Cringley on Wikileaks
Cringlely has written a very good article about Wikileaks from his journalistic point of view. He identifies a number of problems that I'd been thinking about and more; I've thought for some time that the Wikileaks approach is particularly unprotective of its sources - although, in this case, Bradley Manning was given a small amount of rope and seems to have managed to hang himself multiple times over.
I disagree with Cringley about the role of the New York Times / Guardian / et al. I don't think that was any kind of political cover; I think it was an attempt at covering themselves shameless veneer of respectability. What Wikileaks is doing is not journalism by any standard, it's more akin to dumpster-diving. Cringley talks about stretching the material out over a number of stories, but I think there is a much stronger point to be made here: there is a huge difference between "the public interest" and "of interest to the public". The vast, vast majority of material leaked has absolutely no public interest whatsoever. No real journalist would have covered that material simply because there is no story; having it available only makes sense from the political point of view of Assange. And I think viewing Wikileaks as some kind of journalistic enterprise is wrong: it's a political enterprise, as they freely admit.
What irks me most about their approach is that the small number of real stories contained in these cables have basically been totally blown away by the Wikileaks spin and newsmaking. And who can blame anyone? They're out there, hidden in plain sight of the multiple-gigabytes of information. We've found out (amongst other things) that it really is the US bombing the Yemen, but most of these stories aren't going to be covered in our meda - although Al-Qaeda's monthly rag sounds like it will really be going to town. No, what we're talking about is Wikileaks and Julian Assange himself.
And next he's apparently going to go after a large American bank. This man needs to be locked up before he does even more damage. I have very little problem with the real stories here coming out, but Wikileaks is doing it in such a cack-handed fashion that they really need saving from themselves, and certainly before they manage to trigger a Korean war / economic sub-crisis / etc. If Wikileaks were to make information available only to genuine journalists, I don't think we'd have half the issue: if the likes of NYT and the Guardian had run the stories they did without the Wikileaks hype, we would have had some real stories running with proper attention. Instead we basically have the "throw mud against the wall" method which is entirely useless.
I don't doubt that Assange is going to be in prison very shortly, and potentially / probably some of his Wikileaks cohorts, and to be honest it would be about time. Of course there is a free speech issue, but I don't think they deserve journalistic protection because what they're doing simply isn't journalism. The bleating of free speech from them sounds to my ears much like the British National Party: they're a nasty political organisation the world would be better off without (in their current form).
I disagree with Cringley about the role of the New York Times / Guardian / et al. I don't think that was any kind of political cover; I think it was an attempt at covering themselves shameless veneer of respectability. What Wikileaks is doing is not journalism by any standard, it's more akin to dumpster-diving. Cringley talks about stretching the material out over a number of stories, but I think there is a much stronger point to be made here: there is a huge difference between "the public interest" and "of interest to the public". The vast, vast majority of material leaked has absolutely no public interest whatsoever. No real journalist would have covered that material simply because there is no story; having it available only makes sense from the political point of view of Assange. And I think viewing Wikileaks as some kind of journalistic enterprise is wrong: it's a political enterprise, as they freely admit.
What irks me most about their approach is that the small number of real stories contained in these cables have basically been totally blown away by the Wikileaks spin and newsmaking. And who can blame anyone? They're out there, hidden in plain sight of the multiple-gigabytes of information. We've found out (amongst other things) that it really is the US bombing the Yemen, but most of these stories aren't going to be covered in our meda - although Al-Qaeda's monthly rag sounds like it will really be going to town. No, what we're talking about is Wikileaks and Julian Assange himself.
And next he's apparently going to go after a large American bank. This man needs to be locked up before he does even more damage. I have very little problem with the real stories here coming out, but Wikileaks is doing it in such a cack-handed fashion that they really need saving from themselves, and certainly before they manage to trigger a Korean war / economic sub-crisis / etc. If Wikileaks were to make information available only to genuine journalists, I don't think we'd have half the issue: if the likes of NYT and the Guardian had run the stories they did without the Wikileaks hype, we would have had some real stories running with proper attention. Instead we basically have the "throw mud against the wall" method which is entirely useless.
I don't doubt that Assange is going to be in prison very shortly, and potentially / probably some of his Wikileaks cohorts, and to be honest it would be about time. Of course there is a free speech issue, but I don't think they deserve journalistic protection because what they're doing simply isn't journalism. The bleating of free speech from them sounds to my ears much like the British National Party: they're a nasty political organisation the world would be better off without (in their current form).