Glenn Greenwald
Air Dates: March 12, 2011
This video is not available at this time, we apologize for the inconvenience.
Glenn Greenwald is an award-winning columnist and civil rights activist. His column on Salon.com blends legal
analysis and investigative reporting about privacy and
civil-rights issues often ignored by the mainstream media.
Greenwald is a former constitutional and civil-rights
attorney and is the author of How Would a Patriot Act? and
Great American Hypocrites. He is a frequent guest on
television news shows and writes for the New York Times,
the LA Times, and the American Conservative.
In this compelling interview, Greenwald talks about
WikiLeaks and the fate of Private Bradley Manning. We
discuss famous whistleblowers such as Daniel Ellsberg,
Karen Silkwood, Frank Serpico, and Erin Brockovich, all of
whom were motivated by “discovery of corrupt things and a
belief that the people who are engaged in the corruption
need to be exposed” which could then bring about
much-needed reforms.
New media and new journalism are explored by Greenwald,
especially in terms of the exciting developments in Egypt
and the Middle East. “A lot of times people get
pessimistic about the prospects for political change, but
the Middle East and the growing technology shows that even
when it seems like it's very difficult, because the
political forces are so great, citizens banding together
in common cause can always find ways to bring about real
political change.”
Studiously non-partisan, Greenwald believes that “because
our politics are so dichotomized between Republicans and
Democrats, or left versus right, and people have to choose
which side they are on, they don’t end up actually
assessing issues on an issue by issue basis. They know
which side they are on and they automatically take the
position that helps their side and hurts the other side.”
The problem with that, adds Greenwald, is that aside from
the fact that it leads to somewhat irrational political
discourse, “it becomes more like a football game where you
cheer for your favorite side and root against the other
one as opposed to being a rational citizen engaged in the
process of understanding and analyzing issues and seeing
where you come down on a position, regardless of what
impact it has.” And this divides people who actually have
very common interests. Because of that, Greenwald strives
to remain steadfastly independent in his analyses.
QUOTE:
“The prime responsibility (of journalists) is to hold
people in power accountable, whether they are Democrats or Republicans or liberal or conservative. People in power
who don’t have accountability will abuse the power and act
corruptly.”