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roachboy · 11-30-2010, 01:12 PM

i think this "there ought to be some kinda prosecution" business is funny.

meanwhile, the rules of the game internationally, and the notion of what investigative journalism is and how it's organized, is getting changed by how wikileaks is operating.

Quote:

WikiLeaks a media game changer
By: Keach Hagey
November 29, 2010 07:22 PM EST

After the New York Times published stories based on the WikiLeaks’ Iraq war logs in October next to a tough profile of the organization’s founder, the paper’s public editor concluded that the paper had taken a “reputational risk in doing business with WikiLeaks, though it has inoculated itself somewhat by reporting independently on the organization.”

But that independent reporting got the paper left out of getting advance access to the latest round of leaked cables, despite being originally told that it would get them, New York Times Editor Bill Keller told POLITICO.

“Back when we got the original archive — the Afghanistan and Iraq war reports — the understanding was that the same group, Guardian, NYT and Der Spiegel, would eventually get the cables,” Keller said. “Why [WikiLeaks founder Julian] Assange chose to cut us out, he never explicitly said. He has a rather lengthy bill of grievances against the Times, which he has voiced in public, to journalists at the European papers and to me by phone.”

Assange thought the Times’ profile of Bradley Manning, who is suspected of providing the documents to WikiLeaks, “paid insufficient attention to Manning’s political motivation,” Keller said, and “strongly disliked John Burns’s piece on the internal strains within WikiLeaks.” Keller added, “I think he was unhappy with something the editorial page said about him.”

So, in one of the back story’s strangest twists, the Times had to get the leaked cables through something akin to a second leak — obtaining them from the Guardian of London. Guardian investigative editor David Leigh told Yahoo’s Michael Calderone that the British paper handed over the source material because British law "might have stopped us through injunctions [gag orders] if we were on our own." Keller told readers in a Q & A Monday that the Guardian “considered it a continuation of our collaboration on earlier WikiLeaks disclosures.”

Either way, such international collaboration on a major story is unprecedented in the history of journalism and points to the new role that elite news organizations play in the Internet age — in this case, as conduits of material originally obtained not by their own investigative journalists but by others, such as WikiLeaks.

The big papers wouldn’t have the material without WikiLeaks. And WikiLeaks wouldn’t get the international exposure — and, perhaps more important, the credibility — that comes from having its material published in the world’s most important newspapers.

But the Times has come under some criticism from readers for the arrangement. One reader called it “disgusting” that the Times would act as a “media partner” to WikiLeaks, which Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) wants to have designated as a “foreign terrorist organization.” Others wondered what the Times gave up by agreeing to work with WikiLeaks, after other news organizations declined early access because they did not want to abide by confidentiality agreements.

Keller defended the paper’s decision, saying that “WikiLeaks is not a ‘media partner’ of the Times” and that the paper “signed no agreement of any kind, with WikiLeaks or anyone else.” While WikiLeaks did not get a look at the Times’ stories in advance, the Times did try to influence what WikiLeaks plans to put up on its site over the course of this week.

Keller acknowledged the Times has “no control over what WikiLeaks will do” but said the paper told WikiLeaks and the other papers in possession of the cables about the State Department’s concerns, as well as the Times’ plans to edit out sensitive material. “The other news organizations supported these redactions,” Keller said. “WikiLeaks has indicated that it intends to do likewise — and as a matter of news interest, we will watch their website to see what they do.”

Such collaboration by major media organizations across international borders — both in agreeing to work together in publishing the material and in agreeing what material should be kept out — is new for journalism.

“I know of no international efforts like this, a global kind of collaboration,” said Mark Feldstein, a professor at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs and author of “Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson and the Rise of Washington's Scandal Culture.”

“It’s unprecedented and to be commended. The volume of the material that WikiLeaks obtained is unprecedented, so to tackle a subject this complicated is going to take more resources. And just as everything else has gone global — crime and multinational corporations — so we are starting to see the beginning of a more global investigative journalism," he said.

The collaboration began in June, when Nick Davies, a senior contributor to the Guardian, tracked down Assange in Brussels and suggested that the paper would devote a team to researching stories within WikiLeaks’ cache of documents, Clint Hendler reported in the Columbia Journalism Review. Assange suggested that The New York Times and Der Spiegel be involved as well. Editors from the three papers agreed to a deal in which they’d keep the documents under wraps for a few weeks and publish simultaneously with WikiLeaks.

The result was the July 25 story of the Afghanistan war logs. A similar process was used in the release of the Iraq war logs last month and in Sunday’s release of the U.S. Embassy cables, though the list of papers had expanded to include Spain’s El Pais and France’s Le Monde.

It might have expanded even further had CNN and The Wall Street Journal agreed to sign the confidentiality agreements that WikiLeaks required in exchange for advance access.

CNN reported that it “declined a last-minute offer to discuss advance access to some of the documents because of a confidentiality agreement requested by WikiLeaks that CNN considered unacceptable.” A spokesperson for CNN would not go into specifics on the unacceptable terms of the requested agreement.

The Wall Street Journal also declined an offer of access made about a week ago, Russell Adams and Jessica E. Vascellaro reported. “We didn't want to agree to a set of pre-conditions related to the disclosure of the WikiLeaks documents without even being given a broad understanding of what these documents contained," a spokeswoman for the paper said.

The five newspapers that did get advance access had been looking at the cables for some time. The Guardian has had access to them since August, while the Times has been reviewing them for “several weeks.”

Part of that review process, in both papers' cases, included a process of redaction in consultation with U.S. officials.

“We have edited out any information that could identify confidential sources — including informants, dissidents, academics and human rights activists — or otherwise compromise national security,” Keller wrote in response to readers’ questions. “We did this in consultation with the State Department, and while they strongly disapprove of the publication of classified material at any time, and while we did not agree with all of their requests for omission, we took their views very seriously indeed.”

Both papers shared their redactions with each other, and with WikiLeaks, in hopes that the organization would make similar choices. WikiLeaks could not be reached for comment.

This kind of negotiation with U.S. officials has not always been part of the history of large leaks. The New York Times’ release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, the most frequently cited precedent for the WikiLeaks revelations, had no input at all from the government, according to David Rudenstine, a professor of law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and author of “The Day the Presses Stopped: A History of the Pentagon Papers Case.”

“In the Pentagon Papers case, The New York Times kept the fact that it had the Pentagon Papers secret from everybody, including the government,” he said. “The fear at the Times, in April, May and June of 1971, was that the government would find out that it had these documents and seek through the FBI to perhaps recover them. And so perhaps as a result, the Times took extraordinary steps to keep the stories confidential.”

He added that the Times “thought that they had more than adequate capacity to make these judgments without going to the government,” as did The Washington Post in its Pentagon Papers stories.

At the time, the Times was generally lauded for its courage in exposing a bad war.

More recent history does have the Times holding stories containing major revelations over government concerns, as was the case when the paper held the NSA warrantless surveillance story from 2004 until 2005, a move that provoked criticism because the story could have had an effect on the 2004 presidential elections.

But the deals the papers strike with WikiLeaks makes such holding impossible. The scope of action available to the papers is limited: They can provide context and verification, but they can’t stall or kill the story.

After the leak of the Afghan war documents, New York University professor Jay Rosen noted that this arrangement alters the role the press has traditionally played.

“Notice how effective this combination is,” he said. “The information is released in two forms: vetted and narrated to gain old-media cred and released online in full text, Internet style, which corrects for any timidity or blind spot the editors at Der Spiegel, the Times or the Guardian may show.”

Pointing to a request from the Times to WikiLeaks, urging the site to withhold harmful material from its website, Rosen wrote: “There’s the new balance of power, right there. In the revised picture we find the state, which holds the secrets but is powerless to prevent their release; the stateless news organization, deciding how to release them; and the national newspaper in the middle, negotiating the terms of legitimacy between these two actors.”

WikiLeaks a media game changer - Keach Hagey - POLITICO.com

no wonder fox et al have their panties in a bunch. they loose.