Using WikiLeaks As a Tool In Investigative Journalism

Hugh Pickens writes writes "It took a team of ten reporters working two months to sift through 250,000 confidential American diplomatic cables at the NY Times, but when a story idea recently came up that I wanted to research in more detail, I found Wikileaks to be a very useful and accessible tool for further investigation. First, some background: For the past ten years I have written stories about Peace Corps safety and medical issues, the Peace Corps' budget appropriations, and the work done by volunteers in their countries of service on a web site I publish called 'Peace Corps Online.' When the Peace Corps announced last month they were taking the unusual step of suspending their program in Kazakhstan and withdrawing all 117 volunteers, I decided to dig deeper and find out what was behind the decision to leave the country. First I went to blogs of volunteers serving in Kazakhstan and found that four rapes or sexual assaults of volunteers had occurred in the past year and that it had became increasingly difficult for volunteers to conduct their work. But the biggest revelation was when I found fourteen U.S. diplomatic cables on Wikileaks that cited elements in the Kazakhstani 'pro-Russian old-guard at the Committee for National Security (the KNB, successor to the KGB) aimed at discrediting the Peace Corps and damaging bilateral relations' with the U.S. Further investigation on Wikileaks revealed how one Peace Corps volunteer had been sentenced to two years imprisonment in 2009 after 'what appeared to be a classic Soviet-style set-up.' The volunteer was only freed through the diplomatic efforts of U.S. Ambassador Richard Hoagland and the personal intervention of Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev."

Comments

Really? That's Investigate Journalism?

[eldavojohn]

Well, no wonder news reporting is in such a sorry pathetic state these days.

How did you verify this information that you found on a third party site? How did you confirm that the U.S. diplomats were not trying to re-awaken old fears of the KGB by spreading misinformation in their communications? Did you find any evidence in these communications of the volunteers doing anything wrong? Did you contact the people the volunteers had worked with in Kazakhstan? Did you request a comment from the KNB?

Further investigation on Wikileaks revealed ...

No, that is wrong. That is not journalism. Nothing was revealed. You have a tip. Face it, you can't wake up, make a cup of coffee in your home and decide that today you're going to 'do' investigative journalism. Journalists are people who go out and acquire information, allegations, evidence, testimony, etc first hand. You could have started with Wikileaks as a tip, as a lead and put together your own external information from multiple sources. At best you have one side of an issue here and at worst you've been indirectly mislead. This shouldn't be called journalism. This should be called "googling."

I'm not saying you are wrong with this information, what I'm saying is that the NY Times wouldn't run this story unless they did due diligence to be completely sure they are 100% right because they are held to journalistic standards. As a blogger or armchair Wikileaks reader, you have nothing to lose by publishing this under your pseudo-name online. "Oh, maybe I'll try my hand at investigative journalism today." But let's face it, you get this wrong and you lose nothing. A journalist gets this wrong and they should lose their job and be blacklisted. And that's how news sources work.