Panama Papers Leak Signals a Shift in Mainstream Journalism.
'Four years passed between The New York Timess first article based on the Pentagon Papers and the end of the Vietnam War.
Two years passed between The Washington Posts first story establishing Richard M. Nixons link to the Watergate burglary and Nixons resignation from the presidency.
Last week, Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson of Iceland couldnt make it 48 hours before having to step aside after the disclosure of the shady bank dealings contained in the Panama Papers, some of which involve him. . .
Because while we Americans were transfixed by the latest plot turns in our presidential campaign, you and the rest of the world were living through the biggest corporate data leak in history. It had reverberations not only in Iceland, but in China, Britain, Russia, Argentina and some 50 other countries.
But the leak signaled something else that was a big deal but went unheralded: The official WikiLeaks-ization of mainstream journalism; the next step in the tentative merger between the Fourth Estate, with its relatively restrained conventional journalists, and the Fifth Estate, with the push-the-limits ethos of its blogger, hacker and journo-activist cohort, in the era of gargantuan data breaches.
Back at the dawn of this new, Big Breach journalism, The Timess then-executive editor, Bill Keller, wondered aloud in the papers Sunday magazine whether The War Logs, a huge cache of confidential war records and diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks in conjunction with The Times, Der Spiegel, The Guardian and others, represented some kind of cosmic triumph of transparency. He concluded, I suspect we have not reached a state of information anarchy, at least not yet. That was in 2011.
Five years later, it is safe to say that we are getting much closer. This is changing the course of world history, fast. It is also changing the rules for mainstream journalists in the fierce business of unearthing secrets, and for the government and corporate officials in the fiercer business of keeping them.'>>>
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/11/business/media/panama-papers-leak-signals-a-shift-in-mainstream-journalism.html?
Faster than a speeding bullet! It's a bird, it's a plane, it's SUPER WOODSTEIN!!!
EdwardBernays
(3,343 posts)I have almost no faith in government using secrecy properly...
nikto
(3,284 posts)Equinox Moon
(6,344 posts)Last edited Mon Apr 11, 2016, 09:34 AM - Edit history (1)
UPDATE: Link for NPR podcast (17-min)
http://www.npr.org/podcasts/452538775/on-the-media
4/6/2016 - Behind the Panama Papers
from 14 min to end (17min) is about the American news media not collaborating
*************
NPR did a long radio report yesterday including discussion on how M$M was not in on it and did not report on it. Something to do with M$M not willing to be part of global collaboration. (not team players)
It was an interview with the international journalists that made the massive leak public.
Fascinating report about a consortium of 400 journalists worldwide working online collaboratively and keeping it quiet for an entire year.
I will look for a link to the NPR interview.
Festivito
(13,452 posts)And, what do those very large donors want? Just to be quiet on occasion and not report some story here and there when the order comes down from on high. It just looks like an inside administrative decision.
But, is it?
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)on the flipside, there are plenty of instances where outlets with a genuine interest in collaborating get shut out (i.e., Snowden/Greenwald)
bemildred
(90,061 posts)It's not going to get better. They won't eventually get a handle on it. It's an arms race now, and the hackers have the advantage. There are vast quantities of hastily assembled software out there which everybody uses and depends on, and more all the time. And it will all get examined in minute detail by somebody looking for a flaw.