Gawker has had enough of the tight-lipped Wikileaks and its elusive founder, Julian Assange, it would seem. According to a blog post this morning, the media outlet decries the website to be “about as open as North Korea”. In response, it has launched the hilariously-named Wikileakileaks, “your source for Wikileaks-related secrets, documents and rumors”.
Gawker writes that, “it’s time to give Wikileaks the Wikileaks treatment – expose it to the same sort of radical transparency it advocates and see what turns up”.
The Wikileakileaks (no, it’s not a rare Hawaiin fruit) page offers a laundry list of what Gawker’s looking for, including documents relating to Assange’s recent sexual molestation charges in Sweden, information on finance and funding or information on upcoming leaks.
According to Wikileakileaks, the editorial process for posting any tips or leaks will be using “the highly-scientific criteria of ‘does it look legit?'”
Gawker seems to see a contradiction in a media organization that publishes sensitive governmental and banking secrets yet wants to keep secret the real identities of its staff. The collection of “leaks” so far looks like a concerted attack on the site and its founder, who has cut Gawker off, according to today’s announcement. Gawker’s hatred of the organization is no secret, after all. It has gone so far as to call Assange a “megalomaniacal prick”.
One of the things Wikileakileaks is in search of is “information regarding upcoming leaks”. We have to wonder, is Gawker really looking to out whistle-blowers and expose them? While we would like to know the motives behind media organizations and what they publish, it seems contradictory to the general effort of exposing information to the light of day by calling out those people that put themselves on the line to expose it.
What do you think – should all media be as transparent as the governments and institutions it looks to assess or is there good reason for keeping staff, finances and “information regarding upcoming leaks” secret?
