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THE MEDIA

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INTERVIEWS

01-29: Bill Keller & WL. Bill Keller, the New York Times' executive editor, published an enormous article on the 26th of January about the New York Times' dealings with WikiLeaks. The article develops further the running story of WikiLeaks' relationship with its media partners, the subject of a Vanity Fair piece earlier in the month.

Much has been made of the negative light in which Julian Assange appears in the article. Wired's Kim Zetter published a digest piece, in which the more absurd claims of the piece are given particular attention but little critical treatment. The more colourful parts of the article were, predictably, grist to the celebrity gossip mill. Perhaps the most important thing about the article, though, is that it is the first authoritative indication that the Times is willing to take a stand for media freedoms in the United States. No longer. It is to be commended that Keller has given this sentiment editorial expression in the Times. How Many Documents? NPR Apologizes for WikiLeaks Mistake. Thanks to one persistent listener, NPR published a correction admitting that it has mistakenly – and more than once – inflated the number of State Department diplomatic cables released recently by WikiLeaks.

Since the cables first became public on Nov. 28, NPR had repeatedly referred to "thousands" of confidential State Department cables. In reality, as of December 30, 2010, only 1,947 are publicly available. Here's a hat tip to Henry Norr, a San Francisco listener who frequently complains about NPR's news coverage. He first contacted to me on Dec. 13. about this NPRWikiLeaks story. "Do you guys just make stuff up and present it as fact? " Norr asked in an email. I checked with the story's editor and learned that NPR considered it technically accurate. Norr agreed. I admit it. It did. On Dec. 21, I sent Norr's 9 examples to NPR top editors and asked that a staff memo be sent out reminding everyone to be more careful in talking about the November document release. Schafer is correct.

Why? Collab. with respected media. By JAMEY KEATEN and BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE The diplomatic records exposed on the WikiLeaks website this week reveal not only secret government communications, but also an extraordinary collaboration between some of the world's most respected media outlets and the Wikileaks organization, just as U.S. officials target WikiLeaks in a criminal investigation. Unlike earlier disclosures by WikiLeaks of tens of thousands of secret government records, the group is releasing only a trickle of documents at a time from a trove of a quarter-million, and only after considering advice from five news organizations with which it chose to share all of the material.

"They are releasing the documents we selected," Le Monde's managing editor, Sylvie Kauffmann, said in an interview at the newspaper's Paris headquarters. WikiLeaks turned over all of the classified State Department cables it obtained to Le Monde, El Pais in Spain, The Guardian in Britain and Der Spiegel in Germany. U.S.

JOURNALISM (broad)

CONTRA. PRO. THE GUARDIAN. VANITY FAIR. Summary Voice of Russia. In a recent interview to The Guardian, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange spoke of his fears that the United Kingdom might meet the requests from Washington to extradite him to the United States, and later he may be either kept in solitary confinement or murdered “Jack Ruby-style”. This is a reference to a story dating back to mid 1960s when a Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby murdered John F. Kennedy’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and later died in prison of lung cancer. Shortly before his death, Ruby himself complained that he had been injected for cancer. To avoid it, Julian Assange is rallying his supporters to impose pressure on the British government so that it would be politically impossible to ignore public opinion. In Assange’s opinion, the present Conservative – Liberal Democratic government is in a stronger position than the previous, Labour government to resist his extradition by Washington.

But, on the other hand, the situation does not look too rosy for Assange. King Wants NYT Indicted For Espionage. NYT on J.A. (oct. 2010) He demands that his dwindling number of loyalists use expensive encrypted cellphones and swaps his own the way other men change shirts. He checks into hotels under false names, dyes his hair, sleeps on sofas and floors, and uses cash instead of credit cards, often borrowed from friends. “By being determined to be on this path, and not to compromise, I’ve wound up in an extraordinary situation,” Mr. Assange said over lunch last Sunday, when he arrived sporting a woolen beanie and a wispy stubble and trailing a youthful entourage that included a filmmaker assigned to document any unpleasant surprises. In his remarkable journey to notoriety, Mr. Twelve weeks ago, he posted on his organization’s Web site some 77,000 classified Pentagon documents on the Afghan conflict.

Much has changed since 2006, when Mr. Several WikiLeaks colleagues say he alone decided to release the Afghan documents without removing the names of Afghan intelligence sources for troops. Exposing Secrets Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Why Journalists not defending J.A. Bob Beckel. Assault on Journalism.

December 17, 2010 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Whatever the unusual aspects of the case, the Obama administration’s reported plan to indict WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for conspiring with Army Pvt. Bradley Manning to obtain U.S. secrets strikes at the heart of investigative journalism on national security scandals.

That’s because the process for reporters obtaining classified information about crimes of state most often involves a journalist persuading some government official to break the law either by turning over classified documents or at least by talking about the secret information. Contrary to what some outsiders might believe, it’s actually quite uncommon for sensitive material to simply arrive “over the transom” unsolicited.

In most cases, I played some role – either large or small – in locating the classified information or convincing some government official to divulge some secrets. A Nixon Precedent. Media VS WL.