Have you heard about the hawt new Afghanistan war journalism, Wikileaks? The Washington Post heard about it too, probably by checking Google News or whatever. And two unlucky reporters got the Sunday night job of writing about the “new approach” Wikileaks took to publicize the damning war documents — a “new approach” that completely passed over America’s Newspaper, the Washington Post, in favor of the New York Times, the Guardian and an actual German paper, Der Spiegel.
In this case, rather than conduct its own assessment of the documents, Wikileaks selectively provided the files to the Times, the London-based Guardian newspaper and the German magazine Der Spiegel. The three outlets agreed to publish simultaneously, though each organization did its own reporting and produced its own stories.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange “said he expects that Americans will respond as they did nearly 40 years ago to the Pentagon Papers,” the Post writes. Meaning, of course, that Americans will first read the secret documents in the New York Times and not the Washington Post. [WaPo]
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Why, I don’t know why the leakers wouldn’t have wanted to give these documents to the paper that has half its editorials and op-ed columns arguing that we must keep fighting forever in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with invading Iran also.
It’s “Pentagon-Papers-O-Mania!” Not the actual investigative journalism, but an incredible simulation!
Yes, but Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford never worked at the New York Times.
[re=625422]JMP[/re]: And also referring to this debacle as “Obama’s War”, which is beyond disingenuous.
Pity. We would have enjoyed the multiplayer swordfights to determine whether Krauthammer, Will, Gerson, Thiessen or Cohen got to write the “Hopey can’t handle national security” column running simultaneously with the actual story.
Unless they gave it directly to Howard Kurtz to criticize the “journalistic ethics” (cough, cough) of anyone who reported it.
[re=625424]Capitol Hillbilly[/re]: HEY REMEMBER THAT ONE TIME WHEN WE LIKE TOOK DOWN A PRESIDENT? I MEAN, WERE SPOON-FED STORIES BY A HIGHLY-PLACED INSIDE SOURCE AND SOMEHOW CONVINCED EVERYONE THAT JOURNALISM WAS AN ADEQUATE SUBSTITUTE FOR CITIZEN ACTION? I’M CARL BERNSTEIN AND YOU WILL BLOW ME BEFORE THE JACUZZI.
I’ve thought for quite a while that Assange is a dick. But this whole having actual neutral parties examine the documents and fucking over the WAPO is making me rethink that…
Or at least maybe he’s my kind of dick.
Stop it already. How do you expect Ben and Sallie to keep getting invites to State Dinners if they publish such Damming evidence about this White House or any previous Administrations? WAPO has no gravity, THEY SUCK.
Screw WaPo’s sad ’cause Wikileaks had sexytime with that New Yawk paper. Why wasn’t this leaked to our Wonkette?!?!?!?!?!?!
‘Scusies, I haz a sad now.
Ugh, and your editor took a “new approach” in this post by leaving an abandoned sentence fragment at the very bottom of the post. NEVER FORGET.
If only WaPo hadn’t hired Bill Kristol. They might still be on the kewl guest list.
This is good news for John McCain!
THere’s only one way to bring this conflict to a successful conclusion…. RELEASE THE KRAUTHAMMER
Meanwhile, the Post has a live chat coming up this morning about last night’s episode of Mad Men.
[re=625435]Ken Layne[/re]: Gasp! Ken, you’re admitting fraggings?
[re=625426]freakishlystrong[/re]: What do you mean? Obama retroactively began the Afghanistan war, like how he created the deficit, after the 9/11 attacks happened under Clinton’s watch.
Of course the librul media gives Obama a pass for starting this war!
Just like they’re overlooking the fact that it was a North Korean mini-sub,
piloted by a Libyan trained Taliban suicide submarine crew that torpedoed
the Maine. I mean the Deepwater Horizon.
America will respond to this the way they did the Pentagon Papers? By snorting coke and watching porno movies in theaters? (I assume this was what happened. I went to public school and our textbooks only went up to 1970 so everything after that I learned from Boogie Nights)
[re=625446]MissyLissa[/re]: The solution to the Afghan war is to turn it into a reality TV series. It will be a huge hit and the merchandise alone will pay for it.
[re=625426]freakishlystrong[/re]: S’okay, remember when the Post called AfPak andIraq “Bush’s Wars?”
What? They didn’t? Never mind.
I grinned a little last night when I read that WikiLeaks released the docs to the NYT, but not the Post. This headline is just a little reason why.
…And we’re off!
Story 1: “There’s no NEWS here! DO NOT READ THIS!”
Story 2: “The leaks were leaked by leakers who leak. Let’s look at the leak.”
Story 3: “This leak is like other leaks, and yet different.”
Summary: “Do not read these things. They’re long and detailed. Next on Crossfire: Lindsay Lohan, a skank or a victim of bad parenting?”
Pfft. The only reason the NSA Times published this in a timely manner is because they didn’t want The Foreigns to beat them to it.
The guy released the documents to The New York Times because the Times remains the best newspaper in the country, and is miles ahead of the Post in recent years because the Post has somehow, for some reason, in some way, incredibly dumbed down its paper, fired most of its copy editors, fired or pushed out its best and most experienced writers and editors, gotten away from its core mission of actually reporting daily news and providing good, strong, solid investigative reporting (key words there are good, strong and solid), dropping several of its most popular features, somehow destroyed the Style section by hiring childish writers who don’t bother doing any real reporting, somehow ruined its once-mighty comics pages, destroyed the weekly TV guide, devalued the once-great Weekend section, added weird sub-headlines that just take up space, destroyed its once-great layout and design, added some ridiculus features that dumb down the paper, and added some horrible op-ed writers. So it’s little wonder that this guy chose the Times. The Post is still a good paper–but it’s not as good as it once was. Readers can blame the new leadership–the decrease in quality started with their ascension. The Post needs to go back to what it once was. They can start with getting rid of the ugly new re-design, dropping the juvenile writing, dropping the dumbed-down writing, getting rid of most of their op-ed writers, getting back to the basics or reporting news, putting an outdoors column and a running column back in the Sports section, getting more local arts coverage back in Style, and getting rid of much of the dumbed-down crap added in recent years. It can really be that simple for the Post–just go back to what it once was. Oh, and hire about 10 new copy editors.
Why hasn’t anyone thought before to combine an important topic and investigative journalism?
[re=625429]Panquake[/re]: The Nora Ephron tapes have surfaced?!
[re=625474]thefrontpage[/re]: The Post strikes me as a fairly good local paper. Sort or the Mayberry Sentinel for a somewhat larger but extremely provincial city. The NYT on the other hand is what USA Today could have been if it hadn’t been directed at the middle intelligence business travel segment of society. A national paper.
[re=625474]thefrontpage[/re]: The Post’s core mission is to provide a tax writeoff for a lucrative online degree program. The other missions (providing a place for pompous gasbags to “write” “op-eds” that are actually press releases written by lobbying firms, providing space for vanity pieces by Sally Quinn, etc) are entirely incidental.
[re=625483]doxastic[/re]: Oh God, I forgot about the two of them. LEAST ANTICIPATED NET VIDEO RELEASE EVER.
Too bad Wikileaks didn’t think to send a copy to Dan Froomkin.
Wikileaks might have left out the Washington Post cause they knew the Post would have shoved the story right into the toilet.
Fuck the Post. For the past 10 years they’ve been angling for the Washignton Times readership when Rev. Moon’s paper finally folds. The only person in America who hasn’t figured this out is G. Gordon Liddy who’s still pissed he had to spend time in jail because of a couple of guys who worked for the paper before it became a little more than a Neocon rag.
[re=625495]Panquake[/re]: It has to be transferred from Super 8 first.
[re=625474]thefrontpage[/re]: Wow, it sounds like you’re describing the LA Times, except that the LA paper has been ravaged by a whole series of (mis)managements.
Today we are all once-great (or at least once-adequate) newspapers that have embraced teh suck.
Whatta buncha dumbasses – they don’t even know that ObaMao was actually born on Mars in a test tube from Ol’ Joe Stalin’s DNA.
OK. So I read some of the Wikileaks data in The Times this morning. Wasn’t Hillary Clinton just in Pakistan giving the Pakistani government $500 million dollars in aid and don’t the Wikileaks kind of show that Pakistan has been giving aid to the Taliban in Afghanistan….blowing up US soldiers with roadside devices or at least not using Pakistani military to stop these roadside bombings, while saying, at the same time, that they go out on missions and patrol the roads (which they don’t)? Did I get the facts wrong? But if I didn’t: WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE: we give the Pakistanis $500 million dollars. They pretend to patrol the roads but don’t, with the result that roadside bombs are blowing up our military personnel. This is SO WRONG!
[re=625506]Serolf Divad[/re]: “For the past 10 years they’ve been angling for the Washignton Times readership”
What readership? Haven’t they always been around to fulfill messiah Moon’s ego?
[re=625587]Army of None[/re]: Ok, slow down.
To be boringly serious, yes, there is a problem that “Pakistan” has given aid to the Taliban, but that “Pakistan” is the ISI, and Hillary has put giant pressure on them to reform (dismantle and rebuild) the ISI. In fact, remember the protests in Pakistan last year, where they demanded that we not put any “strings” on our aid? Guess what that was?
So, yes and no. More worrisome, though, is how much gets siphoned off in corruption. Also, when “contractors” make $500/day to provide security a piece for Xe, and there are tons and tons of them for every official, and then tons of them for the fuel, tons of them for the aid, tons of them for the building contractors, etc., you start getting into an open spigot of money on our side of the equation which is only exceeded by the flowing toilet on their side of the equation with bribes, tribes, thefts, and gangs.
Of the $500 million, maybe a million would hit the ground.
The “this is something we knew” report seems consensus, but that’s not the point of the leak. The point of the leak was the toll in civilians (which US media is skipping in favor of Stinger missiles).
I’ll wait until I get the book on tape to pass judgment. Or maybe Rush Limbaugh’s no doubt erudite and informed opinion.
“he expects that Americans will respond as they did nearly 40 years ago to the Pentagon Papers”
Maybe if they published the ingredients in Cheetos.
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