Greenwald: Beltway media types are ‘courtiers to power’

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2013/06/24/greenwald-beltway-media-types-are-courtiers-to-power/?hpid=z7

Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald yesterday clashed with “Meet the Press” host David Gregory, who’d asked Greenwald the following question: “To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?”

The elbow that came right back at Gregory was sharpened by the contempt that Greenwald harbors toward the media types that live and work around here. “I think it’s pretty extraordinary,” Greenwald said to Gregory, “that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies.”

When asked by the Erik Wemple Blog for his thoughts on how the rest of the media has greeted his stuff, Greenwald responded:

Media reaction to our scoops has been mixed. Many journalists have taken them very seriously, been quite supportive of the reporting I’ve been doing, and have with particular vigor defended our free press rights to report this.

But it is true that the Guardian generally, and me in particular, are outsiders, not members of the Beltway establishment media clique. I’ve purposely made myself an outsider by very aggressively and harshly criticizing not just the culture itself but the most prominent members of it, including David Gregory and Andrew Ross Sorkin, who this morning suggested on CNBC that I be arrested.*

Some of what is driving this hostility from some media figures is personal bitterness. Some of it is resentment over my having been able to break these big stories not despite, but because of, my deliberate breaching of the conventions that rule their world.

[font size="3"]But most of it is what I have long criticized them for most: they are far more servants to political power than adversarial watchdogs over it, and what provokes their rage most is not corruption on the part of those in power (they don’t care about that) but rather those who expose that corruption, especially when the ones bringing transparency are outside of, even hostile to, their incestuous media circles.[/font]

(more)