutes. In the paragraph following the one Greenwald quotes, he said that political actions were most significant when one had a chance of influencing and controlling their consequences, and that for him this ‘overwhelmingly’ applied to American actions. He added:
‘But I am also involved in protesting Soviet imperialism, and also explaining its roots in Soviet society. And I think that anyone in the Third World would be making a grave error if they succumbed to illusions about these matters.’[11]
This ruins his previous paragraph’s argument that, quoted out of context, Greenwald now admires so much. By Chomsky’s own logic just a couple of minutes earlier, protesting Soviet imperialism would have had ‘about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century’. So why did Chomsky protest Soviet imperialism, then, and why did he add this statement to his argument? Presumably because he realized that the argument collapsed when faced with reality. If he couldn’t even bring himself to object in any way to the self-evident totalitarianism of the Soviet Union, he was doing precisely what 2005 Greenwald objected to: overlooking and excusing violations of his professed principles in order to attack the United States instead.
Greenwald understood the weakness of such a position very well in 2005, but he has now adopted it wholeheartedly. On November 4 2014, he tweeted a link to a new article by Chomsky:
‘“It’s official: The U.S. is the world’s leading terrorist state, and proud of it”—new Noam Chomsky http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/27201-the-leading-terrorist-state …‘[12]
There’s nothing ‘official’ in the claim: it’s just Chomsky overstating the finding of a declassified CIA study that covert aid has often been ineffective in order to list a string of now-familiar American abuses. It’s an extension of the same point Greenwald made in his 2013 piece on Sam Harris et al, that the American government ‘has brought more violence, aggression, suffering, misery, and degradation to the world over the last decade than any other’.
In that TruthOut article, Chomsky wrote:
‘Jihadism’s most fearsome current manifestation is the Islamic State, or ISIS, which has established its murderous caliphate in large areas of Iraq and Syria.
“I think the United States is one of the key creators of this organization,” reports former CIA analyst Graham Fuller, a prominent commentator on the region. “The United States did not plan the formation of ISIS,” he adds, “but its destructive interventions in the Middle East and the War in Iraq were the basic causes of the birth of ISIS.”’
Chomsky doesn’t give a source for where Graham Fuller ‘reported’ his view on this, incidentally, but it was in an interview he gave to Al-Monitor in September.[13]
This is the political view Greenwald has brought to his reporting. Like Jacob Appelbaum, he is skilful at using formalistic news reporting idioms to make his political points, so much so that even when he reveals his agenda nobody bats an eyelid. Greenwald has given many interviews, but his more extreme views of the NSA situation have been largely missed. Many people who support Snowden’s actions feel that the NSA’s surveillance reach has spiralled beyond what is needed to protect the US since 9/11 and infringed on civil liberties in the process. But that isn’t Greenwald’s view. He’s convinced that the NSA aren’t carrying out surveillance to protect citizens from threats at all, but that their goal is to spy on civilians to subvert the democratic process. You don’t believe me that he’s that extreme? Here’s what he said in an interview with the New Zealand TV programme The Nation in September 2014:
‘If these agencies were using this technology to spy on Al Qaeda and to spy on terrorists, to spy on ISIS, there would never have been an Edward Snowden in the first place. There would be no public debate. It’s precisely because that is the pretext and not the actual reason that this spying is being used that there is these disclosures and there is a public debate.’[14]
This is an astonishing idea, and if it were true would be deeply troubling—but none of the documents published so far indicate that this is the case at all. In fact, many of them detail the value of intelligence gained. Many thousands of people work for the NSA, the CIA, MI6, GCHQ and other intelligence agencies in the West. Many work for decades for no recognition and put their lives in danger in order to protect their countries from terrorists, hostile governments and other bad actors. The idea that they are simply pretending to do this as a pretext so they can read innocent citizens’ emails is not just absurd, but insulting.