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NY Times Considers Creating a WikiLeaks Type Site
eko3 writes "The New York Times is considering options to create an in-house submission system that could make it easier for would-be leakers to provide large files to the paper. From the article: 'Executive editor Bill Keller told The Cutline that he couldn't go into details, "especially since nothing is nailed down." But when asked if he could envision a system like Al Jazeera's Transparency Unit, Keller said the paper has been "looking at something along those lines."'"
This is the New York Times hoping to get a scoop for free so they can increase readership without actually doing any real investigative journalism for themselves.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
The NY Times *may* have once had some real balls, back in the Vietnam/Watergate days. People used to really believe in them (and the press in general) back in those days too. Anyone remember the scene at the end of Firestarter where the guy takes the girl to the New York Times, knowing it's one of the few places she can tell her story that's safe from the government? Pretty typical attitude back in the "All the President's Men" era, when reporters regularly stood up to the government (or at least were perceived to).
But today they certainly don't have the guts to do it right. They will insist on editorial control of what gets actually posted, and once submitters see their stuff disappearing into a black hole (because the Times doesn't have the guts to publish anything that might offend their advertisers or subscribers, or *really* bring the government down on them), they'll go back to Wikileaks or other sites. No one wants to man-up and blow the whistle, only to have the NY Times kill their voice just as surely as the government would.
People don't believe in the press anymore. They've seen too many instances (like the second Iraq War) where the press served as little more than a cheerleader for the government, for big business, for nationalism, etc. No one still believes that The New York Times will be (or even could be) as free as Wikileaks.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Aren't we a little late on the fadwagon NYT?
to gain access to the submission page? Not sure how the paywall would work on that one.
OMG!!!!!!!!! NY Times r terrist's! Their doing same ass All Zajeeera!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
I see nothing wrong with this. An anonymous way to provide documents and video to the media would be great.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
But instead I got some filet mignon. It was tasty.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
*insert "NY times raped me" joke here*
One important aspect of Wikileaks is that the journalists who end up making a decision to turn the information into a story or not are not the ones deciding if the information will be published at all. If you leak something to the New York Times and they decide it would harm their interests or the interests of the USA, then the source of the leak has taken the risk in vain.
This is the outfit that help us get into the Iraq War.
They expect leakers to sign up and watch a 30-second ad before commenting.
Never gonna happen.
Would the NYT keep the submitter anonymous at all costs, and if not wouldn't this just become a honeypot for the US (or any) government?
"Are they made from real Girl Scouts?" ~Wednesday Addams
There's very little "wiki" to Wikileaks. As for leaking stuff, they pride themselves on having the stuff vetted and confirmed by a team of professional journalists.
So it's a website with a bunch of journalists. And some pointy haired boss in NYT is saying "Ooooh, we should set up one of those!"
The only question is: why to whistle blowers go to Wikileaks instead of NYT?
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
being in U.S. ? the country where everything is under the mercy of secret government agencies ?
after what happened with cryptome http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1910704&cid=34556662 , do you think that ANYone would trust nyt and leak ? nsa has been able to infiltrate a swiss establishment as such. they dont even need to infiltrate new york times.
Read radical news here
I hope that "Executive editor Bill Keller" has the common sense to restrain himself, when suddenly, after his LeakSite is online, chicks start trying to hit on him in bars. Otherwise, he can play cards with Julian Assange behind bars.
Assassinating the publishers of leaks is a dirty business. Assassinating their characters is a better, cleaner option.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I find it sadly funny that we are followers, by a long ways, in the spectrum of transparency. We're being led by news organizations that are based in states who's record on transparency would on the surface seem to be much lower than our own.
Congrats NYT. You *still* have it after all this time.
Um, the NYT are all too eager to kiss the asses of the people in power, and you know they would sell out their leakers in a heartbeat for a pat on the head from their corporate masters. Not in a million years would I leak any information to an NYT leak site. For all the many faults of Julien Assange, at least you know he's not gonna sell you out and that he'll try to really distribute the information he gets.
does it matter? Since their own journalists are corrupt and just 'leak' and regurgitate what the white house tells them [during Bush's presidency].
First AlJazeera and now NYT. IF they implement these things well and IF this catches on, this could be the biggest contribution Wikileaks has made to the World. Those are big ifs and the devil is in the details, but one can be hopeful.
It's called Fox News.
let me spell it out: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Oh yes. Let me see if I understand this correctly. A major media outlet, the NY Times, wants to create a wikileaks type environment providing leakers a way to submit files to the newspaper. Does anyone honestly believe the NY Times, or any large newspaper for that matter, is free to report whatever it wants? Their handlers (CIA, etc) have them on a leash so tight that they are nothing more than a shadow of what they should have been. They are a joke. If anyone has anything really substantial to reveal, they would have more impact giving away copies in Grand Central Station during rush hour. The last place you should expect any kind of meaningful response is from the mainstream media...
Gotta love the plain-jane speak that gets drilled into journalists. You'd never hear that from the stupid tech corporations. If it were Microsoft:
...instead of going through all the hassle (and security work) of setting up their own? Isn't this the exact reason OL is being created?
"They [the Rockefellers] control most of the important newspapers, magazines, and book publishing houses in the country, including the Curtis Publications, the Hearst Publications, Time, the New York Times, the Associated Press and many others." - J.L. Carmichael, The Elements of Economics
"We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our union and have respected their promises of discretion for almost four decades... it would not have been possible to develop our world project if we had been subjected to the full fire of publicity all these years. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and of world bankers is surely preferable to the self-determination which has been practiced for centuries past." - David Rockefeller, Germany, June 1991
If the point to leaking documents is to get information to the public about wrongdoing by powerful institutions like governments and large corporations so that the public can do something about it, The New York Times is not where I'd send the information.
The Times had evidence of the Bush Administration program to illegally wiretap American Citizens but, at the urging of the White House, sat on the story for a year until after the 2004 elections before publishing. The public might have taken action to punish the perpetrators of this crime by voting them out of office. But the Times made sure that the powerful lawbreakers avoided any accountability for their crimes.
Go ahead and leak information about crimes to The New York Times. But if that information implicates powerful people or institutions in the US, don't expect them to publish until the criminals have safely gotten away with it.
Is this the same NYT that refused to print the climategate emails???
“The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.” Andrew Revkin, Environment Editor, New York Times Nov 20, 2009.
As many have pointed out, the NYT would have to be extremely trusted, and also the government they operate their servers in (though to a lesser extent).
However, services like this, are very interesting.
Perhaps, the new role of WikiLeaks is to provide the anonymity services, and then immediately disseminate this information verbatim to the various news services. This could mean:
Lastly, perhaps leaks that have been marked by the others, or WikiLeaks as "safe" can be released in the end anyway.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
It may have just struck them that there is an appetite for truth out there that wikileaks is busy feeding. They are in the prime position to embrace, extend, extinguish. In their extinguish phase,I suspect they'll begin turning on wikileaks and Julian Assange by scandalising, spreading doubt and making them out to be the enemy,and naturally the public will sing in chorus,forgetting all the truth wikileaks had revealed ,and embracing the old king as the real voice of truth. Disclaimer: this is my very pessimistic view.
Funny, I hadn't realized that Wikileaks was involved in typography as well.
Great, now the NY Times can supress stories that displease their corporate masters and cut out the middleman. There was a time in the not so distant past that led people to believe if only a story could be taken to the New York Times or the Washington Post that the minions of the press would then work tirelessly to get the storty out and expose the corrupt evil-doers. We now know, in the case of Judith Miller's coverups at the NYTimes that helped the re-election of George Bush in 2004 and the Post's meetings with policy makers to provide them access to WP's reporters to manufacture friendly stories that the corporate owned for profit media organizations will do whatever is necessary to avoid biting the hand that feeds it. I support an independent organization like WikiLeaks with a proven track record over the easily corrupted state news organs any day. It's a trick -- they will bury the story if it suits them or expose the leaker if they're pressured.
The German Privacy Foundation already has an applicable software system developed for journalists. Open Source and ready to use. It is called Privacybox and allows anonymous and end-to-end encrypted communication for whistle blowers. The NY Times might consider using such a system. See: https://privacybox.de/index.en.html
They should be banned from anything Wikileaks related.