The Iraq War Logs don’t seem to have hit here as hard as their much smaller predecessor—WikiLeaks fatigue? Friday afternoon release? Midterm eclipse? But there is some smart stuff out there on the leaks.
One of the toughest, smartest assessments comes, unsurprisingly, from Robert Fisk, the Middle East correspondent for Britain’s Independent. On Sunday he penned a column titled “The shaming of America,” the tenor and substance of which you’d be hard-pressed to ever find in a U.S paper.
It’s an angry run-through of the new documents’ revelations, and a pretty brutal condemnation of the U.S. military and world press for not more aggressively exposing them before now. But perhaps the most interesting section is where Fisk asks a question about WikiLeaks’s implications for the future of journalism.
But I do suspect this massive hoard of material from the Iraq war has serious implications for journalists as well as armies. What is the future of the Seymour Hershes and the old-style investigative journalism that The Sunday Times used to practise? What is the point of sending teams of reporters to examine war crimes and meet military “deep throats”, if almost half a million secret military documents are going to float up in front of you on a screen?
It’s an interesting question, and not so easy to answer. No doubt there will be a temptation—much the same one that came with the Internet—for organizations to assign reporters to cover war through easily and cheaply available material like these leaks, especially if they become more frequent.
But there is a very important reason to send teams of reporters out into the fields of war: journalism cannot be passive. Waiting for a new trove of documents to be leaked, or relying solely on its leaked documents for reporting, would allow WikiLeaks to take on an editorial role, selecting what gets published and what makes news; at minimum selecting from what information news would be gathered.
Journalists fight against government attempts to do that as a matter of routine, and they should be skeptical of WikiLeaks, as well. And, as much of Friday’s reporting revealed—the best of which included context and reporting added by correspondents—the WikiLeaks documents are snapshots, rough sketches, and first reports that demand fleshing out by those who are well-versed in the war from which they sprang.
Rather than suggest a worrying future for investigative, on-the-ground reporting, WikiLeaks shows that it’s as important as ever.
David Cay Johnston has something very important to say about this.
Poynter Online - Romenesko
"When reporters parrot official lies the way Tom Gjelten of NPR did in saying pay no attention to those documents because its old news not worth mentioning, important news does not get reported, to the detriment of our nation and our freedoms. When reporters, editors, and Sunday talk show hosts, ignore such government documents they help perpetuate falsehoods that are fundamentally dangerous to our nation and to the First Amendment. "
There's more, and I encourage you to read the whole letter.
He is referring to another letter on Romenesko by John Parker
Poynter Online - Romenesko
"The career trend of too many Pentagon journalists typically arrives at the same vanishing point: Over time they are co-opted by a combination of awe -- interacting so closely with the most powerfully romanticized force of violence in the history of humanity -- and the admirable and seductive allure of the sharp, amazingly focused demeanor of highly trained military minds. Top military officers have their s*** together and it's personally humbling for reporters who've never served to witness that kind of impeccable competence. These unspoken factors, not to mention the inner pull of reporters' innate patriotism, have lured otherwise smart journalists to abandon – justifiably in their minds – their professional obligation to treat all sources equally and skeptically."
Read Parker's entire letter as well.
I hope that you, Joel, and others on CJR weigh in on these important insights by two of the best journos in the business. In fact, I am counting on you.
#1 Posted by James, CJR on Tue 26 Oct 2010 at 03:01 PM
Good post, and Fisk is provocative and smart. But his question surely is rhetorical, and I hope we don't lose sight of that.
To the extent that the wiki revelations are not thunderbolts of revelation, it's because a lot of brave journalists plowed this territory in Iraq. Anthony Shadid, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Glantz, Rubin and many brave others (Fisk included) reported many of these abuses in real time. To argue that we didn't know quite a bit of this until it floated on to our screens this week is to take leave from the facts.
That said, the strength of these documents, and why NPR's correspondent was so woefully, ineptly wrong on this, is that it has the virtue of connecting the many various pieces of the puzzle. It takes what we know and, to muddle my metaphor, weaves it together.
The Pentagon Papers derived some of its power from the earlier strong, brave reporting of Sheehan and Halberstam and others.
#2 Posted by Michael Powell, CJR on Tue 26 Oct 2010 at 06:56 PM
Michael Powell makes good points, but the fact remains that unless journalists read the documents they cannot determine what is new.
What strikes me, based on Parker's letter and reporting by Jeremy Scahill, is that the documents evidently reveal a host of lies by officials, who knew certain facts and said things were not so.
My focus on the Rumsfield statements smearing all journalists as aiders and abettors of terrorism goes to this point about what officials knew and what they said.
But no journalist should ever endorse the view of a government official, when the government is trying to keep documents from being released, when he or she says there is nothing significant in the documents. And that is especially egregious when the journalist has not read the documents before embracing the government's point of view.
#3 Posted by David Cay Johnston, CJR on Wed 27 Oct 2010 at 01:11 PM
Yes, that's a good point, David. Good journalists are critical of official stories which "officials say":
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-farcical-end-of-the-american-dream-470295.html
But good journalists don't have the access to officials, nor the job security which depends on it. Exceptions exist, you being one of the best, but the rule is access goes to the uncritical, commercial revenue to the connected.
Therefore, I think we have to be careful that we don't label a media institutional problem as a journalist quality control issue. There 's a reason why these factual stories and perspectives come from blogs and fringe journalists outside the daily news media.
There are conflicts of interest between a corporation's obligation to truth and its relations with government power. The shoddy work of many a journalist is a symptom of that problem, not the problem itself.
#4 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 27 Oct 2010 at 03:03 PM
I'll be short and sweet: I agree with David Cay and with John Parker. There's a lot that is important in the wiki leaks, and it provides a massive context.
#5 Posted by Michael Powell, CJR on Wed 27 Oct 2010 at 04:21 PM