Wikileaks Targets the Local News Frontier

eldavojohn writes "Wikileaks has been pretty successful on a global scale — from ACTA documents to East Anglian e-mails, it is the definitive place to find suppressed documents. But some are saying that now Wikileaks should begin focusing on a local level. From the article: 'The organization has applied for a $532,000 two-year grant from the Knight Foundation to expand the use of its secure, anonymous submission system by local newspapers. The foundation's News Challenge will give as much as $5 million this year to projects that use digital technology to transform community news. WikiLeaks proposes using the grant to encourage local newspapers to include a link to WikiLeaks' secure, anonymous servers so that readers can submit documents on local issues or scandals. The newspapers would have first crack at the material, and after a period of time — perhaps two weeks, [German Wikileaks spokesman Daniel] Schmitt said — the documents would be made public on the main WikiLeaks page.' Anyone reading this who works for a community news source and would like to host sensitive documents with no risk: here is your solution."

Comments

Better Reporting On The Way.

[Web Goddess]

This may well be the key to resuscitating the integrity of journalistic reporting. With falling revenues comes an inability to pay reporters enough to research stories and verify the claims of sources. By helping reporters to more quickly arrive at the heart of the story, WikiLeaks Local just might turn around the industry!

If it becomes big, it may also become an anonymous source of misinformation. Sad.

Re:Better Reporting On The Way.

[Seor Jojoba]

Exactly.

Companies and orgs already barrage newspapers with press releases in hopes of favorable coverage. And they often rely on writers and editors to be so rushed that they will carry their advertisements without working for the benefit of their readers to verify facts and judge value of the content. Posting misinformation on wikileaks anonymously is just a logical and painfully rational extension of marketing.

Look at it another way: even if real, honest, factual content is posted anonymously on wikileaks, with no sources available, all an implicated individual or institution has to do is deny the content is true in some vague way. And the flakier our news reporting gets, the harder it is to convince anyone that anything is true. In the end, we will just wander around cynical and unconvinced of anything, but also unwilling to act since no information seems actionable.

We need old-fashioned journalists that report facts with verifiable sources. Not the cheap, Web 3.0, crowdsourced crap.

Re:Better Reporting On The Way.

[MichaelSmith]

We need old-fashioned journalists that report facts with verifiable sources. Not the cheap, Web 3.0, crowdsourced crap.

How about we not get the cheap cut and paste crap which our old-fashioned news sources give us now.

Re:Better Reporting On The Way.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking something else: if this becomes successful, the authorities certainly aren't going to like it and may try to "do something" about it.

Re:Better Reporting On The Way.

[AnotherUsername]

Bloggers are idiots. Lumping them in with journalists is like saying that a 5 year who draws a stick picture of his family is in the same group as a Renaissance artist. These are the same people saying that Obama wasn't born in the U.S. and that Bush caused 9/11. Give me a break.

- Journalists study for years, and fight to get a good job with a reputable news agency.
- Bloggers have a computer, and a website(oftentimes only a free account that took 10 minutes to start up).

- Journalists spend their workday following up on leads, researching stories, and fact checking.
- Bloggers do their 'research' by checking other blogs, and occasionally looking stuff up on wikipedia.

- Journalists worry about libel and slander lawsuits constantly, because it could mean their job if they don't have the facts to back up their claims. If a tip turns out to be fraudulent, they could be in deep water, not only with their job, but with the courts.
- If a blogger prints faulty information...I don't know. You never really hear about it, because they don't own up to it. A retraction, on a blog? Fat chance. Whatever the information, they'll just either pass blame, or they'll deny that it is wrong, or they will just delete it and pretend it never happened.

I hate bloggers.

Re:Better Reporting On The Way.

[VoiceOfDoom]

Afraid I have to disagree with you there. In the UK at least, there are many bloggers whose output is verifiably more truthful, better-written and more apropos than that of most "professional" journalists. While the journalists are concentrating on how many women Tiger Woods has slept with, how breakfast is good for you and generally toeing the corporate party line, there are bloggers like this chap: Anton Vowl who writes coherent (if occasionally profane) and well-researched articles about important issues - often pointing out where the "proper" journalists have got it wrong and then admitted it later in very small writing.

The quality of bloggers is just as variable as the quality of journalists. From the many examples of cut-and-paste journalism that have been seen lately, it would appear that "following up on leads, research and fact-checking" are far less of a priority than publishing the latest celebrity scandal or product press release.

Re:Better Reporting On The Way.

[AnotherUsername]

You are an idiot. Despite the fact that the Director of the Hawaiian Health Department verified the birth certificate, that all those who have seen it have verified it, that both of Honolulu's major newspapers, the Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin published birth announcements in August, 1961, that the Obama campaign actually released a digitally scanned copy of the birth certificate, that time and again Hawaiian officials have said that it is real, you still think that it is a forgery?

What is wrong with you? There is no conspiracy. Obama was born in the U.S. He is a natural born citizen. Get over it.

Re:Better Reporting On The Way.

[steelfood]

Bloggers have their place. They're not journalists in the traditional sense, but they're not useless either. Bloggers can spread disinformation if they are careless or malicious. But most often than not, they also have a reputation to uphold, and for those catered to a more educated crowd, they have to do just as much work as any traditional journalist to ensure their stories are accurate.

Bloggers differ from journalists in that their articles are always opinionated. They offer a biased view of the world, which makes them more attractive to the people who share the same biases. This is why they're so specialized. There's no blog for "everything" (not even a place like Fark) because there's a whole lot of everything and bloggers can't catch up. But the intense specialization is the value of blogs. Instead of having journalists who do journalism very well write about technology, law, foreign affairs, recipies, parenthood, etc., specialists in each respective field write about their field, and often for other like-minded people.

Ideally, blogs fit into the space between traditional journalism and trade journals. But traditional journalism is so desperate to jump on the blog bandwagon they've started to lose themselves.

Somebody call the Hoff

[0xdeadbeef]

The organization has applied for a $532,000 two-year grant from the Knight Foundation to expand the use of its secure, anonymous submission system by local newspapers.

Wouldn't that money be better spent on a prissy talking car?

Newspapers?

[adbge]

Why release the documents to newspapers before releasing to the public?

I feel that the public should be able to view the entire document when the newspaper does -- instead of being spoon fed snippets of the document by the media for two weeks.

Re:Newspapers?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'd assume that this is a strategic compromise on Wikileaks' part. They are trying to encourage local papers to bring them into the process of storing and disseminating juicy information, so that they can make it available to the public.

The supply of journalists willing to play along if they get a two-week head start over their competitors is almost certainly a good deal larger than the supply of journalists willing to do so out of the goodness of their hearts.

If the alternative were getting it now, obviously waiting two weeks would be stupid. If, however, the alternative is never seeing it, two weeks would be a tiny price to pay.

Re:Newspapers?

[adbge]

The supply of journalists willing to play along if they get a two-week head start over their competitors is almost certainly a good deal larger than the supply of journalists willing to do so out of the goodness of their hearts.

It seems to me that redirecting more people to wikileaks holds sufficient incentive for journalists without the two week "holding period."

Sending more people to wikileaks increases the likelihood of leaked information. More leaks, more news, more sales.

Re:Newspapers?

[quantumplacet]

The two weeks is NOT so that the local newspaper can 'spoon feed snippets' it's to give an actual journalist time to verify the accuracy and authenticity of the information. Without that, wikileaks is really nothing but a gossip site.

Re:Newspapers?

[adbge]

Wikileaks has their own verification process independent of the local newspapers.

Your post also flies in the face of Wikileaks philosophy. From their about page:

Wikileaks believes that best way to truly determine if a document is authentic is to open it up for analysis to the broader community - and particularly the community of interest around the document.

I am also highly sceptical of your implied claim that an "actual journalist's" verification is worth anything.

Sweet!

[sootman]

The organization has applied for a $532,000 two-year grant from the Knight Foundation to expand the use of its secure, anonymous submission system by local newspapers.

I knew the Knight Foundation was real! Oh, how the kids in 4th grade used to tease me when I said I wanted to go work for them...

Only for...

[SimonTheSoundMan]

company x to come to the UK and file a super injunction against the press reporting on the leaked information.

Re:Complain to Stephen Conroy

[atheistmonk]

If you let me cry on your shoulder, you can also cry on my shoulder.

Re:A simple problem.

[Jahava]

Wouldn't this defeat the purpose of anonymization? I mean, the newspaper columnist would be the logical target for who to pursue after something finds its way through this channel. I guess the newspaper itself would have to print the article on the subject anonymously, which doesn't help it much more than printing the leak directly under the same conditions, because they could still be traced (after all, they wrote the article on it) by their subjects. I guess the real benefit would be making sure it's etched in stone, post-apocalypse.

It's a good question, and important that people understand it, so here goes. The scenario is as follows:

1. A newspaper posts a generic link, something like "If you know of any local scandals, post them anonymously at https://www.wikileaks.com/submit/newspaper-name/ !"
2. Someone with a local scandal does just that: they sign into Wikileaks at the aforementioned URL and post their information
3. Wikileaks now has the local scandal, and it is associated with the newspaper that published the leak (via the newspaper-name component of the URL)
4. Wikileaks contacts the newspaper, and gives just them access to the information for two weeks (the exclusivity is a reward for attracting the information via their link)
5. Newspaper publishes the information, scandal, oh noes!
6. Two weeks later, Wikileaks releases the information publicly on their site

Now, specifically regarding your question ... it would not defeat the purpose of anonymous submission. The newspaper columnist knows nothing about the person who actually submitted the information. The columnist only knows the information through Wikileaks. The newspaper would print an article by a columnist attributing the information to an anonymous source. The columnist is not anonymous - but they're not the one who leaked the information, so it's all good.

It's actually a pretty cool idea, but I am worried about the fire it would draw from the Powers That Be regarding Wikileaks. Enough power (read: governments) can trace and stop it, and maybe de-anonymize the incoming stream with enough resources. Wikileaks must either become recognized as an asset or ride below that threshold.

Re:A simple problem.

[MichaelSmith]

I suppose once the application becomes local tracing the submission becomes easier. There might be two ISPs in town and two newspapers. So there are two submission URLs to be searched for and finding them might not be too hard. And local laws vary. In some places it might be easy to get a law to search for a few URLs in proxy server logs.

there's another angle

[SuperBanana]

By helping reporters to more quickly arrive at the heart of the story, WikiLeaks Local just might turn around the industry!

The problem isn't just paying people to research and verify stories. The problem is lso that people who are rich and don't like their dirty laundry being in the papers, tend to use their money to threaten papers with legal action. Small papers have to tremble and retreat. Big papers won't cave.

Case and point would be the community newspaper which investigated condo conversion developers. The story had to be handed off to the Boston Globe, because the Globe could afford to tell the developers to Just Try And Sue Us.

Clearly the story that Chris Lovett was uncovering "had legs," as we in the newspaper business used to say. The buy-rehab-sell-foreclose matrix called for a deep looksee that would by its nature be extensive, expensive, and full of extraordinary challenges for a local newspaper and its intrepid freelance reporter.

Soon enough came a letter to Lovett from a lawyer from the law firm representing Scott warning him that his continuing reporting could result in serious legal consequences for him and the Reporter.

No newspaper worth its ink falls back in the face of such an admonition against the quality of its news report, but reality does intervene in terms of staff size, the money needed to pursue a story with so many tentacles, the time needed to dot all the "I's", and the will and financial resources to deal with a defense of its actions and those of its trusted reporter in the legal arena should things come to that.

So the Reporter's pursuit of the ending to this story was stalled.

Enter an eminent investigative reporter named Walter V. Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize winner with The Boston Globe's Spotlight Team, which he directed in its world-shaking probe into the priest-abuse scandal in the archdiocese of Boston. I happened to be playing a round of golf with him and I mentioned the Lovett two-parter to him, saying that the Reporter and Chris had gone as far as we could with the story, given our resources.

After some discussion, Robinson, retired but holding a continuing affiliation with the Globe, managed to get the story onto the paper's agenda and the result of that almost a year later was this past Sunday's lead-story Page One presentation of the Michael David Scott real estate story that ran across two full pages inside.

Not so much

[Sycraft-fu]

The problem with reporting, or more accurately the recent problem with it (there are other problems that it has always had, nothing is perfect) is that not enough time is spent on stories. There is this push to be immediate with everything, and thus fact checking falls by the wayside. The solution is simply to slow down and do proper investigations. Wikileaks won't help that as it is inherently unreliable. You know nothing about the people putting things on there, and thus you have no idea if it is true or not. So while it would be a great starting place, if you use it to speed things up it'll just make reporting more problematic. If it is taken as some sort of "gold standard" that "If it is on WL it must be accurate," things will get worse not better.

The appropriate use would be if you see something that is relevant to then go and work on interdependently verifying it. For example there is a document that allegedly shows corruption of a local politician. You then use that as a starting point to see where to look. You investigate to determine if other evidence supports the document or not, and then do a story on that.

However, that takes time and effort. If you just uphold the document as true because it was on that site, well then you are going to get hit with fakes.

Re:Not so much

[JackieBrown]

Example: Police officer shoots and kills an unarmed citizen. On administrative leave pending review.

In our typical instant gratification society, most people would read that and go "gotcha! whats next?". Well, some of us want more. I want to read about that cop going to trial. Or that cop going to jail. Or, dunno, why the hell the DA chooses not to press charges.

Wow. Not one of your senarios allowed for the possibility that the officer acted properly (such as the citizen was armed.)

Lack of follow up also occurs when an article is factually wrong and the news media doesn't want to own up to it. And, unless you have the money to do so, there is no way to force them to retract their statements (at least, not on page one where everyone previously read what a peice of shit you were.)

You seem to have a distrust autority (which can be healthy) but your examples show too much faith in the integrity of the media.

Re:Not so much

[AnotherUsername]

Or the cop being shown that he acted as he should have, because that 'unarmed citizen' wasn't actually unarmed, but had a weapon, and tried to kill the cop. However, that kind of stuff never makes the news, because people like yourself don't want to hear that. You want to hear that cops are bad. You want to hear that cops are out to get you. You don't want to hear that most of the time, cops act responsibly and do their jobs like they should. But that kind of stuff doesn't make the news, because that is not news to people. Have you ever considered the fact that the reason you sometimes hear about bad cops is because a bad cop is out of the ordinary? If it was as commonplace as many people around here seem to believe, you would never hear about it. It wouldn't be news anymore.

Re:Not so much

[digitalunity]

I'm from Portland Oregon son. I'm sure there are good cops, but the bad ones make the news a lot.

They've been talking about ending racial profiling for 20 years. A cursory glance at the county sherrifs inmate list(1267 people) seems to indicate they primarily arrest black and hispanic men. 48% of the time an officer pulls his gun, no arrest is made. Black men are on the receiving side of 29% of all use of force incidents, despite them making up just 6% of the city population.

Then there's the case of Kendra James, shot and killed for trying to flee after being pulled over. The wikipedia entry is wrong on that one by the way. She wasn't trying to run over the policeman standing next to her car-that was his opinion of the matter because he happened to be standing next to the car when she put it in gear. Instead of backing away, he pulled and fired. He left her bleeding in handcuffs and she died on that street. The policeman involved in this incident was never charged.

Then there's the case of James Chasse, a 40something schizophrenic who got the attention of 2 police officers and a deputy sheriff. They approached, he ran, they pursued. They beat him so bad they broke 26 of his bones and punctured a lung. He died on the way from the jail to the hospital. It's a little unclear why they took him to jail first, considering the beating they gave him. No officers admitted to using force capable of breaking bones, despite numerous eyewitness accounts that they kicked, elbowed and punched him repeatedly. No charges were filed and all 3 police were cleared. The city just settled with James' family for $925,000 and the internal affairs investigation results are not being released to the public.

If you're still reading, here's another story. Christopher Humphreys, one of the officers who beat James Chasse to death is back on the street again after another suspension. He shot a bean bag from his shotgun at a 12 year old girl for resisting arrest. Again, no charges filed.

Think it's an isolated incident? The police chief reinstated Humphreys because the police union threatened to release the results of a no-confidence vote in the chief, which could have cost the chief his job. The policemen support each other, no matter how far off base their actions are.

That's not freedom and liberty. It's tyranny. Most people don't care that much because they've never been on the wrong end of a tazer, bean bag, or police fist.

First Crack at It Why?

[RobinEggs]

Why should newspapers get first crack at the information posted in the leaks? It sounds like all they'd contribute is the research time of their writers (and a little local publicity), and yet the leaks would shorten and ease their research process enormously. Why give them the added benefit of two weeks exclusive time with the leaked information?

Maybe I'm missing something here, but why should an organization built on the premise that traditional media hides the truth or doesn't have the resources to investigate it properly begin an initiative which will prop up local papers and give them exclusive stories, albeit temporarily, from the information uncovered? Does wikileaks actually like traditional media and want to help them out? Why not continue relying on their volunteer sources for the whole process?

because people tend to clam up?

[SuperBanana]

Why should newspapers get first crack at the information posted in the leaks? It sounds like all they'd contribute is the research time of their writers (and a little local publicity), and yet the leaks would shorten and ease their research process enormously.

Uh, because it's often good to be able to investigate without tipping your hand? Records tend to disappear off the shelves, people stop returning your phone calls, and media relations people start spinning faster than a top...or simply saying "no comment."

It's especially fun when they don't know you have proof of your claims, and thus spin utter bullshit lies.

Re:A simple problem.

[lonecrow]

So if my newspaper breaks the story is that a clear indication that the leaker accessed the wikileaks up-loader from my newspapers website?

Could a lawyer construe that since I placed the link on my site for the express purpose of facilitating the upload in the first place that I was somehow complicit in, and liable for, the release of the information? IANAL but law and order keeps telling me that the parities to a conspiracy do not need to know each and still be involved in a conspiracy. I wonder if the target of a leak could be successful with that argument.

I think they could need some help here...

[kan0r]

WikiLeaks didn't win that challange yet and I think it would be a good idea to support them by commenting on and rating their application here: http://generalapp.newschallenge.org/SNC/ViewItem.aspx?pguid=6aee8166-fb7c-4a2e-8581-fa6f6ff036dd&itemguid=3decc665-ebd1-46f0-95f4-f5fa57311062