Deaf to eavesdropping

CJR's Laura Rozen writes Hung Out to Dry, an excellent recap of how wiretapping and black sites have endured public exposure.

I particularly like this bit (emphasis mine):

“I have found that the stories which most anger and haunt journalists are not necessarily the ones with the most violence,” says Bruce Shapiro, the executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma. “They are the stories in which we felt our intervention to have accomplished nothing. What’s really striking with the Risen story [exposing NSA wiretapping] is precisely that sense of powerlessness: they committed this great act of journalism, and broke a story of a violation of federal law that raises fundamental questions about abuses of power in our society. And then the great institutions of society don’t respond, but instead turn around and say, ‘F-ck you.’ That is a huge invalidation of all the work, and further betrayal of our sense as journalists of what’s right.”

Read the whole thing.