Wikileaks journalism: not wiki, not leaks, not journalism

Here's my latest Sun column on WikiLeaks:

Julian Assange, the boss of WikiLeaks, gave himself the online nickname Mendax. It means liar in Latin. It's a good fit for him.

Take the word WikiLeaks itself. Wiki is a Hawaiian word that means quick. But its meaning on the Internet is different. A wiki is a website that allows many people to collaborate on something quickly - like Wikipedia, the encyclopedia anyone in the world can edit.

So it doesn't just mean quick. It means quick and democratic.

Which is the opposite of WikiLeaks.

Only Assange, the unelected boss of WikiLeaks, gets to decide what's published.

Wikileaks' original mandate was to expose repressive countries such as China, Russia and Iran. But Assange vetoed that. He's all about being anti-American.

But wiki is only half the name. The other half is leaks. A leak implies someone on the inside of an institution voluntarily releases information.

The thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents WikiLeaks has published were not leaked by someone with lawful access to them. They were stolen. One of the alleged thieves, a U.S. soldier named Bradley Manning, told a fellow hacker he was feeling sad and conflicted because of his sexuality, and "no one took any notice of me," and his theft might change that. He was about to be kicked out of the Army for assault, so he had to act fast.

That’s not a leak on principle. That's an act of sabotage by an emotional infant.

Does WikiLeaks distance itself from Manning's alleged theft? The opposite: Its logo now has the words "Free Bradley" added to it.

Is stealing secret information justifiable if it blows the whistle on wrongdoing? Perhaps. But that's not what WikiLeaks does. It doesn’t embarrass wrongdoers. It exposes and endangers real whistleblowers.

WikiLeaks published a document that named an Algerian activist covertly aiding the democracy movement there. It identified a Venezuelan reporter secretly exposing the appalling conditions of hospitals for the poor. Both are real whistleblowers. Both were outed by Assange.

Assange admits WikiLeaks will probably end up with "blood on our hands." But he's not too worried.

Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can't believe their good luck.

So it’s not wiki. It's not leaks. It's not whistleblowing. It's not even journalism. Assange got his hands on e-mails sent by Venezuela's ambassador to Argentina. He tried to auction them to the highest bidder - presumably to Chavez, too. That's not journalism. That's a shakedown. Maybe even a willingness to keep secrets, for the right price.

Then there's Assange's threat that if he's treated improperly - say, if he's forced to stand trial for rape in Sweden - he'll release another batch of secrets, he has labelled "insurance."

If a real journalist had real news, he'd publish it for its own sake. But by using his "news" as a bargaining chip, he gives away his game. It's not journalism. It's espionage. It's a weapon of war. And if police try to hold him accountable to the law, he'll use his weapon.

Assange revealed secret U.S. counterterrorism work in Yemen. That will likely end now, and Yemen may fall to al-Qaida.

Do you doubt if WikiLeaks was around in the 1940s it would have tipped off the Nazis to D-Day or leaked Anne Frank's hiding place too?