On Sun, 22 Aug 2010, Andy wrote:
> I'm curious what you all think of the significance of WikiLeaks.
On the one hand, almost everything in the big dump was old news to anyone who has been following the story reasonably closely.
One the second hand, the big dump managed to make this everyday awfulness newsworthy, and that's important. In a certain way, the whole "news" concept is a filter that leaches everything important out of public discussion. If something is awful and happens everyday it ceases to be news so ceases to be much discussed. But of course most of the important things in life are just like that: steadily, unchangingly awful. My hat's off to anyone who comes up with a technique for ripping off that filter and making people discuss the pattern and accumulation of details. And Wikileaks seems to have a way to do that. Or two. Out of two, so maybe they'll come up with more. They seem very inventive in getting things that should be talked about back on the agenda. And FWIW, my vague impression is that it actually had a measurable impact on the public's support for the war. You could see it in the politics right after the dump. And it seems to be abiding. Yesterday an AP poll said 60% of the US public is against the war -- quite a rise:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j34wJrEYh7J3IiyhYvsCnWfSl31QD9HN9OB80
On the third hand, for all their obvious subtle cleverness (dumping the stuff with 3 new papers, rather than all, and leaving them work to do, so they would treat it as scoop, and the others would attack it (all talking is good talking if it's getting stuff back on the agenda that matters); and this recent rape scare which I have personally begun to suspect they initiated themselves in the way that Karl Rove suckered Dan Rather with the fake National Guard evidence, and for the same reason: a brilliant innoculation against any dirty tricks in the future) I thought they were blatantly lazy on the dump and hurt their cause. If reporters could search through it in a couple of days and find all the names of informants against the Taliban, so could their thousands of volunteers. Not only did they endanger people unnecessarily without adding to the news value, they've given a huge setback the cause of getting things declassified.
Michael