Beck v. Assange, or fiction over fact

For those who pay attention to the battle of ideas that constantly goes on in the United States, two people presently have taken center stage for diametrically opposite reasons: Glenn Beck and Julian Assange. The first is a man whose expertise is in the creation of alternate realities by playing fast and loose with the facts. This sort of enterprise has a long and sordid history to it, and while this fellow is on the rabid right, the tradition has its historical representatives across the political spectrum. There is never any lack of an audience for such promoters of alternate realities. Usually the size of the audience can be correlated to an economic downturn, a defeat in war, or a popular consensus about government incompetency. The second man is a champion of the free flow of information. He believes that the only way citizens will avoid being swept into alternate realities, and victimized by the resulting ill-conceived government actions, is to have full knowledge of what policies are being pursued and their real consequences. Whether most people actually want to know these details is debatable, but this fellow is adamant that they should be available to anyone who cares to look. Now we come to the question of how these two men are perceived by the U.S. government and the "free" people of the United States.