I don’t think it is possible to win the information war by staying on the defensive. The basic problem is that the public has accepted the imbalance. When the other side is allowed to do everything and while their opponents cannot “stoop to their level” and when, moreover, the other side reserves the right to sit in judgment of what constitutes stooping then the game is rigged. It’s a sham.

Why has the public accepted the imbalance? One possible explanation is they’ve been taught to. In which case that teaching has to be challenged. Put through the crucible of democratic debate. But the tough part is that challenging the unfair rulebook is itself considered “stooping”. In that case there will be increasing incentive to tear up the rulebook because you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. So you might as well don’t.

You can make the argument that the Assange incident destabilizes the system to some extent because it decreases the perceived fairness of the game. After a while people leave a crooked casino. There may even be calls for restrictions on the Internet, to pull the license of Fox News etc. You know, fix things. As for the NYT, that is never broken.

The irony of cases like this is that the restrictions may fall proactively on the “usual suspects” — from a certain point of view — and never the right ones. They’ll fix the roulette wheels so that they all play the same statistical way. That way nobody notices the bent ones.