I’ve had my eyes opened to Wikileaks.org, thanks to the flap over the leaking of the names and credit card information of Norm Coleman’s election contest donors. My colleague Kevin Duchschere reported how a self-described German programmer associated with the site explains how it happened. The programmer’s description of these lists “floating around on the Internet” makes me think of this virtual world as a warm sea brimming with flotsam and jetsam that’s waiting to be scooped out and put on display by noble information scavengers.

Here’s the mission statement of Wikileaks:

“Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Our primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we are of assistance to people of nations who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations.”

It goes on:

“We believe that it is not only the people of one country that keep their government honest, but also the people of other countries who are watching that government. That is why the time has come for an anonymous global avenue for disseminating documents the public should see.”

The Coleman donor flap is featured alongside revelations about the murder of two Wikileaks-affiliated human rights activists in Kenya, a report on militia movements in Missouri and Internet censorship in Australia.

Whistleblower shares Wikileaks’ commitment to putting documents in front of people as much as possible, so you can go to the source. So far, that has involved public records obtained through requests to government agencies and downloaded from government web sites. I’ve also used plenty of normally secret documents that became public when they became part of state and federal court cases. Then I have seen internal company and personnel documents that were given to me by the individuals involved. To date, I haven’t used a single anonymous source in a Whistleblower story.

I know that I’m fortunate to practice journalism in a country with a tradition of public records and open government. The Chinese government apparently blocks Wikileaks, and many of the countries it tries to influence have no laws or traditions of open government. As the news media continues its tumultuous transition, it will be interesting to see how effective these extra-national journalism efforts will be.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 11:00 am and is filed under How to blow the whistle, Public records, Whistleblowers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.