Wikileaks wins Australian version of Pulitzer Award

Glenn Greenwald reports that in recognition for breaking stories like this, Wikileaks has been given Australia's highest journalism award.

The Walkley Awards are the Australian equivalent of the Pulitzers: that nation’s most prestigious award for excellence in journalism. Last night, the Walkley Foundation awarded its highest distinction — for “Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism” — to WikiLeaks, whose leader, Julian Assange, is an Australian citizen. The panel cited the group’s “courageous and controversial commitment to the finest traditions of journalism: justice through transparency,” and hailed it for having “applied new technology to penetrate the inner workings of government to reveal an avalanche of inconvenient truths in a global publishing coup.” As I’ve noted before, WikiLeaks easily produced more newsworthy scoops over the last year than every other media outlet combined, and the Foundation observed: “so many eagerly took advantage of the secret cables to create more scoops in a year than most journalists could imagine in a lifetime.” In sum: “by designing and constructing a means to encourage whistleblowers, WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief Julian Assange took a brave, determined and independent stand for freedom of speech and transparency that has empowered people all over the world.” What makes this award so notable is that the United States — for exactly the same reasons the Foundation cited in honoring WikiLeaks’ journalism achievements — has spent the last year trying to criminalize and destroy the group . . . It is telling indeed that the U.S. — with the backing of its subservient allied governments — has devoted itself to the destruction of the world’s most effective journalistic outlet.

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Or maybe we could say, “Good for the Chinese”

When someone from another country does something impressive, Americans are well-trained to be threatened. We are teaming with ressentiment. Here's an example from the July 18, 2011 edition of Time Magazine. Notice the photo on the right. It is an image of a brand new extremely long bridge, the longest sea bridge in the entire world. It is more than 26 miles long. It's extremely impressive. It is something that reminds me that the Chinese people have excelled in many ways. But notice the text under the photo. Especially notice the line: "The Jiaozhou Bay Bridge is yet another Chinese nose thumbing." Where does this writer get the idea that the Chinese have built the world's longest bridge to make the United States look bad? I hear this attitude all the time, exemplified by statements like this: "America is the world's greatest country." Despite the fact, of course, that there is much room for improvement in modern day United States. Many of these comments I hear uttered by Americans are aimed at the Chinese; for many Americans, anything impressive done by Chinese people is a threat to America. More disturbing, I fear that this ressentiment of outsiders builds into paranoia about outsiders and fuels the "need" for exhorbitant and irresponsible warmongering by the United States. I remember that in the months prior to 9/11, there was intense building hostility aimed at the Chinese. Then we got distracted by the Middle East. It seems that Americans intensely need an enemy, and that if they don't actually have one, they invent one. That is a destructive technique most of our politicians use to maintain power and obeisance of the governed. I'd recommend that Americans, especially those involved with the American media industry, work harder to keep their ressentiment in check. Time should have reacted to this amazing bridge by saying something like: "That's amazing engineering and construction! Well done, Chinese people." I'm afraid, though, that this attitude of being happy for the successes of others has become thoroughly un-American.

Continue ReadingOr maybe we could say, “Good for the Chinese”

High school pundits and candidates

A television was installed in my workplace cafeteria this year and it has been an immense source of irritation and revelation regarding the garbage that passes for TV news. Today, I heard a few minutes of discussion by these three women at CNN: What did these CNN pundits discuss today? 1) Horserace politics--who is polling well at the moment, and how will the various candidates do in the various primaries, with barely a mention of how they stand on the issues; 2) An allegation that a candidate flip-flopped; 3) A claim that Candidate A dissed Candidate B, and 4) Did you see that strange  latest campaign ad by Candidate D? This is what passes for serious political commentary today on a major television network.  It's high school all over again. Not only are the pundits engaging in this stunning shallowness, but the candidates are responding in kind. These people remind me of those vapid adolescents who thought it was a life and death matter to win a seat on student council, even though they didn't actually know why they were running other than to be cool. The pundits are like the high schoolers who endlessly swap gossip in the halls. The candidate students end up turning high school elections into personality cults, and that's exactly how we are running our media and our country today. Everywhere we look we see lots of emotionally and intellectually stunted people awash in money and basking with their BFF's in front of camera lenses. Here's what happens when we allow elections become tribal: The voters ease into candidates like they adopt a sports teams and they fight for their candidates out of loyalty and in-group cravings, blinded by the confirmation bias roaring full blast. They get all exercised by the pundits, who are acting as though they are conveying meaningful news, and the networks dress it all up with slick graphics, music and sets to make it look like the information is "news." Many of those who watch this garbage assume that they are informed on the issues of the day. We need to change our ways. We need to start choosing candidates like we shop for consumer goods that have no prestige. I''m not referring to our purchases of cars or clothes, but rather consider the way we shop for things like water heaters and dishwashers. In choosing political candidates, we need to get past all of the brand name loyalties and pettiness and we need to start insisting on well-informed answers to tough questions about how our candidates plan to run the country. We need to turn off the TV when high schoolish pundits try to manufacture conflict that distracts from serious issues. We need to leave all of these high schoolers, candidates and pundits, in the dust, because we have a big complex country to run, and none of them appear to be up to it.

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So-called debates

Just look at what passes for a "debate" to "help" Americans choose their next president. Bob Cesca is aghast:

[T]hat's exactly what CNN put on the other night. A game show. The cable news media has gone from simply cracking gaming and sports metaphors to actually becoming a game, with politicians as the contestants and a rotating guest panel of snickering propagandists and "analysts" as the judges. The only difference is that contestants on traditional game shows are held accountable when they answer incorrectly -- they're penalized monetarily or eliminated from the game altogether. But our cable news game show hosts just move on to the next question, so, in this regard, Wink Martindale might be a tougher moderator than Wolf Blitzer. I'm not sure if CNN knows it, but nearly everyone across the political spectrum thought the CNN presentation of the debate was ridiculously self-satirical

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PBS cannot find a time slot for new Bill Moyers show

Bill Moyers is returning to broadcasting, hosting a show called Moyers & Company, that "will focus on one-on-one interviews with people not often heard on television." PBS says it can't find a timeslot for Moyers' new show. Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) accuses PBS of not understanding its own mission. The show will be distributed for free by American Public Television.

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