Wikileaks and the media: Dancing with the devil

[bemildred]

Pity the poor old MSM, as the blogosphere does insist on calling them.

Reduced in all their variety to a dismissive trio of initials, the mainstream media are now forced to do business with that self-aggrandizing Internet crusader Julian Assange on the one hand and, on the other, face accusations of hypocrisy when they report on his legal travails, his large personality and his working methods.

“A computer hacker with an inflated sense of his own importance has become the new journalist,” the Independent’s Middle East correspondent, Robert Fisk, complained to Al Jazeera recently.

Whistle-blowers often have inflated egos and hidden agendas: The contents of manila envelopes are either deadly boring or so explosive that they are extremely tricky to publish – or worse yet, both.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/wikileaks-and-the-media-dancing-with-the-devil/article1842750/

I like this piece.

[Tunkamerica]

1. what do you like? It's equivicating and states the obvious.

[ixion]

2. It always cracks me up who people attack Assange, but ignore what he exposed

It's a global-scope case of 'shoot the messenger,' and indicative of the problems with modern government.

The problem is not people who report fraud and corruption. It's those committing the fraud and being wholly corrupt that are the real problem.

[bemildred]

3. Yeah, it cracks me up too, all the giant egos attacking his giant ego.

All the control freaks attacking him for being a control freak.
All the media assassins picking over his sex life while whining about how he is exposing confidential things.
All the secrecy freaks whining about his lack of transparency.
Etc.