The Chris Moeller Archives

Contrasts: WikiLeaks and the New York Times

The editor of the New York Times, Bill Keller, published a summary today of the paper's WikiLeak's dealings in 2010, with a larger text to follow at the end of the month in the Times' weekly magazine. While defending the decisions of his paper and his own leadership, his personal opinion of Julian Assange and his enterprise is quite low. Assange, Keller tells us with petulant candor, is simultaneously thin-skinned, arrogant, "naive," "a man who clearly had his own agenda," an office geek," and he reportedly "smelled as if he hadn't bathed in days" in a meeting with Times reporters-- all info designed to discredit the man and his nontraditional methods.

Conversations with Assange, according to Keller, seemed to have involved a lot of smirking and "glib antipathy" towards the United States. The editor calls WikiLeaks "a secretive cadre of antisecrecy vigilantes." He makes the bold implication that WikiLeaks began hacking NY Times online accounts when the relationship between the two organizations took a sour turn months ago, yet it seems the supposed hackers could just as easily be affiliated with the U.S. government-- after all, it was Senator Joe Lieberman, the chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, who threatened with legal action news organizations that released WikiLeaks documents. Per usual, Keller is most acutely sensitive to attacks on his newspaper from the right.

Keller takes a rather mocking attitude towards Assange's suspicions of a violent "Jack Ruby style" reprisal against him by the U.S. government, implying that he is "lacking a sense of the absurd." Yet Assange's fears seem rather grounded in logic if we consider only the blood-thirsty comments of a few elected officials, such as Peter King of New York, or the Justice Department's recent affinity for torture and for holding prisoners without trial, the presentation of evidence, or due process of law. Perhaps Assange's "cloak-and-dagger" routine has some basis considering that he's been branded a terrorist by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and the current president has a penchant for ordering assassinations against other unpopular individuals that have not been actually charged with a crime.

The Keller posting is a shockingly honest account of the editor's attempts to contact Ambassador Richard Holbrooke before publishing the cables, then the White House, and of his concern in general with how the U.S. government and the Obama administration assesses his work. In dealing with the publication of such embarrassing information and accounts of illegal government activity, Keller describes the Obama White House as "more sober and professional" than the Bush White House that preceded it, though it's worth noting that the Obamas' more moderate reaction is in particular response to the Times publishing information that would be published by other news organizations regardless. Interestingly, Keller's reports have both presidential administrations incorporating the tactic of claiming (falsely) the heightening danger to the lives of U.S. citizens and our allies if the particular information were to be published.

Led by Judith Miller's reporting, the New York Times acted as cheerleader in the rush to war on Iraq, an action of gruesome government cover-up that actually did endanger thousands of lives. Keller himself was the architect of the Times' new policy, after 9/11, on redefining "torture" when it's engaged in by the United States government. In the newly published document, he admits, and not for the first time, that he goes to the government with each of the WikiLeaks documents before publishing them (even though he admittedly sometimes fails to heed their advice). He expresses concern over the ability of his sources to "shape or censor (his) journalism," but apparently not the government's.

It is not the responsibility of journalists to protect state secrets, yet this idea of systemic servitude towards the powered class is seemingly always floating through Keller's brain, and by the way, Keller would "hesitate to describe what WikiLeaks does as journalism." Just so you know. This is an almost laughable paternalism by someone unlicensed to provide it. It's a common misconception that First Amendment protections in the U.S. apply only to the news media. We're all protected by the First Amendment. Many inside-the-beltway journalists like Keller, who value their "access" to the powerful above all else, despise WikiLeaks because it poses an actual challenge to entrenched power and its corrupt state. The fate of WikiLeaks as well as citizen bloggers is not tied to "access," which is why Assange's idea of a new "scientific journalism" is so revolutionary. Indeed, such outdated, harmful ideas of news reporting like those of Keller are the precise reason that WikiLeaks is necessary.

posted by CM @ 2:34 PM