John Kampfner makes some excellent points about the media’s own docility in the face of institutional power being what’s ultimately behind their suspicion of and outright derision towards Wikileaks:
All governments have a legitimate right to protect national security. This should be a specific, and closely scrutinised, area of policy. Most of our secrecy rules are designed merely to protect politicians and officials from embarrassment. Documents are habitually over-classified for this purpose.
[…]
Rather than throwing stones, newspapers should be asking themselves why they did not have the wherewithal to hold truth to power.
Lemkin 