>>It has experienced reporters who understand the issues involved.
You mean it has experienced reporters who editorialize the leaks. Because that's one of the many benefits of Wikileaks: you get the data in its raw form and can reach your own, independent conclusions if you choose to do so.
>>It has a process through which the public can contact the organization and correct errors.
This is well and good, but the process is not efficient enough to deal with the sheer volume of leaks in a timely manner. Just as an example, Wikileaks released 400,000 leaked documents in October 2010. How much time would it have taken for The Guardian to process them, and would the information still be relevant by the time they were released?
Seriously, I have a hard time accepting a lack of editorializing as a serious argument in favor of Wikileaks. Collateral Murder was editorialized to the point that it hurt Wikileaks' credibility, if anything.
Yes, we got the raw information as well, but often after highly publicized, deeply editorialized publicity stunts.
I agree with the premise of the headline: an organization like Wikileaks is incredibly valuable to a functional and transparent democracy. Wikileaks itself, however, suffers from far too many fundamental problems to serve as anything other than a vague outline of what such an organization should be.
To be fair, Assange advocates what he calls “scientific journalism”[1] in which the editorialized piece is presented along with the raw and unedited primary source(s)†.
He also acknowledges that Wikileaks is an “activist organization” that uses “transparency as its method”[2].
I do not necessarily agree with the editorial voice of Wikileaks but the style of journalism that it promotes is obviously a Good Thing.
>but the style of journalism that it promotes is obviously a Good Thing.
I very much disagree.
The type of editorializing Wikileaks engages in fundamentally undermines their credibility as an information clearing house. When the raw information takes a back seat to the editorial content, it makes it easier for those that would seek to suppress that information to discredit them as a source.
It simply comes down to trust, and I have personal issues trusting a source that has a stated goal of editing and framing the information they release to suit their agenda.
The Collateral Murder release really is a great example of some of the many issues with Wikileaks' approach. It deliberately presents the footage out of context with post-hoc commentary that frames the entire thing in a pretty misleading light, all wrapped up in an intentionally incendiary title.
And the real tragedy of that?
The story behind the footage is tragic enough that it doesn't need that sort of spin to be effective. Wikileaks tried to tack on claims of deliberate maliciousness to what is, in reality, a clear illustration of the brutal, wasteful, and confusing nature of war in the real world. And, by doing so, Wikileaks made it easier for their critics to dismiss them as propagandists since that's essentially what they were engaging in.
I want an information clearing house that I can trust to simply perform the role of disseminating information while protecting themselves and their sources. I simply don't believe that such a clearing house can be trusted and taken seriously while also pushing an editorial agenda.
Julian Assange has said a lot of times that he doesn't like to edit the leaks in general because it is a slippery slope. Many times they do it to prevent dishonest attacks from people regarding some information, stealing impact from the more relevant worthwhile information of the leaks. I agree that the edited version of the collateral murder video was unfortunate but it hardly changed the substance of the video: collateral murder. The changes were minimal, specially if you take into account the impact that the video had. You're giving too much weight to the editorialization of that video, which amounts to nearly nothing in context of subsequent (and previous) leaks from wikileaks. To top it all off, there is not other news organization at the same level of wikileaks in this stuff (I wish there were tho) so for now we're stuck with them, and they are more than good at what they do.
>You're giving too much weight to the editorialization of that video, which amounts to nearly nothing in context of subsequent (and previous) leaks from wikileaks.
I completely disagree with this.
Collateral Murder frames the entire incident as the intentional, deliberate killing of civilians and a journalist. It's filled with commentary telling you exactly how to interpret what you're seeing. You're told that this guy on the video is clearly carrying around a camera. You're told that, sure, some of these guys were carrying around rifles, but they were just calmly hanging around. You're shown a quote from the military saying that they did not deliberately civilians, then shown images of a van with big arrows pointing at it labeled "CHILDREN." The entire thing is presented with the clear implication that these were deliberate killings of innocent people.
The actual context of that video? A mechanized infantry unit in the area was taking fire from unknown sources and the Apache was there to provide air cover. The Apache gunner is sitting in a helicopter being buffeted in the air while peering through a 5"x5" monochrome display -- something roughly the size of two iPhones sitting side by side -- and sees a large group of men obviously armed with rifles nearby. He sees a large cylindrical object and calls RPG because large groups of armed men in a war zone with active shooting going on are more likely to be carrying around an RPG than a Nikon. He opens fire on them.
The result is the same: a bunch of people died absolutely needlessly and tragically. It never should have happened.
But in one context, you're telling people that the military is going around deliberately killing innocent people for no reason. In the other context, people are dying despite the best intentions of the troops involved because war is a messy, confusing, and terrible thing.
Presenting it in one context is just going to turn off anyone who -- rightly -- thinks you're just trying to sell an agenda. The other just might get people realizing that war is something to be avoided because there's no such thing as a clean war.
Wikileaks has two audiences: the people that agree with its editorial voice and the people that are interested in the raw data.
The former are not going to be easily dissuaded from taking Wikileaks seriously because of loyalty (perhaps misguided), nor will the latter because you cannot discredit raw data (except for denying its provenance).
Furthermore, by providing the raw data, scientific journalist give other organizations a chance to provide alternative context and/or analysis.
>Wikileaks has two audiences: the people that agree with its editorial voice and the people that are interested in the raw data.
This borderlines on being paternalistic in overlooking another audience -- arguably the most important one for an information clearing house -- those whose opinions can be swayed by new information if they trust the source of that information.
Engaging in editorial commentary that overshadows the content of the actual data undermines that trust in a very real way. When you're pushing an editorial agenda, people are going to dismiss the data because it's coming from a source they consider ultimately untrustworthy.
>Furthermore, by providing the raw data, scientific journalist give other organizations a chance to provide alternative context and/or analysis.
This is exactly why the clearing house and the editorial voice need to be separate entities. If the data is available, then anyone is free to (and will) perform analysis on it without tainting the data itself with the reputation of agenda of the organization releasing it.
The trustworthiness of data is a function of its provenance, not its accompanying analysis or commentary.
Conversely, the trustworthiness of information (i.e. analysis and commentary) is a function of the degree of bias of the source and not the data that informs it.
If the raw data is universally accessible then there should be no shortage of trustworthy information sources for the third audience you mention. Unbiased sources are ideal but that’s too much to hope for, so the next best thing for that audience is to consult a multitude of sources that are known to be examining the same data.
Finally, I do not think Wikileaks is ideal (I prefer something more like what Nate Silver does). But I take it as axiomatic that a free press — even one with an editorial voice — is a Good Thing. A journalistic organization that also releases its sources is a Better Thing and hence must also be a Good Thing.
>The trustworthiness of data is a function of its provenance, not its accompanying analysis or commentary.
From an idealistic standpoint, sure. From a real world standpoint, trustworthiness colors peoples' perception of the data itself. Including commentary with the release has lead to Wikileaks being viewed as untrustworthy in many people's eyes, resulting in them dismissing the analysis of data sourced from them outright.
Again, in an ideal world, the data would rule all, but that's simply not the way it actually plays out. It's not hard to find examples of exactly this playing out with Wikileaks, and it lessens the overall value of the data they do release in swaying public perception.
>(I prefer something more like what Nate Silver does).
Nate Silver does meta-analysis. He doesn't perform any data gathering himself. He represents the third-party editorial voice I'm advocating. In fact, Silver's model even further illustrates what I'm getting at because it accounts for and weights the reliability of the sources of the raw data.
>This is well and good, but the process is not efficient enough to deal with the sheer volume of leaks in a timely manner.
You seem to imply that anything that can be leaked should be leaked. There is no morality in haphazardly leaking any and all classified information. This is precisely why established news organizations are effective. They have the will to actually vet classified information for things that would count as whistleblowing. Wikileaks has no such motivation.
You mean it has experienced reporters who editorialize the leaks. Because that's one of the many benefits of Wikileaks: you get the data in its raw form and can reach your own, independent conclusions if you choose to do so.
>>It has a process through which the public can contact the organization and correct errors.
This is well and good, but the process is not efficient enough to deal with the sheer volume of leaks in a timely manner. Just as an example, Wikileaks released 400,000 leaked documents in October 2010. How much time would it have taken for The Guardian to process them, and would the information still be relevant by the time they were released?