Behaving as media should.
Whistle-blowers usually take great risks to get out information to the public. I suspect that it was not WikiLeaks fault that this individual has been arrested, but rather a reverse engineering by the US military of who had access to what and where.
“The army intelligence specialist charged with leaking U.S. military secrets to the WikiLeaks website has been moved from Kuwait to a military jail in Virginia.
In a statement issued Friday, the U.S. army said Pte. Bradley Manning was flown Thursday to Quantico Marine Base, where he will be held while awaiting trial for leaking top-secret military intelligence to WikiLeaks, a site devoted to publishing leaked government and other sensitive documents.”
Mr. Manning, allegedly, has been a very naughty and very busy bee, apparently he is also responsible for the video from the gun cameras of attack helicopters shooting up civilians in Iraq along with the thousands of documents made available on WikiLeaks.
“White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the leak of tens of thousands of secret military documents already has jeopardized the lives of Afghans working with the U.S. and its war allies.”
If our media had actually been doing its job and reporting about what was happening in Afghanistan and Iraq, we would not have had the need for this particular leak. Instead through our journalistic mandarins continue to go meekly through their routines of obedience toward elite power. Journalism is not performing its original function any more, that is bringing the news to the people. Battered by calls for “objectivity” and “balance” what we get is a tendentious smear of propaganda; this vile pap masquarading as “news” for consumption by the public.
A side note, Mr.Manning will probably be publicly drawn and quartered for his heroic actions Al Jazeera opines in their article about the WikiLeaks source:
“In a statement, the defence department said Manning was transfered to the US “due to a potentially lengthy pre-trail confinement because of the complexity of the charges and an ongoing investigation.”
Our correspondent said that the US military wants to use Manning to send a message to future whistleblowers.
“If you violate the trust of security clearance, you will be prosecuted,” she said.”
A rational decision by the US military, but I do not think it will really help their security situation much in the long run. Too much malfeasance, for too long involving so many individuals, one will always have the temerity to challenge the system. This may not have happened if our media was less complacent when it came to analyzing and presenting facts about the current military imbroglios. There is some hope though.
The media is being slowly replaced, people can see the inherent bias in the system and now are cross checking and consulting many sources for a better view of what is happening in the world. So when I hear the newspapers bleating about their costs going up and advertisers leaving them I have no sympathy. If they did their job, people would buy their product. As is, who needs to see elite opinion reiterated for the nth time only in a different medium?
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
7 comments
August 1, 2010 at 8:14 am
tsactuo
I’ve not trusted much the mainstream US media have put forth in 10+ years. Alas, I have to have a “wait and see” approach when it comes to what I see they report. Years ago I began partly relying on the international media and “underground/web media” to get my news. I did so because I found that often I saw stories on them days, sometimes weeks, before I saw them in most US outlets, and even when they showed up they were frequently watered down. (That includes even my regional weekly and daily newspapers.)
Eventually, one of two things is going to happen, I believe. Either the US media outlets are going to buck up and put their money where their mouths are — and actually report on what’s going on, be it good or bad or indifferent — or they’ll fall the rest of the way into the pit — and wholly become the political mouthpieces many already believe them to be.
I wouldn’t bet on the former but the latter, to be honest.
LikeLike
August 1, 2010 at 9:28 am
The Arbourist
Good points.
It is always good to get a couple points of view on what is happening in the world.
I think the latter will be the most likely endpoint for the current crop of media empires. The concentration of wealth is too much for any sort of reasonable journalistic ethos/commitment to overcome.
LikeLike
August 1, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Alan Scott
The Arbourist,
It’s such a shame that someone with your intelligence cannot get past this hatred of wealth and capitalism. But the subject was Whistle blowers. I realize that bringing up modern leakers will only cause you to dig your heals in. So to illustrate the real damage that whistle blowers can cause, I will go back to the good war, WW2. Well it may not be the good war to you, but at least to me, the good guys, that’s us,, won.
Now one of the great controversies for my Country, the USA, was how the Pearl Harbor attack was such a surprise. Besides incompetence among various military leaders, it was a massive intelligence failure. American code breakers had hints, but no definite details of the attack .
An American code breaker named Herbert O. Yardley, published a book in 1931 that revealed to the world the US code breaking group the ‘ Black Chamber’. Japan found out that the US had read it’s secret messages during the early 1920s Naval Conference limiting the size of Navies.
Japan upgraded it’s military and diplomatic codes during the period leading up to WW2, thus making it harder for American code breakers to know about the attack on Pearl Harbor.
LikeLike
August 1, 2010 at 6:59 pm
The Arbourist
t’s such a shame that someone with your intelligence cannot get past this hatred of wealth and capitalism.
It is not a hatred of wealth and capitalism per say. But rather on a system that concentrates wealth too much and exploits those who have little say in the system. The more egalitarian a society is, the better off it is overall, not only in terms of rights and freedoms but in terms of wealth as well. Inequality will never be eliminated, but it can be mitigated to a certain extent by societies rules. It also happens to be one of the tenets of social-democratic mixed economies, that I live within and happen to advocate for.
So to illustrate the real damage that whistle blowers can cause, I will go back to the good war, WW2.
I appreciate your arguments Mr.Scott and it really is a delicate question between the security of the state versus the publics’ right to know about what is being done in their name. Without strong public oversight terrible things can occur because of the lack of responsibility on behalf of those who perpetrate the injustices.
The media is supposed to help the public be ‘in the know’ about things, as opposed to merely parroting what the government want to be known. Journalists used to be at the forefront of the public trust, but now past a few notable exceptions…(Robert Fisk for one) the media is rarely critical of the government and comfortable to act as mouthpieces for the message the state wants to put out to the public.
Where to draw the line is a very hard question to answer.
LikeLike
August 2, 2010 at 4:03 pm
Alan Scott
The Arbourist,
Thank you for acknowledging the fact that whisleblowers and leakers have a down side . Since I’ve managed to pry the door open, now I intend to put my both feet in.
One of the ways the Bush Administration kept Americans and also by the the way Canadians, safe was to stretch the legal limit of domestic spying. Since mixed in with all of the legal and illegal immigrants scattered within my Country were a good number of terrorists . The CIA used a program called ‘ Swift ‘ to spy on financial transactions, money flowing in and out of the Country .
Granted there was great potential for abuse, but I believe that since money is Mother’s milk not only to politics but terrorism, this probably saved many lives. For background.
Once the NYtimes leaked this, terror networks no doubt changed the way they moved money around. What is your take ?
LikeLike
August 2, 2010 at 4:04 pm
The Arbourist
I was browsing around the Science blogs and the recent pepsi-gate controversy and found this great piece on how much media actually effects the content of magazines. I extrapolate other media outlets are in similar predicaments.
It is long, about 15 minutes worth of attentive reading, but well worth your time.
LikeLike
August 8, 2010 at 9:38 am
The Arbourist
From the NYT article:
The issue is complex as there are many factors to consider. Lives would be saved if we lowered the speed limits everywhere by 10 mph, but we do not do that because there are other reasons that supersede the saving of life notion.
My analysis of the article and what you propose led me to the following. It is probably okay to use the tools present in the financial system to track suspicious transactions with the proviso that there is judiciary oversight of the process. There must be a way for the people of the US to have a say on acts that may be perpetrated against them. The US government system is based on the idea of checks and balances, and in this case I believe that this rule also must apply. Without oversight, programs like Swift could easily be abused and used for illegal activities and there would be no legal means of recourse.
LikeLike