Tag Archives: Wikileaks

2012 – a year of irony for the media industry?

By Matt Buck, currently engaged as engraver to @tobiasgrubbe

If…

1. Rupert Murdoch revives the News of the World, but online-only.

2. Nick Davies loses his job at the Guardian, but joins the revived News of the World as part of its investigative team.

3. The Guardian poaches the “fake sheikh” Mazher Mahmood from the Sunday Times.

4. A trend develops for floundering local newspapers to be bought out by local entrepreneurs, returning control and vested interest to their communities.

5. The Leveson inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the UK press concludes nothing needs to be done about unethical and/or illegal media practices, as they are redundant because everyone is publicly revealing everything about themselves on social media sites like Facebook anyway.

6. Journalists are officially declared to be bloggers, thereby ending a perennial (and very tedious) debate.

7. The Guardian launches a paywall.

8. Richard Desmond, founder of Northern & Shell and owner of Express Newspapers is knighted in the New Year Honour list and becomes chair of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).

9. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and is appointed National Security Adviser to the Obama administration.

10. Facebook buys the Daily Mail, as part of a number of strategic acquisitions of ‘accordant’ news outlets throughout the world.

Thanks to Matt Buck for permission to use his excellent cartoon.

#wef11: Why Der Spiegel and the Hindu used WikiLeaks as a source

In today’s session on WikiLeaks and whistleblowing at the World Editors Forum in Vienna, the panel included a number of news outlets which have chosen to publish WikiLeaks material, and some which hadn’t, who shared their thoughts on the platform and process. Some interesting opinions were discussed.

First up, N Ram, editor-in-chief of India’s the Hindu told the conference that his publication had a clear understanding with WikiLeaks and as a result the newspaper was able to offer a “series of worthwhile insights”.

It is an astonishing achievement for any journalistic venture, not to mention a not-for-profit that relies on volunteers. It shows the power of new technology but even more the power of ideas of justice and freedom including the idea that information wants to be free and you have to show very good cause if it is not to be free.

WikiLeaks has a role on the global media stage, as a reliable source, as an enabler. My contention is that there’s nothing nebulous about WikiLeaks or OpenLeaks as a source and we need to cut through the muddle. The muddle is not out there but in our mindsets as professional journalists who often work on the assumption that we have to follow clear standards for dealing with a source. This is a myth. Market practice takes in an astonishing range, from ethically sound rules to an anything goes approach e.g. paying sources, corrupting high value sources, stings purely for sensationalism.

He added that it is not just sources which have an agenda, as do news organisations.

There is no special reason to be suspicious of the agenda of WikiLeaks etc. You just have to apply good journalistic verification procedures and standards.

Another newspaper which partnered with WikiLeaks was Der Spiegel in Germany. Editor-in-chief Mathias Muller von Blumencron discussed the pressures of this form of work, saying there is a lot of credibility at risk if it emerged that such processes were not safe.

It seems in the digital age every step is traceable. Perhaps we all focus too much on technical aspect. In the end it all becomes a very human factor, which I think is more important than the technical aspect. It’s called credibility and trust. Does the audience feel the news organisation handled it in protective way?

He said the paper decided to deal with WikiLeaks last year, as it had the impression that “the material was so important that we had to find a way to publish it in a responsible way”.

We were also thinking it was valuable to work with partners in other parts of the world. Things change. sources change, We don’t know about the future, but what happened during the last month was not making us very happy [a likely reference to WikiLeaks’ decision to publish the US embassy cables in full unredacted form].

It was interesting to then hear the viewpoint of Tom Kent, standards editor and deputy managing editor of the Associated Press, which did not publish the material and is, in his words, a “virgin” as far as working with WikiLeaks is concerned.

Leaked information becomes really valuable when combined with interviews and analysis and leak sites tend not to do a lot of this. If leaking does become a new way of reporting, leakers will face the same issues as news outlets. How do you know what stuff is real? It will be increasingly possible to forge what seem to be authentic documents, or thousands of documents, so they may eventually find their credibility at serious risk. I would not like us to get to a place where we ask for information and authorities say “it’s secret, just try to steal it”.

Looking forward to the next step for newspapers, N Ram said papers need to be bolder and collaborate with hackers, “in a legitimate sense”.

The most elegant way will be to have an open-door approach. This can be a very powerful way of enabling although not soliciting sensitive material relating to security. We all have to gear up, take this seriously, because if we don’t do it other newspapers will.

During this panel session OpenLeaks co-founder Daniel Domscheit-Berg said why he feels journalists must become more aggressive.

#wef11: Journalists must become more aggressive, says Daniel Domscheit-Berg

German journalist and co-founder of OpenLeaks Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who set up the whistleblowing platform after leaving WikiLeaks, called on journalists at the World Editors Forum in Vienna to become “more aggressive” in publishing public interest information.

Speaking on a panel titled ‘After WikiLeaks: The next step for newspapers’, Domscheit-Berg highlighted the importance of the role of journalists in extracting the stories from leaked material while WikiLeaks offers whistleblowers an ease of digital data-dumping not available through news organisations.

WikiLeaks offers part of the aggression that the civilians expect from you people but you don’t give it back to them.

The only new thing I think about the whole WikiLeaks story is that it offered people a means to submit large amounts of information that was easier than contacting you, by just a few clicks online. In the digital society this is what you as an industry needs.

The OpenLeaks model, which is not currently live, works on the premise that its role is to provide the technology for whistleblowers to pass on material to specific organisations, news outlets and NGOs, based on the needs of the source.

Domscheit-Berg said the platform was set live for five days in August which proved to be “quite successful”.

We want to be facilitators. We don’t ever want to get in situation of having information and then deciding who to give it to.

At WikiLeaks we had this big cache of documents and we wanted to collaborate with a few newspapers. So if you are an outfit that enables whistleblowers then you will have the trouble of not being political in who you work with.

A source of OpenLeaks can pick the organisation they think is good, and we pass it on. They decide how to go along with making this public. This will enable a more robust process.

Near the end of the session he also called on journalists to share information more freely.

I believe that we’re living in an information age, developing into an information age and in that age information is the currency so it’s very important that because of this world being so complex that we share this information.

It wouldn’t be right to offer a mechanism to make sure journalists get more papers and then put them in a drawer and the public will not know.

You need to be more aggressive in the way you’re publishing, being transparent and showing that you’ve done a good job. This will not only be better for everybody it will also make sure you get more credibility.

This is part of what the future needs, that we give out more information.

He added that OpenLeaks has mechanisms in place to ensure that, with the source’s permission, even if information is given to one organisation, it will be shared with others.

This is so the media do not depend on copying stories from each other but use source material from each other. This sharing is what the future needs.

He added that in the future the platform will also look to bringing in the wider community to help in the investigative process of working through larger batches of material.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg, co-founder of OpenLeaks by journalismnews

There will be more from this panel on Journalism.co.uk soon.

OWNI.eu publishes WikiLeaks ebook

The rush to get books in the shops in the wake of the WikiLeaks phenomenon was quite predictable. It’s a story with all the Hollywood mores, but strangely real. The films are soon to follow.

So far we’ve had, most notably, David Leigh’s and Luke Harding’s “WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy” and Daniel Domscheit Berg’s “Inside WikiLeaks”.

Now Paris-based OWNI.eu, which helped build apps for WikiLeaks to allow people to navigate the Iraq war logs and US embassy cables, is publishing Olivier Tesquet’s “WikiLeaks: A True Account” through its own publisher OWNI Books. The organisation boasts an “exceptional vantage point” on the whistleblowing group, and claims that Tesquet’s “thorough investigation” will shed light in the relationship between the WikiLeaks and OWNI.

OWNI Books publishes ebooks only, and this latest one will be the first published in three languages: French, English and Arabic.

Hot on the heels of the OWNI book – and the other behind-the-scenes accounts – will be a more academic take on the affair from Polis director Charlie Beckett and former WikiLeaks journalist James Ball.

The book was announced by Beckett at the Polis Value of Journalism conference on Friday and is expected within the next few months.

#media140 – El Pais writer Joseba Elola ‘witnessing history’ with WikiLeaks

“I’ve never lived something like that and I don’t think I will live something again like that,” – these are the words of El Pais staff writer Joseba Elola, reflecting on his work on the diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

Speaking on a WikiLeaks roundtable discussion at #media140, Elola spoke about the journey from arranging to meet with Julian Assange for an interview, to helping El Pais join outlets such as the Guardian and Der Spiegel as a media partner of the whistleblower website in its release of more than 250,000 secret and confidential cables sent by US embassies around the world.

Three months after requesting an interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the pair met, Elola told the conference.

He is a fascinating character, a brilliant person, extremely intelligent.

At the end of the interview I asked him if he had anything on Spain. Why don’t you include also a Spanish media as part of your launch, I asked him, why don’t you transfer your documents to El Pais, we will help.

He said let him mull it over. I came back to Madrid, I was excited and then quite an ordeal began.

You meet them, you see them, but then it takes a long, long while to get to see them.

I got an email from him three weeks afterwards and in the newsroom we were excited, finally that long-awaited email came asking for the specific number for the director.

I have never lived anything like it in my life, it was like witnessing history of the 21st century.

All of a sudden you get new information every day, day after day, it was a very exciting experience.

Speaking further with Journalism.co.uk he added that while he fears it will take “years before we manage to get another release of such relevant information”, he is “so happy to have been able to play a little role in that story”.

I hope we keep on being a reliable media for any platform; WikiLeaks, OpenLeaks, KanariLeaks, BrusselsLeaks or whatever.

I think the important thing is to keep your brand reliable to the public and I hope that the fact we were involved in Cablegate might raise some confidence in the people who leak information into the public, too.

I really think the media for years have been a little bit asleep and didn’t do their job properly, and I think WikiLeaks brought something really good for journalism and for society.

WikiLeaks satire takes first prize at cartoon awards

A cartoon satirizing the 2010 WikiLeak’s story has been named the winner of the World Press Cartoon awards.

WikiLeaks and Uncle Sam, created by Australian artist David Rowe, was awarded Grand Prix at the 7th edition of the awards.

As well as being named overall winner, Rowe’s work took first place in the Cartoon Editorial category. In the same category, Polish Pawel Kuczynski came second with ‘Made in China’ and Alecus, a Mexican cartoonist living in El Salvador, took 3rd prize with ‘Chilean Miners’.

See the full image at this link.

Alan Rusbridger on relationship with WikiLeaks: ‘things are quite difficult’

Last night Journalism.co.uk was at the Press Awards, where the Guardian was named Newspaper of the Year. At the ceremony the paper was praised specifically for its its coverage of the WikiLeak’s releases.

We caught up with Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger at the end of the awards, who said that while the current situation with WikiLeaks is “difficult” there will be more revelations to come.

I think WikiLeaks was the stand out story, not only nationally but also globally. I think it had a global impact and I think it will be historically significant. I can’t think of another story in my lifetime where a story created by a newspaper has become the most discussed thing in every capital city around the world. That was the stand out story.

At the moment things are quite difficult between WikiLeaks and the Guardian, because they just are, partly due to the communications. It’s very difficult to keep relation with people if you never see them and the only way of communicating is through encrypted text messaging.

I think there will be more revelations to come and I think lots of papers are going to be developing their own mini versions of WikiLeaks. One thing WikiLeaks has taught us is the importance of working out how to get information securely and publish securely and I think that’s been a valuable lesson for us all.

You can see the full list of winners from the Press Awards here.

Politico: Amid WikiLeaks battle, Clinton to assert US support for internet freedom

Hilary Clinton is due to give a speech on internet freedom later today. In the wake of Egypt’s shutting off of internet access during recent protests, and in the midst of her department’s ongoing battle with WikiLeaks, it has the potential to be interesting.

Politico has published extracts from the speech Clinton is expected to give. Certain parts closely resemble previous attempts by the US administration to carefully chastise China for its severe curtailments of internet freedom:

History has shown us that repression often sows the seeds for revolution down the road. Those who clamp down on internet freedom may be able to hold back the full impact of their people’s yearnings for a while, but not forever… Leaders worldwide have a choice to make. They can let the internet in their countries flourish, and take the risk that the freedoms it enables will lead to a greater demand for political rights. Or they can constrict the Internet, choke the freedoms it naturally sustains—and risk losing all the economic and social benefits that come from a networked society…

While others are clearly there to speak to the problem of WikiLeaks, and clarify the pro-freedom stance of an administration currently attempting to subpoena private information from Twitter accounts belonging to members and affiliates of the whistleblowers’ site.

Our allegiance to the rule of law does not dissipate in cyberspace. Neither does our commitment to protecting civil liberties and human rights. The United States is equally determined to track and stop terrorism and criminal activity online and offline, and in both spheres we pursue these goals in accordance with our values… Liberty and security. Transparency and confidentiality. Freedom of expression and tolerance. There are times when these principles will raise tensions and pose challenges, but we do not have to choose among them. And we shouldn’t. Together they comprise the foundation of a free and open Internet…

See more on Politico at this link.

Dinner with Julian Assange

This Wednesday at 6:30pm, “people from around the world” will reportedly “commence dining” in what appears to be a fundraising initiative from under-siege whistleblowers’ site WikiLeaks.

All you need to do to join the party is make a donation to the site. And there is more bang for your buck than just dinner, you also get a password to play a video message from Julian Assange.

After you have filled out our pledge form you will be given a password (keep it safe!). The password will unlock a video for you to play at your dinner that will be available from 6.30pm GMT. Introducing aviator — the exciting new money game that can be enjoyed right in your own home or online! With aviator, you’ll have the chance to practice financial literacy, learn good savings habits, and grow your financial skills. Aviator online. Play alone or with friends and family to challenge yourself and earn rewards. Get started today! #aviatormoneygame #aviatoronline

In the words of Julian Assange – “There are four things that cannot be concealed for long, the sun, the moon, the truth – and dessert!”

Check out this rather snazzy website for more information.

“Take a bite of truth!”

CJR: Strange Eruptions from the WikiLeaks Saga

At the end of last week, the Columbia School of Journalism has played host to the two newspaper editors credited with breaking the first major WikiLeaks stories.

The Guardian’s Alan Rusbridger and the New York Times’ Bill Keller shared the stage to discuss their handling of the leaks.

It was not a night of revelations, except perhaps Keller going further than before in claiming that the email accounts of NYT staff working on the story had been “clearly hacked” around the time that the paper’s relations with WikiLeaks deteriorated.

WikiLeaks’ editor-in-chief Julian Assange is in Belmarsh Magistrates Court today to fight extradition to Sweden on charges of rape, molestation and unlawful coercion.

Full story on Columbia Journalism Review at this link.