Is Wikileaks release of war documents responsible or irresponsible journalism?

I think it becomes irresponsible when it actually endangers human life by (for example) revealing the identities of undercover agents or anonymous sources. As far as I understand, Wikileaks has actually redacted such information in the material they posted.

I also think Wikileaks acted responsibly in letting legitimate and professional news organizations (the NYT and two European papers) have access to the material for a month before releasing it. The NYT parsed the material and provided context and filtering as they revealed it to the public. If Wikileaks had simply just dumped it on the internet, it would just be a flood of data with everyone—from objective news professionals to insane ideologues—scrambling to provide the first context and narrative to the story.

I’ve read pretty much everything the NYT has covered about it; I obviously haven’t read all (or any, really) of the actual material on Wikileaks. But while the amount of the material is huge, there aren’t really any revelations that significantly change what we already know about the war. I think this “story” is more significant in that we’ve reached a point of technological development where such a leak is possible.

It is modern day heroism.

I wouldn’t go that far.

I also don’t think “transparency” is the unalloyed good that Assage makes it out to be. Transparency increasingly butts up against another good thing: privacy.

I don’t want to live in a world where any information can end up leaked on an internet site. Journalism, as a professional institution, has long straddled the tension between transparency and privacy. I’m glad that Wikileaks appears to be learning—I wasn’t exactly pleased with their release of the journalism-killing video in Iraq, especially the version of it that they edited.

I haven’t read the information, but I feel that if it puts people in danger, it shouldn’t be published. as someone with a husband currently in a war zone, I know how important it is for some thing to stay secret. If these documents don’t put our soldiers in more danger, then I don’t mind them being published.

I scanned through quite a few of those documents and saw nothing that would endanger troops. They’re not what anyone could construe as battle plans, although one might be able to piece together a direction of battle from past troop movements. On the surface, they appear to be nothing more than first-person accounts, details and statistics from various enemy contacts across the region. It is definitely valuable information for anyone desiring to protest against the war.

I feel they did the right thing, and as Firefly stated, I am sure (or I would hope) that organization would have enough intelligence themselves to read through the documents and decide if there was information that could be harmful to people before posting it. But in my opinion, keeping people in the dark is not a good thing to do. I feel we all need to see these things.

I think that publishing the papers is a heroic act and the organization (by me at least) deserves the highest possible praise. I think the publisher and the other journalists involved should receive the Pulitzer Prize. This is the best reporting since the Nixon burglar story.

The government and military, too often, use secrecy regulations to hide their fumbling, misdeeds, and often criminal acts. There are certain things that should be secret like current troop movements, and weapons system specifications, for example.

The soldier that released the papers deserves the highest commendation and protection under the whistle-blower law. All government agencies need to know that they cannot operate with impunity.

Otherwise secrecy only serves to hide misdeeds and incompetence. I am delighted with the release and hope more follows. I would like to read the secret orders and papers of the mercenary organizations working over there.

I think so, yes. I’m in favor of uncovering war crimes, though.

I used to be okay with Wikileaks. But apparently Assange did a terrible job with his “harm minimization process,” and the leaks spell out the names and ID’s of various Afghan informants who will now likely be murdered by the Taliban.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/taliban-study-wikileaks-to-hunt-informants/?ref=world
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/world/asia/29wikileaks.html

Their blood is on Wikileaks’ hands, and I hope Assange and his source rot in prison.

The idea that transparency is this unassailable moral good is childish and nonsensical. Assange claims to be concerned about the lives of Afghan civilians, and then he callously puts those lives in danger of assassination. Meanwhile, the leaks don’t actually reveal any war crimes, any gross malfeasance, anything we didn’t already know about the war. Besides providing a more fine-grained level of detail, they are basically pointless. Well, unless you are a Taliban commander, then you will probably find them quite useful.

@Ron_C, do you seriously believe that secrecy has no benefits whatsoever? Do you want your online identity to remain secret, or should we all be able to look up your name, your phone number, and anyone you’ve e-mailed in the past 10 years? Do you believe that people who go into the witness protection program should be able to keep their identities secret, or should we expose them—assassins be damned?

I hope anyone cheering Wikileaks as some sort of heroes takes some time to consider their position.

@Qingu I am talking about government secrecy. At this time, the government has the right and is probably looking at all of our emails, tracks our library and book purchases, they have technology that can look through walls if they desire. Individuals have a right to privacy in their letters and papers and these rights are not being protected by the government.

We, however, are supposed to be the government and as such, we have a right to know about governments success and failures. Official secrets mostly hide failures. Pres. Bush set a precedent by exposing an undercover agent to punish her husband. That was not right either. If Wikileaks is punished, then it is only right that people in the Bush administration receive the same trial and punishment. I would be satisfied if Bush shared the same cell as the publishers of Wikileaks but I am not in favor of a double standard.

Like I said previously, the main reason for government secrecy is to hide mistakes and lies. It is the government’s duty to protect our undercover agents and to expose those who harm us whether inside or outside the government. “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”. I can’t remember who said it but look at the “Patriot Act” to see the truth of it.