Gainor Column: Media Can’t Decide Whether Espionage is Journalism
Imagine the year is 1942 and the German government runs a news bureau in Washington, D.C. collecting government secrets. Even FDR would have laughed at claims they were actual journalists, locked them up and thrown away the key. He would have been right. There's a huge difference between an individual or an organization reporting abuses in government or business one at a time and the same people stealing enough classified material to run a spy agency. But sleazy Julian Assange and his spy agency WikiLeaks are trying to pretend they are journalists. He even calls himself 'editor-in-chief,' sort of like Mata Hari calling herself H.L. Mencken or the Rosenbergs claiming to be Woodward and Bernstein. Assange even argued in a recent column that 'WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism.' As a sign just how far that profession has fallen, many in the media are agreeing with the spin. read more
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Gainor Column: Media Can’t Decide Whether Espionage is Journalism
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on December 11, 2010. Filed under