6 ms·

If WikiLeaks is dying, then the NYT is partly to blame

94 points by nextparadigms 15y ago

vph 15y ago
Reading this article several times, I really failed to see a clear logic from the author as to why the supposed dying of Wikileaks is the NYT's fault.
- tedunangst 15y ago
  I think the theory is that WL was a competing news organization with the potential to replace NYT, but NYT hasn't rolled over and died, therefore blocking WL from taking its seat on the throne.
- mquinlan 15y ago
  Agreed - it seems like more of a failed attempt at a namedrop, when more of the "blame" should be directed towards the public. If Times readers as a whole lose express interest in WikiLeaks while Assange is dealing with legal issues and many other whistleblowing sites (OpenLeaks.org as an example) haven't seem to been releasing any high-profile documents, isn't that just more the reason for the Times to focus efforts elsewhere?
- mathewi 15y ago
  As the author of the post, maybe I can try and clear that up: my point was that while we have all failed to some extent -- by not supporting WikiLeaks and protesting things like the PayPal blockade and Amazon deletion and the government's dubious case -- the New York Times has failed by not using its national media platform to protest those things and their impact on free speech and freedom of the press. And my argument about why they didn't do that is in part that the NYT sees WikiLeaks as competition. Hope that helps.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    What about the people among us who don't think that Wikileaks is a good thing to support? What if there are more people who think that than message board sentiment analysis would lead you to believe? What if the New York Times simply doesn't agree with your take --- ok, the popular take on places like HN --- about Wikileaks?
    - mathewi 15y ago
      The article was my opinion -- obviously you are entitled to your own :-)
    - lukejduncan 15y ago
      Does it matter if anyone thinks WikiLeaks is a "good" thing? These are the questions that matter: Is WikiLeaks a journalistic entity? Why or why not? Is it OK for a bank/financial entity to block donations to any entity, journalism or not? *If money is speech (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo) how is blocking donations not a criminal offence? "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
      - asdfasdghasdf 15y ago
        Because Visa and Mastercard are private companies that can decide whom they want or don't want as customers. They'll deny you from being a merchant if you have poor credit, too. They take on risk with every new merchant they accept, and I can see how WikiLeaks might pose a greater risk than most. If a group's supporters are willing to DoS visa.com and mastercard.com, I wouldn't put it past them to make large donations with stolen credit card numbers either, and Visa and Mastercard are on the hook for the chargebacks. And, of course, since money is speech, it's fully within your rights to donate to wikileaks (cash, check, wire transfer, money order), just as its within Visa's rights not to accept Wikileaks as a customer. EDIT: And just to be clear, I'm not trying to argue that there are no political motivations behind the decisions of Visa and Mastercard. I'm just answering the question about why this isn't for some reason illegal.
- grandalf 15y ago
  [edit: I see a few people disagree with this. Care to respond rather than simply downvote?] In case you haven't been following what has been going on. The NY Times published a tabloidesque hit piece on Assange, and has failed to defend Wikileaks on the basis of journalistic freedom. It's pretty clear that the Times management consists of war hawks who oppose Wikileaks b/c of their neoconservative political beliefs and desire to please those with political power. Think about when the last time the NY Times published any remotely controversial investigative journalism... oh yeah it was the articles that supported the claims that Saddam had WMDs. Strangely, the Times (a good but ardently neoconservative) paper still manages to fool progressives into thinking that it offers a sympathetic voice. Sadly the pressures of competing in the online world have left the paper with no choice but to sell off its journalistic integrity year after year. If anything, one would hope that a paper like the Times would have taken a skeptical but journalistically sharp look at the leaked info and would have held off on the ad hominem attack on the Wikileaks founder, at least until some evidence was offered in support of the allegations against him. And no, I don't think the total buffoonery written by Krugman, Dowd, and Herbert counts for any progressiveness points. If anything the three are a sideshow act with no relevance to the issues that matter.
  - starwed 15y ago
    You're downvoted for pretending controversial opinions (that the nytimes is a neoconservative stronghold) are obvious and need no justification.
ars 15y ago
"WikiLeaks is a journalistic entity and deserves our protection" No, it's not. It lost that moral ground when it released unredacted information. It also lost that status when wikileaks became about Assange himself. I supported the original wikileaks: Anyone could leak anything and wikileaks would publish it, and sometimes the broader media would pick it up. This new wikileaks is all about damaging entities Assange doesn't like. No thank you. Wikileaks should not get to choose what to leak. Either leak everything you are given (after redaction of course), or nothing, do not selectively choose who to leak against. Once you do that you become a political organization.
- bandushrew 15y ago
  hmm? you mean like every other journalistic entity out there? Journalistic Purity aside, WikiLeaks was a journalistic entity and did deserve our protection. We have just established a precedent that the US government can unilaterally decide to shutdown any journalistic entity that reports news it doesn't like. What kills me about this is that people seem to support that status quo. Lots of mumbling about how wikileaks should have redacted <whatever> and no outrage at all about how easy it was for this voice to be silenced by our government as soon as it suited them.
  - ars 15y ago
    > and no outrage at all about how easy it was for this voice to be silenced I think it's for two reasons - a: They are not that silent - they released everything they had and the US couldn't do anything. So there isn't all that much to be outraged about. And b: I don't think that most people actually support them (their goals) anymore. I certainly don't. I did, but not anymore. Personally I think their leaks harmed things, and helped nothing. Especially the ones about Abbas. If people had actually believe the leaks were real and not US propaganda (yes I know how funny that sounds to you) those leaks could have easily started another Palestinian civil war (well a Fata vs Hamas war anyway). You may argue that the leaks actually did help, but that's not the perception I have. Maybe I'm manipulated by the media, could be. But it doesn't matter - if I am, then so are lots more. And that's why people are not more outraged.
ternaryoperator 15y ago
There will be many causes for Wikileaks' death (if in fact it does in fact die). None more damaging though than the damage Wikileaks did to itself. Leaving unredacted the names of informants who were later executed for providing the very information Wikileaks posted clinched its fate IMO.
- X-Istence 15y ago
  [citation needed] I haven't read any information regarding sources being executed.
  - ternaryoperator 15y ago
    I stand corrected. There's no proof any source has been killed, but the Taliban has repeatedly vowed to hunt down and "punish" the sources not redacted in the Wikileaks docs. Many links on that on the Web.
rrrazdan 15y ago
The truth even if it causes some harm, is always infinitely better than a lie, even if it helps someone. That is my position.

94 points by nextparadigms 15y ago

vph 15y ago

Reading this article several times, I really failed to see a clear logic from the author as to why the supposed dying of Wikileaks is the NYT's fault.

tedunangst 15y ago
I think the theory is that WL was a competing news organization with the potential to replace NYT, but NYT hasn't rolled over and died, therefore blocking WL from taking its seat on the throne.
mquinlan 15y ago
Agreed - it seems like more of a failed attempt at a namedrop, when more of the "blame" should be directed towards the public. If Times readers as a whole lose express interest in WikiLeaks while Assange is dealing with legal issues and many other whistleblowing sites (OpenLeaks.org as an example) haven't seem to been releasing any high-profile documents, isn't that just more the reason for the Times to focus efforts elsewhere?
mathewi 15y ago
As the author of the post, maybe I can try and clear that up: my point was that while we have all failed to some extent -- by not supporting WikiLeaks and protesting things like the PayPal blockade and Amazon deletion and the government's dubious case -- the New York Times has failed by not using its national media platform to protest those things and their impact on free speech and freedom of the press. And my argument about why they didn't do that is in part that the NYT sees WikiLeaks as competition. Hope that helps.
- tptacek 15y ago
  What about the people among us who don't think that Wikileaks is a good thing to support? What if there are more people who think that than message board sentiment analysis would lead you to believe? What if the New York Times simply doesn't agree with your take --- ok, the popular take on places like HN --- about Wikileaks?
  - mathewi 15y ago
    The article was my opinion -- obviously you are entitled to your own :-)
  - lukejduncan 15y ago
    Does it matter if anyone thinks WikiLeaks is a "good" thing? These are the questions that matter: Is WikiLeaks a journalistic entity? Why or why not? Is it OK for a bank/financial entity to block donations to any entity, journalism or not? *If money is speech (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo) how is blocking donations not a criminal offence? "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
    - asdfasdghasdf 15y ago
      Because Visa and Mastercard are private companies that can decide whom they want or don't want as customers. They'll deny you from being a merchant if you have poor credit, too. They take on risk with every new merchant they accept, and I can see how WikiLeaks might pose a greater risk than most. If a group's supporters are willing to DoS visa.com and mastercard.com, I wouldn't put it past them to make large donations with stolen credit card numbers either, and Visa and Mastercard are on the hook for the chargebacks. And, of course, since money is speech, it's fully within your rights to donate to wikileaks (cash, check, wire transfer, money order), just as its within Visa's rights not to accept Wikileaks as a customer. EDIT: And just to be clear, I'm not trying to argue that there are no political motivations behind the decisions of Visa and Mastercard. I'm just answering the question about why this isn't for some reason illegal.
grandalf 15y ago
[edit: I see a few people disagree with this. Care to respond rather than simply downvote?] In case you haven't been following what has been going on. The NY Times published a tabloidesque hit piece on Assange, and has failed to defend Wikileaks on the basis of journalistic freedom. It's pretty clear that the Times management consists of war hawks who oppose Wikileaks b/c of their neoconservative political beliefs and desire to please those with political power. Think about when the last time the NY Times published any remotely controversial investigative journalism... oh yeah it was the articles that supported the claims that Saddam had WMDs. Strangely, the Times (a good but ardently neoconservative) paper still manages to fool progressives into thinking that it offers a sympathetic voice. Sadly the pressures of competing in the online world have left the paper with no choice but to sell off its journalistic integrity year after year. If anything, one would hope that a paper like the Times would have taken a skeptical but journalistically sharp look at the leaked info and would have held off on the ad hominem attack on the Wikileaks founder, at least until some evidence was offered in support of the allegations against him. And no, I don't think the total buffoonery written by Krugman, Dowd, and Herbert counts for any progressiveness points. If anything the three are a sideshow act with no relevance to the issues that matter.
- starwed 15y ago
  You're downvoted for pretending controversial opinions (that the nytimes is a neoconservative stronghold) are obvious and need no justification.

ars 15y ago

"WikiLeaks is a journalistic entity and deserves our protection" No, it's not. It lost that moral ground when it released unredacted information. It also lost that status when wikileaks became about Assange himself. I supported the original wikileaks: Anyone could leak anything and wikileaks would publish it, and sometimes the broader media would pick it up. This new wikileaks is all about damaging entities Assange doesn't like. No thank you. Wikileaks should not get to choose what to leak. Either leak everything you are given (after redaction of course), or nothing, do not selectively choose who to leak against. Once you do that you become a political organization.

bandushrew 15y ago
hmm? you mean like every other journalistic entity out there? Journalistic Purity aside, WikiLeaks was a journalistic entity and did deserve our protection. We have just established a precedent that the US government can unilaterally decide to shutdown any journalistic entity that reports news it doesn't like. What kills me about this is that people seem to support that status quo. Lots of mumbling about how wikileaks should have redacted <whatever> and no outrage at all about how easy it was for this voice to be silenced by our government as soon as it suited them.
- ars 15y ago
  > and no outrage at all about how easy it was for this voice to be silenced I think it's for two reasons - a: They are not that silent - they released everything they had and the US couldn't do anything. So there isn't all that much to be outraged about. And b: I don't think that most people actually support them (their goals) anymore. I certainly don't. I did, but not anymore. Personally I think their leaks harmed things, and helped nothing. Especially the ones about Abbas. If people had actually believe the leaks were real and not US propaganda (yes I know how funny that sounds to you) those leaks could have easily started another Palestinian civil war (well a Fata vs Hamas war anyway). You may argue that the leaks actually did help, but that's not the perception I have. Maybe I'm manipulated by the media, could be. But it doesn't matter - if I am, then so are lots more. And that's why people are not more outraged.

ternaryoperator 15y ago

There will be many causes for Wikileaks' death (if in fact it does in fact die). None more damaging though than the damage Wikileaks did to itself. Leaving unredacted the names of informants who were later executed for providing the very information Wikileaks posted clinched its fate IMO.

X-Istence 15y ago
[citation needed] I haven't read any information regarding sources being executed.
- ternaryoperator 15y ago
  I stand corrected. There's no proof any source has been killed, but the Taliban has repeatedly vowed to hunt down and "punish" the sources not redacted in the Wikileaks docs. Many links on that on the Web.

rrrazdan 15y ago

The truth even if it causes some harm, is always infinitely better than a lie, even if it helps someone. That is my position.