"WikiLeaks is a journalistic entity and deserves our protection"
No, it's not. It lost that moral ground when it released unredacted information.
It also lost that status when wikileaks became about Assange himself.
I supported the original wikileaks: Anyone could leak anything and wikileaks would publish it, and sometimes the broader media would pick it up.
This new wikileaks is all about damaging entities Assange doesn't like. No thank you. Wikileaks should not get to choose what to leak. Either leak everything you are given (after redaction of course), or nothing, do not selectively choose who to leak against.
Once you do that you become a political organization.
hmm? you mean like every other journalistic entity out there? Journalistic Purity aside, WikiLeaks was a journalistic entity and did deserve our protection.
We have just established a precedent that the US government can unilaterally decide to shutdown any journalistic entity that reports news it doesn't like.
What kills me about this is that people seem to support that status quo.
Lots of mumbling about how wikileaks should have redacted <whatever> and no outrage at all about how easy it was for this voice to be silenced by our government as soon as it suited them.
> It lost that moral ground when it released unredacted information.
If the NYT meets the standards of "journalism", Wikileaks sure as hell does. Better to accidentally release unredacted information than the government sanitized press releases of the NYT.
> It also lost that status when wikileaks became about Assange himself.
Is this not a big part of the campaign to discredit Wikileaks? Focus on the person to hide the idea. Ideas have to be reckoned with; people can be written off ad hominem.
I'm not trying to say Wikileaks is even near perfect. The main point is that the NYT, which many see as authoritative, consistently avoids mentioning the implications of what is happening to Wikileaks.
[edit: I see a few people disagree with this. Care to respond rather than simply downvote?]
In case you haven't been following what has been going on. The NY Times published a tabloidesque hit piece on Assange, and has failed to defend Wikileaks on the basis of journalistic freedom.
It's pretty clear that the Times management consists of war hawks who oppose Wikileaks b/c of their neoconservative political beliefs and desire to please those with political power.
Think about when the last time the NY Times published any remotely controversial investigative journalism... oh yeah it was the articles that supported the claims that Saddam had WMDs.
Strangely, the Times (a good but ardently neoconservative) paper still manages to fool progressives into thinking that it offers a sympathetic voice. Sadly the pressures of competing in the online world have left the paper with no choice but to sell off its journalistic integrity year after year.
If anything, one would hope that a paper like the Times would have taken a skeptical but journalistically sharp look at the leaked info and would have held off on the ad hominem attack on the Wikileaks founder, at least until some evidence was offered in support of the allegations against him.
And no, I don't think the total buffoonery written by Krugman, Dowd, and Herbert counts for any progressiveness points. If anything the three are a sideshow act with no relevance to the issues that matter.
I think the theory is that WL was a competing news organization with the potential to replace NYT, but NYT hasn't rolled over and died, therefore blocking WL from taking its seat on the throne.
Agreed - it seems like more of a failed attempt at a namedrop, when more of the "blame" should be directed towards the public. If Times readers as a whole lose express interest in WikiLeaks while Assange is dealing with legal issues and many other whistleblowing sites (OpenLeaks.org as an example) haven't seem to been releasing any high-profile documents, isn't that just more the reason for the Times to focus efforts elsewhere?
As the author of the post, maybe I can try and clear that up: my point was that while we have all failed to some extent -- by not supporting WikiLeaks and protesting things like the PayPal blockade and Amazon deletion and the government's dubious case -- the New York Times has failed by not using its national media platform to protest those things and their impact on free speech and freedom of the press. And my argument about why they didn't do that is in part that the NYT sees WikiLeaks as competition. Hope that helps.
There will be many causes for Wikileaks' death (if in fact it does in fact die). None more damaging though than the damage Wikileaks did to itself. Leaving unredacted the names of informants who were later executed for providing the very information Wikileaks posted clinched its fate IMO.
[+] [-] ars|14 years ago|reply
No, it's not. It lost that moral ground when it released unredacted information.
It also lost that status when wikileaks became about Assange himself.
I supported the original wikileaks: Anyone could leak anything and wikileaks would publish it, and sometimes the broader media would pick it up.
This new wikileaks is all about damaging entities Assange doesn't like. No thank you. Wikileaks should not get to choose what to leak. Either leak everything you are given (after redaction of course), or nothing, do not selectively choose who to leak against.
Once you do that you become a political organization.
[+] [-] bandushrew|14 years ago|reply
We have just established a precedent that the US government can unilaterally decide to shutdown any journalistic entity that reports news it doesn't like.
What kills me about this is that people seem to support that status quo. Lots of mumbling about how wikileaks should have redacted <whatever> and no outrage at all about how easy it was for this voice to be silenced by our government as soon as it suited them.
[+] [-] mindslight|14 years ago|reply
If the NYT meets the standards of "journalism", Wikileaks sure as hell does. Better to accidentally release unredacted information than the government sanitized press releases of the NYT.
> It also lost that status when wikileaks became about Assange himself.
Is this not a big part of the campaign to discredit Wikileaks? Focus on the person to hide the idea. Ideas have to be reckoned with; people can be written off ad hominem.
I'm not trying to say Wikileaks is even near perfect. The main point is that the NYT, which many see as authoritative, consistently avoids mentioning the implications of what is happening to Wikileaks.
[+] [-] dantheman|14 years ago|reply
http://boingboing.net/2011/08/31/wikileaks-guardian-journali...
[+] [-] lwat|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vph|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grandalf|14 years ago|reply
In case you haven't been following what has been going on. The NY Times published a tabloidesque hit piece on Assange, and has failed to defend Wikileaks on the basis of journalistic freedom.
It's pretty clear that the Times management consists of war hawks who oppose Wikileaks b/c of their neoconservative political beliefs and desire to please those with political power.
Think about when the last time the NY Times published any remotely controversial investigative journalism... oh yeah it was the articles that supported the claims that Saddam had WMDs.
Strangely, the Times (a good but ardently neoconservative) paper still manages to fool progressives into thinking that it offers a sympathetic voice. Sadly the pressures of competing in the online world have left the paper with no choice but to sell off its journalistic integrity year after year.
If anything, one would hope that a paper like the Times would have taken a skeptical but journalistically sharp look at the leaked info and would have held off on the ad hominem attack on the Wikileaks founder, at least until some evidence was offered in support of the allegations against him.
And no, I don't think the total buffoonery written by Krugman, Dowd, and Herbert counts for any progressiveness points. If anything the three are a sideshow act with no relevance to the issues that matter.
[+] [-] tedunangst|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mquinlan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mathewi|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rrrazdan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ternaryoperator|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] X-Istence|14 years ago|reply
I haven't read any information regarding sources being executed.