How the US media is dumping on WikiLeaks - and censoring the cable disclosures

How the US media is dumping on WikiLeaks - and censoring the cable disclosures

In a hard-hitting piece in defence of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange - now officially named as a fugitive - Alexander Cockburn contends that American newspapers have colluded with the US government to conceal some of the leaked embassy cables.

He cites research by Gareth Porter, who identified a cable released by WikiLeaks that provides a detailed account of how Russian specialists countered official US claims that Iran had missiles capable of reaching Europe, or that Iran intended to develop such a capability. Porter wrote:

"Readers of the two leading US newspapers never learned those key facts about the document. The New York Times and the Washington Post reported only that the United States believed Iran had acquired such missiles... from North Korea.

Neither newspaper reported the detailed Russian refutation of the US view on the issue or the lack of hard evidence...

The Times, which had obtained the diplomatic cables not from WikiLeaks but from The Guardian... did not publish the text of the cable.

The Times story said the newspaper had made the decision not to publish 'at the request of the Obama administration'. That meant that its readers could not compare the highly distorted account of the document in the Times story against the original document without searching the WikiLeaks website."

Aside from this self-censorship, Cockburn also remarks on the distaste among the "official" US press for WikiLeaks after its previous releases of documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He writes:

"The New York Times managed the ungainly feat of publishing some of the leaks while simultaneously affecting to hold its nose, and while publishing a mean-spirited hatchet job on Assange by its reporter John F Burns, a man with a well burnished record in touting the various agendas of the US government."

As for TV coverage, he cites Glenn Greenwald, writing on the Salon.com:

"On CNN, Wolf Blitzer was beside himself with rage over the fact that the US government had failed to keep all these things secret from him...

Then - like the Good Journalist he is - Blitzer demanded assurances that the government has taken the necessary steps to prevent him, the media generally and the citizenry from finding out any more secrets...

The central concern of Blitzer - one of our nation's most honoured 'journalists' - is making sure that nobody learns what the US government is up to."

Some of that Blitzer rant (no longer available on the CNN site) deserves quoting. Here's a sample:

"Are they doing anything at all to make sure if some 23-year-old guy, allegedly, starts downloading hundreds of thousands of cables, hundreds of thousands of copies of sensitive information, that no one pays attention to that, no one in the security system of the United States government bothers to see someone is downloading all these millions - literally millions of documents?...

It's amazing to me that the US government security system is so lax that someone could allegedly do this kind of damage just by simply pretending to be listening to a Lady Gaga CD and at the same time downloading all these kinds of documents...

Do we know yet if they've [done] that fix? In other words, somebody right now who has top secret or secret security clearance can no longer download information onto a CD or a thumb drive? Has that been fixed already?"

Journalists who oppose WikiLeaks are opposed to journalism. Here's Jack Shafer offering some sense:

"Information conduits like Julian Assange shock us out of that complacency. Oh, sure, he's a pompous egomaniac sporting a series of bad haircuts and grandiose tendencies.

And he often acts without completely thinking through every repercussion of his actions.

But if you want to dismiss him just because he's a seething jerk, there are about 2,000 journalists I'd like you to meet."

Quite so. Too many "seething jerks" who also deny the point of their own trade - disclosure!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/dec/02/the-us-embassy-cables-julian-assange