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New York Times Style Mag 'T' Treats Wikileaker Julian Assange As Pop Icon, a Santa Claus of Information

By Clay Waters | December 07, 2010 | 08:46

A  A

This Christmas, give the gift of...secret diplomatic cables?

There were several surprisingly slanted articles in the Holiday edition of “T,” the New York Times style magazine published 15 Sundays a year and put together by writers and reporters from outside the paper. Most newsworthy (if almost as shallow as the other pieces) was British writer Misha Glenny’s profile of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (arrested in a sex inquiry in London Tuesday morning), presenting his damaging, illegal leaks of secret diplomatic cables as a Christmas gift, treating the controversial figure as just another one of the hip icons celebrated in T Magazine in a story with the galling title “The Gift of Information.”

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have been jettisoned to fame or notoriety (choose your noun, please) not because of a passing political battle but for reasons much deeper: the desire to possess, distribute and devour information. Ever since the release in July this year of some 92,000 documents relating to America’s involvement in Afghanistan, an old joke from Communist times keeps spinning around my head. "We cannot predict the future," announces the newsreader of Soviet radio reporting on the Politburo’s deliberations, "but the past is changing before our very eyes." Now our understanding of the nature of the intervention in Iraq has also changed radically with the publication of a still more astonishing collection of 391,832 secret United States military field reports from the kaleidoscopic theaters of battle.

It has been the eye-opening, game-changing year of WikiLeaks. It started in April, with the release of video shot in 2007 from an Apache helicopter as a group of men on open ground in Baghdad were fired upon. Two of the victims worked for Reuters, as a photographer and driver, and the tragic nature of their deaths was made all the more horrific by the robotic, almost desultory voices of the airmen narrating their actions. The impact was immense. Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’ mercurial and complicated founder, had the attention of the world.

Back then, Wikileaks claimed that footage “clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers.” But the Times left out the findings of a subsequent Pentagon report:

On Tuesday, the Pentagon made public a partially redacted report on the incident that concluded the Apache attackers had no way of knowing the journalists were among suspected insurgents on the street....From that perspective, the journalists' cameras looked like weapons carried by the suspected insurgents, including rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles, according to the report. In addition, the journalists lacked any distinctive clothing or markings to distinguish themselves from the combatants, the report said.

Glenny continued:

Assange understands full well the significance of these documents and their surreptitious transmission, and that knowledge translates into power and influence. For most of history, government has enjoyed an easy superiority in adjusting the ebb and flow of information. Now the rules of the contest have changed. In contrast to the petabytes of data flotsam, half-truths and speculation that drift daily around the Internet, WikiLeaks spews forth unvarnished, sensitive truths. Assange’s extraordinary project provides transparency unbridled. Historians, journalists and civic activists will continue to fish in these rich informational waters for some time if the organization does not collapse.

For the world’s militaries it is, of course, a less welcome operation. The Defense Department’s official response to the Afghan documents thundered, "We deplore WikiLeaks....We know terrorist organizations have been mining the leaked Afghan documents for information to use against us." At the same time, the Pentagon suggested that "the release of these field reports does not bring new understanding to Iraq’s past." But if they do not bring new understanding to the past, why are they damaging at all? Is this not the curse of power, forever compelled to conceal and dissemble? In his recent memoir, Tony Blair berates himself for introducing a Freedom of Information Act. "You idiot. You naïve, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop," he writes.

Glenny concluded with a throwaway line that's too dopey to even qualify as amoral:

Assange and his crusaders may be good. Perhaps they are bad. But they have taken everyone’s urge to tell a story to a new and almost wholly unfamiliar level.

The article is even accompanied online by a staggeringly pointless six-minute video of Times features and entertainment director Jacob Brown and photographer Max Vadukul pursuing Assange like he was a reclusive rocker, from London to Stockholm, in a quest for a portrait, and not even finding Assange. If you’re breathless with curiosity, a flattering black and white portrait of Assange as hipster icon accompanies the article.

About the Author

Clay Waters is the director of Times Watch, an MRC project tracking the New York Times. Click here to follow Clay Waters on Twitter.
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Comments

Assange

Submitted by Cool Arrow on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 9:14am.

I'm witholding judgment of Assange pending his release of Obama's Birth Cirtificate and marriage to Larry Sinclair.

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More than that Mr. Waters.

Submitted by The Vet on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 9:30am.

  It was not just the release of the Pentagon report. We could see the video with our own eyes. You do not hang around with armed men on a battlefield. You don't do it and expect to live. You don't walk around with anything that could be misconstrued as a weapon from any distance. You don't do it on a battlefield.

  I did not need a Pentagon report to know these men made themselves part of the battle through their own actions. Their deaths fall only at their feet.

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This is so typical of the

Submitted by Chris Norman on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 10:02am.

This is so typical of the media and what was predicted would happen. The Times is attempting to lighten the whole story, trivialize the crime and the criminal, and make the story "fun". Now government attempts at prosecution of Assange will be reported  in the typical way: like the prosecutors are the villains and stories about how they are heavy-handed and bungling will proliferate. The whole thing, with the steering of the media, will become a circus in an attempt get Assange off with, at most, a slap on tthe wrist and the status of folk hero for the far-Left. Kind of like the OJ trial. You just watch and see...

Let's make the 2012 campaign: "The War on Error"
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'Don't shoot the messenger'

Submitted by Slyrr on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 10:05am.

Now that he's captured, Assange is wringing his hands and pleading, 'Don't shoot the messenger for revealing uncomfortable truths!'

This jerk should try being a missionary for a while, preaching the gospel of Christ to non believers and fair-weather church members, and see what happens.  They crucified Christ for telling 'uncomfortable truths' and murdered the apostles.  Yet Assange now is begging for kid-glove treatment for what he did?

There's an old cowboy proverb you'd do well to hear, Assange - that is if you can chip yourself out of the filthy crusts of your elitist snobbery long enough to humble yourself and listen:

'When you're tellin' the truth son, it's best if you keep one foot in the stirrup.'

If a Liberal/Democrat politician/media figure wants to put their arms around you, or pat you on the back, all they're doing is looking for a good place to stick a knife.
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er excuse me

Submitted by theduck6 on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 10:42am.

Didn't the left flambe the Scooter man (Libby) and send him to jail for doing essentially NOTHING? Sure hate to be Asssange if Obama gets him....Bwaaahaa Just kidding.

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You're excused...but Scooter never

Submitted by Jer on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 11:59am.

spent one single night behind bars despite being convicted of several felonies and being sentenced to 30 months in prison.

Jer

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ChickaBOOMer| TIME Warp: Beware Of Freaks Bearing Gifts

Submitted by StewartIII on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 10:09pm.

TIME Warp: Beware Of Freaks Bearing Gifts
http://chickaboomer.blogspot.com/2010/12/time-warp-beware-of-freaks-bearing.html 

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Stop Censoring The Gosnell Trial!

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