The New York Times has published a review of journalist Glenn Greenwald’s new book, No Place to Hide, by Vanity Fair contributing editor Michael Kinsley in which he madly endorses the interest the United States government may have in prosecuting journalists who publish leaks.
Kinsley, who was once the co-host on CNN’s “Crossfire,” defends fellow Beltway establishment journalist David Gregory, who asked Greenwald on “Meet the Press,” “To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden,…why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?”
Greenwald “does not deny” that he “aided and abetted Snowden,” Kinsley writes. So this question is “not baseless.” “If the leaker can go to prison, why should the leakee be exempt?”
Kinsley suggests that Greenwald thinks he is “beyond having to defend himself.” But Kinsley sympathizes with the government’s efforts to prevent news media from exposing government secrets. He holds the view of officials in the White House that a “balance” between national security and press freedom. He also appears to hold the viewpoint of those in the highest positions of the national security state—that decisions about what should and should not be kept secret are best left to the people who most benefit from keeping Americans in the dark about what they are doing with their power.
“So what do we do about leaks of government information?” Kinsley asks. “Lock up the perpetrators or give them the Pulitzer Prize? (The Pulitzer people chose the second option.)”
For Kinsley, journalists who won Pulitzer Prizes, one of the most esteemed prizes in the field of journalism, are “perpetrators” who the government has a legitimate interest in wanting to imprison.
