Bill Keller wrote an expose of Julian Assange’s personal hygiene.
I give the New York Times credit for continuing to cover the Bradley Manning trial when so many other outlets have stopped doing so. But reporter Charlie Savage’s recent piece (7/11/13) included a curious take on the testimony of Harvard professor Yochai Benkler.
After explaining some of the attacks on WikiLeaks coming from U.S. government officials, Savage wrote (emphasis added) that
such claims were amplified, Mr. Benkler noted, by commentators on Fox News and in the Weekly Standard, among other outlets, who sharply criticized WikiLeaks. Its journalistic reputation was also undercut by two prominent articles published by the New York Times—an opinion column by Thomas L. Friedman and a lengthy first-person magazine article by Bill Keller, the paper’s executive editor at the time—portraying the group as anarchists and “a secretive cadre of antisecrecy vigilantes.”
But Benkler’s point was not that WikiLeaks‘ “journalistic reputation” had been undercut; he was criticizing the Times for maligning WikiLeaks.
What was in that Tom Friedman column? He wrote (12/14/10) that while he “learned some useful things” from WikiLeaks, he doesn’t
want to live in a country where any individual feels entitled to just dump out all the internal communications of a government or a bank in a way that undermines the ability to have private, confidential communications that are vital to the functioning of any society. That’s anarchy.
Setting aside the matter of Tom Friedman being the arbiter of anyone’s journalistic reputation, it’s not clear that the column undercut anything—especially considering that his description of what WikiLeaks was doing did not square with the way the outlet actually released information.
As for that lengthy Keller piece (1/30/11), it is perhaps best known for breaking important news about the personal hygiene of WikiLeaks‘ Julian Assange, as told to Keller by Times reporter Eric Schmitt:
“He’s tall—probably 6-foot-2 or 6-3—and lanky, with pale skin, gray eyes and a shock of white hair that seizes your attention,” Schmitt wrote to me later. “He was alert but disheveled, like a bag lady walking in off the street, wearing a dingy, light-colored sport coat and cargo pants, dirty white shirt, beat-up sneakers and filthy white socks that collapsed around his ankles. He smelled as if he hadn’t bathed in days.”
If journalistic reputations are the issue, there are some ways to compare the Times and WikiLeaks. As Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald (8/22/12) noted:
On the very same day WikiLeaks released over 400,000 classified documents showing genuinely horrific facts about massive civilian deaths in the Iraq war and U.S. complicity in torture by Iraqi forces, the New York Times front-paged an article purporting to diagnose Assange with a variety of psychological afflictions and concealed, malicious motives, based on its own pop-psychology observations and those of Assange’s enemies (“erratic and imperious behavior,” “a nearly delusional grandeur,” “he is not in his right mind,” “pursuing a vendetta against the United States”).
And Keller’s piece referenced one controversial episode in the Times‘ reporting on the WikiLeaks‘ diplomatic cables. The Times (11/29/10) reported that “Iran has obtained a cache of advanced missiles” that could have “the capacity to strike at capitals in Western Europe.”
But as FAIR reported at the time (FAIR Blog, 11/29/10), the Times was dramatically overselling the story. The paper decided, at the request of the U.S. government, not to publish the cable in question. WikiLeaks did, though, and anyone who read it could see that the Newspaper of Record was omitting some key facts—namely, that Russian intelligence officials were not convinced that Iran purchased any such missiles, or even that they existed. Subsequent reporting by the Washington Post and others cast further doubt on the Times‘ scoop.
And there has also been criticism of how the Times‘ treated some of the other WikiLeaks revelations—downplaying revelations about civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially when compared to how newspapers like the Guardian were reporting the same evidence.
But back to Yochai Benkler’s testimony at the Manning trial. This is what he said (transcript courtesy of the Freedom of the Press Foundation):
Tom Friedman, probably the best known op-ed writer of the New York Times, wrote an op-ed in which he talked about there being two major threats to the world: one was China and the superpower, and the other was super-empowered individuals like WikiLeaks, and compared those to the major threats to the world. New York Times editor Bill Keller published an 8,000-word New York Times Magazine description of the events—in which the same WikiLeaks and the same Assange that the news reporting part of the organization eight months earlier had called a muckraking site, a small online site that provides information that governments and corporations would like to keep quiet—suddenly started to describe WikiLeaks as a secretive cartel of antisecrecy vigilantes. He described Assange in terms of, like, badly smelling as though he hasn’t bathed. Repeatedly tried to denigrate the professionalism.
It would seem to me that Benkler’s point was that outlets like the Times were in some ways mimicking the attacks on WikiLeaks that were coming from right-wing media and U.S. politicians, in an attempt to “denigrate” an outlet that the Times had previously praised. When Savage writes about WikiLeaks‘ reputation being “undercut” by his paper, perhaps he means that as a critique of the Times. But I don’t read it that way. If anyone’s “journalistic reputation” has suffered as a result of the WikiLeaks stories, it was the New York Times‘.
I think that Wikileaks has more credibility than mainstream media even among Wikileaks critics while at the same time there is a lot of distrust of main stream media and government both from Left and from right.
Benkler’s point was not that the attacks were unfair (though he also thought they were) but that they changed Wikileaks’ image.
I.E., At the time BM leaked, Wikileaks was widely seen as a legit journalistic org. Enemy/anarchist/activist thing came later.
He wasn’t there to say “jerks!” but to offer insight into whether BM’s conduct should be understood as wanton/aiding the enemy.
Please feel free to reach out 1st for response next time – a good approach to avoiding unfairness and inaccuracy in reporting.
Mr Savage, your response doesn’t make sense, unless you believe Bill Keller could actually damage anyone’s journalistic credentials. Not even Judith Miller would believe that.
Et tu, Mr. Savage? Hasn’t the “give me a chance to respond first” school of journalistic gatekeeping been thoroughly discredited? FAIR’s role is to examine your thinking as represented by the article published in the Times. Why do they need to “reach out” to you first in order to accomplish this task? If Peter Hart had called you first, were you hoping that he would have avoided criticizing you in his post?
In any event, your comment only reinforces the point that Hart was making: your article misrepresents Benkler’s testimony. You claim that the attacks on Wikileaks “changed” its image; and your article, as published in the Times, suggests that its reputation as a journalistic organization was “undercut.” A more accurate take–and one less sympathetic to the Times’ opinion pieces–would have merely stated that Wikileaks’ “journalistic reputation” was attacked by Friedman, Keller and others. That was Hart’s point–which you missed.
Prof. Benkler’s article in New Republic published today clearly lays out the thrust of his testimony, and Charlie Savage in his comment here accurately summarizes it. Peter Hart’s take does not (“But Benkler’s point was not that WikiLeaks’ ‘journalistic reputation’ had been undercut; he was criticizing the Times for maligning WikiLeaks.”). Calling up Savage before publishing such a garbled piece would have done nothing to thwart journalism. Read Benkler’s article for yourself at RSN:
https://us-mg5.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?retry_ssl=1#mail
Mr. Savage, I do not read Peter Hart’s article as saying that Benkler’s point was that the Time’s articles were “unfair” as you have characterized. Hart’s point is not about Benkler. His point is about you. And your characterization that the TImes through two articles “undercut” Wikileaks’ reputation. Hart’s point is that the NY Times’ journalistic reputation was undercut itself by the character assassination piece by Keller and Friedman characterizing Wikileaks as a world danger on the level of China. Those statements undercut many people’s view of the Times. Though they may have also changed the perception in some people’s view of WIkileak’s, as Benkler testified to.
We the People have been trained to deify the US military for
so long that ohe risks being called unpatriotic for not supporting the wars. Incurious, uninformed Americans forget that the US has not participated in an honorable war since 1945. If people are going to cheerlead for war, then accept the reality and publish video and photos of the egregious reality of imposing “liberty and democracy” with bombs and bullets. Considering the ongoing censorship of/by the media due to people pretending to be “respectful of our heroes”, I would submit the lack of honesty about the reality of the wars increased the U.S. empathy deficit.
Wicki leaks is an avenue for a lot of information.Problem is a lot of it is stolen.And to a lot of people raised very differently than me, that seems A OK.But it is very one sided.Once upon a time a bunch of “plumbers”broke into the Democratic national headquarters to find out what they were up to.Lost in the watergate slap down of Nixon and his party was this.The Dems were up to some dirty pool of their own.Call it a sign of the times.Now that info would of found its way to the press if the operation was a success..Not one sight per say that asks for ,and expects information for political reasons like wiki leaks.There would of been many out lets in Nixons pocket.Point is I don’t see Wiki leaks lovers making any monuments to the “plumbers”.I sometimes wonder if folks on your side of the fence can see ,or understand right and wrong anymore.The ends really does not justify the means.
The American Empire and its mouthpieces like the New York Times are throwing a hissy fit about Wikileaks and Snowden because the latter have exposed the self-styled “Land of the Free ” as the true threat to world peace and security.
American war crimes and global spying exposed by Wikileaks and Snowden are all symptomatic of an American Empire that is hellbent on global domination and waging serial wars of aggression (Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) to achieve its ambition.
Most Americans–including supposed US “progressives”–simply cannot overcome their inbred sense of American moral goodness to face this reality that increasing numbers of people outside of the American bubble reality understand.
The American media like Tommy Friedman, NY Times, Bill Keller are well-paid propagandists for the American Empire and of course peddle its propaganda.
As for journalistic reputation, the New York Times doesn’t have any such thing to begin with–long before Wikileaks or Snowden. After all, the NY Times spewed American lies about “WMDs in Iraq” for years and employed Pentagon stenographer Judith Miller as one of its reporters.
The supposed Newspaper of Record in reality is the Newspaper of Lies.
Just right with this write-up, I truly think this site needs far more consideration. I’ll apt to be again to read much more, thank you for that details.
ben http://www.bizcommunity.com/View.aspx?ct=5&cst=0&i=83983&eh=Y1top&msg=y&us=1
cte…..so who is not a part of the shadow army?
michael e.:
If Watergate were to happen today, many of today’s corporate journalists would probably report the story like this:
Information from a psychiatrist’s office seems to show that the man who took classified government documents had some ongoing difficulties. A Mr. Plummer and members of his family have some inside knowlege on this, as they were witness to the break in. To complicate matters further, some reporters have also seemed to implicate a Linda Lovelace, with an accompliace known as Deep Throat. Sex and politics, should anyone in Washington or the world be surprised?
It is so very sad that the Watergate story could not be told in today’s world; however, see how easy it is to dissemble. : )
The best mugshots information on the net at Jacqueline Friedberg.