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."'"

Comments

What this really is

[Sonny Yatsen]

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.

Re:What this really is

[severoon]

Allow me to sum up: "NYT considers direction change: future is finding, reporting news, editors say."

Re:What this really is

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe First Amendment will prevail if it is given a chance. But if take someone like Assange, put out a smear campaign and put him away for something else, then 1st Amendment is irrelevant.

You can't put away NY Times because you can't say "NY Times raped kids" or similar garbage. Any NY Times case would have to be fought over the actual publication, not proxy charges.

If Assange worked for NY Times, the published leaks would have been more selective (ie. no point in leaking useless chitchat), but funding would not have been cut off. NY Times has billions at disposal, provided there is interest in its stories. Individuals, even wealthy ones, do not have the same clout.

We need less martyrs, and more actual cases that deal with 1st Amendment. Martyrs simply produce proxy charges, like Assange.

They won't have the guts to do it right

[elrous0]

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.

Re:They won't have the guts to do it right

[oldmac31310]

That, and they would hold stories back for months or years as they have already done in the past - at the request of the government no less. I have no confidence in this and no one else should have either.

Re:They won't have the guts to do it right

[metrometro]

Your smug superiority doesn't match the data. The New York Times has been agressively covering wikileaks material, and indeed is their preferred US outlet. While they are certainly not "as free as" Wikileaks itself, I would argue that an org with a little transparency and accountability (sometimes opposing interests to freedom) would be preferable to what Wikileaks has given us.

Or better yet, an ecosystem of many, many outlets to choose from. Which is exactly what the Times, and Al Jazeera are working towards. So why are you pissing on it, +5 Insightful?

Re:They won't have the guts to do it right

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd also like to point out the largest black eye that the New York Times still carries to this day.

Sitting on the Illegal U.S. Wiretapping Story for a year during the early Bush Administration.

Care to defend how a Corporate news agency will able to achieve the likes of what Wiki-leaks is doing?

Re:That's so 2010...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "bandwagon". We don't need a new word to replace an existing word. That would be ricockulous.

I wouldn't trust them

[ISoldat53]

This is the outfit that help us get into the Iraq War.

Registration required

[Anonymous Coward]

They expect leakers to sign up and watch a 30-second ad before commenting.

Never gonna happen.

Don't they already have one: a newspaper

[ciaran_o_riordan]

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?

Re:Don't they already have one: a newspaper

[Korin43]

Which is complete bullshit. How can you call it freedom of the press if the government gets to decide what the press is?

Watch out for those chicks in the bar ...

[PolygamousRanchKid]

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.

Narcs!

[Dr. Spork]

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.

Don't Hold Your Breath

[Voline]

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.