Wikileaks and context

Raffi Khatchadourian has a measured, insightful look at Wikileaks, the whistle-blowing website that published the Collateral Murder video of an American Apache crew. Predominantly, it's a profile of Wikileaks' will-o-the-wisp founder, Julian Assange, and his messianic quest to bring sensitive documents into the public domain. You understand so much more about Wikileaks when you know that Assange once spent two months straight working in a room in Paris on a new story. He is an obsessive, and he lets his obsession blind him to some of the ethical difficulties around his work.

Collateral Murder was a game-changing scoop. As a journalist, you can only admire Assange's balls in bringing the video to the world. But one also has sympathy with the view of the American general, who said "there's no before, and no after." The video is entirely shorn of useful context. Journalism, at its best, should aim at the truth. Collateral Murder was highly truthful in one sense - the video is basically unmediated. But how can we know the more significant truth about the incidents shown in the video without access to a raft of other facts?

Anyway, a fine piece of reporting - and well worth a look, because Wikileaks, or websites like it, will play a significant role in the future of journalism.