WikiLeaks scoop
sets media on new course
Web site shares Afghanistan war logs with three papers
By Toni Fitzgerald
Jul 26, 2010
It's safe to say that WikiLeaks has now become a WikiSpigot.
If you've so much as turned on the radio or surfed the web this morning, you're surely aware that the web site provided some 90,000 pages of federal intelligence reports on the Afghanistan war to the New York Times, London's Guardian and German magazine Der Spiegel, all of which published them last night, setting off a media firestorm.
The Times, which, like the other two, received the docs weeks in advance in order to perform its own background investigation, described the documents thusly: "a daily diary of an American-led force often starved for resources and attention as it struggled against an insurgency that grew larger, better coordinated and more deadly each year."
Among other revelations, the so-called war logs reveal that the Taliban used heat-seeking missiles and that some special forces missions resulted in the deaths of civilians, even though the military declared them a success.
While the Obama administration is certainly fussing over the seven-year archive, the media community is more focused on the practical aspects of the scoops, including first and foremost why WikiLeaks wouldn't just release the documents itself and enjoy the accolades that came its way.
The main sticking point seems to be that WikiLeaks wasn't sure it would be able to secure sufficient coverage of the documents if that happened. Exposure in the print publications, as well as giving those pubs an "exclusive" tag and the accompanying bragging rights, should bring more people to the WikiLeaks site.
Perhaps the second and bigger question is just how WikiLeaks managed to acquire the documents. There's been a lot of speculation today over who leaked them, and the name that keeps popping up is 22-year-old intelligence Spec. Bradley Manning, who was arrested last month in Iraq after allegedly boasting about a leak.
Finally, the timing of the war logs release serves as further proof that the web has become the main driver of journalistic scoops.
The papers posted their scoops yesterday evening, rather than in Sunday's morning paper, much like the Washington Post last week opted to kick off its huge investigation into "secret America," a look at the Homeland Security Department, on Monday morning, when the web audience is in full surfing mode, rather than on Sunday.
|
|
|
