N.Y. Times treated WikiLeaks as a source, Editor Keller tells Kalb audience

WikiLeaks is a source of information – not a journalistic organization, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller said on Monday's edition of The Kalb Report in the ballroom of the National Press Club.

WikiLeaks, like every source, comes with an agenda and a bias, Keller told Report host Marvin Kalb. Times' job was to determine if the information WikiLeaks provided was true and valid, he said. The information had to be verified, edited and put in context before the Times would publish it.

“WikiLeaks is not in my ballpark of journalism,” Keller told the packed crowd in the ballroom. “It’s an advocacy group or a vigilante group.”

The Times could not ignore the information, he said. Without the Times, WikiLeaks could have published the information on the Web, and it would have circulated through the blogosphere in a day.

The difference between Daniel Ellsberg and the publication of the secret Pentagon Papers in the 1971 and WikiLeaks, he said, is that Ellsberg needed the Times to get the information out. WikiLeaks did not.

Times Washington Bureau Chief Dean Baquet said the WikiLeaks documents added to the understanding of events behind the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

“Isn’t it unimaginable that the New York Times would have the arrogance to have this information and not publish it?” Baquet said.

Turning to the Times’ decision to impose a “pay wall” for regular online readers later this year, Keller said it would not stop occasional readers who drop into the site to get the information for free. And subscribers to the print edition will also get it for free.

“People who use the site as their newspaper should pay for it,” he said. “But we don’t want to lose a lot of readers.

The Times’ printed circulation is about a million daily, he said, but the paper reaches 50 million distinct readers a month online.

A video of the complete Kalb Report will be found here: http://kalb.gwu.edu/

-- Gil Klein, [email protected]