That is very true. And it has always been true that te media has dropped this ball most of the time, with the wikileaks role, as you call it, being filled by renegades (Ellseworth, etc.).

“but I don’t think you can make too great a distinction between the two before you run into precisely the reasons Wikileaks can do what the NYT can’t.”

Which is why I have said that Wikileaks is better off simply passing on all of the information it gets.

This is probably the end of Wikileaks. Two things will happen, I suspect: Such bad things are going to happen to step one whistleblowers that Wikileaks is going to have a hard time getting sources, and the major media will jump in and start to fill this role more themselves for a while.

Regarding Wikileaks specifically, I think what they’re doing is filling a role that’s been in many ways abandoned by the media. Are they doing as good a job as others have in the past? Probably not. Hopefully they’ll get better at it over time, or someone else will step up.

WTF is Wikileaks? WTF is the New York Times? Journalists gather, vet, contextualize and publish information. Wikileaks skips that third step, but I don’t think you can make too great a distinction between the two before you run into precisely the reasons Wikileaks can do what the NYT can’t.

I think if Wikileaks can do anything to improve themselves and what they do, it’s to become better curators of the information they get. I’m not sure how much filtering that involves, but they are probably in a better position to do it than their source when so much information is involved.

There are two flaws in this approach, however.First, WTF is Wikileaks? I, personally, do not remember ever being asked if Wikileaks could take over the job of deciding what I get to see and not see. IN my view, either they close down or expose everything they have, because it is not their job to be my filter.

Second, concerning this: “you have made another basic mistake here in assuming that a conversation between protesters would be published, even if it were nefarious. Wikileaks is about publishing what governments, the incumbents, the powerful people, want to keep secret, not protesters. ”

Your argument does not hold water. If a group of people get together to, say, overthrow the government, that makes them the same thing as the government. For instance, say you looked at the documents of the US “Founding Fathers”. Are their letters amongst themselves prior to some date private and after related to the US government’s history? And, what would that date be? The Albany Congress? Saratoga? Yorktown? Sept 17th ’87? Who decides that? Wikileaks? You?

What I’m asking people to do here is to think about this, rather than to come to the table with a strongly held opinion and no interest in other people’s perspectives. If you continue to comment here, please consider that. Oh, and the first think you need to produce is a set of apologies to match your horrid insults.

Governments are plenty good at disrupting and suppressing protesters all by themselves, thanks. Protesters certainly don’t need to fear wikileaks, with enemies like that.

Are you stupid or something?

‘k, DR laden, this is not how wikileaks works. At all. I have read w great deal about wikileaks. They bend over backwards to redact all names of informers and other parties that could be put at risk. They even have developed software to do this automatically for large quantities of documents.

The problem is they are runnin gon a shoestring, really. They have spent something like $100,000 in the last 2 years for the whole organization. I don’t know if people are afraid to donate or what.

Yes there were a small number of names of iraqi informers that were accidentally released recently, but that was completely overblown by the media.

Secondly, they do NOT release just any old information willy nilly. They are journalists, basically. They decide stuff that is important and needs to be published, and what is not. This hypothetical conversation you just aid out, if it cam into their possession, would not be published, an if it were, names of innocents would be redacted.

And yes, that introduces a political aspect to them, of course it does, and there is a lot of juggling to do, but that does not mean they have done tremendous good.

Your name as an informant would not have been released by them, there is no way, and the FBI could just keep you pseudonymous in their records. It just becomes their responsibility to change their ways slightly.

In any case, the very small risk, and slight chilling effect it might exert on people doing the right thing is completely outweighed by the good they do – just look, for cripes crap, at the summary of stuff they have published. Go check out their wikipedia page, and they probably have a roundup on their own site somewhere.

And then read some about how they actually do things, instead of assuming, or worse taking the main stream media’s word for it.

Then have some integrity and post a follow up correcting the falsities you just perpetuated with this post.