Truth is Terrorism or: The Selective Definitions of What it Means to be a Journalist in the Mainstream Media or an Elected Official

Definition of Journalist (jour·nal·ist):

1. One whose occupation is journalism.
2. One who keeps a journal.

Definition of Journalism (jour·nal·ism):

1. The collecting, writing, editing, and presenting of news or news articles in newspapers and magazines and in radio and television broadcasts.
2. Material written for publication in a newspaper or magazine or for broadcast.
3. The style of writing characteristic of material in newspapers and magazines, consisting of direct presentation of facts or occurrences with little attempt at analysis or interpretation.
4. Newspapers and magazines.
5. An academic course training students in journalism.
6. Written material of current interest or wide popular appeal.

Definition of Diplomacy (di·plo·ma·cy)

1. The art or practice of conducting international relations, as in negotiating alliances, treaties, and agreements.
2. Tact and skill in dealing with people. See synonyms at tact.

(definitions courtesy of thefreedictionary.com)


"He [Julian Assange] is an active, willful enabler of Islamic terrorism. He is as much a threat as Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahri. In short, Mr. Assange is not a journalist or publisher; rather, he is an enemy combatant - and should be treated as such."

"News reports say the WikiLeaks founder is hiding out in England. If that's true, we should treat Mr. Assange the same way as other high-value terrorist targets."
-Jeffrey T. Kuhner, columnist at The Washington Times and president of the Edmund Burke Institute

"Everybody is freaking out over this WikiLeaks stuff. And, frankly, the WikiLeaks guy bugs me because he looks like a waif.  He looks like he ought to be in a Peter Pan stage play rather than on the world stage affecting things.  He's a little wuss, Julian Assange.  Need to find this guy and string him up."
-Rush Limbaugh, radio personality and broadcaster

"Well, I think Assange should be assassinated actually (laughs) I think Obama should put out a contract and maybe use a drone, or something."

"I wouldn’t feel unhappy if Assange disappeared."
-Thomas Flanagan, political scientist at the University of Calgary and conservative political activist 

"Hunt down the WikiLeaks chief like Taliban"

"He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaida and Taliban leaders?"
- Sarah Palin, former Governor of Alaska and Member of the Republican Party


 

I admit, I've picked some of the more shocking quotes and the more high profile statements from people you may be more familiar with, but after having done a lot of scouring, I have to say I find it unnerving that there are more than just these tasty little tidbits of misdirected ire and knee jerk bullying out there on this subject; hell, I could copy / paste quotes all night and still not get them all in here.

These people are SCARED.  Okay, more dramatic than it needed to be, I mean, of course they're scared, they make their livelihoods off of being scared and deceptively sneezing their fear all over anyone who has their aural orifice open and within range of their infected gobs.  It's what they do, it's in their nature, and they are encouraged by their peers to behave this way on a daily basis.

My lament is over the redefinition of terms, particularly what defines a journalist (and through that journalism) and the definition of diplomats and diplomacy.  These terms really seem to have been drastically re-written.  I don't pretend that this sort of selective description modification hasn't happened before from time to time, or that there exceptions to the rules, but it seems we live in an era where this sort of thing has become the new norm.

What is astounding through all the bandwidth, broadcast time, airwaves and hot air spent on this subject, is that the opinions expressed by the aforementioned individuals are not expressed in any way that is actually truly constructive to: a) their desire for the resolution of containment of the WikiLeaks documents and b) the protection of members of the military or diplomatic community.  It's all just acid and vitriol, self aggrandizing and soapboxing and it really resolves nothing or goes anywhere. It's also no coincidence that several of the biggest media grand standers in North America are quoted above.

Mainstream media particularly are working very hard at distancing themselves from the actions of this organization by any means possible.  Gone are the days of associating with the likes people like 'Deep Throat'...  And well they should, because frankly WikiLeaks does things pretty differently than say, CTV here in Canada or CNN.  And I'm sure I don't have to say Fox News with this group without actually including them in the list.

From everything that I've seen, the big difference is WikiLeaks, for the most part, offers almost NO OPINION in regards to the content they publish.  They just put the facts out there and allow the reader to draw their own conclusions.  You cannot say the same thing about any other media organization that I have seen in the western world, and frankly it's quite refreshing.  This, from what I can tell, is as close to true journalism as you're going to find.

There is not a single shred of proof that anything that WikiLeaks has revealed in cables or via anonymous source has killed or injured a single person as a result of their release.

This, unfortunately cannot be said about the U.S. Government, and it's allies.

The fifteen minutes of leaked video footage of a U.S. military helicopter pilot who mistakenly identifies two Reuters photographers for insurgents in Baghdad, who casually mows them and a group of people down (including two children in a van) with his rotary cannon from the safety of his gunship is just one of hundreds of these kinds of assertions.

There is no coincidence between the attempted extradition to Sweden and arrest of Assange in the UK and the release of these cables.  This applies to the DDoS attacks on the WikiLeaks site as well.

This sort of thing is exactly what is often outlined with great detail in the leaked cables, and previous WikiLeaks releases, and from all the sources I've read, Assange was reasonably prepared for this sort of action.

To me this proves two things: Journalists in the mainstream are not actually journalists at all, and that diplomats are not trained in and are completely unfamiliar with the concept or definition of diplomacy.

If you're a member of the news media and you feel like offering an opinion on a news article, the very moment you attach your opinion the accuracy of the article becomes tainted.  The amount of spoilage in the article is directly proportional to the ratio of the size of the opinion to the size of the facts.  By including any personal opinion, it is automatically boxed around the facts, repackaged, re-tasked, made to linger for as long as it can be held up, and eventually lost, pulled under by the weight of that opinion addendum.

Raw facts are truth; but adding a cooked opinion around fact has no nutritional value, it's becomes limp and soggy.  Eventually, inedible.  Like how most people eat their carrots.

So back to the definitions: A journalist collects, writes, edits, and presents news.  A diplomat practices the art of conducting international relations, as in negotiating alliances, treaties, and agreements. Diplomacy involves  TACT.

Tact, does not mean suggesting that someone have missile dropped on them remotely via an unmanned drone, or assassinated by a black ops unit.  Journalism does not dictate that you have to say what's on your mind every time you personally feel threatened by something that you actually do not understand, or dare I challenge, even read.

Without tact (and a reasonable level of empathy), the end result is called R.I.D., or Ridicule, Isolate and Discredit; long touted as a strong propaganda tool, and often used by many governments on the collective psyches of the public for years.  Personal opinion leads to generalization and half truth, personal attacks and finally, a hurried and pronounced attempt to move on from the subject and never speak of it again for the benefit of everyone else who just doesn't want to deal with it.  Fact and information is subverted for raw emotion and fear.

Instead of discussing the content of any of the disclosed information via WikiLeaks, the discussion of the fifth estate has become WikiLeaks itself, and the person who established the organization, Julian Assange, which, with the amount of information available, can only be opinion, with very little fact.  Which goes to show - as per the accepted definition of a journalist - that anyone not discussing the very important content of the cables is actually a glorified opinion columnist and not a legitimate journalist.

I'm not going to guess as to why this is, the only reasons I can come up with are a combination of the journalistic equivalent of penis envy, and the chronic practice in the last twenty to thirty years by the mainstream media of hiring Anne Landers types pretending to be Walter Cronkite with the intent to boost their ratings so they can compete with HBO.

And, instead of discussing everything BUT the content of the disclosed information via WikiLeaks, and by making the discussion about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, and the supposed threat he poses, the political powers within the documents who are trying to thwart the truth are, by their own actions actually denying themselves, and in turn, denying you and I, the freedom to have the basic liberties of simple truth. 

We, who happen to be the very people that put them there.

In power.

In the first place.

We really need to change things, beyond who's in office.  The idea of transparency and accountability of those who speak for us has to become something beyond the rally cry of those who want to get elected; it needs to be worked into statute and law.  Policy on checks and balance needs to be drastically rewritten here, because it's night time, and the freaks have come out and have taken up a squatters residency in the bureaucratic offices.

Everything so far in the cables speaks to this denial, this institutional double talk, which is really why they are working so hard to keep us from seeing it.  WikiLeaks is the only organization who, and in a very legitimate and necessary way, has opened up this political can of worms outside of mainstream opinion and laid it squarely in the lap of those who's opinion really matters - you.

And all you have to do is read them.  So don't listen to my opinion, go and review them, and get your own.