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WikiLeaks, Whistleblowing and the Future of Journalism

1 year ago
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Delia Lloyd
Delia Lloyd
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LONDON -- Next Monday, Feb. 7, Julian Assange will return to court in London for his extradition hearing on sexual assault charges in Sweden. But as we await that ruling, another question hangs in the balance: Has Assange's whistleblowing organization, WikiLeaks, forever altered modern journalism?

Certainly, Wednesday's news that Wikileaks has been nominated for the 2011 Nobel Prize would seem to suggest that the answer to this question is a resounding yes. So would the extent of whistleblowing activity reported in recent months by the world's media.

Since last April, when WikiLeaks exploded onto the global consciousness with its video showing an American Apache helicopter opening fire on a group of men in Iraq and killing 12, it has released half a million military dispatches from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. The flow of secret U.S. diplomatic cables continues to leak out, day by day, offering fresh insight into things as timely as Hillary Clinton's behind-the-scenes dealings with Egypt's now imperiled president, Hosni Mubarak.

And it's not just WikiLeaks and the recipients of its materials (such as The New York Times and Le Monde) that are involved these days. In late January, in an event quickly overshadowed by the turmoil in Tunisia and Egypt, Al Jazeera released 1,600 secret documents (to The Guardian) about the ongoing peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. These so-called "Palestine Papers" revealed that Palestinian negotiators were willing to go much further in offering concessions than their people -- or the world -- realized.

Meanwhile, a host of WikiLeaks spinoffs are germinating in Europe. There's OpenLeaks.org, whose founder, German transparency activist Daniel Domscheit-Berg, openly broke with Assange last year over controversies surrounding Assange's private life and their impact on WikiLeaks employees. Berg's new site, which launched last week, is intended as a mechanism both for linking leakers with knowledgeable recipients and for linking leak-consuming organizations to one another.

There are also two "Green Leaks" websites that intend to become conduits for corporate insiders wanting to blow the whistle on environmental abuses. And rumor has it that The New York Times is considering developing a system that will let anonymous leakers easily submit large and confidential files directly to the newspaper.

Given such momentum and the speed with which media outlets large and small seem to be jumping on the leaks bandwagon, it's worth asking: Is this the future of journalism? And, if so, will that -- by necessity -- change what journalism does?

The consensus on those two questions -- so far, at least -- would appear to be "sort of" and "no."

On the first point -- is this the future of journalism? -- New York Times media reporter David Carr describes the emerging model as a new kind of "hybrid journalism" that exists somewhere in the space between "hacktivists" and mainstream media outlets. It depends, on the one hand, on outfits like WikiLeaks as the suppliers of the raw information, but equally on outlets like the New York Times to cull, analyze and disseminate it.

As New York Times reporter Scott Shane notes, while his paper and WikiLeaks are "not equivalent historically or in terms of philosophy . . . in this particular project, they're doing almost literally the exact same thing as us."

As to the second question -- what does all this mean for how journalism is practiced? -- two veterans in the field strongly deny any claim that traditional news outlets are no longer relevant. If anything, they argue, the new push toward whistleblowing actually strengthens journalism's core competencies.

For starters, as New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller pointed out recently in a lengthy account of the WikiLeaks saga, WikiLeaks didn't transform journalism -- the Internet did. The Web, he said, "created a wide-open and global market with easier access to audiences and sources, a quicker metabolism, a new infrastructure for sharing and vetting information and a diminished respect for notions of privacy and secrecy."

As for newspapers, Keller notes that they've always been in the business of publishing document text. The Internet just gives them more room in which to do so.

In this sense, Keller is adamant that Julian Assange was simply a source of information. The heavy lifting required to sift through, analyze and redact the mountains of raw data was carried out by top-notch reporters at The Times, The Guardian and elsewhere.

Financial Times Editor-in-Chief Lionel Barber concurs. In a recent speech that got a lot of media attention here in London, Barber spoke about the state of contemporary journalism. Like Keller, he feels that WikiLeaks and organizations like it only underscore the need for journalists -- that in a world where information sources are so varied and numerous, journalists must not only report on events and supply trenchant commentary, but "fulfill with renewed vigor an old task: that of aggregating and verifying sources."

As he puts it: "The task of aggregating and verifying multiple sources and data depends fundamentally on trust. Trust that the facts are accurate. Trust that appropriate weight has been given to context. And, make no mistake, ladies and gentleman, trust in the journalistic profession is a scarce commodity."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

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Filed Under: Media, Woman Up, International, WikiLeaks
Tagged: Al Jazeera Document Dump, Bill Keller, David Carr, hybrid journalism, Lionel Barber, New vs. Old Media, New York Times and Wikileaks, OpenLeaks, Scott Shane, The Palestine Papers, Whistle-blowers and journalism, Wikileaks, Wikileaks and Future of Journalism, Wikileaks and journalism
More articles from Delia Lloyd »

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5 Comments

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Michael

Assange may have, or may one day, deflect the course of journalism.
Delia, not so much, I think.

February 05 2011 at 12:27 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
john

most of our internal terrorists are in the media. whats new about that?

February 04 2011 at 12:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Phillip

you can't have a free sociaty without a free press.msnbc,FOX,CNN,isn't NEWS,when was the last time they broke a story that wasn't spoon fed to them.they each have there own political agenda and the american people isn't part of it.thank god for manning,assange,elsberg,and others.now there going to pass a law that won't protect whisle blowers,as if there protected now.ppry for america.

February 04 2011 at 12:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
rann948

It is truly possible that Assange is the anti-christ. His evil enjoyment of creating chaos and causing harm to nations is just WRONG.

February 04 2011 at 12:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
last01republican

I totally believe in everyone's right to freedom of speech. In fact, I will even argue for those in other countries to have the freedom of expression even if it means I have to listen to them insult my country and heritage. The freedom of speech is very important concept and a valuable commodity especially in these days. But even "Politics Daily" via AOL have moderators who will censor speech "they" deem inappropriate; however, who is really to say what is or is not inappropriate?

This question regarding WikiLeaks pushes beyond "freedom of speech". This website is nothing more than vanity run amok. If you look at the reality behind the situation: You have Julian Assange - a man who was a nobody - who made a website nothing more spectacular than a un-moderated "Facebook" fan page. Then as flamboyantly as possible, he placed a video of a combat situation where there was a mistake in identity. My friends, if I may quote a very wacky yet incredibly ingenious General, "War is hell." Collateral damage is exactly why you want to avoid war. When a leader - either elected or who rose to power simply on the backs of an enslaved county - makes bad decisions, it's time to realize that war is waged due to the bad decisions of the leaders and not necessarily the actions of the soldiers on the ground. To those who are about to vilify me by using NAZI examples, the holocaust could not have been prevented by the soldier at the front lines. As horrible as it was, we need to understand it was a collective effort that caused that tragedy.

Julian Assange is no one really to fear. Those people who feed him the information which places him into the spot light are the ones to focus your attention on. Assange wants that attention and uses people like Pvt. Bradley Manning as his puppets. If you look closely, you will realize how well this parallels with how Osama Bin Laden, Mujahedin, Hezbollah, etc. use people in the same manner to carry out attacks by feeding them with empty promises of grandeur and heroic immortality, only Assange uses the idea of "free speech" as his pulpit.

Regardless if Assange is right or wrong, we need to realize who he really is: An informational terrorist. He has used information to black mail. When he was arrested, he threatened to disperse massive amounts of secret information to the world unless he was set free. What makes him any different than any other desperate criminal? I implore each and every one of you to open your eyes and listen to the historical facts of madmen such as this one. His sole motivation is not free speech, freedom of information, or anything as idyllic as exposing truth. His sole motivation is martyrdom: To place himself on a cross and with the vision you all will bear witness he is about to sacrifice himself for your freedom of information. We all - in the entire world - have to responsibility to look up at him on that self made symbol of crucifixion and blow him the biggest raspberry that will shake the pillars of the Lincoln Memorial. Put a mirror up to this narcissistic Aussie and show him he is still that same little kid who was never picked to play kick ball with the rest of us.

February 04 2011 at 2:02 AM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply

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