on the subject of trust…

[via Poorman].

Glenn Greenwald comments on the tumbleweeds surrounding the latest American propaganda effort:

It has now been more than ten days since the New York Times exposed the Pentagon’s domestic propaganda program involving retired generals and, still, not a single major news network has even mentioned the story to their viewers, let alone responded to the numerous questions surrounding their own behavior. This steadfast blackout occurs despite the fact that the Pentagon propaganda program almost certainly violates numerous federal laws; both Democratic presidential candidates sternly denounced the Pentagon’s conduct; and Congressional inquiries are already underway, all of which forced the Pentagon to announce that it suspended its program…

After I wrote about Williams’ blog item yesterday, his blog was deluged with commenters angrily demanding to know why he has failed to address the NYT expose. In response, Williams wrote a new blog item last night in which he purports — finally — to respond to the story…

But [Williams's military analysts Wayne Downing and Barry McCaffrey] in particular had all kinds of ties to the Government, the defense industry, and ideological groups which gave them vested interests in vigorous pro-war advocacy — ties which NBC News knew about and failed to disclose, all while presenting these individuals to their millions of viewers as “independent.” Is there anyone who thinks that behavior is anything other than deeply corrupt?

Well, my mandate for this awful blog is to be as contrarian as I can be without damaging my integrity to the point of vomiting out my ears. So, in answer to your question: YES, Glenn Greenwald! Me!!! I’ll give Brian the benefit of the doubt. Maybe in the journalism “biz” they are really friendly people who have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy towards what their analysts do outside the studio. It just isn’t fair to prejudge a person because of their shady ties to people in power, where they get their paycheck, etc. The argument stands on its own in the marketplace of ideas! Let freedom ring, etc.

So suppose that the above (crappy) argument absolved Williams of charges of corruption. Even so, what’s puzzling are the senses of trust that people develop, and the kind of trust that they emphasize. In Williams’ reply to the ongoing mess, he emphasizes that the generals were patriots; good friends; brave warriors; and that sort of thing. This is what I mean by expressive trust. They’re allowed a place at the table; whatever they have to say is surely appropriate to the conversation. These are the kinds of happy adjectives that a truly critical analyst of printed media will highlight with a black marker. Unless, of course, we’re having a serious (heh) conversation about patriotism.

There are other adjectives, of course, that indicate something more like instrumental trust — critical, independent, honest brokers, analysts, journalists. These are expressions that tell us, not just that the people at the table deserve to be active nodes in the communicative network, but also that the transmissions they provide in context will be relevant to that context. You kind of expect that the grounds for instrumental trust will be indexed to direct allegations about their, oh, financial connections, or political views — in other words, that they’d live up to their job descriptions as critical, independent analyst-journalists that are honest brokers.

Thanks for coming out, MSNBC.

…oh well. At least HBO is full of surprises. Maybe next season they’ll greenlight a TV show about news anchors whose brains haven‘t been replaced with pixie dust.