Wikileaks ruins investigative journalism

Wikileaks has made a scoop with its documents on the Afghan war yet the renowned papers researched and published the same facts years ago, writes the Neue Zürcher Zeitung: "The masochism of a profession that doesn't attach much value to its own achievements and the public's one-sided perception have acquired new dimensions with Wikileaks. There have always been people who out of revenge, greed for profit or genuine indignation have leaked the confidential documents of their employers to a newspaper. Investigative journalism would be unthinkable without these whistleblowers. But Wikileaks is taking this phenomenon to a new level. The platform maintains that in three years it has published 1.2 million documents - for which Wikileaks would have had to receive, examine and publish more than 1,000 reports daily. One may doubt the veracity of these figures but the platform's impact can't be denied. It reverses the normal media ranking order: the New York Times and the Spiegel don't do the investigative journalism, they just print the investigative products of others."

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