But this is nearly always because he’s hit the nail directly on the head. Today, in a piece titled “The military/media attacks on the Hastings article,” Greenwald dissects the curious antipathy of mainstream journalists towards a reporter, Michael Hastings, who actually does his job. The job in question is, of course, to hold those in power accountable for their actions and to question their often vague and opaque descriptions of what are often very disturbing actions taken in the name of “national security” or some other (similarly Orwellian) newspeak.

One of my favorite parts of Greenwald’s piece is this passage he borrowed from The Atlantic, which quoted Hastings as follows:

Look, I went into journalism to do journalism, not advertising. My views are critical but that shouldn’t be mistaken for hostile – I’m just not a stenographer. There is a body of work that shows how I view these issues but that was hard-earned through experience, not something I learned going to a cocktail party on…K Street. That’s what reporters are supposed to do, report the story.

Strange, isn’t it, that this type of journalism is considered suspect by many prominent reporters? And by strange, I mean very scary.