“I would have done it anonymously” when the girl in the middle of the Australian football “dickileaks” scandal was asked what she would have done differently after being ordered by a court not to post any more nude photos of star players she had obtained through a relationship with one of their team mates.
Having unsuccessfully tried to pass them over the local Melbourne press, who instead tipped off the governing Australian Football League, the girl posted them on Facebook and was quickly shut down by lawyers and a hostile local media more concerned about their access to star footballers than the ethics or behaviour of their beloved sports teams.
The lesson has been learned with events like this and the systemic corporate shut down of Wikileaks; that the media, big business, governments and the media cannot be trusted.
For anybody with sensitive information that upsets people in power – be it Julian Assange, a girl with nude footballer photos or a US pilot posting inconsistencies in the Transport Security Administration’s policies – it is essential to get your message out, you don’t have to wait for a producer or editor to decide to publish the story based upon whatever news values they think have priority.
The next wave of Wikileakers won’t be waiting for Julian Assange to do deals with The Guardian, New York Times or Der Spiegel, they’ll be setting up anonymous websites on services like Blogger or WordPress and hiding their IP address to publish the details directly.
Sure most of them will get caught, but instead of finding the leaker in ten minutes, as would happen should they post on Facebook or contact a journalist more loyal to powerbrokers than their readers, it may take the authorities weeks or months to find them and shut them down.
For the media – who have largely sat on the girl’s story since it first broke in May last year, kept silent on the TSA’s flaws and ignored much of the obvious that is stated in the Wikileaks cables – they are no longer the trusted brokers. Too many journalists and media proprietors have cosy, safe relationships with the organisations they should be reporting upon.
For those journalists, their cosy world is over. No longer are they the trusted gate keepers with the privileges that come with the position.
The next generation of media proprietors and journalists understand this and are figuring out the ways to regain trust as sources of factual, useful information.
Digital technology means there will be many Deep Throats and Daniel Ellsbergs in the future, while they won’t need a newspaper editor to get the message out, a channel to vouch for their veracity will be needed and that’s where trusted journalists will matter.
Wikileaks and similar direct publishing channels won’t kill media, but it’s going to be a very different world from that of the 20th Century.