Why The NYT Should Finally Fire Tom Friedman

August 14, 2013

Tom Friedman for the NYT on August 14: Obama, Snowden and Putin

Considering the breadth of reforms that President Obama is now proposing to prevent privacy abuses in intelligence gathering, in the wake of Snowden’s disclosures, Snowden deserves a chance to make a second impression — that he truly is a whistle-blower, not a traitor. […] To make a second impression, Snowden would need to come home, make his case and face his accusers.

Charlie Savage for the NYT on August 9: President Moves to Ease Worries on Surveillance

Mr. Obama showed no inclination to curtail secret surveillance efforts. Rather, he conceded only a need for greater openness and safeguards to make the public “comfortable” with them.

Editorial for the NYT on August 10: A Weak Agenda on Spying Reform

President Obama, who seems to think the American people simply need some reassurance that their privacy rights are intact, proposed a series of measures on Friday that only tinker around the edges of the nation’s abusive surveillance programs.

Peter Maass for the NYT on August 13: Q. & A.: Edward Snowden Speaks to Peter Maass

Edward Snowden: After 9/11, many of the most important news outlets in America abdicated their role as a check to power — the journalistic responsibility to challenge the excesses of government — for fear of being seen as unpatriotic and punished in the market during a period of heightened nationalism. From a business perspective, this was the obvious strategy, but what benefited the institutions ended up costing the public dearly. The major outlets are still only beginning to recover from this cold period.

Tho Friedman obviously does not read the newspaper he is opining for. If the NYT wants to "recover", it should fire him.

Posted by b on August 14, 2013 at 10:58 UTC | Permalink

Comments

It’s a Christian trope, I think (and I am aware that Friedman is not Christian, but Jewish): to prove his patriotism, loyalty, good faith, honour, honesty or whatever, Snowden should come home and submit to martyrdom at the hands of the rulers, however obviously unjust and tyrannical they may be. Each will receive true justice only at the hands of heaven, after they shuffle off this mortal coil. And only thus can Snowden’s virtue visibly triumph and be vindicated of the slur of disloyalty. And all this is opportunistic garbage on Friedman’s part.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 14 2013 12:30 utc | 1

Obama gotta love Friedman, although I dont know who is the dumbest and most naive, Obama or Friedman?

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 14 2013 12:38 utc | 2

‘Snowden would need to come home, make his case and face his accusers’
Whoa Tom, Snowdon already has made his case, that Barry and co (both democrat and republican)are intrusive sacks of shit and his ‘accusers’ are in fact those democrats and republicans who created the problems. Which is why he he took off.

Posted by: heath | Aug 14 2013 12:57 utc | 3

Central to Snowden’s position is the argument, sustained by copious and unrefuted proofs, that there is nothing close to justice in the United States.
His revelations put an end to any doubt that the US government has torn up the United States Constitution and is using the Bill of Rights as toilet paper.
Then there are exhibits one and two: the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp and the trials of Bradley Manning and Jose Padilla.
It is notorious, and the Supreme Court is graphic proof, that the US Justice system, never very robust, is now functioning, in exactly the same way that the FISCourt has done, as a rubber stamp for the regime.
And Snowden by showing that the illegal surveillance system has been used, illegally, to facilitate prosecution of the political enemies of the State, has completed the discrediting of the Justice system.
Only a fool would trust the courts to deliver justice. One such fool, a former guard at Guantanamo who had first hand evidence of the murder of three detainees, said to have committed suicide, is still waiting, after five years for a proper response to his call for a DOJ review of his eyewitness testimony.
Calls for Snowden to return and face “justice” are a particularly shallow form of demagoguery, regularly exemplified by the idiotic Friedmann in the NYTimes. And echoed by prostitutes in newsrooms everywhere.

Posted by: bevin | Aug 14 2013 13:32 utc | 4

Not going to happen. As a loyal servant of empire, Friedman has reached Too Big To Fail status.

Posted by: Colin Brace | Aug 14 2013 17:51 utc | 5

Tom is the terminally self-absorbed 20th Century Goebbels understudy whose wholesale post 911 pro-war, anti-Iraq crap, imported and echoed ad nauseum in what had been my favourite newspaper for several decades, caused me to cancel my subscription. Luckily, that wasn’t the only blunder they made and it’s finally in its death throes, is circling the drain, and should be gone within the next 2 years.
Anyway, his vapid Snowden spin is slithering perilously close to his “Moral Equivalence” meme which he aimed at everyone who thought about objecting to America destroying an entire country on the pretext of imposing Yankee Justice on a single individual (Saddam).
I consider everyone who sold Friedman et al’s USraeli Iraq War ‘moral equivalence’ bullshit to the public to be an unconvicted war criminal – including the owners and editors of the aforementioned newspaper and Friedman himself.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Aug 14 2013 20:09 utc | 6

Here’s a great take down of the Mustache of Wisdom… Tom Friedman: No Sixth Amendment For You

Posted by: CTuttle | Aug 14 2013 23:37 utc | 7

When the history of these times are written, the career of Tom “Suck on This” Friedman will be a particularly embarrassing footnote.
He has the key qualification for being a top American intellectual: he lacks intelligence.
A wealthy ignoramus. Truly despicable.

Posted by: guest77 | Aug 15 2013 1:19 utc | 8

May his cicadas chirp from the ground

Posted by: bob | Aug 17 2013 12:08 utc | 9

Friedman’s opinion shows what the people inside the Beltway are thinking. But the NYT’s opinion starts to diverge from that Beltway opinion. It’s going to be interesting to see in which direction the discussion will go.

Posted by: Willy2 | Aug 25 2013 22:37 utc | 10

Back to Main