La leçon d’ignominie, – par le New York Times

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La leçon d’ignominie, – par le New York Times

Il faut reconnaître au site WSWS.org, toujours très militant et ferme sur les principes (trotskistes), une remarquable capacité de lecture du New York Times, et une espèce de don pour débusquer tout ce qu’il peut y avoir d’infâme dans ce pseudo prestigieux “journal de référence” devenu une “Pravda de référence” en direct avec le pouvoir du Système. Preuve en est une fois de plus donnée.

Joseph Kishore, de WSWS.org, revient, ce 16 décembre 2010, sur un commentaire du 29 novembre 2010 de l’Executive Editor de la feuille, Bill Keller, en réponse à des lettres de lecteurs syndiqués qui s’étonnent de voir la Pravda reprendre les infamies de Wikileaks. Auparavant, Kishore note très justement que le NYT n’a pas publié un seul édito sur Wikileaks représentée comme une organisation terroriste et les appels de personnalités US à la liquidation d’Assange depuis la fin novembre… «This is tantamount to tacit support for this campaign.»

Quelques extraits des commentaires de Kishore sur les commentaires de Keller.

« Keller began by declaring that he was “uncomfortable” with the notion that the editors of the Times “can decide to release information that the government wants to keep secret.” The editor’s “discomfort” at performing what has traditionally been considered one of the most essential roles of the media says a great deal about the real function of organs such as the New York Times.

»“We have as much at stake in the war against terror as anyone,” Keller continued. “So the thought that something we report might increase the dangers faced by the country is daunting and humbling… When we find ourselves in possession of government secrets, we think long and hard about whether to disclose them.”

»Here Keller accepts entirely the legitimacy of the “war on terror,” which, as he is well aware, has been used as a catch-all pretext for a series of criminal wars. The Times itself played a critical role in legitimizing the lies used to launch the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. By declaring that the newspaper has as much a stake in the “war on terror” as anyone, Keller is, in fact, proclaiming the Times’ unconditional support for the interests of American imperialism.

»In considering whether to disclose information, Keller wrote, the Times engages in “extensive and serious discussions with the government.” Here he evinces no conception of the press as an institution independent of the state. That the Times should discuss its publishing decisions regularly with the US government is for him perfectly natural.

»In a passage that could have come straight from Orwell, Keller wrote, “We agree wholeheartedly that transparency is not an absolute good. Freedom of the press includes freedom not to publish, and that is a freedom we exercise with some regularity”.

»For Keller, the question of the freedom of the press is not a matter of the right of the public to know state secrets through the investigative inquiries of the press, but the right of the state, through its connections in the media, to keep information “with some regularity” from the American people. It is already known that the Times decided to sit on stories involving illegal domestic spying and torture carried out by the United States. How many other crimes is the newspaper helping to cover up?

»In relation to the recently released documents, Keller continued, “We have withheld from publication a good deal of information in these cables that, on our own and in consultation with government officials, we believed could put lives at risk or could harm the national interest.” These conditions for withholding information from the American people—“could put lives at risk or could harm the national interest”—are so broad as to cover virtually anything.

»Not only did the Times censor itself, it worked essentially as an arm of the US government in trying to get other news organizations with access to the documents to follow its lead…

Il n’empêche, ces dernières précisions (ci-dessous) de Keller, que rapporte et commente Kishore, mesurent combien les fuites de Wikileaks constituent une source d’embarras pour le Système et ses divers séides. Un certain malaise de Keller montre que le NYT est bien obligé de suivre parce que d’autres médias publient eux-mêmes ce matériel, et qu’il se trouverait trop clairement pris en flagrant délit, non seulement de désinformation et de mésinformation, mais également de sous-information par incompétence et servilité. Cela confirme le brio de la tactique choisie par Wikileaks d’impliquer plusieurs grands quotidiens internationaux en même temps dans les premières diffusions de ses fuites.

«For the Times, the release of the documents by WikiLeaks is a misfortune. Keller would prefer that this information—and previous leaks documenting the criminal character of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—were kept secret. Given that the information was coming out anyway, however, the role of the Times was to vet it and function as a “gatekeeper” and guardian of state secrets.

»The Times had the option, Keller wrote, “to ignore the secret documents, knowing they would be widely read anyway, picked over, possibly published without removal of dangerous information, probably used to advance various agendas [i.e., agendas opposed to the policy of the US government]; or, to study them, put them in context, and publish articles based on them, along with a carefully redacted selection of actual documents. We chose the latter course.”»

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