Download the eBook (8.25 MB) - ECREA Thematic Sections

Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011
In the UK, many journalists acknowledged the public value of the material that was
published. “To judge from the response we had from countries without the benefit of a
free press, there was a considerable thirst for the information in the cables – a hunger
for knowledge which contrasted with the occasional knowing yawns from metropolitan
sophisticates who insisted that the cables told us nothing new. This could be the
opportunity to draw up a score sheet of the upsides and drawbacks of forced
transparency,” said Rusbridger, (2011).
According to Keller, The New York Times knew that because of “the range of the
material and the very nature of diplomacy, the embassy cables were bound to be more
explosive than the War Logs” (Keller, 2011). So they decided to send the Washington
bureau chief to the White House on November 19 th . Two days later, the night before
Thanksgiving, they met with representatives from the State Department, the Office of
the Director of National Intelligence, the C.I.A, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the
Pentagon and, of course, the White House. “The meeting was off the record, but it is
fair to say the mood was tense. Scott Shane, one reporter who participated in the
meeting, describe ‘and undertone of suppressed outrage and frustration,” wrote Keller
(2011). The main concerns of the Administration chiefs was the importance of
protecting individuals and to withhold some sensitive information about American
programmes as well as information originating from candid comments by and about
foreign officials, including heads of state.
The New York Times shared with the five news organisations its policy on reporting
classified information. "The Times has taken care to exclude, in its articles and in
supplementary material, in print and online, information that would endager confidential
informants or compromise national security" (2010, Note to the readers). As Bill Keller
argues, “the tension between a newspaper’s obligation to inform and the government’s
responsibility to protect is hardly new.” The New York Times took out a competitive
insurance policy before reporting on those documents.
In June 2010, once the NYT started working on the raw material from the first leak,
they began to notice unexplained suspicious activities in their emails, so they consulted
their lawyers. Their lawyers assured them that reporting on secret documents could be
done within the law. They knew that they had to work with an enormous moral and
ethical obligation because they were certain that the government could do anything to
impede their work. For that reason, at the beginning, they took great care in their work
and decided to omit any materials could put lives at risk (Keller, 2011). "We excise
material that might lead terrorists to unsecured weapons material, compromise
intelligence-gathering programs aimed at hostile countries, or disclose information
about capabilities of American weapons that could be helpful to an enemy" (2011, note
the readers).
El Páis followed The New York Times´ policy about keeping some names and
confidential information away from the public. Javier Moreno, the executive editor of El
Páis, insisted in several meetings that “they were informed by the U.S. Government
that publishing some data would endanger thousands of human lives and undermine
hundreds of ongoing diplomatic deals that were necessary in the war against terrorism
and could weaken U.S. international policies and policies of other friendly nations”
(2010a).
90