Wednesday, September 29, 2010

AFP Runs With Wikipedia Founder's 'Crazy Information' About WikiLeaks

Still the stupid parroting of the Pentagon talking point of all the people in danger from Wikileaks. As Eli Stephens says in the comment section of this article:

Unlike the New York Times, whose irresponsible publishing of leaked information via the conduit of Judith Miller and others resulted in the deaths of an estimated one million Iraqis. Are those the "responsible journalists" Jimmy Wales is referring to?

From FAIR.

09/28/2010 by Jim Naureckas

Agence France Presse (9/28/10) has an interview with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales about WikiLeaks--apparently because of their proximity in alphabetical order. Wales says that he wishes WikiLeaks didn't have "wiki" in its name--fair enough; he's free to wish that. But he goes on to say:

In the most recent round of leaks, the New York Times...actually redacted certain information that could put people in harm's way whereas WikiLeaks is planning to publish absolutely everything.... I think it is really important, when we have sensitive information, that we do rely on responsible journalists to sort through it for us.... It's much better than dumping all kinds of crazy information online and get people killed.... I don't think [WikiLeaks editor] Julian Assange wants those people killed, however if he irresponsibly follows the policy of releasing absolutely everything, it's incredibly dangerous for those people.

There's no indication in the piece that AFP tried to get a response from the group that its story is accusing of recklessly putting people's lives in danger. Granted, WikiLeaks might be hard to get hold of these days. But two minutes of googling would turn up plenty of quotes like this one from Assange (Huffington Post, 8/14/10):
He said WikiLeaks was about halfway though a "line-by-line review" of the 15,000 documents and that "innocent parties who are under reasonable threat" would be redacted from the material.

Clearly, WikiLeaks does not have a "policy of releasing absolutely everything"--as a "responsible journalist" would have noted, rather than "dumping all kinds of crazy information online."

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