The lack of original source material is the primary problem with modern media. There's far too much flavourless copy pasta. It started in the blogosphere, but now a lot of newspapers are no better.

They call it "churnalism", where the same press release is often just dumped into a publication verbatim, without even being checked for accuracy or rewritten.

It's also nothing new - the papers have been doing it for years. Once you've got the eye, you can spot a press release based article a mile off. Many years ago at college, we had to go through a tabloid and broadsheet, clipping out the press release based items, and there's not much left once you've done that, believe me.

The UK media also refer to "a source" and hardly ever name them. You'd rarely get away with that in the US media.

Its just causing alot of upset. I mean it hasn't made my life and better or worse since the leaks, only caused international upset. I can understand people want to know about these things but it has caused alot of trouble.

Good. True, most of it hasn't been hugely enlightening but it's good to kick everyone out of their sheep like stupor every now and again.

Trouble is a good thing.

Provided it's not made-up

Knowing the truth is the only basis for a just society. Secret deals and public lies are not something we should accept.

As someone tweeted, we're closing in on Assange, yet Bin Laden remains at large.
So that's ok then.

Bin Laden is good for the administrators.

Anyone looking to destabilise the status quo. That's quite a long list.



Bin Laden is good for the oil business.

Damn right too, been playing the same tune for sodding years.

There's always people wanting to destabilise the status quo.
What I'm failing to see is how any of the accused agencies would benefit.
Unless, of course, they're mere puppets of the shadow government, waiting in the wings to install the NWO and do the bidding of the Blytonians.
As for finding a reason to generate a conflict in Korea, this seems like an awfully big can of worms just to oust a paranoid, short despot. Can't we just claim he's sitting on oil and do it that way?

Ok, let's go back to basics. Instability leads to tension, tension leads to war. War is great for business. The CIA along with every other agency out there from every major player on the planet, need continued funding during a time when cuts are being made left right and centre. No war - no funding. Destabilise the status quo and you can persuade senate sub-committees to keep filling your coffer.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/government/an ... 1#comments

ZDNet had an article, asking if Assange and Wikileaks are terrorists...

I wrote in reply:

If he is a terrorist...
What does that make all of those investigative journalists?

Sure, Assange and Wikileaks are only doing the first 10% of a good investigative journalists job - collecting the information - and the last 1% (publishing it), but that is what a IJ does as well. An IJ will then vet the information, check the sources, try and verify the information is correct, make sure that their (and their publisher's) rears are covered and write an interesting piece of journalistic content around the garnered information.

Wikileaks is eschewing responsibility for the information they are publishing, they are not researching and investigating, before publishing the facts and they are not putting any value-add information to the stories.

On the one hand, Wikileaks are causing governments and corporations trouble, on the other hand, that is also what a good journalist should be doing - they just have more / better ethics.

If we class Assange as a terrorist, we will have to start shipping every budding Woodward and Berstein off to Gitmo and it would cause a serious breach of the freedom of the press.

It is a difficult grey area. He isn't a journalist, more like a researcher at a newspaper or TV news station, but instead of using the material to spark off further research, he is publishing it without taking any responsiblity.

That makes him incredibly dangerous to democracy and the press, because if a government moves against him, they are declaring they want a totalitarian state, where nobody is allowed to report on government mistakes.

Assange and Wikileaks have maneouvered themselves very cleverly, they have put themselves in a position, where governments and companies are damned if they sit idly by, but they are doubly damned if they act out against Wikileaks...

Good post

One point though... they don't publish anything without first confirming its authenticity.

They also have methods of collecting the data that means the whistle blowers are anonymous even to Wikileaks.