Jay Rosen and Glenn Greenwald on Wikileaks

By John Ballard

Jay Rosen on Wikileaks: "The watchdog press died; we have this instead." from Jay Rosen on Vimeo.

There is no transcript. This is from the last few minutes. He raises the excellent question of why do those who do the leaking go to Wikileaks instead of the traditional press? A compelling and embarrassing question indeed.

This is one of the things that makes it really hard for our journalists to grapple with Wikileaks.

On the one hand they are getting amazing revelations. I mean diplomatic cables tell stories about what it's like to be inside the government  and to be inside international  diplomacy that anyone who tried to understand government would want to know. And so you can understand why the big media organizations like the New York Times, the Guardian are collaborating with Wikileaks.

On the other hand they're very nervous about it because it doesn't obey the laws of the state, it isn't a creature of a given nation and it is inserting itself between the sources and the press. But I think the main reason why Wikileaks causes so much anxiety in our journalists is that they haven't fully faced the fact that the watchdog press they treasured so much -- died -- under George Bush.   It failed.   And instead of rushing to analyze its failure and prevent it from ever happening again... instead of a truth-and-reconciliation commission style effort that would look at how could this happen, mostly what our journalists did, with a few exceptions, is they just went off to the next story.

The What's up? press died. And what we have is Wikileaks instead.

Is that good? Or is it bad? I dunno, because I'm still trying to understand exactly what it is.

Glenn Greenwald is keeping close tabs on this story and writes a lot to think about. I got the link to the video above from his column today.

Here is part of yesterday's commentary. Plenty of supporting links at the source.

It is a "scandal" when the Government conceals things it is doing without any legitimate basis for that secrecy. Each and every document that is revealed by WikiLeaks which has been improperly classified -- whether because it's innocuous or because it is designed to hide wrongdoing -- is itself an improper act, a serious abuse of government secrecy powers. Because we're supposed to have an open government -- a democracy -- everything the Government does is presumptively public, and can be legitimately concealed only with compelling justifications. That's not just some lofty, abstract theory; it's central to having anything resembling "consent of the governed."

But we have completely abandoned that principle; we've reversed it. Now, everything the Government does is presumptively secret; only the most ceremonial and empty gestures are made public. That abuse of secrecy powers is vast, deliberate, pervasive, dangerous and destructive. That's the abuse that WikiLeaks is devoted to destroying, and which its harshest critics -- whether intended or not -- are helping to preserve. There are people who eagerly want that secrecy regime to continue: namely, (a) Washington politicians, Permanent State functionaries, and media figures whose status, power and sense of self-importance are established by their access and devotion to that world of secrecy, and (b) those who actually believe that -- despite (or because of) all the above acts -- the U.S. Government somehow uses this extreme secrecy for the Good. Having surveyed the vast suffering and violence they have wreaked behind that wall, those are exactly the people whom WikiLeaks is devoted to undermining.

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On the issue of the Interpol arrest warrant issued yesterday for Assange's arrest: I think it's deeply irresponsible either to assume his guilt or to assume his innocence until the case plays out. I genuinely have no opinion of the validity of those allegations, but what I do know -- as John Cole notes -- is this: as soon as Scott Ritter began telling the truth about Iraqi WMDs, he was publicly smeared with allegations of sexual improprieties. As soon as Eliot Spitzer began posing a real threat to Wall Street criminals, a massive and strange federal investigation was launched over nothing more than routine acts of consensual adult prostitution, ending his career (and the threat he posed to oligarchs). And now, the day after Julian Assange is responsible for one of the largest leaks in history, an arrest warrant issues that sharply curtails his movement and makes his detention highly likely. It's unreasonable to view that pattern as evidence that the allegations are part of some conspiracy -- I genuinely do not believe or disbelieve that -- but, particularly in light of that pattern, it's most definitely unreasonable to assume that he's guilty of anything without having those allegations tested and then proven in court.