The Secrets Of Fragile Information

Michael Hedges November 30, 2010 Follow on Twitter

Thousands of journalists went to work Monday. Some even started early, on Sunday. There was a lot of catching up to do…in more ways than one.

The latest Wikileaks data dump happened in the middle of Sunday afternoon. Five newspapers – the New York Times (USA), the Guardian (UK), Le Monde (France), Der Spiegle (Germany) and El Pais (Spain) – received the material in advance, honored the embargo and proceeded to scare the living daylights out of several governments, mostly the Untied States. Perhaps embarrass is a better word; none of these governments scare easily.

The five big newspapers had editorials prepared to explain their reasons for participating in the Wikileaks release. “Le Monde has deemed it within its mission to acquire these documents, to make a journalistic analysis and make it available to readers. Informing doesn’t come without responsibility. Transparency and judgment (discernement) are not incompatible,” wrote Le Monde (November 29), “and, without doubt, that’s what sets us apart from the basic strategy of Wikileaks.”

“Clearly, it is for governments, not journalists, to protect public secrets,” wrote columnist Simon Jenkins in The Guardian (November 28). “Were there some overriding national jeopardy in revealing them, greater restraint might be in order.”

What does the Wikileaks data dump – and the previews afforded five big newspapers – say for the state of news media? Why, when more people are reached by television, was that medium not among the chosen? Of course, the leaked documents were made available on the Wikileaks website and that worked out well until that small matter of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack took down the website. How’d that happen?

The DDoS took Wikileaks to a new, probably temporary, web host: Amazon – just in time for Christmas. Shortly after being knocked off one web host, Wikileaks reappeared, according to UK technology website The Inquirer (November 29), on Amazon’s EC2 cloud service, which refers visitors to other servers. “Wikileaks' sparse website hosts very little actual content as the group uses Bittorrent to distribute leaked documents,” said the article. Wikileaks announced the DDoS attack on Twitter.

“Newspapers and broadcasters tend to be suspicious of those who do not play the game, people like (Wikileaks founder Julian) Assange who are awkward outsiders,” wrote Index on Censorship chief executive John Kampfner in the Independent (November 29). “Some editors are quite happy to help the authorities in their denunciations of him, partly out of revenge for not being in his inner circle.”

“Perhaps the most curious aspect of the Wikileaks revelations is not that they have happened,” continued Mr. Kampfner, “but it took someone as mercurial as Mr Assange to be the conduit. Rather than throwing stones, newspapers should be asking themselves why they did not have the wherewithal to hold truth to power.”

The Economist (November 29) drew in the tangential paywall discussion, without noting the Amazon connection. “Sadly for print journalism… any boost in sales will be temporary. The trend, especially among the young, is for news increasingly to be delivered by the computer and smart-phone screen rather than by the printed page. The answer in 2011 is not just that (newspapers) will smarten up their websites but also that more and more will put those sites—or part of them—behind a paywall.”

In just one more strange twist to the latest Wikileaks data dump, The Cutline in Yahoo News (November 29) reported that only the European newspapers were included among the privledged few. The New York Times was left out and had to get the documents from The Guardian.

Editors and journalists poured over the leaked documents and fragments through Monday and will continue until this news cycle dissipates. Junior American diplomats will get their hands slapped. Senior diplomats will call the supply room looking for that old paper shredder. The printed page is less frail.