WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has warned whistleblowers to steer clear of rival whistleblowing sites set up by mainstream media outlets, saying that almost no website other than his own could be trusted.
The Australian freedom of information activist said people considering leaking sensitive information could not trust confidential sites such as a new one created by the Wall Street Journal, saying that Wikileaks was one of just a few that could be guaranteed to protect their sources.
Before taking the risk of giving a media outlet confidential information whistleblowers should check whether the organisation had secure technology and a track record of standing up to authority, he said, insisting that the Wall Street Journal "doesn't measure up on any criteria."
The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corporation, which also publishes The Australian, but Mr Assange did offer some support to the Rupert Murdoch-led media group by defending its British Sunday newspaper, the News of the World over its phone hacking scandal.
Mr Assange launched a withering attack on the Guardian newspaper for its exhaustive coverage of the News of the World scandal, which has seen one reporter jailed and others questioned by police for tapping into the mobile phone voice messages of celebrities.
Newspapers which highlighted the phone-hacking scandal were threatening the free flow of information by making it difficult for media outlets to publish the contents of intercepted telephone calls, said Mr Assange, who claimed that the Guardian and the New York Times had partly been motivated by their corporate rivalry with News Corporation.
Siding with the tabloid newspaper famed for its scoops about the private lives of celebrities, Mr Assange said "a middle-class moral majority that embodies itself in the Guardian" had derided such stories.
In a surprisingly strong defence of populist journalism the internet activist said the media's test of what was in the "public interest" should be shaped by what the public or "the proletariat" was interested in.
Mr Assange has had bitter fallings out with the Guardian and the New York Times, which worked closely with him last year before eventually criticising some of his methods and reporting extensively on allegations that he had committed sex crimes in Sweden.
Mr Assange's defence of the tabloid newspaper came at a ceremony in London to award him a gold medal from the Sydney Peace Institute for his whistleblowing work.
"When organisations like the Guardian write over 100 articles on the News of the World being involved in putting in default passwords into voice mailboxes - because that is what we are actually talking about here - they are taking space from other things and they also have other agendas at work," he said.
"The other agendas at work are attacking newspaper rivals in the same market, it is their biggest rival in the same market, it should be obvious to everyone."
"The New York Times became involved because similarly it wants to attack the Wall Street Journal in its market."
Mr Assange said that Wikileaks had aired some major political issues in Peru by publishing leaked intercepts of telephone conversations between politicians and business leaders.
For the Guardian and New York Times "to engender a climate where that is hard to do is extremely dangerous."
"The British press should be very careful what they are doing in relation to spending time on that as opposed to all the other injustices they could be spending their time on."
Mr Assange said the media "misuses its power in approximate proportion to the size of the particular industrial grouping and News Corporation is a very large industrial grouping and it uses it power accordingly" but that did not justify the attacks on the News of the World.
To criticise stories about the private lives of celebrities "is to say that the interests of the proletariat which are the readers of the News of the World are insignificant and are not important and that the middle-class moral majority that embodies itself in the Guardian is to be the arbiter of what is important and what is not important."
"And if the reality is that the readers of the News of the World, and there are very many, find a particular thing to be of significance, a particular character or personality to be influential to their lives, the information about how that person truly behaves is also influential to their lives."
"It also seems to me it is a way to get into the Guardian news about celebrities and about the tabloid salacious rumours, you can just report on what the News of the World has done."
"So generally I say that the public interest is to be determined by what the public is interested in because otherwise...who is going to determine the public interest if it is not the public, is it going to be a self appointed committee of people?
"Well who appoints those people, who appoints that committee... how do we know that process won't become corrupted?"
Mr Assange said he applauded the idea of media organisations such as the WSJ and the broadcaster Al-Jazeera setting up their own sites to confidentially receive whistle-blowing information but the reality was that whistleblowers should be careful about who they trusted.
"So for the WSJ and for similar organisations that whistle blowers are thinking about dealing with it is not just the technology it is a combination of the technology and the people. The technology is opaque and very complex and sophisticated if done right so how are you to assess whether technology has been done right?"
"How are you to assess whether these people will sell you out, as the WSJ permits in its terms and conditions to sell you out any time they like?
"You have to look at the people who are running the organisation, what is their history and their experience. Have they stood up to pressure before and have they managed themselves well before so there is actually very, very few organisations. "There are almost no organisations other than us that have that track record.
"On individual journalists there is just a few with a track record of not buckling when they receive pressure and so I would advise everyone who is thinking a bout disclosing confidential information to look very closely at the track record of the people that they may be dealing with - but don't google their name from your home."
Peter Wilson @'The Australian'
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