All The News That's Fit To Bury

Seeing as they each impact key pillars of what today passes for liberalism, there seems to be more than a few connections between the recent ACORN stings by Giles, O’Keefe and Breitbart, and the recent hacking of the emails of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit, or “Global WarmingGate”, as Charlie Martin dubs it elsewhere at Pajamas. Not the least is that they each sent the legacy media into full gatekeeper mode, hoping to prevent exciting, important news of current events from ever reaching their readers. Or perhaps, like the scandal last year involving John Edwards, sitting on the stories for so long, while making claims that they have to endlessly research them to verify their authenticity — Keep rockin’! — that when the legacy media decides to go “public” with news that everyone already knows, they can dramatically dilute the ultimate impact of these stories.

In September, we noted the L.A. Times’ hypocrisy when they wrote, “O’Keefe’s hidden-camera methods are distasteful, and the extent to which his videos were edited is unknown” — as opposed to the hidden camera videos run almost every week by their fellow liberal brethren on 60 Minutes since the show debuted on CBS over 40 years ago.

And as a nice sequel of sorts to our previous post on leftwing cognitive dissonance, Orrin Judd spots this staggering moment of hypocrisy from the New York Times’ Andrew C. Revkin of their “Dot Earth” blog on Friday:

The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.

And they don’t contain any obvious state military secrets as well, unlike say the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War or more recently, the secrets of War on Terror, or any of a number of other leaked documents the Times has cheerfully rushed to print.

Back in 2006, when his paper disclosed the previously confidential details of the SWIFT program, which was designed to trace terrorists’ financial assets, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller said on CBS’s Face the Nation, “one man’s breach of security is another man’s public relations.” Of course, much like the rest of the media circling the wagons with ACORN, it’s not at all surprising that the Times circles the wagons when it’s necessary to save the public face of their fellow liberals.

Incidentally, Tom Maguire explains the perfect way to square the circle:

If Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe are done tormenting ACORN maybe they can figure out how to pose as underaged climate researchers…

Heh, indeed.™

Update: At the Weekly Standard, Michael Goldfarb adds, “As a journalist, there is no greater glory than publishing materials that were not meant to be published”:

If I could, I would only publish emails and documents that were never meant to see the light of day — though, unlike the New York Times, I draw the line at jeopardizing the lives of American troops rather than jeopardizing the contrived “consensus” on global warming.

And of course, the Times has those priorities exactly reversed. But then, for the Gray Lady, small government Republicans are “Stalinists”, but actual totalitarian governments are worthy of emulation and respect.

Update: On Twitter, “Justkarl” asks, “You don’t suppose the real reason Revkin won’t publish the CRU e-mails is that he’s implicated in them?”, adding, “Revkin CRU e-mail. Likely here too.”

Related: For those who would like to “Wear The Decline”, T-shirts are now available in the lobby!

Update (11/23/09): And speaking of bringing things full circle, the commenters below note that the Times had few ethical concerns when they linked to the hacked emails of Sarah Palin last fall during the presidential election.

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