Thread by @interfluidity

i am very torn about this stuff, but the issue i don't think @ggreenwald addresses is that leaks themselves constitute a form of selective editing, and an "in the public interest standard" has to consider that, even regarding authentic material. 1/ greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-j…

if (not saying this is the case here and now, but if) one political faction is much more capable of unearthing competitors' private materials than others, when is it in the public interest to cover even the authentic material released? 2/

records of private, "candid" conversations will include things that would be discreditable in a public context, even when actions ultimately taken may be innocent. 3/

that ought to be the case. good humans, in order to act with intelligence, consider bad actions that they wisely choose not to perform. such deliberations made public can be scandalous. 4/

if one faction is capable of deliberating securely in private, while others may not, that disadvantages other factions in ways contrary to democratic accountability and the public interest. journalists legitimately don't want to be accomplices to that. 5/

none of this exonerates anyone. it just creates a world of hard-to-adjudicate tradeoffs. 6/

obviously, some scandalous revelations are of such strong public interest, they'd clearly outweigh accomplice to politically-motivated-selective-editing concerns. some revelations that would be newsworthy if discovered differently would not outweigh those concerns. 7/

given such blurry lines, @ggreenwald is very right to worry that the politics of press and tech gatekeepers puts its own thumb on the scale, shrouding its own politically-motivated selective editing behind accusations of the same by others. 8/

but i don't think the line is as bright as he thinks. it's hard to say what's "fair" or "professional" when editorial choices have electoral ramifications and the contours of what gets revealed to become fodder for such editorial choices is itself gamed by partisans. 9/

p.s. i don't know, am explicitly not weighing in, on whether news+social media orgs have made good choices with respect to the apparent Hunter Biden leaks. with @ggreenwald, i've found the noncoverage chilling. but the alternative is bad too, and not just on partisan grounds.