Che cos’è (e cosa non è) WikiLeaks [eng]

Redazione — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 14:22:33 +0000

WikiLeaks launched publicly in 2007. The site, led by Assange and run by 1,200 international volunteers (as of Jan. 2010, The Guardian writes) and a handful of full-time workers, “is all about opening up secrets,” NPR wrote. Correspondence among the site’s workers is exchanged via encrypted chats and people are identified by initials, not names, The New Yorker wrote. [...] WikiLeaks’ leaks in the past few years vary in importance. They include the Standard Operating Procedures at Guantánamo Bay’s Camp Delta; a batch of “Climategate” e-mails from the University of East Anglia, in England; and e-mails from Sarah Palin’s personal Yahoo account, The New Yorker wrote, calling the site “a media insurgency,” instead of an organization. The site claims to run leaked documents through a forensic analysis. However, it mentions limitations on their vetting practices due to prohibitive cost of forgery detection forensics when attempting to determine if a document is legitimate or not. According to its website, WikiLeaks believes that it hasn’t published any fake documents so far. However, the site’s description creates wiggle room for any liability if they have, by suggesting that it is possible for it to have published a bad document. But it excuses that by publishing it, “the broader community” of people in the world can judge for themselves if any document is authentic. In other words, let others do the verification and pay for it.

Leggi l’intero articolo di Sydney Smith (primo di due approfondimenti) su StinkyJournalism.org.

Luci e ombre da Amburgo

Sergio Maistrello — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 18:23:07 +0000

Craig Silverman pubblica un esaustivo resoconto della conferenza sul fact checking organizzata ad Amburgo da Der Spiegel, di fatto la prima di cui si abbia notizia.

Nearly all of us who spoke in English couldn’t help but note what a pleasure it was to participate in, wonder of wonders, a conference about fact checking. God bless those crazy Germans. None of us were willing to offer the checker’s guarantee that it was the first ever such gathering on record, but it was the only one we could think of.

[leggi tutto su Regret the Error]

Alcuni fatti interessanti che emergono dalla sintesi di Silverman:

Der Spiegel ha un reparto di fact checking composto da 70 persone full-time;
il New Yorker, la testata americana con il maggior numero di checker, arriva a 16;
il fact checking è in declino in tutto il mondo, le testate investono sempre meno in questa funzione.

Nel post di Regret the Error ci sono alcuni filmati e molte slide, decisamente interessanti. Tra queste ultime, uno studio comparato tra Stati Uniti, Svizzera e Italia in merito al numero e alla tipologia di errori rintracciati sui quotidiani. Non ci facciamo una grande figura, naturalmente.

FactCheck.it » New Yorker

Che cos’è (e cosa non è) WikiLeaks [eng]

Luci e ombre da Amburgo