Editorial: The #GuptaLeaks revealed

Necropolis

Necropolis

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The two newspapers had access to a trove of about 650 e-mails sent between the Gupta brothers, their associates and others.

Today Scorpio, the Daily Maverick’s newly launched investigative unit, and amaBhungane, the independent investigative non-profit, start publishing stories from a much, much wider trove: a few hundred gigabytes of information containing between 100,000 and 200,000 unique e-mails and a host of other documents. This we call the #GuptaLeaks.

Why did we not publish before? Why did we let ourselves be “scooped”?

The answer is in what we shall call a story of heroes and the misguided.

The heroes are whistle-blowers who may be risking their lives to expose the truth, and others who assisted in the process. For now, for their safety, they shall remain unsung.

The misguided are people whom we had trusted and let into the process, but who took a copy and without our knowledge caused a selection to be leaked to the two newspapers last week. Their motive was short-term political gain.

They seem to have thought they could influence the ANC National Executive Committee to recall the president. They failed.

Our approach was different, based on journalistic values. We had the information for some time, but held back in the interests of in-depth inquiry and the safety of the whistle-blowers.

The first consideration was informed by the nature of the information. There was some low-hanging fruit, yes – many examples of which were in the sample that was leaked to the two newspapers.

But much of the data is such that it requires a painstaking assembly of pieces of a very large puzzle, combining what is in the #GuptaLeaks with external information.

The second consideration is Journalism 101. One does not publish before taking all reasonable steps to secure sources who may be in harm’s way. Full stop. Those who caused the sample to be leaked to the two newspapers appear to have put expediency above the whistle-blowers’ safety.

Our plan had been to research thoroughly, for months if needed be, to get a sizeable proportion of the really important stories ready before first publication. That way, should there have been any attempt to stop us after first publication, we could have put it all out at once. That too is Journalism 101.

So why do we start publishing now?

The horse has bolted. The whistle-blowers’ safety no longer lies in delaying publication, but in us declaring the full extent of what is out there. Shutting up the whistle-blowers will not plug the leak because we have all they had.

Coming for us will not help either. It was our plan eventually to place the full #GuptaLeaks on a platform accessible to the wider media for further investigation.

We have now brought that forward and placed the full #GuptaLeaks in the care of an offshore organisation which will load it to a secure platform, from where it will soon be accessible to many bona fide journalists, including the Sunday Times and City Press. We bear them no grudge as they did not know the context.

This information is both too dangerous and too important not to share.

Let the people know. DM
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Source
 
I heard about it on 702.

This information is both too dangerous and too important not to share.
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One wonders how hectic is the ride that we are in for.
 
We have now brought that forward and placed the full #GuptaLeaks in the care of an offshore organisation which will load it to a secure platform
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None more robust than WikiLeaks I suspect ...
 
 
Urg... I used to get excited about every new wave of revelations, but now its just something to fill newspaper pages. They all will ride this out as well and probably profit somewhere of it.
 
yebocan said:
unfortunately, ain't going to happen. he has outplayed all....2019 the ANC will be booted out, but fear there will not be much of state left. We are in a state of paralysis.
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This is also very unlikely. They will be with us post-2019 as the ruling party.
 
Curious that the Guptas are not threatening legal (which they never follow through on) this go round and have instead resorted to calling fake news and asking to examine the emails. Why would they even need to examine the emails when they can just compare them to what they have on their servers.
 
Just to think the whole load shedding thing was engineered to rob South Africans. These people should be handed to the people for justice.
 
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