3/11: Catch Lorene Mills' Interview with Glenn Greenwald on Wikileaks and More

“REPORT FROM SANTA FE” -- AIRING on KNME, Ch. 5.1
FRIDAY, March 11, at 10:30 PM
Hosted by LORENE MILLS
See Below for Airings on Other PBS Stations/Radio

Glenn Greenwald, Lorene Mills

Highly recommended: This week's guest on “Report from Santa Fe” is award-winning columnist and civil rights activist, Glenn Greenwald -- one of my favorite online writers and reporters. His column on Salon.com blends legal analysis and investigative reporting about privacy and civil-rights issues often ignored by the mainstream media. Greenwald is a former constitutional and civil-rights attorney and is the author of <em>How Would a Patriot Act? and Great American Hypocrites. He is a frequent guest on television news shows and writes for the New York Times, the LA Times, and the American Conservative.

In this compelling interview with host Lorene Mills, Greenwald talks about WikiLeaks and the fate of Private Bradley Manning. They discuss famous whistleblowers such as Daniel Ellsberg, Karen Silkwood, Frank Serpico and Erin Brockovich, all of whom were motivated by “discovery of corrupt things and a belief that the people who are engaged in the corruption need to be exposed” which could then bring about much-needed reforms.

New media and new journalism are explored by Greenwald, especially in terms of the exciting developments in Egypt and the Middle East.

“A lot of times people get pessimistic about the prospects for political change, but the Middle East and the growing technology shows that even when it seems like it's very difficult, because the political forces are so great, citizens banding together in common cause can always find ways to bring about real political change,” Greenwald says.

Studiously non-partisan, Greenwald believes that, “because our politics are so dichotomized between Republicans and Democrats, or left versus right, and people have to choose which side they are on, they don’t end up actually assessing issues on an issue by issue basis. They know which side they are on and they automatically take the position that helps their side and hurts the other side.”

The problem with that, adds Greenwald, is that aside from the fact it leads to somewhat irrational political discourse, "It becomes more like a football game where you cheer for your favorite side and root against the other one as opposed to being a rational citizen engaged in the process of understanding and analyzing issues and seeing where you come down on a position, regardless of what impact it has.” Greenwald believes this divides people who actually have very common interests and, because of that, Greenwald strives to remain steadfastly independent in his analyses.

“The prime responsibility (of journalists) is to hold people in power accountable, whether they are Democrats or Republicans or liberal or conservative. People in power who don’t have accountability will abuse the power and act corruptly,” Greenwald said.

REPORT FROM SANTA FE will air this week on all three PBS stations across New Mexico:

• KNME-TV/Channel 5.1 - PBS Santa Fe/Albuquerque – Northern & Central New Mexico, Friday night, 10:30 PM (there is no Sunday repeat this week)
• KENW/Channel 3 – Portales – Eastern New Mexico, Saturday afternoon, 6:00 PM
• KRWG/Channel 22 - Las Cruces – Southern New Mexico, Sunday morning, 7:00 AM
• Albuquerque radio station KANW-FM, 89.1, at 9:30 AM on Monday