{"id":644632,"date":"2013-02-28T17:01:46","date_gmt":"2013-02-28T22:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paidcontent.org\/?p=225325"},"modified":"2013-02-28T17:01:46","modified_gmt":"2013-02-28T22:01:46","slug":"bradley-manning-provides-more-evidence-of-why-we-need-a-media-entity-like-wikileaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/644632","title":{"rendered":"Bradley Manning provides more evidence of why we need a media entity like WikiLeaks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bradley Manning, the former U.S. army private who is being tried by a military court<\/a> for leaking classified documents after spending almost three years in jail, admitted on Thursday that he gave information — including a video of an attack by U.S. forces on civilians in Iraq — to WikiLeaks. But Manning also provided some details about his leaking of documents that reinforce why having an independent quasi-media entity like WikiLeaks is important: he says he tried to provide<\/a> the same information to traditional news outlets, including both the New York Times<\/em> and the Washington Post<\/em>, but was ignored.<\/p>\n

This information came out during a statement that Manning read aloud in court, so most of the details couldn’t be immediately verified, but the former military intelligence agent said that he called<\/a> the New York Times<\/em> to offer them a story based on the documents he had, but his voicemail message was never returned. Manning said that he also spoke to someone at the Washington Post<\/em> and described what he had, but no one ever followed up.<\/p>\n

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Manning said he talked to person at WaPo who he did not think took him seriously when he described war logs.<\/p>\n

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Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) February 28, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to some reports, Manning’s call went to the public editor’s voice mail<\/a> at the Times<\/em>, which could explain why no one in the newsroom contacted him — as anyone who has ever worked in a large newsroom knows, crank calls and vaguely conspiratorial reports from would-be tipsters come with the territory, and many don’t result in any action. The part of his story about speaking<\/a> with someone at the Washington Post<\/em> directly would seem a little more damning, but he apparently didn’t provide many details to the reporter he spoke to.<\/p>\n