Five Sad Reasons American Press Isn't Outraged & Defending WikiLeaks

[Hissyspit]

http://www.yelvington.com/content/five-sad-reasons-american-press-isnt-outraged

Five sad reasons American press isn't outraged

Submitted by yelvington on December 12, 2010 - 12:24pm

Over the last couple of weeks a parade of non-journalists has approached me, offline and online, wanting to talk about the Wikileaks mess. Most of the discussion has boiled down to this, which I'm quoting from a note:

"Why isn't the American press screaming at the top of its lungs about this. How can we let the Joe Lieberman's of the world lead this discussion. If the press doesn't take a stand here we are doomed. There will be no reason to have a "press" in this country. Politicians can simply post their "press releases" themselves."

I can think of some reasons. They are sad ones.

1. Julian Assange isn't a "journalist," and Wikileaks isn't a "journalism organization." Many journalists are horrified by the implications of letting just anybody practice journalism. I've actually heard People Who Ought To Know Better -- journalists, educators, former editors of major newspapers -- call for certification and, in effect, the licensing of Real Journalists. It's as if freedom of the press is a privilege of professionals, not a human right of some mere computer nerd.

2. The "liberal media" meme is bogus, a giant mind fake. The American press is an infotainment/advertising industry owned by giant corporations and run, on the whole, but rich white men for the financial benefit of themselves and investors. The "liberal media" complaint has long been the refuge of political weasels (remember Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew), but its latter-day power comes from the media itself, manipulated by ultra-rich power brokers like Rupert Murdoch.

- snip -

5. The concept of "property" has been extended to embrace information, supporting the claim that the information from secret cables is "stolen property." It used to be that telling a lie about a person or a corporation could get you into trouble. Now governments and corporations can claim injury when someone states a fact, and, stunningly, act to enforce silence without any judicial oversight. Now, if you can't tell a lie and you can't state a fact, what else is there? (Note that these restrictions do not apply to those in power -- as shown by the cables, Washington is free to lie, and insiders strategically leak classified information whenever it's politically advantageous.)

There are many people who are legitimately troubled by the release of secret information and there is plenty of cause to question the judgment of the Wikileaks editors who are posting this stuff. Don't go around expecting anyone to have clean hands. I keep coming back to a couple of basic principles. One is that the purpose of government is to protect the rights of the people. The other is that our first freedom is the right to speak freely the truth. If our government turns its back on that freedom, then none of the others will matter. But I'm not writing newspaper editorials or running a newsroom these days.

[spanone]

1. we no longer have an 'American Press'. it's all about profit media now.

whatever sells the ads....

what kind of american press would allow someone such as palin to only be covered by fox news and not complain or point it out?

we lost our press to consolidation many years ago

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. K&R

[Imagevision]

3. And 'General Electric' own how many news outlets people? and they say no to Assange!

[Kalyke]

4. While I agree with four of the five reasons, Reason No. 4 isn't

exactly a reason:

Local media doesn't find this local issue. Our press has, as I predicted years ago, separated out into distinct local and national layers. Most local newspapers today give only a passing nod to nonlocal news (and as a result, AP gets 80% of its revenues elsewhere). Don't go looking for your local newspaper to be worrying about foreign-policy fraud. Not their jobs. Our national mass media scene now is whittled down to a couple of rage-exploitation channels on cable, the New York Times, Murdoch's kleptocracy-supporting Wall Street Journal, and a pathetic free Gannett paper that everybody steps on when walking out of their hotel room in the morning. The network news organizations are hollow shells speaking to dying audiences, fearful of accelerating their own demise by taking a stand.

Local newspapers are intensely local out of necessity. The national news isn't going to cover Aunt Bessie and her fabulous cheesecake recipe, nor will they cover the guy who has been arrested 15 times for a variety of small crimes that may effect little community A, but not anywhere else.

I have no problem with this - caveat: I worked as a local reporter for an intensely local newspaper. Communities need intensely local coverage and they also, theoretically, have other outlets for national and world news. Granted, most of that news is biased or not even covered, but that isn't my argument.

Finally, local newspapers do have reporters who are worth a damn. They live and care about their community and aren't subjected to the tyranny from both the politicians and the Big Corp bosses on the national level; therefore, they're more apt to do investigative work.

[Prophet 451]

5. I'll go with a mixture of the first three.

1 is fairly self-evident and has been for a few years now. 2 is a massive "HELL YES!". The "liberal media" meme is and always was, utter and deliberate bullshit but has become so prevelent (and US media so bootlicking) that it now merely disguises teh fact that the US has the most conservative media in the free world. The bootlicking mentioned above also means there's some truth in 3. Lawsuits cost money and the corporates who own news outlets don't like to take that out of their profit margins. I'm neither American nor in the US so I can't comment on 4 and I think it's too early to assess 5.

[lunatica]

6. What we have is privatized press in this country

The few real journalists are drowned out in the thunderous noise of for profit journalism.