The San Francisco Chronicle is apparently in trouble with the White House for posting video of a protest against the White House's treatment of suspected WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning. The Chronicle's Carolyn Lochhead reports:

The White House threatened Thursday to exclude the San Francisco Chronicle from pooled coverage of its events in the Bay Area after the paper posted a video of a protest at a San Francisco fundraiser for President Obama last week, Chronicle editor Ward Bushee said. White House guidelines governing press coverage of such events are too restrictive, Bushee said, and the newspaper was within its rights to film the protest and post the video.

Chronicle reporter Carla Marinucci was the designated "pool" reporter at an Obama fundraiser--meaning that her write-up would be shared with other reporters who were not allowed into the event.

But something truly newsworthy happened--and she reported it:

At the St. Regis event, a group of protesters who paid collectively $76,000 to attend the fundraiser interrupted Obama with a song complaining about the administration's treatment of PFC Bradley Manning, the soldier who allegedly leaked U.S. classified documents to the WikiLeaks website.

As part of a "print-only pool," Marinucci was limited by White House guidelines to provide a print-only report, but Marinucci also took a video of the protest, which she posted in her written story on the online edition of the Chronicle at SFGate.com and on its politics blog after she sent her written pool report.

The Chronicle's story closes with this ironic point about the White House's view of technology and information-sharing:

At Facebook the day before the San Francisco fundraiser, Obama said, "The main reason we wanted to do this is, first of all, because more and more people, especially young people, are getting their information through different media. And obviously, what all of you have built together is helping to revolutionize how people get information, how they process information, how they're connecting with each other."

Apparently Marinucci posting a video was a little too much revolutionizing.

The New York Times and London Guardian both published stories yesterday (4/25/11) examining the WikiLeaks documents about the Guantanamo prison. While obviously just a snapshot, it is interesting to see how the papers have headlined their findings.

The Guardian:

The New York Times:

And today the Times stresses the potential danger allegedly posed by those imprisoned there:

This is not to suggest that the Times' pieces are particularly bad. But the difference in emphasis is striking--and reminiscent of how differently the papers treated previous WikiLeaks disclosures.

WikiLeaks' Julian Assange believes people are out to smear him and his organization. That much seems clear. Today the New York Times' Ravi Somaiya writes a piece that would seem to confirm those suspicions.

The headline today:

Assange Complains of Jewish Smear Campaign

The issue here is what an editor at the British magazine Private Eye says Assange told him--that there is, in the Times' words, "a Jewish-led conspiracy to smear his organization."

There's no way for the Times to verify this information, as Glenn Greenwald points out at Salon. So why the definitive-sounding headline?

And the background to Assange's "rambling phone call" raises more questions about the Times story.  The paper reports that Assange

was especially angry about a Private Eye report that Israel Shamir, an Assange associate in Russia, was a Holocaust denier. Mr. Assange complained that the article was part of a campaign by Jewish reporters in London to smear WikiLeaks.

That makes it sound like:

a) Assange has some formal association with Israel Shamir, a Holocaust denier;

b) Assange is angry that this magazine reported that Israel Shamir is a Holocaust denier.

But Assange's anger actually seems to stem from the suggestion that he has a formal relationship with Shamir. As a WikiLeaks statement put it:

Israel Shamir has never worked or volunteered for WikiLeaks, in any manner, whatsoever. He has never written for WikiLeaks or any associated organization, under any name and we have no plan that he do so. He is not an "agent" of WikiLeaks. He has never been an employee of WikiLeaks and has never received monies from WikiLeaks or given monies to WikiLeaks or any related organization or individual. However, he has worked for the BBC, Haaretz and many other reputable organizations.

WikiLeaks went on to say that "Shamir was able to search through a limited portion of the cables with a view to writing articles for a range of Russian media." It's possible that WikiLeaks is downplaying Shamir's role; other accounts portray him as having a somewhat closer connection to the organization. But Assange's and WikiLeaks' public pronouncements take issue with the linking of themselves to Shamir, not the exposure of his anti-Semitism (which seems to be quite real).

You get a very different impression from the headline and thrust of the Times piece, which would lead you to believe that Assange consorts with anti-Semitic Holocaust deniers, gets angry when they are exposed as such and alleges that a Jewish conspiracy is out to get him.

It's clear that Assange does believe that people are out to spread misinformation about him and his group. The Times story won't do much to convince him that he's wrong.

The long 60 Minutes segment on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange from last night (1/30/11) is definitely worth a look. But this set-up from correspondent Steve Kroft was certainly odd:

Julian Assange is not your average journalist or publisher, and some have argued that he is not really a journalist at all. He is an anti-establishment ideologue with conspiratorial views. He believes large government institutions use secrecy to suppress the truth and he distrusts the mainstream media for playing along.

Assange believes the government keeps important secrets? And that mainstream media play along? That is kooky.

Joe Biden on Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak (PBS NewsHour, 1/27/11):

 I would not refer to him as a dictator.

 On WikiLeaks' Julian Assange (NBC's Meet the Press, 12/19/10)

 DAVID GREGORY: Mitch McConnell says he's a high-tech terrorist, others say this is akin to the Pentagon Papers. Where do you come down?

 JOE BIDEN: I would argue that it's closer to being a high-tech terrorist than the Pentagon Papers.

For the record, neither journalist pushed Biden to explain his opinions.

The New York Times:

Cables Show Delicate U.S. Dealings With Egypt's Leaders

The Guardian:

WikiLeaks Cables Show Close U.S. Relationship With Egyptian President

That reminds me of something Times executive editor wrote in a forthcoming piece on WikiLeaks, where he explains the difference between The Newspaper of Record and the Guardian in handling the Afghanistan documents:

If anyone doubted that the three publications operated independently, the articles we posted that day made it clear that we followed our separate muses. The Guardian, which is an openly left-leaning newspaper, used the first War Logs to emphasize civilian casualties in Afghanistan, claiming the documents disclosed that coalition forces killed "hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents," underscoring the cost of what the paper called a "failing war." Our reporters studied the same material but determined that all the major episodes of civilian deaths we found in the War Logs had been reported in the Times, many of them on the front page.

They are indeed different newspapers. The Guardian thinks civilian deaths should be reported, in some cases maybe more than once.

The Guardian's piece today reports:

Another cable, from March 2009, shows the U.S.'s astonishingly intimate military relationship with Egypt. Washington provides Cairo $1.3bn annually in foreign military finance (FMF) to purchase U.S. weapons and defence equipment, and the cable said. "President Mubarak and military leaders view our military assistance program as the cornerstone of our mil-mil relationship and consider the $1.3bn in annual FMF as 'untouchable compensation' for making and maintaining peace with Israel.

"The tangible benefits to our mil-mil relationship are clear: Egypt remains at peace with Israel, and the U.S. military enjoys priority access to the Suez canal and Egyptian airspace."

Presumably Keller would argue that the Times has already--somewhere, at some time--mentioned U.S. military aid to Egypt, and thus didn't need to dwell on it today.