The dual revelations, in rapid succession, also suggested that someone with access to high-level intelligence secrets had decided to unveil them in the midst of furor over leak investigations. Both were reported by The Guardian, while The Post, relying upon the same presentation, almost simultaneously reported the Internet company tapping. The Post said a disenchanted intelligence official provided it with the documents to expose government overreach.
— The New York Times, June 7, 2013, “US Says It Gathers Online Data Abroad”
By Joel Thurtell
This can’t be happening.
According to the Times, “someone” described by The Washington Post as “a disenchanted intelligence official” leaked to the media top-secret information about government surveillance of Internet communications.
Impossible!
Why, if we believe the media, all this hoopla about media surveillance has frightened government officials from leaking for fear they’ll be prosecuted.
It is what the media calls a “chilling effect.”
Now we’re told by the very propagators of the “chilling effect” concept that some intelligence official had the temerity to leak.
Brave fool he, or she.
Leaking in spite of the chilling effect!
These disenchanted officials need to stop this. Right now!
They are making liars of the media.
If people are still leaking to news reporters, what happened to the “chilling effect”?
Was it a lie put out by the media as part of a self-serving campaign to gain a constitutional right that doesn’t exist?
Protection of so-called confidential sources and the ability to refuse to testify in court cases are privileges long sought by the media as part of a campaign to enhance their ability to publish allegations without attribution.
And, yes, in some cases the allegations might be lies.
Lies that nobody can rebut because the liars — media — wouldn’t have to tell us who told them the lies.
That is what the so-called shield amounts to — protection against revealing who the media’s liars are.
Selling that elitist goal to the public requires that the media paint themselves as protectors of the public good. The public good requires there be government leakers who nobly come forward at personal risk to spill the beans. If those noble leakers stop leaking, so the media mythology holds, the public will suffer from not knowing about all the bad things the media have let us know the government is doing.
But if leakers keep leaking, as seems to be happening, then the “chilling effect” is revealed for what it is — a piece of propaganda manufactured by the media to push their agenda.
The Times wants it both ways — there is a “chilling effect” which is scaring leakers into their holes, except when they come out of their hideouts to leak to The Times.
