I’ve been reading as much about WikiLeaks’ release of the State Department cables as I can find, and trying to get a handle on what I and others think about it.  The reaction to these leaks by the media, politicians, and various public figures has been far more hostile than to WL’s previous releases.  The key question seems to be whether the release of the cables is a responsible action, in the manner of the classic whistle-blower, or whether it is egregious and unwarranted.

I think the hostility stems primarily from two causes, a misunderstanding of exactly what has taken place, and a bit of good old-fashioned American navel-gazing.

On the first point, I think most people are under the impression (as I was, based on the initial coverage), that WikiLeaks has dumped it’s entire cache of documents on the Internet for everyone to peruse.  In fact the documents are being released in redacted form by WikiLeaks’ media partners at a rate of about 100 per day.  As far as I can tell, the balance of the documents are not available anywhere on line, nor were they available on the old wikileaks.org site.

My main point though, is aimed at the people who don’t think these documents are significant enough to warrant a deliberate breach of American security.  It’s only natural that these documents (being records of US diplomacy) are primarily of interest to people in other countries.  For instance, I think people in the UK are pretty interested to find out that their government lied to them about the cluster bomb treaty and the fate of Diego Garcia natives, and residents of the Middle East might want to know how the Qatari government manipulates al-Jazeera.  If someone sends you that kind of information, it seems to me that you’re morally obligated to disseminate it as widely as you can.

Perhaps the saddest part of this chapter is the vehemence with which the American media have attacked Assange and WikiLeaks, and the ambivalence they’ve shown in reporting the stories.  Glenn Greenwald has really been on top of this, check out the way the MSNBC host talks about Assange in the clip linked here.  Liberal media indeed.  Coverage in the New York Times, which has all the cables, has been, to me, significantly poorer than that of the Guardian, and even the English-language coverage by Der Spiegel.  Check out this list of stories broken by all of the outlets for a comparison (admittedly biased towards the Guardian).

I think the media has particularly dropped the ball on reporting the ideology behind WikiLeaks.  They have spelled out quite clearly the reasons behind what they’re doing, but I had to read about it on the blog of a grad student in California, because I haven’t heard it mentioned (much less engaged) by the mainstream press.  I suppose this is a little unfair, because the mainstream press does a bad job of reporting ideas and ideology at the best of times.

Why has the US media not embraced this treasure trove of information?  Maybe this is too simplistic, but I blame jealousy.  Once upon a time Daniel Ellsberg took the Pentagon Papers to the NYT, but the cables leaker(s) went to WikiLeaks instead.  Some potentially good reasons are spelled out in these videos.  This is yet another way in which new media is eating old media’s lunch, and a certain amount of hostility is only natural (if deeply unprofessional).

I’d like to close by saying that I don’t see a millimeter of moral difference between the releases by WikiLeaks and those of any other major media organization.  The reason they have been targeted is that they enjoy less status than more established organizations, and because they are a choke point in the information flow.  Next time you hear Eric Holder or some other Obama apparatchik call Julian Assange a criminal, just imagine they are talking about Marcus Brauchli or Bill Keller instead.  Better yet, ask yourself why those guys haven’t done anything to get themselves talked about that way.