As the WikiLeaks diplomatic cable revelations continue this week, news organizations are quietly but hilariously drifting into at least 3 camps:
- organizations and reporters who read WikiLeaks source material and publish informed stories based on the cables, carefully redacting where necessary to minimize harm. These include The Guardian, Le Monde, the NY Times and WikiLeaks itself.
- organizations like the Associated Press with reporters who read and write about redacted WikiLeaks cables published elsewhere
- organizations that write about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks based on third party reports, but who don't read the cables and won't visit the WikiLeaks site itself even for basic information
This week both Time Magazine and The New Republic revealed themselves to apparently be in the latter category. Both published articles containing false statements, followed by update/corrections that essentially said, 'Julian Assange says our description of the site is false but we haven't attempted to verify it' and, 'It's not our fault we didn't know as much as the AP', respectively. In the case of The New Republic, Todd Gitlin crankily confesses his fact checking was done by Salon's Glenn Greenwald, after the original false TNR piece was published.
Michael Lindenberger's Time article with its odd "correction" is here. The many letters from readers express nothing but contempt for the "correction".
Todd Gitlin's New Republic article and his reply naming Greenwald are especially hilarious. Gitlin was evidently so upset that Greenwald's headline referred to "lies" and "propaganda" from multiple media sources without specifying which term was specifically referring to his work, that Gitlin left the falsehood uncorrected at TNR for days after it was pointed out -- so he could craft a sufficiently outraged riposte. Far from attaining moral high ground, Gitlin gives the unmistakable impression that if Greenwald had not called out him and TNR as author and publishers of falsehoods, no update would have been forthcoming.
And apparently, that's because Gitlin never actually visited the Wikileaks site, and has no idea whether there are 250,000 or 900 cables posted there, let alone whether they've been redacted exactly as the NY Times and Guardian articles were. (As of today there are 1344 and they were indeed redacted before publication.)
Keep in mind, these guys are in the same position as Amazon and Mastercard -- they know that Information Security Minister Liebermann would like to make Americans' reading and sharing the WikiLeaks documents illegal -- retroactively if possible. Could that be impacting their willingness to actually visit the site before sharing their insight and expertise?
Do Gitlin, Lindenberger and their editors fear that if they actually download the cables before writing and publishing stories "about them", they too could be subject to the current Espionage Act or a new law crafted for the digital age that makes them Terrorists? They don't want to find out -- but they don't want to admit they'll never be experts on WikiLeaks or diplomacy with that mindset either. And they can't figure out why almost no one buys Time Magazine anymore.
So get ready for more inaccurate reports and more dishonest, hilariously ignorant retractions from the mainstream press.
And get ready for a vibrant new generation of fearless, credible, trustworthy news sources.