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The conflicted attitude about Wikileaks manifested itself as a general tone of disapproval and alarm about the underlying organization; and with a sense of interest and curiosity about the specific secrets that the organization made public.

Those secrets, so far, have fallen into three broad categories: potentially scandalous revelations about the conduct of the United States government; newsworthy insights into dilemmas facing foreign governments; and trivial gossip that would not be worthy of coverage at all, except for the fact that the State Department had, needlessly, categorized the scuttlebutt as secret.

1.Potential Scandals: at the United Nations; in Yemen; and in Afghanistan.

The revelation that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and her predecessor Condoleezza Rice, had ordered diplomats to violate UN neutrality and engage in espionage against their colleagues hardly made a ripple, mentioned in passing by NBC's Andrea Mitchell. The exposure of a conspiracy between the President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen and the Gen David Petraeus to lie about the clandestine war that US special forces are prosecuting there was mentioned in more detail--but covered as a problem for the Sanaa regime rather than for the Pentagon. "All this potentially undermines a key US ally," was how ABC's Jonathan Karl calculated the fallout.

Only the diplomatic cables concerning Afghanistan were reported in enough detail to provide a potential embarrassment for President Barack Obama's foreign policy. Their release coincided with his surprise trip to inspect the troops at Bagram AFB and they contradicted his claims that the government of Hamid Karzai was a viable partner to take over national security, allowing US forces to withdraw in 2014. "We knew the Karzai regime was bad," noted NBC's Mitchell," but these newly released cables show just how corrupt US officials believe it really is." White House correspondents Chip Reid at CBS and Jake Tapper at ABC both cited WikiLeaks' releases to make the case that the handover plan was flawed.

So, as an exercise in news agenda setting, the WikiLeaks enterprise has underperformed in generating coverage of potential scandals. Only the Afghan leaks achieved any traction--and that was because Afghanistan policy was already an ongoing controversy on the networks' agenda. WikiLeaks was able to add color to a story that was already established; but not to generate a new scandal from scratch.

2.Foreign Insights: in Russia; in the People's Republic of China; in Pakistan; in the autocratic kingdoms of the Arab World.

In an environment of swingeing budget cuts against foreign newsgathering, this is the area in which WikiLeaks' contribution is least troublesome and most productive for the American networks. A component of the job of diplomats is to report on the internal political dynamics of the nations to which they are assigned; this aspect is not too dissimilar to that of the foreign correspondent. There is enough overlap that the cables could be used as a basis for reportage.

So, WikiLeaks becomes the news hook to allow us to hear coverage about the influence of organized crime in Russia, "a virtual Mafia state," as NBC's Mitchell quoted. ABC organized a round-up of foreign-based correspondents Clarissa Ward and Nick Schifrin and Lara Setrakian to reference Beijing's growing frustration with North Korea and its potential acceptance of Korean unification; Islamabad's refusal to accept controls on its nuclear arsenal and its inability to rein in domestic support for the Taliban; the paralysis of Arab states in forming a policy towards Iran, caught between opposition to Teheran by ruling elites and solidarity among the general population, born of resentment against the United States and Israel.

Transparency concerning this type of insight can only improve Americans' understanding of foreign countries and US foreign policy towards them. Continuing to make such cables unclassified--whether illicitly through the conduit of WikiLeaks or directly by no longer reflexively resorting to the secret stamp--would improve overseas newsgathering by allowing correspondents to check diplomatic insights against the perceptions of local journalists and other sources in the countries concerned. In the traditional role of the foreign correspondent, this work had to be done from a bureau. Transparent diplomatic cables combined with the World Wide Web would liberate such newsgathering to cover more corners of the globe, and in less costly fashion.

3.Embassy Gossip: Moammar Khadafy has a voluptuous Ukrainian blonde for a nurse; Silvio Berlusconi hankers after nubile flesh; the TV viewers of Riyadh love Desperate Housewives, per ABC's Jim Sciutto.

This is the obverse of the coverage of potential scandals in point one, above. If those scandals were perhaps undercovered because WikiLeaks was seen to have an ax to grind in publicizing them, this gossip was only deemed worthy of mention because it happened to be mentioned in a secret cable. Diplomats had no business labeling this trivia classified. It should have been disseminated through TMZ.com not WikiLeaks.org.

Secretary Rodham Clinton herself joked about the scuttlebutt. All three newscasts (here, here and here) quoted the quip that she repeated from an unnamed diplomat to whom she had apologized for any indiscretion that the cables might contain: "You should see what we say about you."

Andrew Tyndall 12/10/10 2:11:35 am

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