For an organisation that likes to present itself through a veil of mystery and intrigue as a secretive source of classified information for the world’s lazy and complacent media, Wikileaks does spend a lot of its time as the subject, not only the source, of the headlines.

Wikileaks, or more to the point its founder Julian Assange, is once again monopolizing headlines after the whistleblowing website released 92,000 classified military documents on Sunday. The leaks comes hand in hand with a series published by the New York Times, The Guardian and Das Spiegel, who were granted an advanced preview of the documents, titled the War Logs.

Wikileaks teamed up with three of the most respected titles in the Western media to reach the widest audience possible with their mass leak, or hemorrhage, as the BBC’s Mark Mardell described the release, because experience has taught them that just dumping content into the public domain doesn’t produce the reaction that Assange and his shadowy team aspire to.

This raises some important questions in relation to Wikileaks’ desired outcome from their leaks. The Pentagon branded the whistleblowing website as “irresponsible” for leaking the secret military files, claiming that the leak put both NATO forces and Afghani informants in danger, but I think that motive, rather than responsibility, or the lack of, is the key question that needs to be discussed.

I have met and extensively interviewed both Julian Assange and Daniel Schmitt, another key player in Wikileaks who appears to have ducked out of the media limelight in recent months, for an article I wrote for Wired (UK) magazine last year, titled Exposed: Wikileaks’ Secrets. I have also spoken to most members of Wikileaks’ so-called ‘Advisory Board’. Both men are highly intelligent individuals with expert computer skills who have dedicated their lives, with an almost religious fervour, to promoting transparency in governments and corporations around the world.

Their commitment is one that is hard to argue with. Transparency is key to a functioning society and a healthy democracy needs groups bent on holding powerful individuals accountable. But Julian has the utmost conviction that he is right to be doing what he’s doing. And his zealous conviction, always presented in a mass of anecdotal florid rhetoric, need to be questioned. Regardless of what the subject may be, I am always concerned by people who are so convinced of their ‘rightness’ that they have an inability to debate all sides of the argument.

Andrew Exum may be towing the party line when he asserted this week in the New York Times that the mass less of documents to the press adds nothing to the debate that is already fraught with “hard moral choices and [a] dearth of good policy options” but he has a point when he points out that Assange is “muddying the waters between journalism and activism”.

Assange is an activist, with the technological knowledge, experience and ability to have a huge impact with his work. But he describes himself as a journalist and talks about editorial standards. Journalism and activism are two very different things. I am not going to talk about objectivity here, because I am personally of the belief that objectivity is the false beacon in journalism (sometimes there is a ‘baddie’ and a ‘goodie’). But activism means you have a mission. A desire to change things. And that motive in Wikileaks’ work has not been examined.

Wikileaks’ technological expertise gives it huge power, and like the powerful corporations and governments that the transparency group want to shake down, Wikileaks need to submit themselves to the same standard. Or be required to by the media and public.

When I met Julian he frequently voiced frustration with the media’ fascination with who Wikileaks is. “It’s not who, its what”, he would say. But like every subject that makes the news cycle, Wikileaks needs to be exposed to the maxim of journalism: who, what, where and why.

Everyone should be joining Michael Rosenblum’s venomous attack of 60 Minutes’ latest self-congratulatory funfair.

Media budget cuts are effecting the coverage of foreign news. But then in walks CBS and blows a huge sum on producing a flaccid piece about Afghanistan. This comes out at the same time as the whistleblowing website, Wikileaks is begging for financial support so that they can continue exposing the truth around the world.

The big new corporations need to get their priorities straight and should be reminded of the huge responsibility they have on their shoulders as they inform huge audiences about the realities of the world we live in.

No of us should accept this kind of propagandistic, congratulatory drivel. We should all be up in arms about it.

60 Minutes is a Pile of Crap by Michael Rosenblum on February 1, 2010 – 6:33 am

CBS News ‘correspondent’ Lara Logan posing as a reporter…

A few days ago we ran a clip from Newswipe, a BBC parody of ‘news programs’.

It was funny.

But last night 60 Minutes ran a segment on the war in Afghanistan that was more parody than Newswipe.

Alas, it was far from funny.

The segment, the first on the show, was entitled The Quiet Professionals, and it was a profile of the highly trained green beret units in Afghanistan by ‘correspondent’ Lara Logan.

In the end, it didn’t say a whole lot about the Green Berets or Afghanistan but it said reams about the death of journalism on 60 Minutes.

Apparently, the 60 Minutes crew spent 2 months in Afghanistan filming this 7 minute report. From what they have aired, most of that time was spent getting Ms. Logan made up. There are long, languid shots of her in cover-girl pose – extreme close up – as she awaits answers to hard hitting questions like ‘that must be very hard’.

Tough stuff.

We are informed that many of the Green Berets are undercover, so CBS News ‘disguised’ them with Rayban sun glasses.

Great disguise!!

Most of the piece was just a pure softball love fest about how great a job the awesome Green Berets were doing, even if none of it was working. Still, they have beards and wear sun glasses and walk are all in great shape – let’s see them lift some weights! Yes! Sexy stuff and sexy Ms. Logan.

Then, at the end of the story, seemingly by accident – some real action (as opposed to the training exercises we have been watching). A ‘mysterious’ van approaches our hero Green Beret – the guy with the sexy beard and raybans – and our hero opens up on them! From a distance (you never know in Afghanistan). Two ‘warning shots’.

The van, it turns out, is filled with Afghan civilians. What a surprise.

But wait!! Our cool hero Green Beret in the raybans shot!!! two of the civilians in the back of the van!

Two kids!

And they are bleeding all over the van.

One is shot in the leg. The other has been shot in the chest.

Jesus Christ allmighty. You moron!

You absolute idiot!!

A chopper comes in to medivac the two wounded kids to medical care.

Now this is really a story. One that Ms. Logan and her crew have come upon entirely by accident, but what a story.

Do you wanna know why the Taliban are so popular in Afghanistan? It’s because we send thousands of idiots like this guy to parade all over their country killing their children at random and then going ‘oops!’

Does Ms. Logan pick up on this?

Not at all. The story line remains the same. Our hero sexy Green Beret is still our hero! Bad things happen sometimes but he’s still doing his dangerous job. (Dangerous to the locals!!)

More languid shots of Ms. Logan hair blowing in the wind. Make up looking good.

I was personally so astonished at this piece that I went to the 60 Minutes website and posted the very first comment. I said there what I said above.

Remarkably, 10 minutes after I posted my comment, I returned to the 60 Minutes site to see that it had been removed.

Astonishing.

I then tweeted the whole experience and an unnamed producer from 60 Minutes responded that Lara Logan indeed was a mindless piece of fluff. That he used to write every word that came out of her mouth, and that she had gotten hired, much to everyone’s ’shock’ at CBS News following a ‘dinner’ (his quotes) with Dan Rather.

You know, the media takes a lot of the responsibility for the debacle in Iraq because they simply refused to report.

60 Minutes is doing the same thing in Afghanistan now.

And it’s not like the truth is not out there.

It is.

Raul Gallegos, a Videojournalist for the Associate Press has been in Afghanistan for years, reporting the real story.

He is a far better journalist than Ms. Logan will ever be, he costs a whole lot less than the 60 Minutes crew does, and for two months, he gets a whole lot better product.

Here’s a small example of his work:

Compare this to the pure crap that 60 Minutes puts on the air – not to mention the propaganda feel of their ‘reporting’ and you will see why American journalism is in such serious trouble.

Lara, you looked great!