The NYTimes has started posting its latest Wikileaks collaboration.
They’ve also posted “A Note to Readers: The Decision to Publish Diplomatic Documents“:
… Beginning Sunday, WikiLeaks intends to publish this archive on its Web site in stages, with each batch of documents related to a particular country or topic. Except for the timing of publication, the material was provided without conditions. Each news organization decided independently what to write about the cables…
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The Times has taken care to exclude, in its articles and in supplementary material, in print and online, information that would endanger confidential informants or compromise national security. The Times’s redactions were shared with other news organizations and communicated to WikiLeaks, in the hope that they would similarly edit the documents they planned to post online.
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After its own redactions, The Times sent Obama administration officials the cables it planned to post and invited them to challenge publication of any information that, in the official view, would harm the national interest. After reviewing the cables, the officials — while making clear they condemn the publication of secret material — suggested additional redactions. The Times agreed to some, but not all. The Times is forwarding the administration’s concerns to other news organizations and, at the suggestion of the State Department, to WikiLeaks itself. In all, The Times plans to post on its Web site the text of about 100 cables — some edited, some in full — that illuminate aspects of American foreign policy…
It would be interesting to compare the Wikileak source dumps with the NYTimes‘, and other publishers’, redacted versions. If only there were someone with the memetically selected high-IQ metatalents to fully grokk the PURE DATA in a post-gutenberg Sufi undertanding not available to us bioluddite olds!