Mainstream press throws Wikileaks under a bus:

The title of this entry copies Cory Doctorow's piece on this subject at BoingBoing. The issue is a new proposed federal journalist shield law, something a country with our first amendment shouldn't even need. The issue is that a few big, 'responsible' news entities are trying to work verbiage into this new law that prevents it from protecting Wikileaks. Cory links back to: Trying to exclude WikiLeaks from shield law stinks, by Douglas Lee.

One offensive observation by these weasels is the assertion that Wikileaks is not practicing Journalism; it's just doing "data dissemination." Thank God that no responsible paper has ever stooped to disseminating data, like, oh, say, the Pentagon Papers, or transcriptions of the Nixon tapes, or Associated Press feeds.

Here's one of the fine points Lee makes, and I quote: First, does anyone — including the most mainstream of traditional journalists — really think it a good idea that Congress and judges define, analyze and evaluate what is appropriate “editorial oversight”? For decades, news organizations have struggled to resist those efforts in libel cases and, so far, those struggles have succeeded.

Before we add a few dozen more exceptions to the first amendment, why don’t we exercise our muscles a bit by adding a measly one or two exceptions to the second? I’m not sympathetic to most of what WikiLeaks does, but it’s pathetic for news media in the USA to think that it’s so dangerous, it needs its own exception from our constitution.


I’ve been down a lot lately, haven’t I? I’ll write with a lighter hand next time, I promise.