I'm sorry, but I'm not buying. Legally, he may be correct, but ethically??
However reprehensible Joe Klein's thoughts and statements were and are (they're certainly not polite), he still has a right to them. He still has a right to keep them private, if he so chooses. He still has a right to even a basic understanding of privacy. Is Glenn Greenwald really going to act as sole artiber, sole judge and jury to determine what should and shouldn't be held private? Apparently he is.
And in the end, no matter what Greenwald says Joe Klein wasn't discussing or setting Policy, which we as a collective group of citizenry have a right to know. One Journalists personal opinions about another? Is there really a "public interest" in knowing this? Especially when the Journalist being insulted is the apparently has sole determination of what the "public interest" apparently is?
This is no different that me and a bunch of friends getting together, and Glenn Greenwald or someone else reaching into the middle of that conversation with a tape recorder (secretly) and collecting our private thoughts and insights, then publishing them because he thought they were in the public interest. Sorry, this is the act of a scumbag. This is why I don't trust Greenwald, I don't trust his acolytes online, and look with building suspicion with those who solicit his opinions. I'm talking about you, Bill Moyers.
Klein's complaint that "twice in the past month, [his] private communications have been splashed about the internet" is revealing. The first incident was when he went to a beach party, spat a slew of insults (I'm not only a "civil liberties absolutist" but also "evil") in front of a group of people, all while speaking with an individual he didn't know but who happened to be a prolific and excellent blog commenter, sometimes blogger and I.F. Stone's granddaughter. She then wrote about what he said in a very widely-linked post. That's who Klein, in yesterday's post, bizarrely called a "rather pathetic woman acolyte of Greenwald's."
The second incident happened yesterday. Klein belongs to "Journolist," a secret online club where several hundred liberal journalists, pundits, bloggers, editors, policy experts and the like gather to discuss various matters, all organized by The Washington Post's Ezra Klein. It includes some of the most influential people in the profession. I'm not a member and never have been. Yesterday morning, one of the participants (whose identity I don't know) emailed me to advise me that Joe Klein was sending out extremely insulting and derogatory emails to the entire group about me, and forwarded that email discussion to me, telling me he thought it was wrong that I was being repeatedly attacked by Klein in front of hundreds of people -- including many people who are my colleagues and peers -- without my knowledge and without being able to defend myself. He told me I could do whatever I thought was best with what he sent. I then posted some of those emails on a site I use to post documents, and briefly mentioned it on Twitter. That -- a political rant in front of strangers on a beach and an insult fest sent to hundreds of journalists -- are the ostensibly "private communications" to which Klein is referring.
I don't think there's anything wrong at all with journalists emailing one other to discuss various political issues as they do on Journolist. Journalists, like everyone else, are entitled to have private conversations, and privacy can facilitate more candid discussions. But when hundreds of highly influential opinion-makers gather to talk about politics, that is a matter of public interest. If participants in that discussion agree to keep the discussions confidential, they should abide by that. But the rest of the world isn't bound to honor that secrecy. That's what journalism and leaks are about: disclosing and publishing other people's secrets that are a matter of public interest. That's what journalists do all the time, or at least should do: inform the public what powerful people are saying and doing in "private." Unless you're Tim Russert, you don't need "permission" or "authorization" to publish what you learn. Beyond that, the very idea that someone has the right to attack and insult someone who isn't present in front of hundreds of people -- and then demand that the entire world, including the target of the attacks, honor that discussion as secret and private, that the target has no right to publicize it or respond -- is ludicrous beyond words.
