Update 4: The very positive New Yorker piece on Wikileaks that I cited is by one Raffi Khatchadourian who happens to be an alum of the Johns Hopkins Nitze School of International School, a hotbed of neoconservative policies, which hosts, among others, Francis Fukuyama, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Eliot Cohen. Of course, I studied there for a while too, so that doesn’t say anything definitive by itself.
But Khatchadourian also wrote strongly in support of the Iraq war…
Update 3 (June 27) A blog called Civilities discusses the Bank Julius Baer case, in which whistle-blower Rudolf Elmer uploaded financial information to Wikileaks that included tax information that’s private under Swiss law, as well as personal information. Civilities draws a somewhat negative conclusion about the “full-transparency” model Wikileaks promotes and the writer Jon Garfunkel makes the point that Wikileaks works better as a source for original documents than as journalism, because it lacks accountable editing. It simply uses the signature Wikileaks, which conceals the identity of the editor.
However, Garfunkel, who is also a Wikipedia editor, seems to think Wikipedia is a perfectly transparent and objective information source. That makes you wonder if he has the experience to make a credible judgment on this issue. Anyone who thinks Wikipedia is always balanced or objective clearly isn’t too familiar with Wikipedia or has a motive to misrepresent it. In his case, the first explanation seems the right one. Continue reading