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December 16, 2010
In The media's authoritarianism and WikiLeaks at Salon.com Glenn Greenward critiques the American media over its response to WikiLeaks in accepting and repeating the false claim that WikiLeaks has indiscriminately dumped thousands of cables, whereas newspapers have only selectively published some.He says:
the broader point here is crucial: the media's willingness to repeat this lie over and over underscores its standard servile role in serving government interests and uncritically spreading government claims...That's why this cannot-be-killed lie about WikiLeaks' "indiscriminate" dumping of cables has so consumed me. It's not because it would change much if they had done or end up doing that -- it wouldn't -- but because it just so powerfully proves how mindlessly subservient the American establishment media is: willing to repeat over and over completely false claims as long as it pleases the right people -- the same people to whom they claim they are "adversarial watchdogs." It's when they engage in such clear-cut, deliberate propagandizing that their true function -- their real identity -- is thrown into such stark relief.
He adds that the immediate consensus in the American political and media class was that the cyber activists who launched denial of service attacks were engaged in pure, unmitigated destruction -- even evil -- and should be severely punished.
The Americana media is less a check on state power and more a reflection of what the government thinks. They are, as Jay Rosen puts it, on the wrong side of the secrecy of the national security state after 9/11.
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