First of all, I must admit that the Guardian has always been my favorite newspaper in the world and WikiLeaks is one of the best sources in the New Media that I'm using as a journalist.
Firstly, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange accused the Guardian journalist David Leigh of disclosing the password to the entire, unredacted cache of 250,000 cables in his book. Then the Guardian defended its editor and put the blame on Assange in return. And finally, by alleging that it was through Leigh's password that outsiders were able to access and circulate the files, WikiLeaks did the same and unleashed it all after a popular vote on the website.
As a matter of fact, The Guardian reiterates that Assange had told that it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours. Anyway, the British newspaper was wrong to publish this password in a book without verifying that the password was really changed. So the Guardian breached its contract for collaboration with WikiLeaks and this is just the smaller picture.
The big picture, on the other hand, is that the whole parody has put the final nail on the coffin of a trans-generational media cooperation. Traditional mass media and the New Media is just not compatible. They can't work together in the long run. A rogue whistle-blower can't be the natural part of the establishment, while still remaining himself.
And there is almost a consensus:
The release of the unedited texts of all the cables without removing the names of vulnerable people in repressive countries, including activists, academics and journalists, who might face reprisals for speaking candidly to American diplomats, is deemed as wrong. As the Wall Street Journal has put it, "expect many more covers blown, careers ruined, and lives placed in jeopardy before all this is over."
Such a consensus is emphasized in the common declaration of the mass-media collaborators of WikiLeaks today, namely the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Figaro, Der Spiegel and El Pais.
It is really a consensus, but the fact is that it is the consensus of the mass media, not the New Media, not the news outlets of the Web 2.0. For the traditional media, politics is still strictly categorized as national and international. Just looking at the founders and the first financiers of WikiLeaks, from China to Scandinavia, would be enough to see that this is not the way it is for the the New Media.
On almost every occasion that I cover a story abroad with journalists from different countries, say, in the World Trade Organization summits in Geneva, I get surprised by the attitude of the majority of my colleagues. The questions that some of them ask during interviews and press conferences are intrinsically from a national -and most of the time, nationalist- perspective. "Why are you giving us such an headache over palm oil trade? Start bugging Malaysians, too," one Indonesian colleague had once scolded at
Pascal Lamy, as if he was an ambassador, not a journalist. (Even the Indonesian ambassador wouldn't be so pointlessly blunt, though.)
On such occasions, I try to remain as a silent observer. I always try to refrain from putting myself in a similar situation. Of course, as I am also a part of the traditional media, even I may have fallen into the trap of thinking and behaving as if I'm an ambassador, instead of a journalist. Journalists of the New Media are not in such a inner struggle. Because their organizations are a part of the Internet without borders, the national interests of a certain state should not be an issue for them.
This is why it is normal that newspapers like the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Figaro, Der Spiegel and El Pais condemn the unredacted release of all U.S. cables. Behind a veil of humanitarian reasons, some may even try to protect the integrity of the U.S. Department of State by keeping the guarantee of the anonymity of the local sources of U.S. diplomats around the world. (And I know what a sloppy job they have been doing so far, while deleting almost all the American/Western European names in the cables while keeping the Turkish ones among many others.)
But this is not New Journalism. The journalists of our day just don't linked to national interests, because they are the part of a supranational communication network. With such a creed, these rogue journalists may even force us, the traditional journalists, to reflect on our professional values and principles again. So we can remember that
...the ultimate duty of a journalist is to provide the people with the information, by remaining free and self-governing.
The responsibility of the effects of uncovering such a truth is a different subject. If it's about the Cablegate2, then the U.S. Department of State should be held to account for any kind of future damage, not WikiLeaks. After all, they were the ones who must have secured the cables and avoided any leaks. It is under the freedom of expression for a journalist to publish a diplomatic cable that -through any process- ended up in the public domain that we call the Internet.
The American officials or the officials of other countries naturally pursue the leakers for violating their national laws if their sovereignty can really apply, but the journalists should always be for truth vs. falsehood, justice vs. injustice, law vs. order, democracy vs. everything else.
Finally, I hope that both the Guardian and WikiLeaks realize their mistakes, so that I keep reading the former as my favorite newspaper and using the latter as one of my online sources, although I know that we can't put them in the same basket.
