Poynter on the Record

By March, more than one million leaked documents from governments and corporations in Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Bloc will be available online in a bold new collective experiment in whistle-blowing. That is, of course, as long as you don't accept any of the conspiracy theories brewing that Wikileaks.org could be a front for the CIA or some other intelligence agency.

The website claims that it will use the same software platform as Wikipedia, the wildly popular online grassroots encyclopedia, to let users anonymously post documents and analyze them. In theory, this system will protect leakers' identities while exposing government and corporate corruption worldwide.

"Instead of a couple of academic specialists, Wikileaks will provide a forum for the entire global community to examine any document relentlessly for credibility, plausibility, veracity and falsifiability," its organizers write on the site's FAQ page. "They will be able to interpret documents and explain their relevance to the public. If a document is leaked from the Chinese government, the entire Chinese dissident community can freely scrutinize and discuss it..." ...

... "For journalists, I think [Wikileaks] is actually a good thing," says Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institue. "This could be a place where they could go to seek documentation of something they already have some other reporting on or to find further documentation." Who knows, they might even find the smoking gun that reveals what shadowy organization is behind Wikileaks.
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