Wikileaks Vs. the U.S. Media

It is no headline to say that America's media takes its cues from the U.S. government on matter relating to foreign policy.

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Considering the way the press covers world affairs within the realm of human rights. If a nation is an adversary of the United States (and also of Israel) the American press feigns concern over human rights abuses in that country. But if a more serial offender of human rights is considered an ally of the United States then its offenses are of little concern. The U.S. media only discovered the horrors of Saddam's regime after he broke his alliance with the United States in his invasion of Kuwait and did not bother with the repression of the Iraqi people when Saddam was receiving gifts from Donald Rumsfield.

Libya's Qaddafi offers another illustration in recent years as a dictator has gone from being labeled as such to now receiving a more polite reception.

So it is no surprise that the press would quickly adopt the labels of the government in attacking Wikileaks. The media has continually repeated the mantra that Wikileaks has indiscriminately dumped thousands of diplomatic files and that its actions should therefore be seen as separate and distinct from that of the "responsible" press like the New York Times. This is false.

Wikileaks has thus far released only .5% of its holdings (a little more than a thousand) and they have mostly been released after they were first published in the press and Wikileaks has subsequently released them with the redactions made by the media. Wikileaks is acting in anyway but indiscriminate. But this line helps to tarnish Wikileaks and if Secretary Clinton says its bad the media will duly follow.

Compare that to a genuine independent press in Europe where the center-left Liberation paper recently adopted a Wikileaks mirror allowing the whistle-blower organization to borrow data space. Can you imagine an American paper doing that? Do you even need an answer?

The state media in Britain is freer than the free press in America, for God's sake! After 9/11 Condi Rice called the heads of several American networks and asked them not to show any Bin Ladin tapes. They all compiled with that state dictate. When Tony Blair told the BBC the same thing they refused as a matter of journalistic principle, independence and integrity even though Blair was the head of government which funds the entire budget of the BBC and the BBC is a state corporation. Again: the state media in Britain is freer than the free media in America.

What a lousy bunch!