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• Friday, March 30, 2007 08:02 AM

  Alan S:

  Glenn, your media analysis is very valuable, but you tend to not to recognize that reporters are not independent actors, but employees of large commercial enterprises. The issue is not so much the individual ethics of reporters or journalistic culture, but the practices and policies of the companies they work for.

  I agre that that's a factor, and said so. But it clearly isn't the only thing needed to explain everything.

  For one thing, not everyone who works for a company is a whore for the company willing to sacrifice their integrity to please their bosses. Some people who work at large corporations -- including media corporations -- retain their integrity and fight agianst currents they disagree with. Many don't (which is why the dynamic you describe is relevant), but many do (which is why your theory doesn't explain Everything).

  Dana Priest is a very valued reporter at the Washington Post. Jim Risen and Eric Lichtblau won Pulitzer Prizes, and sure enhanced their standing at the NYT, as a result of uncovering and exposing illegal eavesdropping. There are anti-administration leaks and anti-administration stories all the time in major newspapers.

  Yes, you are right that the corporate culture breeds some of these attributes. But clearly there are people within it who nonetheless produce good reporting. And -- as the Lewinsky scandal showed -- scandal sells newspapers and produces ratings, so there is a corresponding economic/corporate incentive to actually do real investigative journalism (there's a countervailing incentive not to).

  I just don't think it can be reduced to "Media = corporations = dictatorship suppressing dissent."

  —GlennGreenwald Read GlennGreenwald's other letters
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