On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 5:49 PM, Michael C. Toren <mct@toren.net> wrote:
On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 11:58:22AM -0700, Rich Jones wrote:
> At one point Ewen MacAskill brings up the idea of there being a
> Wikileaks-esque document explorer, and Ed says that this would be the
> best outcome for the documents, and Greenwald quickly dismisses the idea
> to talk about his publishing schedule.

I wasn't watching the scene with the intention of being able to recall it
fully afterwards, but I remember it rather differently.  I recall Ed saying
releasing all of the documents Wikileaks-style would an ideal outcome, but
because it included information that should be legitimately redacted, he
instead wanted to filter the material through journalists who would make
that judgement call.  Also, Greenwald said he was under a deadline, and I
think you'll agree it was in everyone's best interests to start to get the
information out as quickly as possible.

But, I could be misremembering.

That's my memory as well. I also don't remember any cognitive dissonance between Poitras' and Greenwald's answers to Snowden's question about how much background to go into. The film doesn't portray a lot of daylight between Snowden and Greenwald in what they want to do, really.

But that's what you should expect from the movie, I think, given a) how close Poitras and Greenwald are, and b) that the movie is clearly meant to tell Snowden's story and show his motives and impact, not amplify any drama between the people involved. 

The movie didn't cover, for example, Greenwald misleading the entire world on why David Miranda was detained at the Heathrow airport. Greenwald initially insisted it was simply the gov't applying pressure on Greenwald by harassing his family, lambasting the government as cruel despots, and didn't say anything about Miranda carrying an encrypted hard drive. You can still criticize the government for detaining him how they did, but lying about the reasons, to get an edge on defining how the news cycle talks about it -- that corrodes trust.

But, you know, that's fine, that's for others to tell. CITIZENFOUR is about Snowden's decisions, not Greenwald's decisions, and it does a great job at communicating and humanizing them.

-- Eric


-mct



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