Re On WikiLeaks, Journalism, and Privacy: Reporting on the Podesta Archive is an Easy Call

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Hendricks Dewayne <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: October 14, 2016 at 11:01:04 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] On WikiLeaks, Journalism, and Privacy: Reporting on the Podesta Archive is an Easy Call
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> On WikiLeaks, Journalism, and Privacy: Reporting on the Podesta Archive is an Easy Call
> By Glenn Greenwald
> Oct 13 2016
> <https://theintercept.com/2016/10/13/on-wikileaks-journalism-and-privacy-reporting-on-the-podesta-archive-is-an-easy-call/>
>
> For years, WikiLeaks has been publishing massive troves of documents online – usually taken without authorization 
> from powerful institutions and then given to the group to publish – while news outlets report on their relevant 
> content. In some instances, these news outlets work in direct partnership with WikiLeaks – as the New York Times and 
> the Guardian, among others, did when jointly publishing the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and U.S. diplomatic cables 
> – while other times media outlets simply review the archives published by WikiLeaks and then report on what they deem 
> newsworthy.
>
> WikiLeaks has always been somewhat controversial but reaction has greatly intensified this year because many of their 
> most significant leaks have had an impact on the U.S. presidential election and, in particular, have focused on 
> Democrats. As a result, Republicans who long vilified them as a grave national security threat have become their 
> biggest fans (“I love WikiLeaks,” Donald Trump gushed last night, even though he previously called for Edward Snowden 
> to be executed), while Democrats who cheered them for their mass leaks about Bush-era war crimes now scorn them as an 
> evil espionage tool of the Kremlin.
>
> The group’s recent publication of the emails of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta has been particularly 
> controversial because it comes less than a month before the election; it included all sorts of private and purely 
> personal exchanges along with substantive, newsworthy material; and it was obtained through actions that were likely 
> criminal (hacking). Compounding the intensity of the debate is the now-standard Democratic campaign tactic of 
> reflexively accusing their adversaries of being a tool or agent of Moscow.
>
> As a result, it’s worth reviewing a few crucial principles and facts about the journalistic process. It’s vital to 
> emphasize that there are two entirely independent questions presented by all this: (1) were the hackers who took 
> Podesta’s emails, and WikiLeaks which published them all without curating them for relevance and harm, justified in 
> doing so?; and (2) once those emails were taken by the hackers and published in full by WikiLeaks, what is the 
> obligation of journalists with regard to reporting on them? I’ve spoken a lot in the past about question (1) – 
> including explaining why, rather than just indiscriminately dumping the Snowden archive and other leaks we’ve 
> received, we instead carefully curate the materials and only publish what is newsworthy – so, here, I’m going to 
> address only the second question.
>
> When it comes to the question of whether and how the Podesta email archive should be reported, there are, in my view, 
> five principles that ought to guide the decision-making process:
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/>



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