Big Leaks, No Meetings, Shoe Leather Reserved

Michael Hedges May 2, 2016 - Follow on Twitter

Clandestine meetings on dark street corners, secrets passed silently, details checked diligently, the story written brilliantly and published under a tough editor’s watchful eye has narrated journalism’s highest calling, bringing truth to power. Real life is less dramatic. The digital age has brought new tools to the newsroom and a far different practice. The result is measured the same.

In just about one week the first Panama Papers data-set will become available in searchable form. Wide and well-organized international news coverage in early April revealing client activities of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca is moving to a new level. Anybody in the world will soon be able to name search cousins, neighbors, C-list actors, cello players and dictators in hopes of finding links to tawdry tax dodging or money laundering.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) will be releasing to a dedicated website names, names and more names but not phone numbers. “The database will not include records of bank accounts and financial transactions, emails and other correspondence, passports and telephone numbers,” said the ICIJ statement, widely reported (April 28). “The selected and limited information is being published in the public interest.” Raw data, all those scanned documents, will not be released, limiting the possibility of revealing the source or sources.

German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung found itself unable to cope with the massive 2.6 terabyte, 11.3 million page document dump offered in early 2015 by an anonymous source and the ICIJ, experienced in such matters, was called in. “The source wanted neither financial compensation nor anything else in return, apart from a few security measures,” reported the newspaper (April 4). “My life is in danger,” said the source. “We will only chat over encrypted files. No meeting, ever.”

The global headline tsunami that followed soaked a few politicians; Iceland’s prime minister and Spain’s industry minister resigned while Malta’s energy minister has been reassigned lessor duties. Other politically exposed people (PEPs) ducked for cover, denying everything - or almost everything - and preferring to fight it out on the ground. In general, where corrupt practices have long been a cornerstone of life the Panama Papers removed all doubt.

Links to media organizations, their directors and proprietors have been detected within the clients of Mossack Fonseca. Indirect as it was, an ex-wife’s name appeared, Juan Luis Cebrián, CEO of major Spanish and Portuguese media house Prisa, joined the list of assumed tax dodgers. He expressed displeasure by filing a lawsuit against ICIJ partners television channel La Sexta and online news portals El Confidencial and El Diario for “libelous information and comments released by these media.”

Two board directors of Irish media house Independent News and Media (INM) have or have had financial relationships with offshore companies named in the Mossack Fonseca files. Vehement denials of wrongdoing were released.

Several governments quickly followed with directives to investigate tax havens and bring cheats to heel. The European Commission called for investigations. None of it was particularly new as rooting out corruption is an ever-popular political cause. News organizations know this. Conspiracy theories falling out of the mouths of less adept politicians and celebrities made the headlines even bigger.

As it would happen the trial of alleged LuxLeaks leakers and the French reporter who received those interesting documents got underway last week in Luxembourg. The material “discovered” by former PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) auditor Antoine Deltour revealed very big international companies getting very big tax breaks by establishing legal homes in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. PwC called it theft. Independent investigative reporter Edouard Perrin produced the documentary Cash Investigation for public television channel France 2, broadcast in 2012, excerpts appearing on BBC Panorama.

Those documents and related data supplied by former PwC tax specialist Raphael Halet were presented to the world by the ICIJ consortium of news organizations in November 2014. "After (seeing) the report (on France 2), I was able to better understand the content of the documents,” said M.Halet at the trial, quoted by Luxemburger Wort (April 29). “These were practices that shocked me.”

When not chasing tech giants like Google (now Alphabet) for high crimes and misdomeanors, EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has since LuxLeaks given certain attention to tax-home shopping that deprives some Member States of tax revenues while enriching others. Attorneys representing the three LuxLeaks defendants requested Commissioner Vestager’s attendance at the trail, perhaps to testify. In January she had voiced general support for whistleblowers, a status the defendants claim. Alas, she declined the invitation, reported politico.eu (April 27). European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker’s previous job was prime minister of Luxembourg, by coincidence during period the LuxLeaks material was collected.

Protecting sources is a basic tenet of investigative journalism and the ICIJ has learned a lot since LuxLeaks. Dark clouds, 30-digit double passwords and encryption software donated by Australian cybersecurity specialist Nuix kept the Panama Papers investigation under wraps while allowing 400 investigative journalists to pour over it all and share what they were learning. The leaker’s (or leakers) identity remains a secret.

There is, they say, more to come. “It was like falling down a Wikipedia hole that is full of mirrors,” said Fusion investigative digital editor Adam Weinstein (fusion.net April 4). Fusion and acclaimed news agency McClatchy were the only US news organizations participating. “It’s such a massive trove of information that there will probably be new revelations surfacing for a long time to come.”

Another lesson learned by the ICIJ is the importance of carefully selecting journalistic partners. Several heavy-lifters in the news business were left out of the initial Panama Papers release. Collaboration within a select team resonated more with the ICIJ, which was formed by the Center for Public Integrity, than any possible advantage from allowing individual outlets or, even, reporters to create their own exclusives.

Today’s investigative journalists are a generation separated from the earth-shattering reporting, literally and figuratively, commonly known as the Pentagon Papers and Watergate that exposed political corruption in the United States. The New York Times seralized extracts from documents leaked by a government official illuminating public deception in the conduct of the Viet Nam war. The Washington Post began its own investigation centering, largely, on government officials attempting to silence Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Eventually, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were approached by another whistleblower who whispered clues of the Watergate scandal. Both episodes are still studied at journalism schools and, certainly, spy schools.

In the digital age, the individual whistleblower armed with a secret or bag of paper has been superseded by big data. Persons wishing, for various reasons, to bring sunlight to wrongdoing, real or perceived, still seek out news organizations as platforms. Daniel Ellsberg first took what he knew up the proverbial chain of command. Rebuked, he turned to the New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan. Woodward and Bernstein’s source - Deep Throat, FBI associate director Mark Felt - lived in absolute anonymity, revealed only upon his death. That famous line - “follow the money” - existed only in the movie.

The most well-known leakers of digital age - Julian Assange and Edward Snowden - sought, arguably, their piece of the limelight and developed their own platforms. Like the LuxLeaks and Panama Papers leakers they had massive data files to share. Their reward, to date, has been telling. Mr.Assange remains a guest at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, Mr.Snowden is a guest of the Russian Federation.

Two aspects of the Panama Papers and LuxLeaks reporting are new and different. One begets the other: huge amounts of data and cooperation. “At a time of diminishing resources in newsrooms,” said long-time Guardian reporter Luke Harding, quoted by politico.eu (April 4), “I think this model of transnational cooperation is the way to go. Everybody’s broke, but if we hold hands we can do amazing stuff.”

That “amazing stuff” doesn’t simply arrive. “The freedom journalists have to report critically about an amoral wealth-concentrating economic system depends not only on freedom from government censorship, but on freedom from corporate constraints,” observed University of Texas journalism professor Robert Jensen in a blog post (April 19). “Media owners rarely have much interest in funding and promoting such reporting, unless there are social movements demanding it.”

The film dramatization of Woodward and Bernstein’s best selling book All The President’ Men about their quest for light amidst the dark was released 40 years ago. It won four Oscars a year later and was featured this past weekend in Los Angeles at the TMC Classic Film Festival. This year’s Academy Awards bestowed two Oscars - best picture and best original screenplay - on Spotlight, the low-budget, limited-release film about the Boston Globe’s renowned investigative unit breaking open details of child abuse by Roman Catholic priests and the systematic cover-up by Church officials.

“Besides both films demonstrating the societal impact of shoe-leather reporting, they share a strand of actual DNA,” noted the LA Times (April 28). “Ben Bradlee Jr., the son of (Jason) Robards’ character in All the President’s Men, followed in his father’s footsteps, working as an editor at the Boston Globe, and is a character in Spotlight, played by John Slattery.”

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