>I object to the new definition of “leaking” that tries to make all cases of it unquestionably good.
I don't think this has ever been the case. There's still large contingents of the US that think the Snowden leaks were part of a Russian operation, that the Manning leaks were bad and so on. I wasn't alive during Vietnam, but were those leaks considered unquestionably good?
I don't know if Snowden was a Russian operation, I don't think the facts are there for that. However, I do think Snowden committed treason by doing what he did, and so did this National Guardsman. It doesn't matter the reason or morale justification, breaking the law is still breaking the law. If you're going to call for the prosecution of Trump you can't in the next sentence say yeah but Snowden broke the law for the right reason so it's ok. That sort of hair-splitting is disingenuous.
Those examples seem to be addressing a statement that no one made. Is that in an effort to make people think a different statement was made, one that’s trivial to disprove rather than addressing the actual statement?
Yeah that’s obvious because the comment replied as if I said “no leaks are good” which is a highly illogical and contrived reading of me saying I object to how the article is acting like “all” leaks are good.
>A duty of care arguably extends beyond one’s immediate source: You don’t have to assist an individual in publicizing the workings of government, but at the very least, you should not intentionally compromise them.
This is, as far as I can tell, the only real substance in this article, and it is completely undefended. If journalists have an obligation to avoid exposing leakers, then the actions of these organizations were inappropriate. But the author does absolutely nothing to establish that journalists have such an obligation.
There are leaks of classified material that are, I think, plainly harmful. This is one of them. None of the information I have seen revealed is useful to the public, but may be useful to the Kremlin. No responsible journalist would have published this information had it been provided to them. I see no reason to want to encourage this kind of "transparency".
>NPR recently decried being labeled by Twitter as state-affiliated media, writing that this is a label Twitter uses “to designate official state mouthpieces and propaganda outlets.” That unrelated controversy is notable given that an NPR staffer seems to have deputized himself to act as a government investigator by posting image analyses on Twitter. (While NPR has announced that its official organizational accounts have quit Twitter, individual staff accounts still appear to be active.)
"Unrelated" is right. Why bring in conspiracy theories?
>The Intercept was widely criticized for its handling of the document Winner leaked—in particular, the decision to show the leaked document to the U.S. government. While attempting to verify its authenticity with the NSA, an Intercept reporter inadvertently revealed its provenance. According to an FBI affidavit, the document had a telltale crease in it, indicating it had been printed and folded. An FBI agent assigned to the case would later testify that a total of six people had printed the document. The pool of potential leakers was further narrowed to one — Winner — when investigators discovered she’d emailed The Intercept from her work computer. The Intercept would go on to conduct an internal review, which found that, in Winner’s case, its “practices fell short of the standards to which we hold ourselves” when it came to protecting sources.
Ouch.
That said this case seems quite different. The Intercept didn't do it on purpose, but instead had someone not competent in protecting the source while attempting verification. The case of Teixeira seems remarkably different, however, in that journalists actively did the investigative work for the government while also, to an extent, reporting on the leaks themselves.
For sure, The Intercept got dragged for that episode because of how shoddy their controls were. Winner would've been "got" regardless, just maybe a little bit later.
The Reality Winner leak wasn't real, it was intentional.
It was a leak of no importance (more summaries and assessments i.e. editorial) that claimed Russiagate stuff was true. The most important part of the leak was the identity of the woman who leaked it, who was a Bernie supporter with idiosyncratic politics. The goal was to bring the Bernie wing of the Democrats into the anti-Russian buildup by putting it into the mouth of a quirky left-leaning woman of pretty impeccable character (as far as that can be true for someone who works in US intelligence.) I absolutely guarantee that she wasn't in on it, they just played to her urge to feel heroic.
Richard Esposito (https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/pr0218/nypd-executive-app...) was part of handling her leak on the other side (The Intercept is lousy with spooks), so they had whatever help they needed for their parallel construction, which they would have no obligation to fully explain, anyway. The trial went perfectly because Omidyar was paying her lawyers, so spies on both sides.
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edit: the growing cynic consensus is that this leak is fake, too. The fact that there were "crudely altered" casualty figures and that point was repeated multiple times is bizarre. Why would Russians be altering information that they're meant to use? If it were meant for propaganda purposes, why would it be crude?
And for the papers: why were they immediately convinced of the authenticity of these "crudely altered" documents when past leaked documents that had no indication of falsehood and were easy to authenticate were held in question for months or years after discovery by these same outlets?
>the growing cynic consensus is that this leak is fake, too.
Hard time squaring that with the hyperventilating in the press briefings, where administration officials ask journalists not to report on the documents.
That this happened the way it did is deeply concerning and should anger you. The media worked with a rare diligence to help the government apprehend someone who made information about which we've been repeatedly lied to available to the public. Let's not forget both the media and the government have spent the last couple of weeks on a gaslighting tour telling us the leak was Russian propaganda, etc. The tenacity with which they pursued and arrested the leaker is astounding considering we still don't know who leaked the Supreme Court draft decision, or who was on the Epstein client list.
This is just gross. It doesn't matter where you align politically, the degree to which the media has been working with the government against the interest of the public is unprecedented. We have US troops on the ground presumably fighting Russia - who is, contrary to what we were told, winning the war - and there was no formal declaration of war, nor was the public informed of it. And not a single journalist in the recent WH press conferences has asked about it. Instead, we got questions such as "How do we prevent leaks like this in the future [so we can keep lying to the public]"?
Perhaps Elon was being a troll by labeling some of these outfits "state-sponsored", but they sure as hell have earned the moniker.
You're absolutely right, but you'll be downvoted and flagged. You're too smart for this forum of smooth brains. Don't forget that the average user here thinks themselves as sophisticated, but are probably more propagandized than any average person.
>who is, contrary to what we were told, winning the war
So you haven't read any documents in the end? Because the worst that these documents say is "mostly stalemate, losses here and wins there". Of course Ukraine isn't overwhelmingly winning, but if you believed that, you just believed war propaganda. You shouldn't be angry at it, because it's literally what happens in every, single war. Every camp will overstate their wins and downplay their losses to the public.
> Let's not forget both the media and the government have spent the last couple of weeks on a gaslighting tour telling us the leak was Russian propaganda, etc.
Who has been saying this? First time I've heard it. The closest I've heard is that there's two versions of the "leak", one with modified numbers making it look better for Russia. Which still appears to be true.
> We have US troops on the ground presumably fighting Russia
Does not appear to be true. What are you basing this on?
One of the first reactions from the government and Ukraine was that this was all Russian disinformation. Then within a couple of days other media sources weighed in and there was considerable debate, until this guy was identified.
So yes. Many people have hypothesized this was Russian disinformation.
> "Let's not forget both the media and the government have spent the last couple of weeks on a gaslighting tour telling us the leak was Russian propaganda, etc."
They all call it a leak and specify that parts of it appear doctored, which is also what I said, right? Has any of that changed or been disproven?
Primary sources are the biggest threat to Narrative-based media. This is why they never ever link to court documents for example, and also claimed that accessing WikiLeaks was illegal for non-"journalists" (a word they used to mean employees of Narrative media).
Working to identify the source of a damaging disclosure of classified information about an ongoing war where an ally is suffering at the hands of a massive invasion force is prime, grade A, investigative journalism.
The guy was a leaker, not a whistleblower. He had no intention of giving the information he leaked to the general public. That just happened by accident. And of course, helping Ukraine defend itself from a genocidal invasion is a very popular cause; this leaker was doing serious harm to that cause. He was no Snowden.
In that circumstance, why wouldn't journalists chase clicks and show off their investigational skills like any other news story?
> Why is the media so eager to help the Justice Department by supplying potentially viable leads?
Because journalist-activists are now part of the military-industrial complex and are fully aligned with the intelligence apparatus.
> Bellingcat, meanwhile, went further and virtually handed over the potential origin point of the leak by specifying the exact name of the chatroom where the documents appear to have first been shared.
Bellingcat founder publicized OSINT tools and techniques that are used by citizens to reports/find out what's happening in protests. Those tools are used in France to report on the action of a "liberal" government and were used in Israel to report on the action of the closest US ally.
Also, Bellingcat brought a lot of people into OSINT and ridiculed Russia multiple times (including the one time they modified the wikipedia page of a USSR airplane to fit their narrative on MH17). The thing is, they do not only write articles, they publish their data and methodology, and encourage you to try yourself. It's not just consummer thinking "ahah, Russia Opsec is shit", it's engineers and people interested in OSINT finding out how incompetent Russia is.
The one thing i don't like about Bellingcat is that they don't write when they fail to find something. I understand that for journalists, its bad to report on nothing, but people like me learn more wth failure than with success. But the Osint community is big and i'm not a Bellingcat contributor anymore, i found better shoes (and in my language).
Maybe you should speak with a little less confidence.
Let me quote from the opening paragraphs of the Wikipedia entry for the source you just quoted:
“ A fringe website,[23] it is known for misleading reporting[24] and sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes.[1][15][25] The Grayzone has denied human rights abuses against Uyghurs,[29] promulgated conspiracy theories about Venezuela, Xinjiang, Syria and other regions,[30][31] and promoted pro-Russian propaganda during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[28] The Grayzone has been described by Commentary as a propaganda shop devoted to pushing pro-Assad, pro-Maduro, pro-Putin, and pro-Hamas narratives.[32]”
Or this section from the Wikipedia entry for the author of that “article”.
“ Blumenthal has contributed to broadcasts on RT (formerly known as Russia Today) on many occasions.[13] In December 2015, during a visit to Moscow presumed by multiple sources to have been paid for by the Kremlin,[19][22] Blumenthal was a guest at RT's 10 Years On Air anniversary party attended by President Vladimir Putin, then-Lieutenant General Michael Flynn of the United States and English politician Ken Livingstone.[19][13][23] In an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News in November 2017, Blumenthal defended RT against "the charge that it’s Kremlin propaganda."[13][24]
He has contributed on multiple occasions to Sputnik radio,[22][25] as well as to Iran's Press TV[26][27] and China's CGTN.[28] Blumenthal founded The Grayzone website within a month after his visit to Moscow.[5]”
Grayzone is a shaky and conspiratorial source in many cases, but Bellingcat is staffed by ex-intelligence agents and attempted to disguise the sources of its funding, which turned out to include multiple intelligence related sources, including National Endowment for Democracy. Which, for reference, was used to launder for the Contras.
Second, journalists use their own judgement or what to publish. Had the kid given it to a news org the reporting would have been redacted.
I object to the new definition of “leaking” that tries to make all cases of it unquestionably good. People can die due to info.