The NYT Is Getting Cold Feet

December 26, 2010

Having been part of ever single government conspiracy in recent years, from the War On Afghans, the War On Iraqis to the to the future War On Iranians, the NYT suddenly discovers that the War On The Freedom Of Speech has been going for years and that now The NYT is very likely to be on the casualty list:

Our concern is not specifically about payments to WikiLeaks. This isn’t the first time a bank shunned a business on similar risk-management grounds. Banks in Colorado, for instance, have refused to open bank accounts for legal dispensaries of medical marijuana.

Still, there are troubling questions. The decisions to bar the organization came after its founder, Julian Assange, said that next year it will release data revealing corruption in the financial industry. In 2009, Mr. Assange said that WikiLeaks had the hard drive of a Bank of America executive.

What would happen if a clutch of big banks decided that a particularly irksome blogger or other organization was “too risky”? What if they decided — one by one — to shut down financial access to a newspaper that was about to reveal irksome truths about their operations? This decision should not be left solely up to business-as-usual among the banks.

No, I do not expect them to learn from this.

Posted by b on December 26, 2010 at 19:18 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Regarding the NYT and wikileaks, a quick glimpse from Glenn Greenwald of What WikiLeaks revealed to the world in 2010 lists not a single one of these stories linked to a story in the NYT. Of course, this means little without further research and perhaps Greenwald chooses to ignore the NYT, but my guess is that the NYT is selective with bias. There is this link regarding leaks published by the NYT.
Not totally off topic, in the referenced (MoA thread topic) NYT article is stated: A telecommunications company, for example, may not refuse phone or broadband service to an organization it dislikes, arguing that it amounts to risky business.
Maybe the NYT needs to review that latest FCC ruling on Net Neutrality. This snip from firedoglake.com:

1. Corporate censorship is allowed on your phone: The rules passed today by Obama FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski absurdly create different corporate censorship rules for wired and wireless Internet, allowing big corporations like Comcast to block websites they don’t like on your phone — a clear failure to fulfill Net Neutrality and put you, the consumer, in control of what you can and can’t do online.
2. Online tollbooths are allowed, destroying innovation: The rules passed today would allow big Internet Service Providers like Verizon and Comcast to charge for access to the “fast lane.” Big companies that could afford to pay these fees like Google or Amazon would get their websites delivered to consumers quickly, while independent newspapers, bloggers, innovators, and small businesses would see their sites languish in the slow lane, destroying a level playing field for competition online and clearly violating Net Neutrality.
3. The rules allow corporations to create “public” and “private” Internets, destroying the one Internet as we know it: For the first time, these rules would embrace a “public Internet” for regular people vs. a “private Internet” with all the new innovations for corporations who pay more — ending the Internet as we know it and creating tiers of free speech and innovation, accessible only if you have pockets deep enough to pay off the corporations.

This morning, MaxKeiser.com opened with a post on this NYT story. A comment on that thread started out “First they came for Assange, …” Yes, that about sums it up. Also today is a good interview: On the Edge with Danny Schechter.

Posted by: Rick Happ | Dec 27 2010 1:09 utc | 1

The WL story in the past weeks has been very revealing as to the role of the MSM.
They appear to be less connected, less – in a way – subservient to superior powers, and less intelligent and forward-looking – not that they scored high on that to begin with.
More focussed on number one – sales, ad revs. and survival – and increasingly just spinning in their own universe, subject to their own group-think and on the spot decisions in their conference rooms. More hapless, and thus also very open to manipulation and influence.
… My impression. My picture of the anglo MSM was that it was more monolithic, more directed, controlled, so I was a little surprised.
They ignored WL for years though it exposed much. Then suddenly, with the war logs and more pointedly the cache of diplo cables, WL – Assange became the story du jour.
They didn’t seem to consider that WL in itself is an org. that is challenging the grip of the MSM, or that WL’s existence, what it makes public, what the MSM publish second-hand in another form, raises all kinds of fundamental questions. (Some seemingly thoughtful op-eds were offered, thin, trivial imho.) As if WL was a speed boat to jump on, similar to discovering the secret scandalous sex correspondence of a pop icon or the turgid revelations of a J. Le Carré spy. Then.. oops!
Sure, daily news – news agencies, papers, TV – are stuck in a rapid cycle of sensationalism, hype, attention-getting, buzz buzz all the way. A recent report on news in CH was damning, showed how just in a few years news reporting – even the valiant efforts at ‘debate’ by the Swiss TV – have sunk to infamous depths of blatant cherry-picking, mindless trivia and fact-bending. And CH has a very free media/press, because it is under the radar.

Posted by: Noirette | Dec 27 2010 13:34 utc | 2

According to Jason Ditz of antiwar.com:
“The Obama Administration is reportedly offering a possible plea bargain to the detained Pfc Bradley Manning, if he agrees to testify against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that Assange pressured him to release the various classified documents.”
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/1…/
On top of that, Glenn Greenwald discusses with Scott Horton of antiwar.com why he thinks that “Manning’s draconian imprisonment may be a negotiating tactic to coerce testimony against Julian Assange” and why he thinks that “the government is now considering conspiracy charges against Assange instead of using the problematic Espionage Act of 1917.”
http://antiwar.com/radio/2010/12/20/glenn-greenwald-29/
So if Obama and his fascist judiciary decide to throw Julian Assange into a black site prison and gitmotize him to the point where his brain turns to mush and his body regresses to a fetal state, or if Obama decides to sic his CIA assassins on him and shower him with bullets, leaving him to die in a pool of blood, then my faith in truth, justice and the American way will slip through my hand and hit the floor, smashing it into a million pieces…;^(

Posted by: Cynthia | Dec 27 2010 16:51 utc | 3

Back to Main