At least in principle. As for his accounting of "on the record" versus "off the record," I find it impossible to disagree with him. I think he would lay waste to Tucker Carlson on this topic.

As for BBC journalists being better at what they do, perhaps so. But I think that Glenn runs a serious risk of confusing, or conflating, anti-Bush/anti-US argumentation with "journalism." I think I'd quite like it if there were more hard-hitting interviews with John Bolton in particular. Bolton can handle himself pretty damn well, thank you very much.

When Glenn Greenwald bemoans the softball interviews done by Tim Russert, I'd commend to him the kinds of interviews done by someone like Terry Gross on NPR when she has one of the never-ending chain of authors penning books critical of the Bush Administration. Talk about journalistic ennabling!

Anyway, this is a pretty poor subject to divide left from right. Readers of James Taranto's conservative blog OpinionJournal.com at the WSJ website know that not a week goes by without James ridiculing the NY Times' excuses for the use of their own anonymous sources. (Example: "so-and-so spoke on condition of anonymity, because the information was confidential and would not be announced until the next day..."

The result is a two-tiered system of information: the first is information that is both sufficiently off-the-record and sensational, which may be released to the public for its attention-grabbing effect.

Should be:

The result is a two-tiered system of information: the first is information that is both sufficiently on-the-record and sensational, which may be released to the public for its attention-grabbing effect.

1) US citizens are no longer allowed any secrets.

2) US government is allowed to claim any secret and conduct any activity cloaked in secrecy with no oversight.

3) The MSM generally serves to protect the US government's secrecy

4) The MSM obsessively and gleefully delves into and exposes the most personal and private matters of not only celebrities and politicians, but even private citizens who for whatever reason are thrust into the limelight.

These same US citizens, like addicts, willfully accept 1-3 above, as long as fed more of 4. Blech.

I haven't had a chance to read all comments yet, but I think this off-the-record phenomenon has an additional (though related) explanation beyond that they feel personally gratified and validated by close contact with powerful people.

To the "typical" big-name American political reporter, the public interest has long faded as a central priority in their professional lives. The perpetual acculturation of belonging to a wealthy elite of high-profile reporters and commentators has drastically, if subconsciously, shifted their professional philosophy away from seeking truthful information that has public importance, toward seeking further aggrandizement of their reputations among one another as creators of flashy narratives and stimulants for higher readership or viewership.

The entire reason we have an entire media culture that seems to care little about illegal wiretapping, telecom amnesty, and unconstitutional expansions of executive power is because these things have almost purely to do with the public interest vis-a-vis the Constitution, and little to do with dramatic narratives that they can ride to further fame and fortune. Instead, all of the coverage and conversation centers on petty, personality-based squabbles and trite shorthand.

This all ties into the media psychology of off-the-record in the following way. To the reporter, merely hearing something off-the-record and being able to share it (also off-the-record) with their similarly privileged colleagues is sufficient disclosure in lieu of actual public disclosure. As long as these elites know this off-the-record piece of highly important information, they feel satisfied, trading these stories like baseball cards amongst themselves, in widely accepted and presumed secrecy more becoming of a club than a profession given constitutional primacy for the good of the country.

The result is a two-tiered system of information: the first is information that is both sufficiently off-the-record and sensational, which may be released to the public for its attention-grabbing effect. The second is information that is off-the-record and potentially highly important to the country, which journalists not only feel satisfied sharing strictly amongst one another, but feel especially satisfied that they belong to the exclusive elite that is privileged to know it.

And this, above all, is why so many so-called journalists are so hostile to bloggers. Bloggers are the unwashed geeks who diametrically reverse that set of priorities, fixating on information of the greatest actual public import and generally shunning information that has little value other than to engender petty personality narratives. Blogger journalists make mainline journalists look bad, and they know it.

OK, Mr. Greenwald. We're deep into this thread now, so is there any chance you could satisfy my morbid curiosity and confirm that the whiny journalist who emailed you was the incompetently programmed cyborg John King?

It wasn't. What was really weird about it was that it wasn't even someone I had actually criticized, just someone mentioned in passing in criticism I wrote who decided to take the criticism on as directed at him.

I'll tell you who it is, as a reward for those who have made it this far in comments -- Jake Tapper of ABC.

An earlier poster pointed out the different levels of agreed-to degrees of confidentiality in an interview. I couldn't help but compare them to my profession (psychologist). Before I actually talk to a new patient they must sign (and hopefully read!) a document that lays out the framework of confidentiality in their treatmnt, and the specific exceptions to it (if the reveal abuse of a child, risk of serious harm to self or others, if I am served with a court order for production of their records, etc.) I review these points in person as well. Can I dream about being handed a menu of choices from "deep background" to "on the record" by my interviewer, choose and sign my choice, then sue his/her butt off if they don't respect it???

There's a foot of snow on the ground- good day for daydreaming.

Samantha Power could not have retracted the Monster statement if Tucker had been interviewing her on live TV. The only reason Tucker wishes to embargo such spontaneous quotes from "print" journalism is because he wants the good stuff to only show up on video. If it's not on TV, it must be discredited.

Similarly for Tim Russert: He keeps all of his newsgathering off the record because he's typically doing background reporting to inform the questions he'll ask on Sunday morning. To him, it's not news if it's not said on his show, even if it's said to him on the telephone.

He's not trying to inform the public, he's trying to assemble questions that sound like "gotcha" questions but are quite predictable to the Beltway insiders starring on his show each week. His putative victims always know what's coming -- a set program of predictable questions -- that they can ignore, filibuster (Bush) or overwhelm with an unexpected propaganda narrative (Cheney). Russert's show is never more than an exhibit on how to manipulate the media and suck up to the powerful.