Now that the WikiLeaks releases about Tunisian corruption have directly sparked a peoples' uprising in Tunisia; now that Egypt is in the throes of pro-democracy protest driven in large measure by WikiLeaks' revelation in the Palestine Papers about US manipulation of Palestine, surely one would expect key U.S. news organizations and journalists to rally prominently to the defense of the right to publish that that site represents. One would expect lead editorials supporting Assange's right to publish from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and USAToday, not to mention every major TV outlet. But instead, what we have heard is the deafening sounds of what middle-schoolers call 'crickets' -- that is, an awkward silence. As Nancy Youssef in the McClatchy papers reported recently, most U.S. journalists -- and, even more shamefully, journalists' organizations -- decided, regarding supporting Wikileaks' freedom to publish, to "take a pass."
How on earth could this be? This cravenness represents one of American journalism's darkest hours -- as dark as the depth of the McCarthy era. In terms of the question of the legalities of publishing classified information, most American journalists understand full well that Assange is not the one who committed the crime of illegally obtaining classified material -- that was Bradley Manning, or whomever released the material to the site. So Assange is not the 'hacker' of secrets, as People magazine has mis-identified him; he is of course the publisher, just as any traditional news organization is. He is not Daniel Ellsberg, in the most comparable analogy, the illegal releaser of the classified Pentagon Papers; rather, Assange is analogous to the New York Times, which made the brave and correct decision to publish the Pentagon Papers in the public's interest.
U.S. journalists also know perfectly well that they too traffic in classified material continually -- and many of our most prominent reporters have built lucrative careers doing exactly what Assange is being charged with. Any sophisticated dinner party in media circles in New York or Washington has journalists jauntily showing prospective employers their goods, or trading favors with each other, by disclosing classified information. For we all, in this profession, know that seeking out and handling classified information is what serious journalists DO: their job is to find out the government's secrets in spite of officials who don't want these secrets revealed. American journalists also know that the U.S. government classifies information mostly out of embarrassment, or for expediency, rather than because of true national security concerns (an example is the classification of suspicious deaths in Guantanamo and other US-held jails). The New York Times garnered kudos -- as they should have -- in 2005 with the publication of the SWIFT banking story -- based on leaked classified documents, which makes Bill Kellers' recent essay trying to put distance between his newspaper and WikiLeaks all the more indefensible.
Here is what readers are not being told: We have ALL handled classified information if we are serious American journalists. I am waiting for more than a handful of other American reporters, editors and news organizations to have the courage -- courage that is in abundance in Tahrir Square and on the pages of Al Jazeera, now that we no longer see it on the editorial page of the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal -- to stand up and confirm the obvious. For the assault on Assange to be credible, they would have to come arrest us all. Many of Bob Woodward's bestselling books, which have made him America's highest-paid reporter, are based on classified information -- that's why he gets the big bucks. Where are the calls for Woodward's arrest? Indeed Dick Cheney and other highest-level officials in the Bush administration committed the same act as Bradley Manning in this case, when they illegally revealed the classified identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
So why do all these American reporters, who know quite well that they get praise and money for doing what Assange has done, stand in a silence that can only be called cowardly, while a fellow publisher faces threats of extradition, banning, prosecution for spying -- which can incur the death penalty -- and calls for his assassination?
One could say that the reason for the silence has to do with the sexual misconduct charges in Sweden. But any serious journalist in America knows perfectly well that the two issues must not be conflated. The First Amendment applies to rogues and scoundrels. You don't lose your First Amendment rights because of a sleazy personality, or even for having committed a crime. Felons in jail are protected by the First Amendment. Indeed the most famous First Amendment cases, the ones that are supposed to showcase America's strength and moral power, involve the protection of speech most decent people hate.
So again: why have U.S. journalists and editor, as Youssef reported, "shunned" Assange? Youssef reports an almost unbelievably craven American press scenario: The "freedom of the press committee" -- yes, you read that correctly -- of the Overseas Press Club of America in New York City declared him "not one of us." The Associated Press itself won't issue comment about him. And even the National Press Club in Washington made the decision not to speak publicly about the possibility that Assange may be charged with a crime. She notes that it is foreign press organizations that have had to defend him.
One answer for this silence has to do with what happens to the press in a closing society. I warned in 2006 and often since that you don't need a coup to close down America's open society -- you need to simply accomplish a few key goals. One critical task -- number seven -- is to intimidate journalists; this is done, as in any closing society, by creating a situation in which a high-profile reporter is accused of "treason" or of endangering national security through their reporting, and threatened with torture or with a show trial and indefinite detention. History shows that when that happens, you don't need to arrest or threaten any other reporters -- because they immediately start to police and censor themselves, and fall all over themselves attacking the "traitor" as well. That way safety lies, whether the knowledge is conscious or not.
Another motive is revealed in the comment that Assange is "not one of us." U.S. journalism's business model is collapsing; the people who should be out in front defending Assange are facing cut salaries or unemployment because of the medium that Assange represents. These journalists are not willing to concede that Assange is, of course, a publisher, rather than some sort of hybrid terrorist blogger, because of their self-interested prejudices against a medium in which they are not the gatekeepers.
In this, paradoxically, they have become just like the outraged U.S. government officials who are threatening Assange: the American government too is in the position, because of the Internet, of no longer being able to control its secrets, and is lashing out at Assange as it faces a future in which there are no traditional gatekeepers, and all institutions live in glass houses.
It is for this reason that the prosecution of Assange -- and his betrayal by his fellow journalists and publishers in America -- is so almost absurdly futile. Even if they lock Assange up forever, the world of the future is a WikiLeaks world. Trying to extradite and to convict Assange is like trying to convict the first person who dared to install a telephone. The WikiLeaks necessity -- for citizens who are upset at government or private sector abuses of power -- to release documents, is not going away, ever. Egypt is showing us that conclusively: they turn off the news and people create the news on their cellphones. The technology of leaking government secrets globally is not going away either. In five years one can expect that every major institution will have its own version of WikiLeaks -- so shareholders, members of university communities, citizens of governments all over the world, and so on, can read the secrets that are in the public interest that the traditional gatekeepers wish to keep under wraps.
History shows that journalists only protect themselves, when bullied like this, by fighting back -- as a group. And history shows that when a technology and its social change are inevitable, it is better to integrate the way the future will work, into an open society -- rather than trying pointlessly to punish it, in this case by seeking to ship the inevitable future off to Guantanamo Bay.
An earlier version of this post appeared at Project Syndicate.
1) Wikileaks is a threat to the journalism model of them being the chosen disclosers of classified information.
2) The method by which journalists get this information is drip-by-drip disclosure from sources. In exchange, they don't disclose what is requested. This quid-pro-quo benefits both sides of the table (but not the People). This 'classified' business was disbanded after the first World War. It was not after the second World War - in some Orwellian ways, it never ended.
thank you for being one of the very few journalists in the US that dare to stand up for freedom
of speech and defend Wikileaks and Julian Assange.
I think what could be another motive for the press everywhere on the planet not to take a stand
and defend WL and Julian Assange is the fact that he has not just embarrassed the US
Government but also makes the traditional media look very bad.
With only a small team of 5 full time people and very little budget Wikileaks has managed to
reveal more important information then anyone else since the days of Elsberg.
New York Times and Washington Post are not what they used to be. Bernstein and Woodward
have since the 70's become a part of the establishment. In the 70's they were angry young
men. Just like Assange is now. He still wants to prove himself.
What is very strange to me: The editor of the New York Times calling Assange merely one of
their sources, to downplay his role in obtaining important information that the New York Times wanted. Now wanting to make money with a book about collapsing socks. And not at all defending their source but still believing that the New York Times is a quality paper ?
Wikileaks and Assange need all of our help.They are fighting for our freedom to have the right to speak up. And they are fighting for our ability to make well informed decisions.
You'll never hear me say the media is in a god place. They fail in a number of ways. But releasing information with no regard for repercussions (like Assange has done) is reckless. It's not journalism.
You're offering a very black/white opinion in a field that savors the gray. Journalists don't like to make absolute claims. There are always more details to dig through, there are always caveats to every opinion offered, there are always two sides to everything. And I think, with all due respect to Ms. Wolf, that is being lost here.
I would say Assange should be admired for how headstrong and vigilant he is. I would say news organizations should envy the strength of his network, and his ability to get this information. But he should be scolded for releasing it at times without any forethought, putting individuals at risk. There are better ways to use that information without simply revealing every word.
Palestine has caused those governments to fall. The gutless wimps the
American Journalists are busy writing about a Lohans latest adventures.
While the right was lying about "Mainstream Media" no onenoticed , there is no media.
I am not about to read 10,000 documents trying to figure it all out. I have better things to do with my time. Has Assange even read all these documents?
We are trying to get a community center built for our teenagers so they stop killing themselves and stop dropping out of school. I want to invest my time in a project where I can have direct influence in the outcome and contribute to its success and have it all happen right here locally. I want to do something constructive and positive and uplifting for the members of our community.
Naomi, you read the documents and then write a book about it all. I will buy your book. Hows that?
Many of you are inappropriately obsessing about corporate control of the mass media content to
the point of distraction.
Naomi Wolf never said that capitalist media moguls were marching into newsrooms and announcing to their groveling minions “Wikileaks is bad for business; don’t be sucking up to Assange. Make him look bad”
NO. That is not what happens. The core point of Naomi Wolf's article was that in the face of coercion, journalists censor themselves, which is perhaps even more insidious that formal state censorship.
Nor is the article solely about Wikileaks/Assange. The Wikileaks dissemination of classified documents serves as a hypocritical and egregious example of journalist self-censorship and the dangers of that process to our society.
Probably true in general, but it wouldn't surprise me if this does happen at FOX. Their leaked memos are a lot like that.
AS for Naomi WOlf's article, I see three players: Goverment, Parent Corporation and Journalist.
(1) Big Media
Parent corporations excercise control over content; for they are happy to make money off anyone. Wikileaks has been in the news every single day for months and months on end. I don't they care for they are about money.
(2) Goverment
Goverment wants to censor, but how? Any effort to suppress news could boomerang on them badly, for that could be a HUGE story in of itself.
(3) Journalist
The weakest link. Journalist's can't bitee the hand that feeds them, Journalist's are dependent on govermental sources. And if they go rogue, that is the last inside scopp they will ever get from a credible govermental source.
Naomi Wolf touched upon that with her argument concerning journalist self censorship.
Further, with media cross ownership and consolidation at what would have been an umimaginable level only 20 years ago (I've read somewhere that there are only 6 major news organisations that control all of the American and European news) the number of media mogul / executive editor conversations required to apply this control is almost trivial.
It seems obvious to me that when journalists of generally high integrity and very independent nature are all pushing the same fabrication in the face of strong evidence that it is fabrication, they are not doing it because they have a free choice to present their individual views.
Simply look at the evidence and you'll see that the intuitive perceptions of the Huffpo commentors while they may have no factual evidence YET are emminently justified and instantly obvious to anyone who "knows something without knowing why", as Malcolm Gladwell so aptly describes in his book, "Blink".
Journalists, however, are dependent upon govermental sources for classified information, they can't go biting the hand that feeds them.
The gist of Naomi Wolf's article concerned self-censorship; not overt acts of news suppression such as parent corporations dictating editorial policy or state sponsored censorship.
.
What concerns me is that here in the US, people have been made aware of all sorts of truth yet the average citizen could frankly care less. To paraphrase Aldous Huxley "give me liberty or give me death" has turned into "give me cable TV and hamburgers but don't burden me with the responsibilities of living in a democracy".
Is it the media's fault, or do they simply provide what people want to hear? When faced with the truth, will people wake up, or will they simply change the channel?
And the deliberate twisting of truth from both left and right should be criminal.