As Rupert Murdoch attempts to manage fallout from the News Corp. scandal on an expanding number of fronts–including a hacker group threatening a collaboration with major media outlets to distribute a purported trove of News of the World emails–his company may be faced with even more leaks from current and former employees.Murdochleaks, a WikiLeaks-style site that went live this weekend, encourages whistleblowers both inside and outside the company to submit “tips or evidence of wrongdoing relating to Rupert Murdoch’s affiliated institutions.”
The site claims that “credible submissions will be distributed to our network of journalists (actual journalists) and law enforcement agencies in the U.K., the U.S. and Australia. We will not publish anything ourselves. We do not accept rumor, opinion or material that is publicly available elsewhere.””With the recent phone hacking scandal surrounding Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World and other aspects of his empire, it’s become evident that the fourth estate has failed so it’s time to invoke the fifth estate,” a mission statement on the site reads.
As the Guardian’s Charles Arthur pointed out, the site is hosted by CloudFlare, a “service increasingly popular among hackers seeking to cover their tracks.” It’s unclear whether Murdochleaks is affiliated with Anonymous or Lulzsec, the hacker group that claims to be working with news organizations on a release of News of the World emails.
Interestingly, WikiLeaks-style technology is a reporting power News Corp. has itself tried to leverage. In May, the Wall Street Journal launched SafeHouse, a standalone site for leaking tips, intel, documents or files directly to editors in the newsroom. “If a user prefers to be considered a confidential source before agreeing to provide materials to the Journal, the user can fill out a secure online form, and a Journal editor will follow up directly,” the press release stated.
(It’s worth noting that the Journal did not participate in the recent WikiLeaks release of diplomatic cables, and—in a much criticized editorial defending Rupert Murdoch and the company amid the exploding scandal—the paper trashed the Guardian for doing so.)Both the Guardian and New York Times have been working on their own anonymous submission systems for months. – Yahoonews
