Documents in the raw undermine propaganda

While the leaking of Afghan war documents has been
criticized in some Canadian columns, on the pages of J-Source WikiLeaks is
described as citizen
journalism we need and a new form of
asymmetrical journalism. Founder Julian Assange, a self-described ‘person of
interest’ to U.S. authorities, explains his decision to provide advance
viewings to select outlets. The mainstream media partnerships weren’t
completely comfortable: Assange later criticized the New
York Times for its handling of the data, including checking with the White
House before publishing and not providing a direct link to the documents. An alternative strategy could have been dribbles instead of dumps. Here
are links to compare the special reportage sites: New York Times,
Der
Spiegel, the
Guardian.

To Afghanistan observers, the documents undermined
government propaganda, which – we learn from the docs – includes paying for
positive stories. Unlike the NYT, J-Source has no problem providing a
direct link to the WikiLeaks war
documents site, as well as to data-dumping links and instructions
for CAR journos. (And we didn’t check with Ottawa first.)

(Photo: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, by Martina Harris/Julian Assange.)