After I highlighted the multiple factual inaccuracies in Time‘s WikiLeaks article yesterday (see Update V) — and then had an email exchange with its author, Michael Lindenberger — the magazine has now appended to the article what it is calling a “correction.”  In reality, the “correction” is nothing of the sort; it is instead a monument to the corrupted premise at the heart of American journalism.

Initially, note that Time has refused to correct its blatantly false claim that WikiLeaks has published “thousands of classified State Department cables” and posted “thousands of secret diplomatic cables” when, in reality, they’ve posted only 1,269 of the more than 250,000 cables they possess: less than 1/2 of 1 %.  It’s true that they provided roughly 251,000 cables to five newspapers, but they have only “posted” and “published” roughly 1,200 of them.  Time just decided to leave that statement standing even knowing it is factually false.

More significant is the “correction” itself.  It applies to Time‘s clearly false claim of “a distinction between WikiLeaks’ indiscriminate posting of the cables . . . and the more careful vetting evidenced by The New York Times.”  That is false because WikiLeaks’ release of cables had not been “indiscriminate” in any sense of the word.  As this AP article documents — and as a casual review of its site independently proves — WikiLeaks has done very little other than publish the specific cables that have been first released by newspapers around the world, including with the redactions applied by those papers.

So did Time correct its false statement by acknowledging its unquestionable falsity and pointing to the evidence disproving it?  Of course not.  Instead, they merely noted this at the bottom of the article: “Correction: The story has been amended to reflect the fact that Assange rejects claims that WikiLeaks has ‘indiscriminately’ dumped documents on its site.”  They also added to the body of the article a sentence noting that “claims that Assange has simply dumped the documents without reviewing them, much like a traditional editor would, have been disputed” because “Assange himself told TIME that each diplomatic cable his site has published has been vetted by his own team or by the editors of newspapers with whom he has shared the documents.”

In other words, the most Time is willing to do — when forced by public complaints — is note that “some” people (i.e., Assange) “dispute” the Government’s accusatory claims of “indiscriminate” document dumping, ones uncritically amplified by Time and countless other media outlets.  The most they’re willing to do now is convert it into a “they-said/he-said” dispute.  But what they won’t do — under any circumstances — is state clearly that the Government’s accusations are false, even where, as here, they unquestionably are.  Anticipating that this would be the “correction” they issued, I even emailed Lindenberger before it was posted and wrote:

One thing, while I have you – the appropriate correction needed is **not** a he-said-/he-said formulation (“we said ‘indiscriminate,’ but Assange denies this”).

That WikiLeaks has (with a handful of exceptions) published ONLY what other newspapers first published is a VERIFIABLE FACT. AP reported it, and all you have to do is look on its website to see that virtually all the cables published were ones first published by the five partner newspapers.

To say “some say ‘indiscriminate’ while Assange denies this” as a correction is misleading. As a journalist, you should tell your readers the verifiable FACT: that virtually all of the cables published thus far by [WikiLeaks] were first published by these newspapers.

What was vital here was to have Time state clearly that the claim of “indiscriminate” dumping of cables is factually false — not merely that Assange disputes it.  That could then be used to quash this lie each time it appears in other venues.  Of course, all of that fell on deaf ears, because my demand required that Time do exactly that which establishment media outlets, by definition, will rarely do: state clearly when the facts contradict — negate — claims by those in political power, especially when the target of the false claims is a demonized outsider-of-Washington faction like WikiLeaks.

The same exact thing happened when Time was finally forced in 2007 to issue a “correction” to Joe Klein’s factually false statement (which he was told by GOP Rep. Pete Hoekstra) that the Democrats’ FISA bill “would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans.”  Rather than admit what was 100% clear — that Klein’s statement was categorically false — Time instead merely noted in its “correction” that “Republicans believe it can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don’t.”

That was Time‘s “correction” to a factually false statement — some say yes and some say no: who are we to say which is true? we’re just “journalists” — and that’s what they just did again in the WikiLeaks case (by contrast, The Chicago Tribune, which had run Klein’s original Time story, issued a clear correction: “A Time magazine essay by Joe Klein that was excerpted on the editorial page Wednesday incorrectly stated that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act would require a court approval of individual foreign surveillance targets. It does not” — that’s what a genuine correction looks like).

The reason this matters so much is because this falsehood is at the center of both the propaganda war against WikiLeaks and the efforts to criminally prosecute it by claiming it is not engaged in journalism.  Almost every radio and television show I’ve done over the last ten days concerning WikiLeaks — and most media accounts I read — have featured someone, somewhere, touting this lie, usually without contradiction: that WikiLeaks has indiscriminately dumped thousands of cables, whereas newspapers have only selectively published some.

As I wrote yesterday, WikiLeaks has every right to publish more cables than these newspapers decide to publish, and even to publish all of them — if it does that, that won’t change the legal issues one iota — but since they haven’t done that, media outlets have a responsibility not only to refrain from saying they have, but to state clearly that those who make this claim are spouting falsehoods.  That’s what “journalism” is supposed to be: stating what the facts are for one’s readers and viewers. Time‘s “correction” explicitly refuses to do that (though the magazine’s response is at least mildly better than the gross irresponsibility of The New Republic, which published at least two columns promoting this falsehood — one by James Rubin and the other by Todd Gitlin — and then did nothing other than publish a piece by Gitlin days later which devotes a couple of paragraphs to insisting he bears no responsibility whatsoever for his factually false statements and then the rest of the piece to attacking me for pointing them out).

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Beyond the need to destroy this pervasive zombie lie about WikiLeaks’ conduct in the diplomatic cables disclosure, the broader point here is crucial:  the media’s willingness to repeat this lie over and over underscores its standard servile role in serving government interests and uncritically spreading government claims. NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen has an excellent analysis today documenting how, in the wake of 9/11, they dropped all pretenses of checking those in political power and instead began explicitly proclaiming — as The New York Times‘ chief stenographer and partner-of-Judy-Miller, Michael Gordon, suggested — that “capturing the dominant view within the government was the job [of journalists], even if that view was wrong.” As Rosen writes, “our press has never come to terms with the ways in which it got itself on the wrong side of secrecy as the national security state swelled in size after September 11th,” and thus: “To understand Julian Assange and the weird reactions to him in the American press we need to tell a story that starts with Judy Miller and ends with Wikileaks.”