Baltileaks: New Media Targets Old Ways

From virtually the moment it debuted earlier this year, upstart site Baltileaks has made a steady noise at the intersection of politics, media, and civic engagement.

Dissatisfied with what they deem the "culture of secrecy" around Baltimore City government, the site's founders in February began anonymously releasing documents they consider of interest to the public good. These documents aren't covert emails that could blow the lid off of developer-politico relations in Baltimore; at least, not yet. Everything Baltileaks has published as of press time is publicly available information.   

By making ample use of Twitter and other new media tools, however, the site seeks to become an amplifier for the kind of relevant and useful information that, for a variety of reasons, doesn't always get attention. Baltileaks further hopes to harness the power of the crowd to build off of their findings and do the investigative work that traditional media outlets are too busy or understaffed to tackle.

The question is, will it have a long-term impact? If the info is already available and few people are talking about it, will the protestations of an anonymous circle of concerned geeks get a sustained reaction from the citizens of Baltimore?

Anonymity and Goals

In an email interview, a Baltileaks representative compared the "military-industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned against" to a "political-developer" complex that has risen to excessive influence in Baltimore.  

"It's not enough to simply expose the politicians as incompetent or corrupt," the representative says. "We also need to expose the developers and power-players that enable them, mostly behind closed doors."

The irony is that the figures behind Baltileaks themselves have chosen to remain behind closed doors. This has caused some observers to cry foul, claiming that anonymity allows the founders to indulge personal bias without fear of reprisals. Baltileaks, for their part, argues that anonymity makes them impervious to pressure from Baltimore power players.

"Because we are anonymous, we may obtain tips and leads that other journalists can't," a representative writes. "It's unfortunate, but many journalists are also beholden to the 'political-developer' complex. To retain access to sources, many journalists have to 'play nice' and pick and choose what they'll report. We have no such limitations; for us, everybody is fair game."

Community activist Adam Meister faults the Baltileaks founders for choosing to remain anonymous.

"You need to be able to stand behind what you say," Meister says. "Those being accused of wrongdoing will just say, 'Oh it's that anonymous site again, if they have a problem with me why can't they use their real name? Obviously this must be politically motivated and it should be ignored.' They will always be able to defend themselves against an anonymous accuser by making their own accusations about that accuser, which might be true since we have no clue who the accuser is."

Still, Meister supports the site in its efforts to pull back the curtain on the politician-developer relationships that it contends shape the city.

"Sites like Baltileaks will have an impact on the city if they keep on digging and keep on exposing," he says. "Right now not many people know of these sites. It will only take the bringing down of one leader to change the political scene forever."

Baltileaks As a Conduit?

Eric Easton, a media law expert and professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, predicts the expansion of whistleblower sites into specific niches. He points out the influence of Wikileaks on national news coverage as a clue to what impact Baltileaks could have on local coverage.

"Nearly every day, we see newspaper stories sourced to one of the cables released by Wikileaks," Easton says. "That's not just stories about the leaks, but real news stories that would not have been discovered but for the leaks. I see no reason why the same thing would not happen on a local scale."

For its part, Baltimore City recently revealed its OpenBaltimore data initiative -- a site that segments publicly available data into easily digested sets. Residents can view info on public facilities and explore government agencies, businesses can survey procurement requests, and visitors can choose from Baltimore's tourist attractions (the utility of which on a transparency-in-government site is debatable).

As you click around, you don't get the sense that you're stumbling onto insider information. Convenient? Yes. Disruptive? Hardly.

Perhaps this is part of what fuels the operatives behind Baltileaks and other sites like it � the sense that token gestures of transparency just aren't good enough. That the democratization of information isn't open to negotiation or shades of meaning, and that no matter how good the intentions, political leadership won't deliver the level of transparency that the web and social media are now capable of providing.

Whether or not their message takes root, however, remains an open question.


Jason Policastro is a freelance writer.


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Photos by Arianne Teeple:

- City Hall in Baltimore
- Eric B. Easton, Professor of Law, University of Baltimore School of Law
- Eric B. Easton writes on a notepad
- Construction in Baltimore
- Construction in Baltimore