{"id":517766,"date":"2010-04-06T12:21:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T16:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100405\/1857418890.shtml"},"modified":"2010-04-06T12:21:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-06T16:21:00","slug":"but-how-could-wikileaks-break-a-story-without-traditional-newspaper-backing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/517766","title":{"rendered":"But How Could Wikileaks Break A Story Without Traditional Newspaper Backing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By now you&#8217;ve likely seen the rather horrifying <a href=\"http:\/\/collateralmurder.com\/\" >Collateral Murder<\/a> website, put together from the video leaked to <a href=\"http:\/\/wikileaks.org\/\" >Wikileaks<\/a> (for which, apparently, US intelligence officials <a href=\"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/2010\/03\/26\/wikileaks-asks-cia-to-stop-spying-on-it\/\" >investigated<\/a> some of the Wikileaks folks).  While there&#8217;s a lot of ongoing back-and-forth over what the video really shows, there&#8217;s no doubt that the release of the video is a journalistic scoop.<\/p>\n<p>And yet, we keep being told that if newspapers fail, no one will be left to do investigative journalism?<\/p>\n<p>So what were the traditional journalists doing to get this story?  Rob Hyndman <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/rhh\/status\/11663947612\" >points<\/a> to a story from a year ago about the mad dash of traditional DC reporters to <a href=\"http:\/\/dyn.politico.com\/printstory.cfm?uuid=CE2C3511-18FE-70B2-A8D7CC38A6EC7231\" >butter up sources<\/a>.  And what great stories have been broken by the White House Press Corp. over the past year?<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s nothing inherent in newspapers that says that only they can do investigative reporting.  As we&#8217;ve seen <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20090317\/0312314149.shtml\">over<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20090810\/1742115829.shtml\">over<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20090405\/2125504401.shtml\">over<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20090701\/1529595425.shtml\">over<\/a> again, investigative reporting comes in many forms, and it need not come directly from newspapers.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the <i>real<\/i> question is why the traditional press never set up anything like Wikileaks itself.  I guess they&#8217;re too busy trying to butter up some source in the White House who they hope will feed them a story for political purposes, rather than breaking any real news.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100405\/1857418890.shtml\">Permalink<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100405\/1857418890.shtml#comments\">Comments<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/article.php?sid=20100405\/1857418890&#038;op=sharethis\">Email This Story<\/a><br \/>\n <br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/click.phdo?s=1147ca6a79e157dc9b471632a9d8c4ad&#038;p=1\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: 0;\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/img.phdo?s=1147ca6a79e157dc9b471632a9d8c4ad&#038;p=1\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n<!-- foo --><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.techdirt.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?a=6BsIyGwNSAQ:dDf5E_Zq88k:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?i=6BsIyGwNSAQ:dDf5E_Zq88k:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.techdirt.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?a=6BsIyGwNSAQ:dDf5E_Zq88k:c-S6u7MTCTE\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?d=c-S6u7MTCTE\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/techdirt\/feed\/~4\/6BsIyGwNSAQ\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By now you&#8217;ve likely seen the rather horrifying Collateral Murder website, put together from the video leaked to Wikileaks (for which, apparently, US intelligence officials investigated some of the Wikileaks folks). While there&#8217;s a lot of ongoing back-and-forth over what the video really shows, there&#8217;s no doubt that the release of the video is a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-517766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}