With standard caveats, we can say in relative confidence that the free press is essentially defunct. A bifurcation has taken place in the information economy, draining virtually all of the resources out of investigative journalism and placing them in the domain of business-driven propaganda, tabloid trivia, and "infotainment." The result is that, with few exceptions, "news" is no longer concerned with fact, and the "fourth estate" increasingly functions as a fifth column in society driving counterfactual narratives to benefit the ruling elite. Coverage of reality has been driven to limited corners of the internet, where it is typically lost in a sea of rumor, noise, and irrelevancy. But then there is Wikileaks.
Ignore, for the moment, the US government's attempts to manufacture an indictment against Julian Assange - I frankly don't care what happens on that front: He is no martyr of conscience, but a man with brass balls who is playing an awesome game on a global scale, and I respect his boldness in challenging the world's governments enough not to weep for him if he loses. The important thing is that he has revealed the shape of hope for transparency in the 21st century: An emergent phenomenon born of, but qualitatively exceeding mere "leaks" - philanthropic espionage.
Traditionally, information has flowed according to channels defined by two forces - money, and political power. Businesses tell people whatever will generate profit; politicians tell people whatever will get them elected; and in between the two are the vast, Byzantine networks of bureaucratic-industrial complexes where policymakers, regulators, lobbyists, and other professionals oscillate between the public and private sectors. This is nothing new, and nothing special in the state of politics.
Within this system are plenty of checks on that information. For one, much of it is contradictory, so barring an objective frame of reference, people will simply ignore two self-interested actors feeding them mutually exclusive information. If a liar in a military uniform says it's an apple, and a liar in a business suit says it's a pear, it's probably a rock - or at least, that is a workable assumption, barring additional verification.
Then there is, of course, personal experience, common sense, and social consensus, but while these limit the effectiveness of institutional lies - and breed an often counterproductive paranoia - they fail to contribute very much to public awareness of what is going on. By default, people are forced to accept much of the bullshit they hear, even if they intensely distrust its corporate/political sources - the alternative is a vacuum, which of course nature abhors.
Enter professional journalism. Its emergence as a socially powerful institution was something of an aberration, driven and reinforced by the birth of a strong, highly educated, and deeply involved middle-class. There had always been muckrakers for as long as freedom of speech has been considered legitimate, but for the most part these people were on the fringe, and major organizations wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot pole. Then, as now, news was primarily an organ of entertainment and propaganda whose content could always be vetoed by local bosses, big industrial concerns, or political interests.
Then a funny thing happened. People are often "scared stupid," but sometimes they're scared intelligent. In the two decades following WW2, America was increasingly prosperous, well-educated, and still felt in its bones the consequences of the madness it had lately witnessed overseas. It was confronted by a growing enemy (the Soviet Union) that at times seemed to be winning economically and technologically, and whose criticisms of American hypocrisy (e.g., segregation) stung badly. Surrounded by relative comfort and security, Americans were suddenly confronted by a world that could end at any moment if a misunderstanding, accident, or lunacy caused some guy in a bunker to push a button. They needed to know what was going on, in the most immediate sense of the word.
Thus "crusading reporters" who in earlier eras would have been left to rot at some local newspaper (or be found dead in a ditch) could, under the right conditions, achieve professional prestige, social status, and a degree of fame. Prior to this time, journalists were not held in high regard - they had about the same status in society as high school yearbook staff, and performed about the same function: Writing puffery under the watchful eye of the faculty. It was a respectable career, and you could still achieve recognition as a gossip columnist or sports writer, but taking down politicians and big businesses was literally dangerous and usually verboten.
The change didn't begin with Edward R. Murrow's famous on-air stand against Joe McCarthy - something remarkable more for being permitted by CBS (even though it refused to fund it or even grant use of its logo) than the fact that an individual journalist had taken a stand - but it was a loud-and-clear signal that news considered itself a separate institution with its own values and prerogatives, and was willing to break with the dominant political narrative. We must remember, Senator McCarthy was quite popular at the time, and the political currents seemed to favor his demagoguery. Given this perception, today's "news" organizations probably would have fired Murrow and given his show to McCarthy, or at very least would have forced Murrow to eviscerate his critiques until they were little more than "Can't we all just get along" whimpers for civility.
For several decades, the United States had something as close to a free press as is humanly possible - a professionalized institution with its own identity that rewarded members for exposing corruption, criminality, and lies by members of the political and economic elite. In one of the truly remarkable occurrences of history, journalists managed to bring down a powerful right-wing American presidency and get some of its top members thrown in jail: Something that would not have been possible a generation earlier, and ceased to be possible a generation later. But the influence and identity of the news media waned as the public's sense of urgency declined into myopia and indifference.
By the time of the Reagan administration, the media was reporting more information than the general public cared to know. The revelations surrounding Iran-Contra were met with a collective yawn. A President of the United States had deliberately broken the law, sold missiles to America's enemies, and used the money to illegally fund right-wing foreign terrorist groups he supported - in other words, he committed treason as an entrepreneurial gambit on Cold War control of Central America. But...what does that have to do with Cyndi Lauper? I'm bored, change the channel! The people no longer felt their interests so intimately tied to knowing what was going on.
By the time George W. Bush took (and I do mean took) power, Americans knew practically nothing about the national or international situation. And as things stand today, our people know less than nothing - they "know" things that are the opposite of reality, because the news media has gone through the looking glass. Far from defining itself to be a separate institution from the political and economic elites - or even a subordinate one that allows them to veto potentially damaging stories - it has become their direct servant: A "private sector" simulacrum of a totalitarian propaganda machine, operating through parallel interest rather than direct command.
The professional journalists have mostly fled or been fired from institutional news, and America has wandered in the wilderness - the most informed people knowing the least, because the best we can generally do is know what isn't true. The usurpation of the Fourth Estate has blinded us, making politics and business (especially business) an opaque Iron Curtained world whose internal machinations we can only guess at based on the actions and claims it chooses to reveal.
Enter Wikileaks. Contrary to the hysterical reactions of global governments, its revelations to date have not been that explosive - so far, to the best of my knowledge, no one in authority has been prosecuted or forced to resign as a result of the leaks other than some of the people who leaked them. Leaders are taking it personally only because a lot of it is personal - it shows them expressing opinions they would rather not be public knowledge, shows others expressing opinions about them that takes them down a peg, and in particular makes the US government look buffoonish for allowing such a massive trove of information to be tossed into the public domain by one person (Bradley Manning) trying to impress a hacker bulletin board.
All in all, the specifics of what Wikileaks has accomplished (and the extent of what is probably in its capacity to accomplish) are not that impressive. Edward R. Murrow brought down a Senator and stopped a destructive political phenomenon in its tracks; Woodward and Bernstein brought down a President, and stopped a dictatorship from being born; but so far Wikileaks has just created a lot of noise, and (still a laudable achievement) brought to the fore some discussion about transparency and the role of media in publicizing classified information. Most people who talk about it do so only because of the breadth of its revelations, which span the globe, not their depth or significance.
But I see something bigger going on that may transcend Wikileaks - something moving into the vacuum left by the death of journalism: A new subculture that rewards public revelation of institutional secrets with social status. For a time, this was partly how the news media operated - get the "big scoop," take down a "big fish," become a star in your profession. Now a "scoop" in the news media is something generously given to reporters by their masters - the boss calls them and informs them that they have been given access to a big story that management wants them to report. But out there in the information badlands of the internet, something else is happening.
For decades there have been hackers, phreaks, and other information-oriented subcultures that pride themselves on their ability to penetrate security, obtain inside lines, and achieve "pwnage" over those who delude themselves that they are under control. But these people keep to themselves, and whatever information they discovered they hoarded as a matter of ego - I know something you don't know! And why not: Remaining in obscurity, they get to explore to their heart's content, have the respect and admiration of others like them, and if they get caught, they will probably be sentenced to a six-figure security consulting contract. So it makes sense that, unlike in the movies, governments are not routinely subject to scandals exposed by these people.
Something has changed. In addition to those who obtain credit and status for acquiring access to secrets, there is now a community built around exposure of secrets - a community that extends well beyond Wikileaks. These are not, for the most part, people trying to expose information that will make them money; they are not trying to expose information that will damage political opponents; and they are not, despite the overly-generous opinions of some progressive activists, trying to serve the public interest or create a more open society. What they are doing is scoring points. And while it may sound cynical or irresponsible, it is still the most hopeful development for public awareness in a long time.
The powerful conceal - it is a fundamental attribute of being in a dominant position. And though they invest some resources in exposing enemies and competitors, it is always a corrupted exercise promiscuously mixed with disinformation and propaganda: They lie about each other a lot more often than they honestly reveal each other's hidden agendas and criminal activities, and protect each other even more often than that. Once an institutional media has settled into an integrated part of this system, about the only thing that can seriously disrupt it is a set of cowboys who don't give a shit about anything other than revealing secrets. It is the definition of their community, and it is the ruler by which they measure their...joysticks.
This is what has people in business and government worried, not that Julian Assange is going to show them using Pentagon computers to download porn. Assange can be controlled - in fact, already is under control by virtue of his quite-logical decision to withhold much of the cables as leverage. He is proving he can be reasoned with, and responds to the levers of politics - so he may be prosecuted or may reach a clandestine understanding, but either way he personally is not as relevant as he appears. But what about all those guys out there who have gotten a vicarious adrenaline rush watching the shitstorm unleashed by Wikileaks? CPAs, stock brokers, office managers, file clerks, warehouse managers, just anyone with any information at all who is bored, underappreciated, and maybe going through a mid-life crisis? Uh oh. :-)
What appears to be developing goes far beyond leaks. A leak is when a professional with access to confidential information decides, as a matter of moral imperative or (far more often) political gaming, to provide that information to a traditional media source where it will either be buried, watered down, or reported according to the judgment of management. In other words, a leak is usually just an extension of the status quo, and is as often a lie or half-truth as it is a genuine revelation: Leakers can be as selective in what they reveal as the people they're trying to damage, so really all they're doing is making themselves participants in the same game rather than changing it.
And then there is Wikileaks - a freaking circus dedicated to the exposure of secrets. It no longer matters whether Assange is prosecuted, because what he's doing is glamorous: People who trade in information and penetrating secrecy have discovered the intoxication of fame, and will seek to share in it even if vicariously. A nobody whose only relevance to global affairs is that they keep a warehouse log for a business that fronts for the CIA can play spy games without actually being a traitor, and probably never face any kind of consequences if their information is kept in the background. And what's more, while surely a far more limited phenomenon, Wikileaks may be inspiring people who are not even in business or government to go out and seek secrets to reveal. Revelation has once again become a competition.
This is not the rebirth of journalism - mere facts do not make understanding, anymore than a handful of sand is a stained glass window. In fact, far from it: What we see in the offing is something very strange and new - espionage by individuals in service to the abstract concept of openness. It is not in service to a government, corporation, or even really an ideology - there is no rigid set of dictates surrounding the phenomenon that one would call a political doctrine or even a "movement," but rather a kind of competitive catharsis. The same motives still apply - people still leak on behalf of banal politics or out of conscience - but there is now also a game afoot. The game is being a spy for all of humanity.
These people do not have handlers, files, or code names (though I'm sure they'll hit on those fun little tropes of spy fiction soon enough). They do not report to Langley, Moscow, Beijing, London, Rupert Murdoch, or Wall Street. They just know a lot, and they think it's time you know too. It isn't much of a stretch to go from revealing what you know to actively gathering new information to report - to make the leap from leaker-of-conscience to spy-for-mankind. In fact, it's a natural evolution regularly employed by national spy agencies to generate agents: They find the disaffected and underappreciated, and give them an exciting mission - get them to feel glamorous, like James Bond. Well, now they can email a .pdf file and feel like Neo, then sit back and watch the gods lose their minds over it.
There are any number of ways this could go, and they will probably all happen to one extent or another: The phenomenon will grow, it will be co-opted, it will adapt, governments and business will adapt themselves, and so on, and so on - the age-old arms race continues between the Byzantine and the libertine. It cannot replace journalism, but it can perhaps make governments and large corporations just uncomfortable enough for the truth to once again have some leverage in society.