Author Name: Fairness and Accuracy in Media.
This story was originally published on FAIR.org[1]

By Assuming Snowden’s Guilt, NYT Indicts Itself—and Journalism
Date: 2016-11-01 20:42:15+00:00
By ['Jim Naureckas']


On the home page of the New York Times, the lead story (10/5/16) bore the headline: “Contractor for NSA Charged in Possible New Theft of Secrets.” Describing the arrest of Harold T. Martin III, a contractor for the National Security Agency accused of taking classified documents, the home page teaser reported, “The arrest raises the embarrassing prospect that for the second time in three years, a contractor managed to steal secrets.”

The main story’s headline continued the same emphasis: “NSA Contractor Arrested in Possible New Theft of Secrets.” The second paragraph stated:

The arrest raises the embarrassing prospect that for the second time in three years, a contractor for the consulting company Booz Allen Hamilton managed to steal highly damaging secret information while working for the NSA. In 2013, Edward J. Snowden, who was also a Booz Allen contractor, took a vast trove of documents from the agency that were later passed to journalists, exposing surveillance programs in the United States and abroad.

The article went on to say, “The information believed to have been stolen by Mr. Martin appears to be different in nature from Mr. Snowden’s theft, which included documents that described the depth and breadth of the NSA’s surveillance.”

The problem with all this talk about the “theft” and “stealing” of secrets was that while Snowden, one of the most prominent whistleblowers of the modern era, has indeed been charged by the federal government with theft—along with two violations of the Espionage Act—he has been convicted of no crime. Were he to stand trial, he would no doubt try to offer a public interest defense of his actions—as the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has urged that he be allowed to do—saying that the need to expose government wrongdoing overrode the law against unauthorized release of government documents.

The Times may believe that such a defense would be unsuccessful—and no doubt many legal experts would agree with that assessment. Still, it’s unusual for journalists to take upon themselves the role of judge and jury by declaring the guilt of someone accused of a crime; that’s why the word “alleged” shows up so often in crime stories.

Such a presumption is particularly problematic in this case, because the same section of the legal code that is used to charge Snowden with theft of “any record, voucher, money or thing of value” also criminalizes “whoever receives, conceals or retains the same with intent to convert it to his use or gain, knowing it to have been embezzled, stolen, purloined or converted.” There is no explicit exception for journalists there, any more than there’s a spelled-out exception for whistleblowers.

If we’re going to call Snowden’s documents “stolen,” then journalists frequently receive “stolen” records from sources and use them as the basis for stories—as the Times itself has done with documents released by Snowden. If Snowden is a thief, then the New York Times is a fence.

One shouldn’t have to point out to journalists that this interpretation of the law is fundamentally incompatible with the First Amendment and, ultimately, with democracy: When exposing evidence of government crimes is a crime, there is no check on the power of the state.

Sidebar: Treat Police Statements as Claims, Not Proof

“One of the major problems with reporting on police violence is the degree to which police statements are treated as the gold standard of information instead of being treated with the skepticism they deserve…. There’s the ‘fog of war’ that happens in these situations, as well as deliberate deception. We’ve seen over the course of our focus on these issues that police do lie, they do create evidence to match a narrative that exonerates them. There is no reason to assume that’s definitely not happening, which is why you treat police statements as claims rather than as proof.—Jim Naureckas (in AlterNet, 9/22/16)

[1] Url: https://fair.org/home/by-assuming-snowdens-guilt-nyt-indicts-itself-and-journalism/
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