Wikileaks Fails “Due Diligence” Review | Hacker News Reader

Wikileaks Fails “Due Diligence” Review

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41 pointstptacek15 comments

The question that the title brings up, but the article fails to answer until the very end, is whose "due diligence" review Wikileaks failed. Well, here it is:

the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation considered and rejected an application from WikiLeaks for financial support

So that's the foundation of the article. An exciting and technically true "fact", a bunch of ranting about why the author doesn't like Wikileaks, and finally the source of the "fact" that the article is based on. Good whining, poor reading. Yawn.

Indeed,

But calling WikiLeaks a whistleblower site does not accurately reflect the character of the project. It also does not explain why others who are engaged in open government, anti-corruption and whistleblower protection activities are wary of WikiLeaks or disdainful of it. And it does not provide any clue why the Knight Foundation, the preeminent foundation funder of innovative First Amendment and free press initiatives, might have rejected WikiLeaks’ request for financial support, as it recently did.

Which of the fallacies from a few days ago are included here? Should "describing wikiLeaks as a whistle blower site" explain why the Knight foundation didn't give them funding?? Labels aren't intended to explain most of the time...

The author also points out that WikiLeaks has published things that are not in the public interest to publish (e.g. the sorority ceremony), not theirs to publish (e.g. the copyrighted book), or that, the article argues, could have been handled much more effectively (the killcam video).

I admit that the last point is not argued very persuasively, but there is more content in the article.

The following paragraph is incredibly stupid. The telling comparison tells nothing at all; the impact of abu graihb pictures vs. american-gunship-massacre-video was not controlled by those who released them.

"A telling comparison can be made between WikiLeaks’ publication of the Iraq Apache helicopter attack video last April and The New Yorker’s publication of the Abu Ghraib abuse photographs in an article by Seymour Hersh in May 2004. Both disclosures involved extremely graphic and disturbing images. Both involved unreleased or classified government records. And both generated a public sensation. But there the similarity ends. The Abu Ghraib photos prompted lawsuits, congressional hearings, courts martial, prison sentences, declassification initiatives, and at least indirectly a revision of U.S. policy on torture and interrogation. By contrast, the WikiLeaks video tendentiously packaged under the title “Collateral Murder” produced none of that– no investigation (other than a leak investigation), no congressional hearings, no lawsuits, no tightening of the rules of engagement. Just a mild scolding from the Secretary of Defense, and an avalanche of publicity for WikiLeaks"

I'm fairly sure those behind Wikileaks are as concerned about their opinion in the eyes of the press as much as we'd still care what an elementary school teacher thinks about our penmanship.

Apart from using Knight as a possible funding source, I assume the whole purpose of the Wikileaks project is to move beyond the realm of requiring a handful of national newspapers and a few wire services to give the news to local outlets too lazy (or poor) to do their own investigations.

I couldn't disagree more. Those behind wikileaks are obviously very concerned about how they appear to others. Did you read the New Yorker profile of Julian Assange a few weeks back?

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_...

Wikileaks is an interesting and (I think) mostly beneficial presence in the world. But it's activism not journalism.

But it's activism not journalism.

I don't understand the distinction you're trying to draw here. If the journalism industry did its job properly, there would be no reason for Wikileaks to exist; they would (literally) have nothing to add to the conversation. But journalists are not doing their jobs properly, and so there are opportunities for Wikileaks to contribute to the public discourse. Wikileaks does some journalism. They might be doing activism at the same time, but that does not mean they're not also engaged in journalism.

I think Greg Sargent's perspective on the "partisan" versus "objective" journalists might be relevant here: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/06/a_little_...

> If the journalism industry did its job properly, there would be no reason for Wikileaks to exist;

Not true. Journalists still have to work within the laws of their country (and possibly, if they want to travel, the laws of others too).

Entities like Wikileaks will always be able to push the boundaries further.

(that's not to say the journalism industry isn't pretty hopeless)

I think Wikileaks does both journalism and activism; nowadays probably more of the latter than the former.

You have a point, but not all the failures of contemporary journalism are due to strict laws, or some such. Nothing coming out of anything owned by News Corp. falls into that category, for example.

Oh absolutely (which is sort of what I meant with: that's not to say the journalism industry isn't pretty hopeless).

Journalism is getting worse (in general anyway) and more "trashy". Sadly that is probably less driven by constriction of press freedom (or whatever) as it is by the populace hankering after worthless trash :(

Advocacy journalism is still journalism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advocacy_journalism

"Nowadays, journalism all over the world is becoming part of the entertainment industry. It's becoming a circus. And in doing so it is forfeiting the constitutional role it had in a free society. This role was to educate, not to entertain." - Amos Elon

WikiLeaks is necessary because, generally speaking, journalists no longer monitor the centers of power. If what WikiLeaks does is activism, then mainstream journalism is propaganda. You are playing with semantics. The truth is the truth, and revealing the truth is almost always noble, regardless of the mechanism being used to reveal such truth. If the powers that be use the media to deceive the masses and that is called journalism, then journalism is itself biased, which invalidates pseudo-moral arguments against WikiLeaks' bias.

I tend to agree that it is not journalism. I also fully agree that we are seeing very little journalism around.

I think Wikileaks fails the journalism test because they are not telling the stories behind the leaks. Those stories are what cause people to change.

I also think Wikileaks could do a better job than saying "anything that is secret, we will publish." If they want to be relevant, they should be deciding if it actually matters and will impact the public discourse.

an incorrect/incomplete assumption will almost always lead to an incorrect/incomplete conclusion. The premise of the entire post is the fact that Knight Foundation rejected Wikileaks' request for funding. Now, unless the reasons have been made public, writing such a piece that is one-sided and highly opinionated.

Now, what wikileaks does can be up for debate but a debate based on facts nonetheless. The comparison between the 2007 video and the abu ghraib lawsuits is incoherent at best. There has been enough uproar and reactions upon the public release of the video. As long as Wikileaks doesn't hinder any undergoing investigation by busting the dam a bit too early, i believe the idea does work towards greater good and opens channels of information that would have been hushed up.

Hm. Complaining when a site that is designed to release information... releases information?

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