Guardian

Submitted by Bella Magnani

Oh dear, Nick Davies, what went wrong?

Back in 2008 you wrote a book called Flat Earth News, a meticulously researched and scathing analysis of journalistic corruption and murky practices in British newspapers. You told us: “the modern newsroom is a place of bungs and bribes, whose occupants forage illicitly for scoops in databases and dustbins. Newspapers hold others to account while hushing up their own unsavoury methods. Self-regulation does not always offer fair (or any) redress to citizens who have had lies written about them. Stories are often pompous, biased or plain wrong. Some close scrutiny is not only legitimate: it is overdue.” Ed: The quote in this paragraph is quoting a review of Nick Davies book printed in the Guardian (see link), not Nick Davies book as is erroneously implied.

Ugh! Sounds nasty. So glad you took the moral high ground there and called so passionately for journalistic standards to be above reproach, lest readers end up “soaked in disinformation”. Warming to your theme, in another Guardian article - Our media have become mass producers of distortion - you let rip:

“Where once journalists were active gatherers of news, now they have gene rally become mere passive processors of unchecked, second-hand material, much of it contrived by PR to serve some political or commercial interest. Not journalists, but churnalists. An industry whose primary task is to filter out falsehood has become so vulnerable to manipulation that it is now involved in the mass production of falsehood, distortion and propaganda.”

WL Central published an article two days ago, outlining the extraordinarily heavy handed redaction by the Guardian of a Bulgarian cable. Wikileaks tweeted the article, saying it was "Another very serious example of the Guardian "cable cooking" in violation of WikiLeaks agreements". Guardian investigations editor David Leigh responded with "@wikileaks Another stupid lie from #Assange alleging 'cable censorship' by #Guardian, (stuck with UK libel laws as he knows). What a liar!"

Wikileaks did not however, accuse the Guardian of cable censorship, they accused them of "cable cooking". A closer inspection of what happened in this one instance of cable redaction by the Guardian indicates that the Wikileaks description was closer to the mark. In fact, an examination of this document brings a feeling that the world will be in for Cablegate 2.0 when we finally get to see these cables without Guardian redaction.

The redaction on this particular cable is best shown here. The parts redacted by the Guardian are in green.

The New York Times, the Guardian, and WL Central have all reported on a new national-unity government being formed in Tunisia today. However, the NYT and the Guardian have delivered notably different accounts of what is unfolding in Tunisia, with the Guardian stressing national unity and concessions, and the NYT concentrating on the continued unrest and dissatisfaction. As reported by the Guardian:

The government hopes the new coalition cabinet will help to stabilise the north African country of 10 million, which is still in turmoil after the sudden collapse of Ben Ali's rule last week amid a popular uprising. "We are committed to intensifying our efforts to re-establish calm and peace in the hearts of all Tunisians," Ghannouchi told a news conference. "Our priority is security, as well as political and economic reform." He named Chebbi, founder of the opposition PDP party, as minister of regional development.

And the NYT reported:

In response to Glenn Greenwald's coverage of the Wikileaks-Guardian-Tsvangirai controversy and the Guardian's recent retraction, The Atlantic's Max Fisher tweeted an interesting point, which throws into confusion the issue of exactly what time Wikileaks released the 09HARARE1004 cable:

Max Fisher:

@ggreenwald Not trying to start a fight, but WL time stamp looks to be older than Guardian's? http://bit.ly/ghUUKc http://bit.ly/hHtH2u

4:39PM Jan 12th 2011

and:

Max Fisher:

@ggreenwald Correct me if I'm wrong, but from these, it looks like WikiLeaks published 21 minutes before the Guardian.

4:40PM Jan 12th 2011

Fisher is pointing out that the timestamp in the header of the 09HARARE1004 cable released on the Wikileaks website reads "2010-12-08 21:09"

The publication date of The Guardian's version of the cable reads "Wednesday 8 December 2010 21.30 GMT."

This would appear to indicate that Wikileaks published the cable on their website 21 minutes before The Guardian did.

This is an important point, and it raises an issue I have been contacted about recently.