Wikileaks To Sell Hugo Chavez' Email

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Wikileaks seems to be a bit hard-up for cash, so they're trying a little experiment. They plan to auction off an archive with three years worth of Hugo Chavez' email. The winner will get a period of embargoed access to break any stories they can find in the files, while Wikileaks will later publish the archive in full. Wikileaks plans to use the profits for their legal defense fund, but they may run into trouble because most reputable news outlets have policies against paying sources."

Comments

Re:It'll give them a dirty name

[ericspinder]

LOL if the successful bidder turns out to be Chavez.

Well, it would only buy him some time, as they are planning to eventually release publicly the entire archive. I suspect that they will get some pretty good bids for it, as the right wing media doesn't have much in the way of ethics. Besides, I'm not even sure if it is truly unethical as many whistle blowers count on publishing companies for advances on books and then the news companies report on it. As they often have close ties, at least for marketing, if not more direct corporate ties; This action just cuts out the middle man. The only question that I have is "how and why did they get it?", was the source paid, did he donate it thinking of the public good, or was it made up altogether.

So I'm thinking a bidding war won by Fox News. While seemingly intellectual, Chavez is a fairly scary leader, I'm sure that McCain is looking forward to using the worst of Machiavellian activities. I'm just wondering if they'll publish what I'm sure is his gloating over the manipulations of the oil market