Wikileaks and the media: Dancing with the devil

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Pity the poor old MSM, as the blogosphere does insist on calling them.

Reduced in all their variety to a dismissive trio of initials, the mainstream media are now forced to do business with that self-aggrandizing Internet crusader Julian Assange on the one hand and, on the other, face accusations of hypocrisy when they report on his legal travails, his large personality and his working methods.

“A computer hacker with an inflated sense of his own importance has become the new journalist,” the Independent’s Middle East correspondent, Robert Fisk, complained to Al Jazeera recently.

Whistle-blowers often have inflated egos and hidden agendas: The contents of manila envelopes are either deadly boring or so explosive that they are extremely tricky to publish – or worse yet, both.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/wikileaks-and-the-media-dancing-with-the-devil/article1842750/

I like this piece.