Reading Greenwald's columns are always depressing. Yet, read them, I do!

When wrapping up one of the courses this term, many students remarked that the contents of the course were more depressing than they would have preferred.  Good thing that I don't share any of Glenn Greenwald's columns with them then, eh!

In today's depressing edition, Greenwald points out how the lamestream mainstream media so readily acts as the government's mouthpiece.  It doesn't matter if it is a Republican or a Democrat in the White House, propaganda machines they mostly are.

As usual, American journalists are the leading proponents not of transparency but of secrecy, not of  accountability but of covert decision-making in the dark, not of the rule of law but the rule of political leaders. As Cohen’s Washington Post namesake put it: “it is often best to keep the lights off.” That, with some exceptions, is the motto not only of The Washington Post but of American establishment journalism generally. That’s what NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen meant when he said that the reason we got WikiLeaks is because “the watchdog press died.” With some exceptions — some of this we have learned about from whistleblowers leaking to reporters, who then publish it – the American media does not merely fail to fulfill its ostensible function of bringing transparency to government; far beyond that, it takes the lead in justifying and protecting extreme government secrecy. Watching a New York Times columnist stand up and cheer for multiple covert, legally dubious wars and an underground foreign policy highlights that as well as anything one can recall.

It is doubly disappointing that all the hide-and-seek is being played by Obama the President.