[edit: I see a few people disagree with this. Care to respond rather than simply downvote?]

In case you haven't been following what has been going on. The NY Times published a tabloidesque hit piece on Assange, and has failed to defend Wikileaks on the basis of journalistic freedom.

It's pretty clear that the Times management consists of war hawks who oppose Wikileaks b/c of their neoconservative political beliefs and desire to please those with political power.

Think about when the last time the NY Times published any remotely controversial investigative journalism... oh yeah it was the articles that supported the claims that Saddam had WMDs.

Strangely, the Times (a good but ardently neoconservative) paper still manages to fool progressives into thinking that it offers a sympathetic voice. Sadly the pressures of competing in the online world have left the paper with no choice but to sell off its journalistic integrity year after year.

If anything, one would hope that a paper like the Times would have taken a skeptical but journalistically sharp look at the leaked info and would have held off on the ad hominem attack on the Wikileaks founder, at least until some evidence was offered in support of the allegations against him.

And no, I don't think the total buffoonery written by Krugman, Dowd, and Herbert counts for any progressiveness points. If anything the three are a sideshow act with no relevance to the issues that matter.

You're downvoted for pretending controversial opinions (that the nytimes is a neoconservative stronghold) are obvious and need no justification.

I think the theory is that WL was a competing news organization with the potential to replace NYT, but NYT hasn't rolled over and died, therefore blocking WL from taking its seat on the throne.

Agreed - it seems like more of a failed attempt at a namedrop, when more of the "blame" should be directed towards the public. If Times readers as a whole lose express interest in WikiLeaks while Assange is dealing with legal issues and many other whistleblowing sites (OpenLeaks.org as an example) haven't seem to been releasing any high-profile documents, isn't that just more the reason for the Times to focus efforts elsewhere?

As the author of the post, maybe I can try and clear that up: my point was that while we have all failed to some extent -- by not supporting WikiLeaks and protesting things like the PayPal blockade and Amazon deletion and the government's dubious case -- the New York Times has failed by not using its national media platform to protest those things and their impact on free speech and freedom of the press. And my argument about why they didn't do that is in part that the NYT sees WikiLeaks as competition. Hope that helps.

What about the people among us who don't think that Wikileaks is a good thing to support?

What if there are more people who think that than message board sentiment analysis would lead you to believe?

What if the New York Times simply doesn't agree with your take --- ok, the popular take on places like HN --- about Wikileaks?

Does it matter if anyone thinks WikiLeaks is a "good" thing?

These are the questions that matter: Is WikiLeaks a journalistic entity? Why or why not? Is it OK for a bank/financial entity to block donations to any entity, journalism or not? *If money is speech (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo) how is blocking donations not a criminal offence?

"I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire

Because Visa and Mastercard are private companies that can decide whom they want or don't want as customers. They'll deny you from being a merchant if you have poor credit, too. They take on risk with every new merchant they accept, and I can see how WikiLeaks might pose a greater risk than most. If a group's supporters are willing to DoS visa.com and mastercard.com, I wouldn't put it past them to make large donations with stolen credit card numbers either, and Visa and Mastercard are on the hook for the chargebacks.

And, of course, since money is speech, it's fully within your rights to donate to wikileaks (cash, check, wire transfer, money order), just as its within Visa's rights not to accept Wikileaks as a customer.

EDIT: And just to be clear, I'm not trying to argue that there are no political motivations behind the decisions of Visa and Mastercard. I'm just answering the question about why this isn't for some reason illegal.

The article was my opinion -- obviously you are entitled to your own :-)