Seriously, what is going on with The New York Times's weird passive-aggressive handling of WikiLeaks*? Their coverage has been truly strange. If you go to one of their dozens of front-page WikiLeaks-sourced stories randomly, say, this one, you get a sidebar that reads: "Articles in this series will examine American diplomatic cables as a window on relations with the rest of the world in an age of war and terrorism." It's as though the cables just appeared, out of nowhere. It's as though the New York Times somehow spent all this time and money to actually do the research to uncover these cables instead of finding them online along with everyone else. They put out passive-aggressiveness everywhere you go on their site: The link to their Lede Blog refers to "Updates on the reaction to the leak of diplomatic cables." If you hit the link they added to the word "WikiLeaks" in the above-mentioned story, it doesn't send you to WikiLeaks. It sends you to their Topics page. I can't find a single link to Wikileaks itself anywhere.

A little while ago, I reviewed a documentary about the Pentagon Papers titled The Most Dangerous Man in America:

It was pretty decent, if a little incurious about Daniel Ellsberg's character flaws. But the part that really struck me was the press's bravery in covering the Papers. They actively teamed up to do what is right. I can't see today's New York Times displaying a fraction of the bravery that they showed back in those days, and that makes me really sad.

* But you know who deserves credit in all this? The Obama Administration. Of course they weren't happy about WikiLeaks, but if this happened during the Bush Administration, we'd be bombing the fuck out of Sweden right now. Instead, our government reacted like adults. Of course, nobody will ever give President Obama credit for handling this calmly and rationally; they'll only focus on the fuckups. And by they, I of course mean the media.