Sullivan vs Sullivan
by digby
Here’s just a small amusing observation about the brouhaha over Margaret Sullivan’s allegedly outrageous decision to criticize the sneering Michael Kinsley when people much better than her don’t believe it’s her place to do so. Yesterday Andrew Sullivan took to his blog to issue a scathing set-down of the New York Times ombudsman. Here is a piece of it, discussing the roles of the press being in conflict:
And that these are necessarily sometimes in conflict. But Kinsley is also pretty emphatic about what the press should do: “the process of decision-making — whatever it turns out to be — should openly tilt in favor of publication with minimal delay.” How can anyone read that review and conclude as Sullivan does that
Mr. Kinsley’s central argument ignores important tenets of American governance. There clearly is a special role for the press in America’s democracy; the Founders explicitly intended the press to be a crucial check on the power of the federal government, and the United States courts have consistently backed up that role. It’s wrong to deny that role, and editors should not have allowed such a denial to stand.
Seriously: can she read? Yes, Mike has a low view of journalism. But so low it’s unprintable? So low that the editors should have refused to allow him to express his opinion? Pious piffle.
The reason it’s amusing is because Andrew Sullivan says “Seriously: can she read?” when he is the one who has misread Kinsley’s passage. Kinsley does not say that “the process of decision-making — whatever it turns out to be — should openly tilt in favor of publication with minimal delay” is what the press should do — he says that’s what the government should do.
Here’s the full passage from Kinsley:
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.
Kinsley is clearly saying that the government should decide what the people should know and then should allow that information to be published with minimal delay:
“The private companies that own newspapers should not have the final say over the release of government secrets that decision must ultimately be made by the government”… “and so the process of the decision-making — whatever it turns out to be — should openly tilt in favor of publication with minimal delay.”
There is nothing whatsoever in that passage to indicate the press has even the slightest agency in this.
This is really about whether or not you think the role of the press is to be adversarial toward power and whether or not you think the government’s powers should ever be restrained by the power of the press. It seems to me that we decided that a long time ago. We have allowed our government to operate much of the time in secret. They can classify mountains of information as being Top Secret and those who leak them are subject to incarceration. But we have also created a free press without any government power of prior restraint. What that says to me is that the design is purposefully adversarial, based in some ways on the legal system, in which “the truth” is believed to emerge from the two sides fighting it out and subjecting evidence to scrutiny by the court of public opinion. It’s like democracy — a really lousy system but better than the alternatives.
To say that the government should have all the power in this situation is the same as saying that prosecutors should have the final say in a murder trial. We don’t “trust” the government to always make the right decision in that case. Why would we trust it to do so in these national security cases? There has to be a test, at least once in a while to make sure they are doing what they say they are doing. And the way they rig the system with classification and oaths of secrecy in the “oversight” process makes the press the last resort to provide that test.
Update: Kinsley replied to Margaret Sullivan in an attempt to put her right in her place. But he certainly doesn’t succeed with this bizarre explanation:
I guess I wasn’t clear (though I don’t know how I could have been clearer). The government sometimes has legitimate reasons for needing secrecy but “will usually be overprotective” so the process of decision “should openly tilt in favor of publication with minimal delay.” Does that sound like I’m saying that news organizations “should simply defer”? Do the people on the other side of this argument believe that the government never has a legitimate need for secrecy? (Standard example: the time and location of the D-Day invasion.) Or do they believe, as I do and as I say, that occasionally the government is right to want secrecy and in those instances it should not “simply defer” to the press? And if so, how should it go about exercising that right?
Ooookay. If that’s what he “meant” I guess that’s what he meant. But what he wrote was obviously something completely different.
Update II: This piece by Jack Goldsmith ties up what I wrote up above.
Oh, and he “misinterpreted” Kinsley too.
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