At Freedom of the Press Foundation, Trevor Timm factchecks an absurd column by Gordon Crovitz which praised the 'aiding the enemy' charge against Bradley Manning and insisted WikiLeaks be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.

  • fuzzyfuzzyfungus

    Wow, Crovitz, could you make it any more obvious that you (for reasons wholly unexplained) think that being employed by a newspaper magically gives everything you do a morally superior status, one that no mere mortal could aspire to, however journalist-like their behavior may be?

    “Journalism” is something you do, not who signs your paycheck (if anything, the guy signing your paycheck is generally guilty until proven innocent of inhibiting your practice of journalism, not that the newspaper who kept Judith Miller on staff and buried the NSA spying story for over a year would know anything about that…)

  • http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai

    Wow that is a pretty fantastic retort to Crovitz’s piece; it seems pretty clear that he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.  The WSJ should be embarrassed to have printed that, but then, it IS the WSJ.

    • http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo

      How about the irony of such bunk being published in the same paper that broke the Watergate scandal?

      • http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai

        I think you are confusing the WSJ with the Washington Post?

        • http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo

          Oh yeah, of course…

          /slaps forehead

  • Jonathan Roberts

    Seeing as the enemy in this case is ‘terror’, I’m sure a similarly loose definition of ‘aiding the enemy’ could put much of the military leadership behind bars.

    • fuzzyfuzzyfungus

      You don’t need a particularly loose definition: Any cooperation with the ISI is virtually a toss-up as to whether you’ll be aiding our frenemies in Pakistan or our enemies in Pakistan; and a lot of the old-school jihad guys(if they are still alive at this point) date back to when the CIA was stirring the place up to give the Commies a quagmire to fall into…
      You’ve also got our delightful little sectarian torture squads, set up by an expert with some quality Latin American experience under his belt, and our, um, ‘rigorous’ asset tracking that definitely didn’t end up financing anybody unsavory.

  • Boundegar

    That last paragraph was really interesting.   It seems “enemies of the state” are not journalists, and therefore not covered by the First Amendment.  Just like people killed by drones are, by definition, enemies, I suppose.

  • Cowicide

    Gordon Crovitz seems to support hiding war crimes and corruption.

    Maybe it’s Gordon Crovitz that should be charged with treason?