Now, let me state from the outset that I have long been – and continue to be – an admirer of Glenn Greenwald.
One of the principle reasons is because he is an unflinching media critic. A critic who time and again exposes those corporate journalists who behave like propaganda mouthpieces for those in power rather than as truth seekers.
He is not alone in this, obviously, as Amy Goodman and other gems in our independent media indispensably do so as well. But Greenwald is ferocious when it comes to confronting deceptions that come from our government. And he's equally ferocious when pointing out those journalists who help those deceptions grow legs.
So when a journalist exhibits courage in the face of government pressure to keep quiet, Greenwald celebrates. As he often should.
However, the problem for Greenwald is this: journalistic courage has become for him the ethical code by which all things media-related are judged.
Which is why, in the furor over CNN using the deceased Ambassador Stevens' private journal in its reporting – against both the family's and the State Department's wishes – Greenwald chose to align himself with CNN.
Why? Apparently, Anderson Cooper and Co. exhibited journalistic courage in not bowing to outside forces in their quest to tell the truth.
Just witness how Greenwald concludes an interaction with another figure on the topic of the Tweet embedded above:
Here we have humanistic ethics and journalistic courage colliding. And Greenwald picks journalistic courage, aligning him – remarkably – with CNN, an organization for which Greenwald has nearly zero respect. Why? Because, for Greenwald, not reporting facts from Stevens' private journal would have been an "abdication of its core duty."
What's that duty? The pursuit of truth.
This is incredibly important, for one reason our corporate media is such an unmitigated failure, and one reason why our electorate is so woefully uninformed, is because modern-day journalists do not regularly pursue the truth.
It's a point Greenwald hammers, correctly, without pause.
The pursuit of truth in journalism is one of the foundational elements which makes a free and open democracy so theoretically potent. The fourth estate can check power in substantial ways.
However, what happens when the pursuit of truth and the pursuit of ethics collide. What happens when the family of a murdered ambassador pleads with a news organization not to use a private journal in its reporting? What if information contained in that journal could benefit the public good in dramatically important ways?
Or, what if, in this case, that information has little value to the public interest?
Does it matter?
For me, it does. In my view, there must be a balance between journalistic courage and and ethical sensibility. A balance which finds its fulcrum at the point where the private pain inflicted by revealing information (personal or political) is outweighed by the public good.
For Greenwald, such equivocation is a slippery slope that could lead to the NYT not publishing the Pentagon Papers.
I'm not saying I'm right, nor that Greenwald is wrong. However, as a media critic myself, I'm uncomfortable with Greenwald's absolute stance.
And I continue to be uncomfortable with our major media institutions' lack of pursuit of the truth – unless it makes them look good.
Like CNN.