Now that the hue and cry over WikiLeaks has subsided somewhat it’s time to take a look at what was actually done, how it was received and where it all stands in the spectrum of journalistic history.
The initial reaction to the first leak was, “Jesus Christ! What has this guy done?” Upon further inspection, however, it seems that what Julian Assange did was exactly what we want our reporters to do. He just forgot to push the edit button.
Like many of you I have spent the last couple of years attacking the media for being nothing but celebrity fawners and Page 6 sycophants. This was especially egregious in an era when we desperately needed our reporters to be spelling out the real problems of government and those who aspired to be part of government. It has been a long time since a reporter or group of reporters walked down the street that led to Watergate. I think Julian Assange belongs in the same category as Woodward and Bernstein… wait let me finish.
Assange has all the right instincts but exercises none of the responsibility of a great whistle blower The problem with Julian Assange is that he doesn’t have a Ben Bradlee. Bradlee was the editorial conscience of Woodward and Bernstein. He was the grownup who said, “Prove it.” Assange has no such grownup. Now, with all the uproar, including trumped up sex charges, and the incredible celebrity surge that the world media seems better at than real reporting, he will probably manufacture enough personal hubris to never accept that badly needed editor.
I have read only what has been passed along by the more connected media outlets but from what I have been able to glean, it seems that Assange’s real screw-up was publishing the names of people in the Middle-east who could be endangered by such revelations. This is indeed serious and Assange should be condemned for it, but the condemnation should be for his failure to edit his material, not for publishing the files.
With great ability comes great responsibility. Assange through his ability as a hacker has been able to uncover all these files and most of them should be published because only transparency keeps governments and their practitioners honest. Having said that, it still remains that he should have exhibited a responsibility toward the material. The withholding of certain sensitive files would not in any way have jeopardized the value of what he was doing or the overall effect of the work. He was just too lazy or maybe too much in a hurry, to do the job the way it should have been done.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what should be published and what should not. “Classified” is not the standard. All bureaucrats, in a terrified effort to protect their butts, stamp everything from nuclear plans to toilet paper orders “Classified.” A little common sense is all you need to determine what to publish and what to withhold.
Julian Assange is not a traitor or a conspirator or a terrorist. He is a whistle blower who was too lazy or too inept to do his job the right way. It’s a shame.