So here we have this remarkable invention which, at the touch of a button, revolutionises the ways in which we can communicate. It allows the dissemination of information to countless people around the world. The operation can be carried out with complete anonymity. Suddenly, leaking and whistleblowing can be done on a grand scale – so who needs time-consuming investigative journalism? I refer, of course, to the arrival of the photocopier.
It was the photocopier which, in 1971, allowed Daniel Ellsberg, a former US marine commander and Pentagon official, to take 7,000 pages of top secret documents about the US decision-making process in Vietnam and disseminate them, first to The New York Times, then to the Washington Post and finally to a series of other newspapers across the US. In this way he established himself as one of the most significant figures in the history of whistleblowing and leaking. The photocopier was hailed at the time as a fabulous conduit for information, as, in many ways, it was. There must be many grateful journalists who have received, often anonymously, the fruits of some troublemaker’s afternoon at the Xerox machine.
Now, forty years after the Pentagon Papers, we have a combination of the internet, WikiLeaks, Twitter and “citizen journalism”, all changing the ways in which we communicate and digest information. But do they really alter the basics of reporting much more than the photocopier did?
Written by Duncan Campbell – Former Guardian crime correspondent.
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