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Comment by johansch | Hacker News Reader

They want to derive the maximum amount of exposure, page views and revenues from the leaked data in the form of web articles with ads, printed news papers with ads etc. Releasing the the actual data would be counterproductive to their own financial gains.

Somewhat ironic, I think.

(Yes, some of the 100+ news organizations are ad free, such as the mandatory tv license-paid state broadcaster/propaganda organ SVT from my country, Sweden, but they also have their own motives of wanting to control the data.)

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The leak contains large amounts of personal information on people who aren't necessarily guilty of anything illegal, correct? If that's the case, releasing the full leak comes with some very real ethical concerns.

> The leak contains large amounts of personal information on people who aren't necessarily guilty of anything illegal, correct?

How do we know? That's just an assumption. It could also be that the leak contains information on some very powerful people who better not be crossed?

> "In this trove there are administrative documents that could actually be brought to public knowledge, such as records of incorporation, shareholder registers or directors or creation of bank accounts. But there is especially a lot of personal information, such as private postal and email addresses, scans of passports for internal and external correspondences Mossack Fonseca, with many private items (such as vacation rentals, electricity bills or, more sadly, the discovery of cancer)".

https://www.reddit.com/live/wp1fvdxxwb45/updates/02ec05f2-fa...

That’s not contradictory. It may well be that the leak contains that and personal information that would be literally unreasonable to publish.

That’s what ethics is all about: weighing different things against each other.

The journalists widely shared the data with other journalists and outlets to make it easier to work through the data but probably also to combat the problem of being blind in certain ways …

This is a real concern. But another one is if the media outlets are being biased on their choice of which data they choose to disclose. They haven't done a good job in showing they are being correct up to this moment, but let's give them some more time and see.

>Yes, some of the 100+ news organizations are ad free, such as the mandatory tv license-paid state broadcaster/propaganda organ SVT from my country, Sweden

Actually, at least here in Finland, the mandatory tax-paid state broadcaster is far from "ad free". They run lots and lots of ads for themselves. They also run ads for third parties (organisations, causes) that are politically suitable.

So YLE is infected by leftist activists masquerading as journalists in the same way as with SVT? That is depressing.

Yep, although it's not as bad as it was at some time. But the number (and sound volume) of these advertisements is rather irritating.

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