Have We Lost Our Freedom?

For John, BLUF:  We think about free speech in terms of the Government taking it away from us, and while that is important, there is also our fellow citizens, in more informal ways, banding together to deny us our free speech, which seems to be happening today.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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The media Stasi:  Glenn Greenwald slams culture of 'junior high hall-monitor tattling' among prominent 'woke' journalists that is like East German 'citizen surveillance'

Here is the sub-headline:

• The journalist shared his thoughts on what he calls 'authoritarian "reporting"'
• Greenwald points to New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz who falsely accused a tech investor of using the r-word during an online chat she was monitoring
• 'They have insufficient talent or skill, and even less desire, to take on real power centers...so settle on this penny-ante, trivial bulls***,' he writes
• Greenwald also namechecked CNN's Brian Stelter, Oliver Darcy, NBC's Ben Collins, Brandy Zadrozny and NYT's Mike Isaac, Kevin Roose, Sheera Frenkel

From The Daily Mail, by Reporter Lauren Fruen, 8 February 2021, 11:39 EST.

Here is the lede plus five:

Glenn Greenwald has slammed what he calls the 'junior high hall-monitor tattling' among the 'woke' media, dubbing it 'Stasi-like citizen surveillance'.

The journalist, part of a team that won a Pulitzer for reports about government surveillance programs based on leaks by Edward Snowden, shared his thoughts on what he calls 'authoritarian "reporting"' on Substack Sunday.

In it Greenwald points to New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz, who falsely accused a tech investor of using the word 'retarded' during an online chat she was monitoring.

Greenwald also namechecks CNN's Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy, NBC's Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny and the Times' Mike Isaac, Kevin Roose and Sheera Frenkel, calling them 'hall-monitor reporters'.

He writes:  'A new and rapidly growing journalistic “beat” has arisen over the last several years that can best be described as an unholy mix of junior high hall-monitor tattling and Stasi-like citizen surveillance.

'They have insufficient talent or skill, and even less desire, to take on real power centers...so settle on this penny-ante, trivial bulls*** — tattling, hall monitoring, speech policing.'

And it goes on, at the link.

For those who don't reverberate with the term Stasi, it was the dreaded East German Secret Police, who monitored everything and everyone and worked to get lover to spy on love and children on parents.  Worse than the tattling on those seen on video walking through the Nation's Capitol on 6 January 2021.  Before computers, many, many file cabinets of "3x5" index cards (probably A7 size index card, it being Europe) and larger size papers and photographs.  The reunified German Government has engaged in a major effort to reclaim and open up the Stasi files.

A serious question is, is anyone playing Stasi in the United States.  There is the Press, of course. Then there are the revelations about spying♠ on Citizen Carter Page, which does not give me confidence.

Hat tip to my Wife.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Former FBI Director James Comey objects to calling it spying, but that is what it is, his sensitivities notwithstanding.