http://www.salon.com/2011/11/29/the_secrecy_loving_mind_of_the_u_s_journalist/singleton/The secrecy-loving mind of the U.S. journalist
By Glenn Greenwald, Salon
In July, 2007, The Washington Post‘s Richard Cohen wrote a column condemning the prosecution of Lewis “Scooter” Libby on the ground that political officials should not “be called to account for practicing the dark art of politics”; instead, he explained: “as with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off.” At the time, I hailed Cohen’s column as “a true tour de force in explaining the function of our Beltway media stars,” writing:
That really is the central belief of our Beltway press, captured so brilliantly by Cohen in this perfect nutshell. When it comes to the behavior of our highest and most powerful government officials, our Beltway media preaches, “it is often best to keep the lights off.” If that isn’t the perfect motto for our bold, intrepid, hard-nosed political press, then nothing is.....
I genuinely thought it would be a very long time before someone surpassed that column’s achievement in shining light on the paradoxical mind and function of the standard establishment journalist: they proudly venerate and defend extreme government secrecy at the same time they parade around as Adversarial Watchdogs and Light-Shiners on the political class. But I was wrong: today we have a column from The New York Times‘ Roger Cohen (presumably no relation) that accomplishes that task with even more stunning (though equally unintentional) brilliance.
Cohen observes, quite rightly, that President Obama — who repeatedly vowed to usher in The Most Transparent Administration Ever — has taken U.S. foreign policy almost completely underground and draped it in sweeping, anti-democratic secrecy:
....
As usual, American journalists are the leading proponents not of transparency but of secrecy, not of accountability but of covert decision-making in the dark, not of the rule of law but the rule of political leaders. As Cohen’s Washington Post namesake put it: “it is often best to keep the lights off.” That, with some exceptions, is the motto not only of The Washington Post but of American establishment journalism generally. That’s what NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen meant when he said that the reason we got WikiLeaks is because “the watchdog press died.” With some exceptions — some of this we have learned about from whistleblowers leaking to reporters, who then publish it – the American media does not merely fail to fulfill its ostensible function of bringing transparency to government; far beyond that, it takes the lead in justifying and protecting extreme government secrecy. Watching a New York Times columnist stand up and cheer for multiple covert, legally dubious wars and an underground foreign policy highlights that as well as anything one can recall.
(lots of examples - worth reading the whole thing)