The Editors of the Los Angeles Times Think that It Is a Good Idea to Prosecute American Whistleblowers Like Edward Snowden — Talk about Sheep Worthy of Totalitarian Takeover

© 2015 Peter Free

 

09 June 2015

 

 

Why have confidence in the LA Times, when the paper itself does not care about journalism’s core mission?

 

The editors of the California newspaper said this:

 

 

[T]here are serious arguments against a pardon [of Edward Snowden]. One is that, in a society of laws, someone who engages in civil disobedience in a higher cause should be prepared to accept the consequences.

 

A stronger objection, in our view, is that Snowden didn't limit his disclosures to information about violations of Americans' privacy. He divulged other sensitive information about traditional foreign intelligence activities, including a document showing that the NSA had intercepted the communications of then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during a Group of 20 summit in London in 2009.

 

A government contractor who discloses details of U.S. spying on another country is not most Americans' idea of a whistleblower.

 

A pardon for Snowden now would be premature. But if he were to return to this country to face the charges against him, the fact that he revealed the existence of a program that has now been repudiated by all three branches of government would constitute a strong argument for leniency. Snowden should come home and make that case.

 

© 2015 Times Editorial Board, Snowden deserves credit for NSA reform -- and to stand trial, Los Angeles Times (04 June 2015) (paragraphs split)

 

In other words, if someone exposes totalitarian practices to the people being unwittingly oppressed, he and she should give themselves up to the enslaving statutes written by those same authoritarians.

 

The logic of the LA Times’ view is brain dead, especially so from a purportedly journalistic entity supposedly committed to providing the public with transparency regarding government.

 

 

Put the Times’ nonsense into comparative perspective

 

If Mr. Snowden had been Chinese — and had exposed the PRC’s authoritarian practices — would the Times be calling for him to submit to the subjugating laws created by those same Chinese authorities?

 

Of course not:

 

 

[A]nyone who has even casually watched the post-9/11 American judicial system knows what an absurdity it is to claim that Snowden would receive a fair trial.

 

He’s barred under the Espionage Act even from arguing that his leaks were justified; he wouldn’t be permitted to utter a word about that.

 

The American judiciary has been almost uniformly subservient to the U.S. government in national security prosecutions. And the series of laws that has been enacted in the name of terrorism almost guarantee conviction in such cases.

 

© 2015 Glenn Greenwald, Media Lessons from Edward Snowden Reporting: LA Times Editors Advocate Prosecution of Sources, The Intercept (07 June 2015) (paragraph split)

 

In the Times’ simplistic black and white mind, China is innately bad and the US is inherently good.

 

Having lost the sense of competing graynesses necessary to seeking and seeing Truth, the California newspaper’s editors are hopelessly lost in a witlessly self-righteous sea of their own making.

 

Particularly galling is the fact that these people are sitting in judgment of someone who courageously sacrificed himself to Liberty’s cause, while they sit comfortably home helping to tear it down.

 

 

 

The moral? — With goose-stepping nitwits like these in charge, the LA Times is not doing exposing and source-protecting journalism in the American tradition

 

The Los Angeles Times (instead) has voluntarily become an organ of oppressive government. We may as well call it American Pravda (“truth”) after the ironically named newspaper of the Russian Communist Party.