Michael Kinsley Comes Out in Favor of Stalinism

In a New York Times review of Glenn Greenwald's latest book, Kinsley declares that it must be the government, and not the journalist, who determines when a sensitive information can be published:

The trouble is this: Greenwald says that Snowden told him to "use your journalistic judgment to only publish those documents that the public should see and that can be revealed without harm to any innocent people." Once again, this testimony proves the opposite of what Greenwald and Snowden seem to think. Snowden may be willing to trust Greenwald to make this judgment correctly — but are you? And even if you do trust Greenwald's judgment, which on the evidence might be unwise, how can we be sure the next leaker will be so scrupulous?

The question is who decides. It seems clear, at least to me, that the private companies that own newspapers, and their employees, should not have the final say over the release of government secrets, and a free pass to make them public with no legal consequences. In a democracy (which, pace Greenwald, we still are), that decision must ultimately be made by the government. No doubt the government will usually be overprotective of its secrets, and so the process of decision-making — whatever it turns out to be — should openly tilt in favor of publication with minimal delay. But ultimately you can't square this circle. Someone gets to decide, and that someone cannot be Glenn Greenwald.

This is not a problem, this is a free press, and one of the consequences of this is that stuff that the government does not want to be pubic knowledge will be public knowledge.

Shorter Michael Kinsley, "Journalism, Schmournalism, we need better stenographers."


H/t Gawker.