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jayrosen_nyu Jay Rosen
I agree with @davidisen. This must be added to any review of best Wikileaks posts. Why EL PAÍS chose to publish the leaks:
http://jr.ly/6hcqWhy EL PAÍS chose to publish the leaks
Editor Javier Moreno explains the decision to publish the State Department cables, which expose on an unprecedented scale the extent to which Western leaders lie to their electorates
JAVIER MORENO 23/12/2010
1. The leak and its consequences. When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange called my cellphone on a Friday afternoon in November, I could barely hear him. The conversation, held amid the usual tumult of Rome's airport on a weekend, was strangely short. Assange talked slowly, making sure to pronounce each word carefully, his deep, almost baritone voice, reducing itself almost to a whisper at the end of each sentence. A few moments before the conversation, I had noticed how the Italian police seemed particularly interested in the little luggage that I was carrying, and that as the phone had rung, they were examining the cloth that I had used to wipe the screen of my iPad. Were they looking for drugs, or explosives, or both?
Assange, as far as I could tell at that time, was willing to give EL PAÍS access to 250,000 cablegrams sent between the US State Department and its embassies in around 30 countries, garnered as a result of the largest leak of secret documents in history. When we talked again, two days later, this time in much greater depth, the full magnitude of the undertaking that has become known as "cablegate" began to make itself clear. At the same time, I began to realize the repercussions that publishing the material would have on US foreign policy, as well as on the reputation of the US government; that of its allies; its enemies; for the future of journalism; and on the debate regarding freedom of information in Western democracies.
Nearly a month after The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and EL PAÍS began publishing the leaked information, we can draw at least one initial conclusion. Rather than sparking an acute state of supranational security crisis, as predicted by some observers, Washington and Europe's political elites have reacted with a mixture of irritation and embarrassed annoyance that is extremely informative as to the true scope and meaning of the WikiLeaks documents.
Before a single line had been published, there had been a barrage of public and private admonishment, with grave warnings emanating from Washington about irresponsibility and illegality. Editors involved in the project were told that publishing the material in our power - both the stories written by our reporters and the cables they were based on - would endanger dozens of lives, ruin diplomatic efforts in the fight against global terrorism and irrevocably weaken the international coalition led by the United States by exposing its allies to such embarrassing situations that it would hinder or prevent future cooperation.
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/english/Why/PAIS/chose/to/publish/the/leaks/elpepueng/20101223elpeng_3/Ten
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