TPM & Josh Marshall are double doofus on WikiLeaks

Per FAIR, I now now that a Talking Points Memo post on the top five surprises out of the cables not only was about unsurprising information, but also, rather than looking directly at the cables, instead looked directly at the New York Times' interpretation of them ... once again, TPM acts like the mainstream media's New Media adjutant.

This is an updated and amended version of my original post on this issue.

Josh Marshall, publisher of the blog and sometimes news site Talking Points Memo, has in the past, shown himself to be almost as much a mainstream media mogul as the proprietors of the New York Times, etc. Posting White House slide shows, using multiple anonymous sources in stories are just two manifestations of that.

Now, we get his his right hand man David Kurtz's take, in one post, on the Wikileaks cable leaks. (Yes, I didn't check the post's byline originally; but, I figured that, with its breathlessness, it was Josh's. Instead, it's Kurtz's breathlessness busted by my the second time. That said, Josh is still the publisher. He could be talking more to Kurtz.) That's followed by Josh sticking his Napoleonic hand inside his publisher's military vest.

The most naive post? Kurtz's "five biggest surprises" one.

The idea that Sunni Arab states fear Iran's nuke program so much they want us to take Iran out? Hinted at in news stories years ago.

That the State Department ordered spying on foreign diplomats? In the wake of the UN discussion on Iraq in late 2002-early 2003, facts to this end were uncovered and reported five years ago. It's just continued since then, obviously.

That Iran supplied North Korea with missiles? News, sure. Surprise? Not really. And, also, per FAIR, not necessarily true, either! And thus, per the FAIR story, I've also busted Kurtz for blindly trusting the New York Times as a secondary source.

Here is the actual cable.

Russia said that during its presentations in Moscow and its comments thus far during the current talks, the U.S. has discussed the BM-25 as an existing system. Russia questioned the basis for this assumption and asked for any facts the U.S. had to provide its existence such as launches, photos, etc. For Russia, the BM-25 is a mysterious missile. North Korea has not conducted any tests of this missile, but the U.S. has said that North Korea transferred 19 of these missiles to Iran. It is hard for Russia to follow the logic trail on this.

A bit different than the NYT's breathless "linkage" take and TPM's gullible acceptance.

Ditto on Iran using the cover of the Red Crescent to smuggle material into battle sites. No real surprise.

That the U.S. diplomatic corps relies on blog-ready gossip items? It has for decades. We probably could learn boatloads from a country like Great Britain.

Next, Marshall notes that WikiLeaks may have intended the cables dump as an attack on U.S. diplomacy.

NOoooooo! Next up, TPM gets an IgNoble Prize.

Of course, the now commenter-unfriendly TPM allows no comments on either story.

What's even worse in a way is how Marshall comes off as a pedantic small-college professor, or cyber-small town newspaper editor:

We've given explicit marching orders to our editors and reporters not to get distracted by the 'meta' part of the wikileaks story and just focus on the details unearthed.

First, we're covering all the details we can find. So that puts some real limits on how much we can credibly criticize the way these cables came to light. I'm also not sure we would have made different decisions than, say, The New York Times, if we'd been given the opportunity to report out the cables in advance of their release. And of course we here at TPM like every other news organization routinely file FOIA requests on the reasoning that it's in the public interest to get as much as possible of the inner workings of government exposed to the public.

What he's saying is, "Folks, look at me give you a peek under the hood about how to run an online news site!"

Oy.

An actual surprise? Per McClatchy, the total clusterfuck of the 2009 coup in Honduras?

An even bigger actual surprise? At least some Chinese officials are OK with a Seoul-led reunified Korea.

And, yet more actual surprises, courtesy Juan Cole. They include that John Kerry wanted Israel to return the Golan Heights to Syria, that Pakistan's chief of staff, Gen. Kayani, considered a coup against President Zardari and more.

TPM #fail.