Advice to Journalists

My opinion of Barry Eisler after reading his blog a few times is that he's a bit full of himself.  I've read a few of his books that I really, really liked (first and favorite:  Inside Out), and tried to read some others that I just couldn't get into as far as chapter two.

But here in this post, he offers some good advice to journalists who are "on their way up."  The advice is how to arm yourself and recognize if you are being suborned to cover for the very people you are supposed to be reviewing objectively. 

Too late for Josh Marshall (as Eisler points out), and I think also Juan Cole.  Those are two who, back in the days of the lead up to and the prosecution of the Iraq War, I read on a daily basis.  Around the time of Barack Obama's ascendance to the throne, however, they both started sounding more and more like administration cheerleaders, rather than exposers and objective reporters.  Marshall has come back around a bit, but I still only rarely read him.  Not that either one of them misses me.  But, if your interest is the truth, these guys are now suspect.  Probably they had a point where they compromised or rationalized their actions the first time, and then it got easier.  As Eisler says, it gets "easier over time, just as impurities are harder to notice when added to water that's already turbid."

Certainly that's true of regular everyday life.  I can witness that fact in my own. 

So, journalists and would-be journalists might do well to read that Eisler post.  Unfortunately, none of them are reading this one, so hopefully they've found it on their own. Maybe through following Glenn Greenwald, someone I can't imagine having any trouble at all staying true and principled, eyes wide open.  Perhaps it's easier if you leave the country.