January 18, 2011 journal, commentary from crooksandliars.com on wikileaks revealing. "Sarah Palin shows her ignorance knows no bounds by calling Assange a "traitor. " Maybe she thinks he lives in Hollyweird? A complete denouncing of Wilkileaks, but it goes farther than that. Even our media is joining in with the politicians and are taking on the same POV. Glenn Greenwald has a great post up about the reaction of CNN's Wolf Blitzer, The NY Times and other media figures who are going on record denouncing Wikileaks . Then, with some exceptions, we have the group which -- so very revealingly -- is the angriest and most offended about the WikiLeaks disclosures: the American media, Our Watchdogs over the Powerful and Crusaders for Transparency. On CNN last night, Wolf Blitzer was beside himself with rage over the fact that the U.S. Government had failed to keep all these things secret from him...It's one thing for the Government to shield its conduct from public disclosure, but it's another thing entirely for the U.S. media to be active participants in that concealment effort. As The Guardian's Simon Jenkins put it in a superb column that I can't recommend highly enough: "The job of the media is not to protect power from embarrassment. . . . Clearly, it is for governments, not journalists, to protect public secrets." But that's just it: the media does exactly what Jenkins says is not their job, which -- along with envy over WikiLeaks' superior access to confidential information -- is what accounts for so much media hostility toward that group. As the headline of John Kampfner's column in The Independent put it : "Wikileaks shows up our media for their docility at the feet of authority." Most political journalists rely on their relationships with government officials and come to like them and both identify and empathize with them. By contrast, WikiLeaks is truly adversarial to those powerful factions in exactly the way that these media figures are not: hence, the widespread media hatred and contempt for what WikiLeaks does. Just look at how important it was for Bill Keller to emphasize that the Government is criticizing WikiLeaks but not The New York Times; having the Government pleased with his behavior is his metric for assessing how good his "journalism" is. If the Government is patting him on the head, then it's proof that he acted "responsibly." That servile-to-power mentality is what gets exposed by the contrast Wikileaks provides. Shouldn't the news journalists out there only be reporting the story itself instead of interjecting their opinion on the propriety of WikiLeaks' actions? There are plenty of opinionators to do that for them already. Glenn mentions instances where WikiLeaks hasn't been perfect in their execution and we'll have to see how it all works out, but when BushCo decided that it was just fine to illegally wiretap phone conversations, the government lost all its credibility on privacy issues. Digby has an excellent take : I know there are differing opinions on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks around the blogosphere, but what's shocking to me is how the media has taken on such a hostile attitude against a man that they should be rallying around and who essentially is the new-age Daniel Ellsberg. There are differences, of course, but the fact that Assange has been targeted by Big Business is shocking. What's at stake? The freedom of the press, that's what . Here's a great piece by Michael Lacy of The Village Voice echoing the same sentiments: WikiLeaks Betrayed by Amazon, Visa, Mastercard -- and, Worst of All, the Media (h/t LA Weekly ) The outrageous behavior of Amazon, Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal directed at WikiLeaks represents a much greater threat to America than any of the alleged security breaches from Julian Assange.....Amazon, Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal set themselves up as judges, juries and executioners. And perhaps more troubling is that while the mainstream media happily regurgitated, repurposed and -- in the case of The New York Times -- reported the context of the released diplomatic cables, they have been noticeably silent as web conglomerates reshaped the First Amendment. Or, as in the case of The Washington Post and The Washington Times, they've joined the ninnies calling for Assange's head. The chief enabler is Barack Obama's Attorney General, Eric H. Holder who announced that the Justice Department and the Pentagon were in the midst of "an ongoing criminal investigation." The key word is "investigation." The Attorney General has yet to charge anyone, let alone bring the case. This is the same Attorney General who has investigated Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio -- the sadistic and brutal jailer who flouts the Constitution in pursuit of Mexicans. The FBI and the Justice Department have had Arpaio under investigation, on a variety of fronts, since 2008. The Sheriff's jails have been declared "unconstitutional" by the same Justice Department since 1996. Have banks or credit card companies seized Sheriff Arpaio's home because he is under investigation? Did any internet company deny Sheriffi Arpaio access to his extensive, online marketing empire? No, that has not happened. But, with the patriots in Congress howling, Amazon and the others moved to isolate and strangle WikiLeaks. And the press does not speak out when the single largest document dump in the history of the media results in financial institutions determining when the flow of information will stop? PayPal's president, Osama Bedler, explained his action by pointing out that the State Department claimed WikiLeaks' dissemination of cables was illegal in a November 27 letter to Assange. And so they did. And so what? The State Department is not a judicial body. It is part of the Executive branch -- and furthermore, they were the target of the revelations. "Your rights on the internet are only as strong as the will of companies to let you have it," observed Hofmann. In such an anarchic environment, is it any wonder that anarchists have responded with the only weapons left? Congressional hearings are now scheduled for this Thursday, December 16. The House Judiciary Committee will not, I predict, worry much about the First Amendment. No good will come to free speech in such a political forum. I expected the State Department to speak out against WikiLeaks, but why have the media been so hostile to WikiLeaks and so passive about the people trying to silence his operation without a shred of evidence of him being guilty of a crime? I wonder if they are afraid that either they or their friends might show up in some of these leaked cables in an unfavorable light. Yesterday on MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell was discussing Assange's bail in the UK and seemed afraid that he might have access to the dreaded "Internet" and destroy the world. Digby: