I spent eight years at InfoWorld working as a gossip columnist and know a thing or two about news leaks. So here is the gossip columnist’s view of this week’s huge Wikileaks story about U. S. diplomatic cables. It comes down, frankly, to a squandered opportunity. [...]

Wikileaks, in contrast, is anarchistic joiurnalism. Wikileaks takes the approach of just dumping on the web the actual documents for the rest of us to dig around in. One shot and they are done, which isn’t journalism but IS news. In one sense this is very generous in that anyone with time on their hands can probably dig through that material and find an untold story or two, but from the perspective of a professional journalist it is squandering material for the sake of spectacle. Wikileaks is just showing-off.

And Stross thinks he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize! I kinda don't think they give those to anarchists, though.

Wikileaks is not attacking the US government; rather, it's acting to degrade the ability of pressure groups to manipulate the US government to their own ends. Those who benefit the most from their ability to manipulate the State Department are the most angry about this: autocratic middle eastern leaders, authoritarian right-wing politicians, royalty, corporate cartels. Those of us who are scratching our heads and going "huh?" about the significance of Muammar Ghadaffi's botox habit are missing the point: it's not about the content, but about the implication that the powerful can no longer count on their ability to lie to the public without being called on it.