Steve Yelvington is right about the five sad reasons the America press is outraged by Wikileaks.
I’d add another:
American journalists are fundamentally conservative –they hate change. The conventions of American journalism are as ritualistic and metaphorical as a Japanese tea ceremony or diplomatic protocol. Wikileaks is outside their taxonomy and it makes their brains itch.
Daniel Ellsberg’s endorsement notwithstanding, the diplomatic cables are not the Pentagon Papers. And the Pentagon Papers currently define the outer edge of acceptable journalistic behavior.
Traditional American journalism has almost always been about telling the least objectionable story. Usually it serves the powerful, sometimes it serves the public at the expense of the powerful. It is seldom willing to alienate both the powerful and the public when both are on the same page.