Rolling Stone writer blasts back at NYT’s Brooks’ column on McChrystal story

New York Times’ David Brooks thinks the job of a journalist is to protect the privileged and powerful.

Michael Hastings, writer of the Rolling Stone profile Gen. Stanley McChrystal, disagrees thinking reporting is a fact-based enterprise that often afflicts the comfortable.

By Michael Calderone

David Brooks occupies a lofty perch on the op-ed page of the New York Times, one that permits the columnist to get inside the corridors of Washington power. He’s got enough pull in the White House to reference President Obama as a senior background source.

Brooks wrote Friday about how “the most interesting part of my job is [getting] to observe powerful people at close quarters.” There, he’s heard some “off-the-record trash talk,” from senators to White House officials, he writes, while noting that such venting is part of life among Washington’s elite. Essentially, it’s not fit for print.

So Brooks takes issue with Michael Hastings, the freelance reporter who included some on-the-record — and “on background,” or not-for-attribution — griping in his blockbuster Rolling Stone profilethat led to the ouster of Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

“By putting [McChrystal’s] kvetching in the magazine, the reporter essentially took run-of-the-mill complaining and turned it into a direct challenge to presidential authority,” Brooks wrote. “He took a successful general and made it impossible for President Obama to retain him.”

Hastings, however, doesn’t think it’s fair to blame him for accurately reporting on the tension between McChrystal’s circle and the civilian chain of command, and came out firing on Twitter Friday morning.

He wrotethe following tweet: “david brooks to young reporters: don’t report what you see or hear, or you might upset the powerful.” And another: “question for david brooks: does he really think WH and McC had good relationships? signs point to lack of listening to kvetching!” Here’s one more: “question 2 to mr. brooks: how much time has he spent listening to the troops kvetch in a warzone? just askin’.”

Hastings, who was in Afghanistan earlier this week, and is currently traveling, told Yahoo! News why he took to Twitter to defend himself against the Times columnist.

“Hard not to respond to this without going back to an old saying. I’m paraphrasing: Reporting is what someone somewhere doesn’t want known,” Hastings wrote. “Everything else is advertising.”

“That’s more or less how I feel,” Hastings continued. “I find it very strange that the response from a few of the pundits has been: Journalists should do more to protect the powerful. Seems to me they’re already pretty well protected for the most part.”

Brooks did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Hastings’ response.