As I have repeatedly documented over the past several weeks, Glenn Greenwald's reporting on the NSA's surveillance programs has suffered from a severe, chronic case of "truthiness" -- that is, he takes some factual information and dresses it up with gross exaggerations and hyperbole; omits other critical, material facts and context; and confuses and conflates, whether deliberately or merely in the interest of sensationalism, mere potential or possible capabilities with actual wrongdoing or illegalities. Not surprisingly, then, Greenwald was up to his usual tricks during his most recent television appearances.
Just has he has repeatedly and consistently exaggerated his claims and ignored facts contrary to his narrative of supposed widespread, unchecked abuse of NSA programs, Greenwald has now brought his exaggeration and material omissions to the topic of whistleblowers generally.
http://thedailybanter.com/...
As detailed in the article above, Greenwald continues to paint a false impression of the current Administration's conduct. Even more troubling, Greenwald's falsehoods continue to gain traction here and elsewhere, as the narrative has continued to outpace the truth.
For example, Greenwald's recent discussion of Snowden as a purported "whistleblower" produced the following gem of blatant exaggeration (dishonesty?) [emphasis mine]:
On Friday, he was interviewed by Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC. In addition to serving as Edward Snowden’s de facto U.S. spokesperson, responding to questions about Snowden’s emotional state and new accommodations in Russia, Greenwald stared into the camera and said on national television:
“[Snowden is] doing very well, he’s obviously very happy for the obvious reason that he’s not going to be subjected to the standard whistleblower treatment that the United States government gives to people, which is to put them in a cage for decades and render them incommunicado.”
Um. Which whistleblowers have been tossed in cages for decades?
This is totally inaccurate. As I’ve noted before, the longest “whistleblower” sentence (explanation of the quotation marks presently) that’s been handed down under President Obama has been 30 months. Not years. Months. The shortest punishment has been one year of probation. If he’s referring to Pfc. Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army soldier who delivered 720,000 documents to Wikileaks hasn’t been sentenced yet, and even if he does end up receiving 130 years in prison, that’d be exactly one “whistleblower” imprisoned for decades. One out of seven “whistleblowers” who’ve been charged under what Greenwald calls the “war on whistleblowers.”
"Put in a cage for decades"? "Render them incommunicado"? Really, Glenn? Where? When? These claims are completely unsupported bunk. Oh, but no matter how untrue, they fit nicely with Greenwald's narrative of an abusive Obama Administration, don't they? The spreading of this nonsense, transforming a falsehood into truthiness and then into a meme, and finally into conventional wisdom, is the problem; indeed, it's the same tactic we've seen from the GOP and its media allies for years. [Just imagine, for a moment, the number of recommends and upratings a diary repeating Greenwald's gross exaggeration would garner here.] As we have seen for weeks, facts don't matter as much as a narrative, and Greenwald's narrative remains as slanted and filled with holes as ever.
But Greenwald wasn't done. On Sunday, he doubled down on the falsehood [emphasis again mine]:
On Sunday’s edition of This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Greenwald’s second This Week appearance in a row, he repeated this exaggeration to guest host Marth Radditz:
“Well I think the concern is that whistleblowers in the United States have become the number one public enemy of the United States government, which is incredibly disturbing. McClatchy has been reporting great things about how the Obama administration equates whistleblowing with treason, with all kinds of programs. [...] Whistleblowers in the United States are put into prison for decades and basically disappeared, as we just saw with Bradley Manning…”
Once again, no, there haven’t been any “whistleblowers” under the Obama administration who’ve been imprisoned for “decades.” They’re not the “number one public enemy,” either, unless you dig way, way, way down the list of U.S. enemies beneath the thousands of people, both foreign and domestic, who are seeking to kill Americans, assassinate the president and overthrow our government. Nor have these “whistleblowers” been “disappeared.” Even if Manning goes to jail for decades, there’s no evidence that he’ll be “disappeared” — a word that’s traditionally reserved for sinister, covert kidnappings in which a suspect is grabbed and hauled off in total secrecy and prevented from alerting anyone to his whereabouts or petitioning for habeas corpus. Extremist language used by a compulsive exaggerator.
As has been documented repeatedly, the "War on Whistleblowers" is a myth. Not only did Obama push and sign the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, which had languished in Congress for more than 13 years, he also initiated by Executive Order those protections which had been stripped by the House GOP. Thanks to Obama's support, last year saw more than 1,000 whistleblower claims, which has saved the government BILLIONS of dollars. Meanwhile, even if one includes Manning Snowden (which is debatable), there are a total of seven -- seven -- prosecutions by the Obama Administration, and most of those are holdovers from Bush Administration proceedings. As has again been documented repeatedly, this is why the Government Accountability Project -- dedicated to whistleblower protections -- has acknowledged that Obama has done more for whistleblowers than any other President.
http://www.whistleblower.org/...
Yet Greenwald's dedication to narrative rather than accuracy has gone even further. When a New York woman recently made a fantastical claim about NSA spying resulting in a raid on her home, did the "journalist" Greenwald pause to verify the story? Of course not -- instead, he tweeted out the false story with some amped-up rhetoric:
Glenn Greenwald
@glenngreenwald
Trust the government to spot The Terrorists
and monitor the internet
http://banter.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/...
That story, of course, collapsed on closer inspection. Not content with pushing one false story, however, Greenwald also tweeted the false suggestion that the recent Al Qaida-related terror alert was an attempt by the Obama Administration to distract from the Snowden/NSA story. It turned out, of course, that the alert originated with Interpol, so his tweet was once again totally off-base, yet as with the fairy tale of an NSA-inspired raid on the woman's house, it does not appear that Greenwald has issued any kind of apology or retraction.
Sadly, however, despite all of the evidence of Greenwaldian playing fast and loose with the facts, the Greenwaldian myths persist -- indeed, the number and nature of diaries on these issues suggests the false memes are spreading. Given the number of overwrought, hyperventilating, "truthy" NSA diaries that have flooded DK lately, the following appears to be a wise plan:
So yes, I plan to continue my work on the NSA beat. Maybe not every day but as new information — or new misinformation — comes to light I will do my best to examine and debunk any claims that don’t hold up. As for the latter, the misinformation sadly doesn’t appear to be letting up any time soon.
The moral? Any claim from the mouth or under the byline of Glenn Greenwald should be met with extreme skepticism.