It is very telling that the panels of experts summoned by TV news programs to discuss the Wikileaks issue are uniformly representative of old media. Here is a Washington Post reporter, here is a New York Times reporter, here is CBS News, here is the Wall Street Journal. Like a Greek chorus: bad, bad Wikileaks! How irresponsible! Do you people now realize how much added value we mediators of news events provide you? And then, with a straight face, one of them commends the New York Times for taking the story to the government first! To make sure they weren’t going to cause any trouble?
What the hell is going on here? We count on the reporters to be informed about the issues and speak to us as an independent voice. And here they get an interesting story about the extent to which the U.S. has over-stated it’s successes in Afghanistan, and they can’t decide for themselves whether or not it should be reported. So who do they ask? The government.
The Wikileaks documents reveal, among other things, that the government has misrepresented the activities they are conducting on behalf of the tax payer. Fox News bleats: we don’t want to know! And those who do want to know should be criminalized.
They all just demonstrated, beyond a shadow of a doubt, exactly why we need Wikileaks. In God’s name, we desperately need some journalists out there who aren’t in the toxic embrace of government or big business.
The New York Times has admitted that they were taken to the cleaners on the weapons of mass destruction issue in Iraq. Absolutely taken to the cleaners. They issued solemn editorials endorsing the invasion of Iraq. It only took them two years to realize they had been duped. And now, having not learned a blasted thing, here they are again, trying to be “responsible”, and completely abandoning their duties as journalists.
In two years, or five, will they finally admit that Afghanistan is a lost cause?