Prompt: How should news organizations approach the increasing volume of sensitive material posted online or otherwise released by organization such as WikiLeaks, The Smoking Gun, Cryptoma, etc? Does it matter how the information was obtained, whether that can even be determined?
The paper should examine the numerous ethical issues raised by this growing repository of material. To what extent are news organizations being co-opted by foreign intelligence services and agenda-driven clearinghouses for classified or sensitive material? Are the media complicit in criminal behavior if the material appears to have been illegally obtained? (You may also discuss terror propaganda as a separate category that raises similar issues of ethics).
Media executives inevitably argue that once newsworthy material is made publicly available, news organizations have an obligation to evaluate it and report it, and that to do otherwise would be to disserve readers. But is there a limit to that self-serving argument? Are there circumstances when news entities should ignore a particular trove?
Introduction
Baseline
5 Principles of Journalism
1. A source’s motives are irrelevant in deciding whether to publish
2. Journalists constantly publish material that is stolen or illegally obtained
a. “by reporting on material from this archive, journalists are rewarding acts of theft and/or encouraging future similar acts of hacking”
b. “No serious journalist would refrain from publishing a newsworthy story because the source broke the law to obtain it. Many of the most celebrated journalism stories of the last several decades involve sources who broke the law to provide the information.”
3. The more public power someone has, the less privacy they are entitled to claim
4. Whether something is “shocking” or “earth shattering” is an irrelevant standard
5. All journalists are arbiters of privacy and gatekeepers of information
The Intercept: On WikiLeaks, Journalism, and Privacy: Reporting on the Podesta Archive Is an Easy Call
Glenn Greenwald October 13 2016
https://theintercept.com/2016/10/13/on-wikileaks-journalism-and-privacy-reporting-on-the-podesta-archive-is-an-easy-call/
Challenges
– Journalists and hackers have diverging views on/beliefs about sharing information
– When info is dumped, how do journalists know what is real?
– How to determine the source when tips are anonymous?
– How to sort through unprecedented high quantities?
– Do you protect the source or protect the subject?
– Do you expose information if someone/some group could be at risk?
Examples:
The Smoking Gun
– Founded in April 1997 by William Bastone, Barbara Glauber, and Daniel Green
– “The Smoking Gun brings you exclusive documents–cool, confidential, quirky–that can’t be found elsewhere on the Web. Using material obtained from government and law enforcement sources, via Freedom of Information requests, and from court files nationwide, we guarantee everything here is 100% authentic.”
WikiLeaks
– Founded by Julian Assange in 2006
– “multi-national media organization and associated library”
– “specializes in the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption. It has so far published more than 10 million documents and associated analyses.
– “WikiLeaks is a giant library of the world’s most persecuted documents. We give asylum to these documents, we analyze them, we promote them and we obtain more.” – Julian Assange, Der Spiegel Interview
– Chelsea (Bradley) Manning 2011 “War Logs”
Cryptoma
– Created in 1996 by John Young and Deborah Natsios
– Compiled leaked documents and contact information
– “Cryptome welcomes documents for publication that are prohibited by governments worldwide, in particular material on freedom of expression, privacy, cryptology, dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence, and secret governance — open, secret and classified documents — but not limited to those. Documents are removed from this site only by order served directly by a US court having jurisdiction. No court order has ever been served; any order served will be published here — or elsewhere if gagged by order. Bluffs will be published if comical but otherwise ignored.”
New Journalism
– “As a group, investigative journalists and their sources operate in grave fear of jail time, but not as much as they fear being cowed out of important stories by the government.” – Jim Rutenberg NYT
– How to address above challenges
– Additional challenges
