Assange's Media Allies
On December 7, the notorious radical mastermind of "WikiLeaks,"
turned himself in on a sexual assault charge in London. But in the
liberal media, the condemnations are few. There are no real enemies to
the media elite's left, especially if they can be (very loosely)
identified with journalism. Julian Assange may be highly motivated to
cripple American "imperialism," but his relentless efforts to disrupt
American foreign policy is a good thing when the media are manipulating
the government's reaction by choosing which leaks they will publish and
promote.
Time magazine editor Richard Stengel, for example, told
Charlie Rose on PBS that Assange is an "idealist" that "sees the U.S.
since 1945 as being a source of harm throughout the planet," but he's
not really opposed to him. He put Assange on the cover of Time with an
American flag gagging his mouth and feigned a position of balance. In
his "To Our Readers" letter, Stengel conceded Assange is out to "harm
American national security," but there is a public good unfolding, in
that "the right of news organizations to publish those documents has
historically been protected by the First Amendment." Our founding
fathers, Stengel huffed, understood that "letting the government rather
than the press choose what to publish was a very bad idea in a
democracy." He tapped the reader on the chest: "I trust you agree."
Americans the world over could die because of these intelligence
betrayals. But hip, hip, hooray for the freedom of speech that got them
killed? 
Some
might ask, on the people's behalf: In our democracy, whom do you trust
to defend you from another terrorist attack? Time magazine? The New York
Times? Who elected them to act as our guardians against terrorist
violence and mayhem?
Time
hailed Assange, Australia's "information anarchist, with the headline
"The Wizard from Oz." (No question mark.) There's even buzz that they're
considering Assange as their 2010 "Person of the Year." For their cover
story, Stengel interviewed Assange over the Internet, and provided a
welcoming American forum for his boasts.
Stengel asked about the
"unintended consequences" of Assange's massive leaks, causing the U.S.
to "make secrets more impenetrable." But apparently, this is an intended
consequence. Assange shot back that a government clampdown on secrets
is "very positive," since government can either be "efficient, open and
honest" or "closed, conspiratorial, and inefficient." His goal is not to
make the U.S. better; it is to harm this country.
Stengel can
hear all this talk of a vast and evil American conspiracy, and the plot
to make it "inefficient" in responding to enemies, and still can tell
Charlie Rose that this whole scandalous mountain of leaks is really our
own fault. "We make Julian Assange possible because we're hiding things
that shouldn't necessarily be hidden. And we're using technology that's
penetrable. And so, in effect, we were creating him by our own
policies." So if our intelligence is penetrable, it's our fault. If it's
impenetrable, we're inefficient.
In other words, Time still
can't find its way out of a paper bag to identify our evil enemies, so
fixated is it on us being the enemy.
Stengel went on CNN and
asserted the media's role is to "publish and be damned," which is the
journalist's way of saying "The public be damned." He added: "I believe
on balance that they have been detrimental to the U.S. But our job is
not to protect the U.S. in that sense."
The government doesn't
take that approach when reporters get taken hostage, as in Iran
(Newsweek's Maziar Bahari) or Afghanistan (David Rohde of the New York
Times). They don't icily ape Stengel and boast "It's not the
government's job to protect journalists in that sense." U.S. officials
work to get them released. But those same journalists can easily turn
around and side with Assange - who would probably have felt no remorse
over leaking that potentially deadly news.
For its part, The New
York Times published a pro-WikiLeaks piece by left-wing British writer
Misha Glenny. He cooed that "WikiLeaks spews unvarnished, sensitive
truths." The Pentagon suggested that the release of field reports does
not bring new understanding to Iraq's past, to which Glenny snapped:
"But if they do not bring new understanding to the past, why are they
damaging at all? Is this not the curse of power, forever compelled to
conceal and dissemble?"
In this good vs. evil narrative, the
Pentagon is forever lying, and the idealistic liberals and leftists are
forever exposing them with the "sensitive truths." It doesn't even
matter if the government is now operated with the "Audacity of Hope." If
someone is being "gagged by the flag," as the Time cover of Julian
Assange artistically implies, journalists can't really be opposed to
him.
