you're right, of course. nonetheless i think it's worthwhile to look at OP's post from a 'more personal' perspective. OP probably agrees with you after having thought about it. the comment is likely an overgeneralized reactionary response to a legitimate issue: it is practically maniacal how difficult almost everybody is making it to talk about the actual issue of publishing leaked information. the anger, though, is legitimate.
it's our own fault; 'the media' is simply reflecting our cultural compulsion to anthropomorphize every abstract issue, and to furthermore identify that abstraction to a real person. this is just one of the more obvious consequence to how our own rationality operates with the instinctual expectation of a 'tribal' social structure. such an individual is not merely a token representing the abstraction; they inform and transform that abstraction through their actions, and culture's interpretations of those actions.
but it fucks us doubly when in concert with mass media. anthropomorphic fallacies are one thing; it is another entirely when their respective 'gods' therein engendered are /idolized/, created incarnate in the body of a real living human. translocal issues, to say nothing of a globally distributed publishing organization, are reduced to the impolitic vagaries of their scapegoat-prophets in the village of our minds.
of course, we can abstract ourselves. recognizing a trap is the first step in evading it. but i see so very few taking the 'high ground' here. the high ground is that, unless we can already agree on certain fundamentals at the get-go, it is useless and likely detrimental to even agree to have a discussion about both wikileaks and the albino austrian teenage computer hacker who is apparently their PR guy*.
* some of this descriptor may not be strictly accurate: please understand that i don't give a fuck.
which brings me, finally, to the point:
while this article is legitimate in terms of content, the context is downright noisome. it has become a legitimate thing to do for *bill keller* to write such an article, and for *the new york times* to publish it as a feature, and for *slashdot etc* to republish it, and for perhaps for vaguely intelligent individuals to comment on that republishing... even if all these are in fact legitimate think to do, it doesn't make how we got here any less disgusting.
we were not suddenly transported: all of these legitimacies came about from small steps of editorial imprudence. we hear about 'collateral murder'; from that we learn about wikileaks. wikileaks now becomes a thing you can talk about. mentions of the albino are kept within reasonable bounds, as properly defined through his relation to the actual story. wikileaks (or rather: the guardian, der speigel, etc) then releases the first round of cablegate. wikileaks as a topic is increased in prominence, and the albino is elevated proportionally. the news media pays due diligence, puts he-or-she-who-shall-nit-be-named on the air, where she/he/it turns out to be outspoken, self-possessed and - more importantly - polarizing.
suddenly the net weight of a thousand minor missteps collapse on itself and tips the scale, before breaking it. the albino becomes more talked about, more known, than wikileaks. then wikileaks becomes vestigial. which is a problem, because 'wikileaks' is itself intellectually problematic, even before considering 'the actual issues'. this problem is also obvious: 'wikileaks' has yet to be properly acknowledged by /the news media/ as a /media organization/. there are no quibbles here, no blurry line: wikileaks is a news media organization; full stop.
we are now talking about the albino as an avatar for the idea of news, the notion of 'being informed'. we have undone any remaining attachment of the 'news media' and reality by marrying it to entertainment: to /celebrity gossip/. the content of the text is now irrelevant; the author, editor, or publisher, can serve in its stead. congratulations, everyone: the written word is now obsolete.
this is not a novel realization. this didn't begin with wikileaks, and does not differ substantially from opinion often and faithfully conveyed by such as NYT, or slashdot etc comments for that matter. but this is one opinion that we (commentators; people) can all translate into immediate, day-to-day behavior. simply refuse to acknowledge arguments that make reference to both wikileaks and their media monkey. inform 'them' that their invented reality is not the one you will elect to inhabit.
