Tag Archives: cablegate

#cablegate: BBC CoJo on Why WikiLeaks’ ‘industrial scale’ releases need journalists

In a post on the BBC College of Journalism site, executive editor Kevin Marsh reflects on the release of diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, which started last week, and the essential part played by investigative journalism in similar scenarios.

Marsh argues that the lack of saliency in industrial leaks means that the “transparency style” of whistleblowers such as WikiLeaks must remain to be seen as a “precursor of journalistic possibilites” rather than a substitute.

The diplodocudump was underwhelming – but that doesn’t mean it was a Bad Thing; no journalist should argue that revelation itself doesn’t serve the public interest. At the very least, it’s about a partial correction of the information asymmetry between power and people.

Journalism – especially investigative journalism – has many shortcomings. There’s no science about what gets investigated and what doesn’t, no guarantee that it’s the biggest scandals – for want of a better word – that get nailed nor that some lesser ‘scandals’ don’t get a place in the public sphere they don’t quite deserve. No guarantee, either, that the evidence stacks up or that the ‘truth’ revealed is uncontestable.

But because of the way most investigative journalism comes about – through a whistleblower who rightly or wrongly senses some kind of moral violation – it has that magic thing we call salience. And it’s salience that leaking on an industrial scale lacks.

His comments follow those by editor of the Guardian Alan Rusbridger on the first day of the release last week, who also argued that newspapers were playing “a vital role” in adding context to the leaked material.

#cablegate: Amazon says WikiLeaks breached terms of service; web address host pulls out

Following reports that Amazon’s servers had stopped hosting WikiLeaks’ site following its latest release of confidential diplomatic cables, it sought to clarify its position in a statement online.

On the Amazon Web Services site the statement says reports that a government inquiry had prompted it not to serve WikiLeaks any longer are inaccurate. It claimed instead that WikiLeaks had violated parts of its terms of service.

WikiLeaks has responded via its Twitter account.

The BBC also reported this morning that the WikiLeaks website had been shut down by EveryDNS.net, the company providing it with its .org web address.

EveryDNS.net said it had terminated services because WikiLeaks.org had come under massive cyber attacks.

But WikiLeaks has already reappeared using a Swiss web address.

Economist.com: The Arab press’ reaction to WikiLeaks’ #cablegate release

Great round-up of the reaction from the Arab press to WikiLeaks’ latest leak involving more than 250,000 cables sent by US embassies across the world, many relating to meetings between high-ranking American diplomats and Arab leaders.

The region’s press has been cautious in its coverage of the documents. Although many newspapers have reported the leak, most were hesitant in revealing details of claims made in the cables, preferring to discuss the themes of the leak in more general terms.

Full post on the Economist’s Newsbook blog at this link…

Yahoo News: WikiLeaks embassy cables release prompts new ‘whistleblower bill’

The leak of the US embassy cables by WikiLeaks is prompting new legislation in the US that would give employees in sensitive government jobs a way to report corruption or mismanagement.

The “whistleblower bill” will discourage leaks of classified information say its supporters. The bill is likely to pass through the approval process quickly, Yahoo News reports

Following WikiLeaks’ pulibcation of the Afghanistan war logs in July US senators Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein began hastily drafting an amendment to a current piece of legislation designed to protect journalists’ sources to ensure that WikiLeaks could not be included. The amendement declared that the bill would “only extend only to traditional news-gathering activities and not to websites that serve as a conduit for the mass dissemination of secret documents”.

Full story on Yahoo News at this link.

#cablegate: 7,500 cables tagged ‘PR and Correspondence’ could shed light on media relations

According to WikiLeaks, there are more than 7,500 embassy cables due to be released as part of its latest classified documents leak that have the tag OPRC or “Public Relations and Correspondence”.

Only two with these tag have been published so far – one is a round-up of Turkish media reaction and the other a summary of media reaction to news issues in China, the US and Iran, both sent in 2009.

But it’ll be worth keeping an eye on future cables tagged OPRC for information about diplomats and country leaders’ media relations and communications.

Until the text of these cables is made public, we don’t know just what they contain and how relevant it might be to media outlets. But using the Guardian’s data store of the cables, it’s easy to find out how many cables have been sent by which embassies during the time period covered by the leak –

The US embassy in Ankara, Turkey is responsible for the largest number of cables tagged OPRC, 1,551, while the American Institute Taiwan in Taipei is behind 1,026 of them. Seventy-five embassies have sent 10 or fewer OPRC-tagged cables.

#cablegate: WikiLeaks’ embassy cables on today’s front pages

Last night saw the beginning of the biggest leak of classified material in history, and most of this morning’s newspapers duly lead with the story. Here’s a look at the front pages of six of our national newspapers and the the New York Herald Tribune.

To read in closer the detail use the full screen toggle on the slideshow player.

#cablegate: The Guardian on the importance of the WikiLeaks embassy cables leak

As WikiLeaks begins publication of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables sent by US embassies around the world, the Guardian, which is one of a group of media organisations publishing a selection (a few hundred) of the cables in partnership with the whistleblowing site, has produced the video below, explaining the significance of the leak:

Video: US embassy leaks: ‘The data deluge is coming …’ | World news | guardian.co.uk.