06-12-2010, 01:39 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-12-2010, 07:02 PM by James H. Fetzer.)
From a discussion thread on which I occasionally post, some reflections:
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2010 18:31:11 -0600 [06:31:11 PM CST]
From: "Carl Sack"
To: prog-action@yahoogroups.com
Reply-To: prog-action@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [prog-action] WikiLeaks in perspective
I agree that there is no American "watchdog press." But I disagree that there ever really was.
One of the reasons I love the internet is it makes projects like Wikileaks possible, exposing corruption and forcing the media to act on it. What would be nice is a media that, instead of making so much huff and bluster over whether the state department thinks Assange should be hung from a light pole, actually paid attention and reported on the substance of the leaked material. We the public--at least, the overwhelming majority of us--aren't going to spend the time and energy to sift through a quarter million diplomatic cables looking for juicy gossip about China or Afghanistan. That's still the press's job. We still need them to distill out relevant information, and this is where their gargantuan failure lies.
I'd be curious to know on what grounds the authors of this commentary label Wikileaks a "shadowy organization." Exactly how would they like the organization to be more transparent--other than revealing Assange's whereabouts so the CIA can swoop in and extraordinarily rendite him to some remote torture chamber in the Caucuses?
Incidentally, I heard an interesting piece on NPR--yes, National Public Radio--this morning about Assange. They extensively quoted his lawyer saying that the Swedish charges were a complete ruse, dropped by one judge then resurrected by another in an entirely different city the day the latest leak was released, apparently at the urging of the U.S., who simply want Interpol to capture and then extradite him to the U.S. for espionage charges. When all this blows over, someone is going to get rich writing and filming Robert Ludlum-style-but-non-fictional thrillers about it.
-Carl
On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 11:13 AM, Patrick Schoenfelder wrote:
While site followers debate the wisdom of breaking Julian Assange's fingers (possibly better than Sarah Palin, who calls for his murder,) here is a comment from Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University and a well known advocate of 4th amendment rights and journalistic integrity, has to say about how the world came to develop a niche for WikiLeaks and why important news sources are using WikiLeaks and other similar sites instead of mainstream news outlets. The quote is from his blog, and I think it says more about this issue than all of the other media noise combined:
In the American case, one of the reasons is that the legitimacy of the press itself is in doubt in the minds of the leakers. And there's good reason for that. Because while we have what purports to be a "watchdog press," we also have -- laid out in front of us -- the clear record of the watchdog press' failure to do what it says it can do, which is provide a check on power when it tries to conceal its deeds and its purpose.
So I think it's a mistake to try to reckon with WikiLeaks and what it's about without including in the frame the spectacular failures of the watchdog press over the last 10, 20, 30, 40 years - but especially recently. Without this legitimacy crisis in mainstream American journalism, the leakers might not be so inclined to trust an upstart like Julian Assange and a shadowy organization like WikiLeaks.
The failures of the press in dealing with these huge, cataclysmic events like the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, and the war on terror within the normal legitimacy regime lie in the background of the WikiLeaks case, because if it wasn't for those things, WikiLeaks wouldn't have the supporters it has, the leakers wouldn't collaborate the way they do, and the moral force behind exposing what this Government is doing just wouldn't be there. . . . The watchdog press died, and what we have is WikiLeaks instead.
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2010 18:31:11 -0600 [06:31:11 PM CST]
From: "Carl Sack"
To: prog-action@yahoogroups.com
Reply-To: prog-action@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [prog-action] WikiLeaks in perspective
I agree that there is no American "watchdog press." But I disagree that there ever really was.
One of the reasons I love the internet is it makes projects like Wikileaks possible, exposing corruption and forcing the media to act on it. What would be nice is a media that, instead of making so much huff and bluster over whether the state department thinks Assange should be hung from a light pole, actually paid attention and reported on the substance of the leaked material. We the public--at least, the overwhelming majority of us--aren't going to spend the time and energy to sift through a quarter million diplomatic cables looking for juicy gossip about China or Afghanistan. That's still the press's job. We still need them to distill out relevant information, and this is where their gargantuan failure lies.
I'd be curious to know on what grounds the authors of this commentary label Wikileaks a "shadowy organization." Exactly how would they like the organization to be more transparent--other than revealing Assange's whereabouts so the CIA can swoop in and extraordinarily rendite him to some remote torture chamber in the Caucuses?
Incidentally, I heard an interesting piece on NPR--yes, National Public Radio--this morning about Assange. They extensively quoted his lawyer saying that the Swedish charges were a complete ruse, dropped by one judge then resurrected by another in an entirely different city the day the latest leak was released, apparently at the urging of the U.S., who simply want Interpol to capture and then extradite him to the U.S. for espionage charges. When all this blows over, someone is going to get rich writing and filming Robert Ludlum-style-but-non-fictional thrillers about it.
-Carl
On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 11:13 AM, Patrick Schoenfelder wrote:
While site followers debate the wisdom of breaking Julian Assange's fingers (possibly better than Sarah Palin, who calls for his murder,) here is a comment from Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University and a well known advocate of 4th amendment rights and journalistic integrity, has to say about how the world came to develop a niche for WikiLeaks and why important news sources are using WikiLeaks and other similar sites instead of mainstream news outlets. The quote is from his blog, and I think it says more about this issue than all of the other media noise combined:
In the American case, one of the reasons is that the legitimacy of the press itself is in doubt in the minds of the leakers. And there's good reason for that. Because while we have what purports to be a "watchdog press," we also have -- laid out in front of us -- the clear record of the watchdog press' failure to do what it says it can do, which is provide a check on power when it tries to conceal its deeds and its purpose.
So I think it's a mistake to try to reckon with WikiLeaks and what it's about without including in the frame the spectacular failures of the watchdog press over the last 10, 20, 30, 40 years - but especially recently. Without this legitimacy crisis in mainstream American journalism, the leakers might not be so inclined to trust an upstart like Julian Assange and a shadowy organization like WikiLeaks.
The failures of the press in dealing with these huge, cataclysmic events like the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, and the war on terror within the normal legitimacy regime lie in the background of the WikiLeaks case, because if it wasn't for those things, WikiLeaks wouldn't have the supporters it has, the leakers wouldn't collaborate the way they do, and the moral force behind exposing what this Government is doing just wouldn't be there. . . . The watchdog press died, and what we have is WikiLeaks instead.