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Wikileaks - the salient point
Kevin Marsh |
Sunday 5 December 2010, 12:08

Pretty well everything that could be said about the Wikileaks diplodocudump has been said. Everyone's made up their mind about whether it's good or bad for the world/diplomatic communication/good government etc etc.

But here's something else to think about: what does it do to journalism?

It's an important question because, as I wrote earlier, we really do have to take care we don't lose investigative journalism and all it entails because we believe ersatz, hollowed out versions are the real thing.

We have to keep in focus, too, Wikileaks' agenda as set out by its oddly self-regarding founder Julian Assange. It and he are not friendly to journalism as we know it - and it wouldn't take too much conspiratorial insanity to construct a theory that this is all about busting traditional journalism.

Here's what Assange told an audience in London back in the summer, as reported by City University's Journalism Professor, George Brock.

Wikileaks, George Brock reports, started with a focus on places where government was least transparent:

"Then they moved on to places where 'the power structure is so sewn up that the press doesn't matter much' ... 'It's all bankrupt' he said ... 'All current political theory is bankrupt, all political thought, because we don't know what the hell is going on'.

You might have guessed by now that the established media are part of the problem. Journalists, he argues, are creating unreasonable public expectations. Their 'original sin' is to enjoy the imbalance of power. Why does someone want to read what a journalist has written? 'They're ignorant and you're not. You know more ... You can't lie but the opportunity to distort is large and prevalent.'

The reader can't see the whole picture so Wikileaks has to fill the gap. Once 'primary source material' is up on the web, the 'lying opportunities' shrink."

In essence, it's the journalism bypass theory, as popular with new media gurus as it was with Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson in the decade 1994-2004.

The diplodocudump was underwhelming - but that doesn't mean it was a Bad Thing; no journalist should argue that revelation itself doesn't serve the public interest. At the very least, it's about a partial correction of the information asymmetry between power and people.

But it wasn't and couldn't ever be an end in itself. Without the attentions and mediation of the very journalism he's declared broken, Assange may as well have fed the leaked diplomatic telegrams straight into the shredder (and, yes, I know they weren't actually on paper - cut me some figurative slack here) or indeed re-recorded Lady Gaga back onto the CD.

Journalism - especially investigative journalism - has many shortcomings. There's no science about what gets investigated and what doesn't; no guarantee that it's the biggest scandals - for want of a better word - that get nailed, nor that some lesser 'scandals' don't get a place in the public sphere they don't quite deserve.

No guarantee, either, that the evidence stacks up or that the 'truth' revealed is incontestable.

But because of the way most investigative journalism comes about - through a whistleblower who rightly or wrongly senses some kind of moral violation - it has that magic thing we call salience.

And it's salience that leaking on an industrial scale lacks. Leaking for the sake of leaking or in the hope of overwhelming both power and journalism as we know it.

Whistleblowing that lacks salience does nothing to serve the public interest - if we mean capturing the public's attention to nurture its discourse in a way that has the potential to change something material.

And the risk is this: that we persuade ourselves that Wikileaks-style transparency is a substitute for investigative journalism rather than the precursor of journalistic possibilities.

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Comments

1. At 10:26am on 06 Dec 2010, charlie beckett wrote:
What was interesting about this latest set of leaks is that most people will read them through the filtering device of mainstream media. Wikileaks is now part of a networked journalism where they are in effect, a kind of news-wire for traditional newsrooms like the New York Times, Guardian and El Pais.
I think that delivers a high degree of what you call salience.

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2. At 10:09am on 08 Dec 2010, Snippet wrote:
I guess this is similar to the way historians work - they look at information from the past (events and whatever primary evidence exists) and then interpret as they see fit.

An investigative journalist does exactly the same, taking the evidence and interpreting it in various ways.

All that wikileaks has done is to put into the public domain information that does not usually make it to that particular table.

And obviously now it now becomes increasingly difficult for the likes of Hilary Clinton to spin the yarns they have been able to do in the past.

What will happen though is that governments will now inevitably adjust the ways they say things publicly and take extra consideration of the possibility of leakage of background inforamtion. Nothing will fundamentally change the way governments operate, but adjustments will be made in how records etc are kept and how internal communication is conducted.

As an ex civil servant, I know this is what is increasingly happening because of the freedom of information act - instead of keep8ing files with information, it is either not kept or kept "unofficially". But you don't have to be an A student in politics and to know this was inevitably going to happen.

If you are likely to be in potential difficulties by saying something on eg email - you just don't do it that way

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3. At 7:45pm on 10 Dec 2010, BluesBerry wrote:
With all the spinning that often counts as news, there is a great hynger among the public for the truth: clear, trustworthy, verified truth.
All this controversy around WiKIiLeaks takes me back to The Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg and the Vietnam War...or Watergate...or Iran-Contra.

WikiLeaks seems to me evidence that investigative journalism is in decline. Or is it the inability of good journalists to get good "news" to the people because the ppwers that be do not want the truth to come out.

I am a news' sceptic. I don't expect to hear the truth on the news; I expect to have to read between the lines and do a lot of independent investigation; even then, who will listen to me, pay attention to me. The definition of someone like me has become paranoid, conspiracy-theory nut case.

The competency and quality in journalism has sunk lower than Davy Jones' locker. If Lady Truth was alive and swimming, WiKiLeaks would be a fizzle, a nothing, unnecessary.

Where is the real breaking news - not how some star got drunk (again) and may have to go into rehab (again), but stuff like Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. Instead we are fed sap, trivia; reports might say: "Well, this is what the public wants to hear about." WikiLeaks proves this is simply not true.

The big stories are still out there - uncovered, awaiting coverage, but no one is covering them.
Why?
Where are the Edward R. Murrows and the Walter Kronkites? Are they afraid of the editors who are afraid of the owners who are afraid of the powers that be that can so easily withdraw a journalist's paycheck?
Is it that money talks and tells journalists what what to talk about too?

Wasn't there a time when journalism used to be a prideful calling, a calling for investigative skills, leads, courage as well as the ability to write well (spelling not so important)?

So WiKiLeaks is like food to the starving, water to the thirsty.

What's wrong with journalism? Where did it go wrong? Who will investigate and tell us the truth? Who will lead the fight to make journalism the honourable profession that it once was?

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4. At 09:30am on 11 Dec 2010, Born to watch TV wrote:
The shortcomings of traditional media is that if the result of the investigation is so earth-shattering as Cablegate and the repercussions threatens their very existence - as it threaten Julian's freedom/life - you would back out and maintain the status quo.

Look back at journalism history from creation of the Tattler. There is a cycle where traditional mainstream media becomes inert and results in the birth of new reactive (in the sense of opp to inert) media which in the fullness of time becomes inert itself and the cycle starts again.

New media have brought a new dimension giving rise to "citizen journalism" which is how I perceive Wikileaks and what you call "by-pass journalism". (I acknowledge the differences between professional journalism and citizen journalism.)

The existence of Wikileaks has to be seen as filling a chasm left by mainstream media.

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