10 ms·

Süddeutsche Zeitung Became the Go-To Place for Leaks Like the Paradise Papers

291 points by sasvari 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
erikb 9y ago
So what is the answer to the question how a German Newspaper became the go-to place for leaks like the Paradise Papers? The article doesn't explain anything. It just states what happened as a list of totally unrelated things.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  At its best, the New Yorker presents well thought-out pieces with an artistic flair. At the worst, you get this kind of "action painting with words" nonsense which adds up to nothing and goes nowhere. I wouldn't mind if they at least added a link at the bottom to some actual information, with a a little note saying, "Oops, sorry we disappeared up our own bungs again!" Since they won't do it... https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/paradise-and-panama-papers-a-look-into-how-s%C3%BCddeutsche-zeitung-kept-the-leaks-a-secret-/s2/a713035/ https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/paradise-and-panama-papers... It's not perfect, but it's a place to start.
- tonfa 9y ago
  I wonder if it's just a coincidence with the fact that germany is one of the countries where tax authority can use (and pay for) stolen banking data. https://www.thelocal.de/20170705/german-investigators-pay-5-million-for-panama-papers-to-hunt-global-tax-criminals https://www.thelocal.de/20170705/german-investigators-pay-5-...
- hanbura 9y ago
  >The article doesn't explain anything. Now you at least know why the New Yorker didn't. Joking aside: Probably because they did a good job with the Panama Papers. So it's a mix of strategic investment in investigate journalism and a bit of luck.
  - dna_polymerase 9y ago
    Actually they do a pretty bad job. Most of the stuff they have is only available to subscribers [0] (Watch out for SZPlus). This topic is too big to put it behind a paywall, but in Germany the whole thing is already out of the focus of MSM. [1] (CTRL-F : Paradise) [0]: https://projekte.sueddeutsche.de/paradisepapers/politik/die-recherche-der-sueddeutsche-zeitung-e585964/ https://projekte.sueddeutsche.de/paradisepapers/politik/die-... [1]: http://www.tagesschau.de/ http://www.tagesschau.de/ EDIT: I just saw, they made more stuff available to the public, yet the concrete pieces on people using the system are paywalled.
    - mschuster91 9y ago
      > but in Germany the whole thing is already out of the focus of MSM because in Germany the coalition bartering takes precedence at the moment (where, like the election of the catholic Pope, every tiny signal is massively amplified to keep the buzz going), and it doesn't exactly help that Trump spews out new nonsense every other day, and the neo-nazis from the AfD can be counted upon to do the same if there is nothing newsworthy at the moment... And the AfD is actually a major part of the problem - they have shifted the discourse from "ultra rich vs poor" to "everyone against Muslims/refugees" pretty successfully and that's shame enough.
      - sdoering 9y ago
        Not to give the AfD (German right wing 'tea party') any benefits, but the necessary discussion of social allocation of income and such is one that is buried under crap news in Germany as a long standing tradition. Your analysis is on the point, but I believe that the AfD is more of a symptom and not much of a cause.
        majewsky 9y ago
        Precisely. Most Germans still remember how the socialist GDR failed, and seem to infer from this that anything that is not neoliberalism is bound to fail (or, alternatively, a pipedream of some delusional leftist students that's not worth trying).
- sabertoothed 9y ago
  This is not true. There are quite a number of reasons to be found in the article. They are just not listed for you using bullet points. E.g.: Focus on investigative journalism - << After publishing the Panama Papers, in 2016, Krach declared Der Spiegel’s monopoly on investigative journalism in Germany over. Part of this push, he said, arose from the need to secure the future of the paper. “The only strategy to survive in the long run in this very complicated and economically difficult environment is that we have to differentiate ourselves from others, so that people can find in our newspaper something they cannot find anywhere else,” Krach said.>> And then further arguments: Success with the Panama papers, etc. etc.
- clort 9y ago
  They have them because they published the Panama Papers before. They had them because they recognised the name of a secretive law firm and took the John Doe seriously, which other organisations had not.
- qznc 9y ago
  Title says "how", not "why". ;)
- watbe 9y ago
  It seems pretty clear that there is a reason why they got the leaks - they paid attention: > Obermayer told me that his source for the Panama Papers, whom he refers to as John Doe, had tried to get the attention of several large international outlets, including a U.S. paper, before he got in touch with him. “The leaker didn’t say, ‘Here’s the biggest leak in history, are you interested?’ ” Obermayer said. The first documents that John Doe offered him were not journalistically compelling, at first glance. But Obermayer recognized that they had come from Mossack Fonseca, which he knew operated in extreme secrecy. “I thought, If somebody has obtained data from inside Mossack Fonseca, this could be really interesting,” he said. Knowing the implications of the firm’s name, Obermayer speculated, may have been why he ended up with the Panama Papers.
- michaelt 9y ago
  I once read an interesting article about a journalist who had reported on a lot of corruption in FIFA. He asked a question at a press conference to the effect of "there are a lot of rumours you are corrupt, do you have any comment?" - but his motivation to ask that question wasn't that he expected a good answer. Rather, he was advertising his interest in the story to anyone who had info they'd like to leak. And just like that, he starts getting tips and leaked documents. Süddeutsche Zeitung is in a similar position. By handling previous leaks well they've advertised several things: (a) They have the knowledge to recognise the importance of such documents, (b) they consider such content within the remit of their paper, (c) they won't bury the story out of fear of the rich and powerful (or on the advice of a risk-averse legal team) and (d) they can do an adequate job of OpSec and source protection. For a leaker, the choice between Süddeutsche Zeitung and Teen Vogue is obvious.
  - cyphunk 9y ago
    I'm not sure how one evaluates that they do good OpSec? Even firstlook failed and accidentally got Reality Winner arrested. So how does one know? Personally the question of OpSec gets more intense when A) I learn they let in a reporter from the New Yorker in to do, well, basically it's a Cribbs episode. And 2) when I learn that the group managing critical leaks is on the same floor as everyone else. Could you please protect your sources at least as well as Apple protects the Animoji release?
caoilte 9y ago
If they weren't so far lost they would stop to applaud the German peoples' disdain for state surveillance. It makes Germany a safer base of operations than the US or UK.
- heavenlyblue 9y ago
  Well, at least they don't try to bad porn over there.
f_allwein 9y ago
Really glad Sueddeutsche Zeitung is getting international attention. They traditionally were vastly important for the intellectual life in Munich (e.g. many families had a subscription for the printed version and get it delivered to their doors in the morning). They do do excellent jorunalism, including on the local area around Munich. So, even though I have lived abroad, I am still a paying subscriber. Quality journalism is useful and great, as are the investigative projects they have been engaged in. Moral? Do support quality journalism in your area if you can.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > Do support quality journalism in your area if you can. And to be fair, the "clickbaiters" from Buzzfeed and friends also do some high quality investigative pieces, financed by the mentioned clickbait. Makes me wonder if this will be the future of journalism...
  - Maarten88 9y ago
    Where do you think they will cut costs when their clickbait income disappoints sometime in the future? Also, I think that given enough financial interest, media businesses like that can be pressured into not publishing/investigating something. They won't take on big financial interests, because in the end, readers are their product, not their reporting. So I sure hope that will not be the future of journalism.
    - mschuster91 9y ago
      > They won't take on big financial interests, because in the end, readers are their product, not their reporting. That's the problem we have with nearly all media businesses these days. The exception are the various public media institutions (eg NPR, BBC, ARD/ZDF) because they do not depend on advertising, but they are subjected to pressure by politicians in leadership positions...
    - sliverstorm 9y ago
      Eh, they might have an eye to "graduate" to journalism. Ego can get involved. Plus, clickbait might not work forever.
ImaCake 9y ago
One of the best things about learning German has been the access to German news media. I find Suedeutsch Zeitung and a few others hold themselves to a higher quality than almost any english newspaper I've read. It's good to see english media take note!
- patall 9y ago
  As a german, its nice to hear something like that since people here also complain about the quality of journalism going down. People are also complaining that public broadcasting (and having to pay for it) but I think that they are the one of the reasons we have good journalism as the set a standard which you will lose audience to if you report too much bias or show too much advertising.
  - chiaro 9y ago
    I think no people anywhere at any time has been happy with their media.
  - emsy 9y ago
    This is certainly true. One channel broadcasts the evening news (Abendschau) from 20 or so years ago and you can clearly see how diligently they try to adhere to journalistic objectivity (in choice of adjectives for example) whereas today it seems they don't even try it anymore.
  - FRex 9y ago
    Having a public broadcaster means nothing. We (Poland) also have one but the quality of their websites and TV channels was always painfully average and since 2015 it's outright propaganda.
  - futurix 9y ago
    Well, German public TV and radio isn’t nearly as good as the newspaper cited in the article. Compared with BBC - it’s certainly is not a great example of spending public funds.
    - deleted 9y ago
davidad_ 9y ago
Did anyone else notice the claim that “The computers had never been connected to the Internet,” followed in the next paragraph by “On another screen, Obermayer opened iHub, the encrypted Facebook-like forum that the ICIJ created to make collaboration easier across borders”? Something doesn’t add up here...
- nabla9 9y ago
  They have different computers. Some are not connected to internet, some others are.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
_jal 9y ago
Have the raw dumps from either of the Paradise/Panama Papers been released?
- johannes1234321 9y ago
  No, and they won't. Reasons certainly include monopolization of the information but also protection of the leakers and others. Protecting the sources is one of the key things good journalism has to do.
  - mtve 9y ago
    some digital proof would be more convincing, like "at time X we got archive with merklehash H of all documents (https://opentimestamps.org/ https://opentimestamps.org/), and this information Y is from this source file hash F proved by this tree T".
    - johannes1234321 9y ago
      For proving what? - I haven't seen anybody that their reports are inaccurate. The only possible critisicm might be that they maybe don't tell everything to protect individuals. (Which I don't believe they do) But even there it won't help if they publish everything as we can't have a prove it's everything.
d2kx 9y ago
As a Sueddeutsche Zeitung subscriber, yeah I am happy with them.
thatsadude 9y ago
Maybe that German paper is just an outlet of German secret service.
danielovichdk 9y ago
I do believe Germany has the best protection laws for keeping sources secret. Not sure it says in the article. I haven't read it yet.
yAnonymous 9y ago
I think this is more a decision for a country rather than a newspaper. A raid on a newspaper like in England with the Guardian is pretty much unthinkable here. German newspapers are just as biased as those in other countries. Süddeutsche is no exception.
- Certhas 9y ago
  Do you know newspapers in other countries? Having lived extensively in the UK and in Germany I can not agree. Imagine BILD being a moderate high quality newspaper. Think I'm exagerating? Imagine BILD frontpage with constitutional judges pictured and headline "Volksfeinde": https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CwXwe6AXUAQsiCp.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CwXwe6AXUAQsiCp.jpg
haraldini 9y ago
All great, but one thing to question is who influences the "International Consortium of Investigative Journalists". ICIJ was launched as a project of the Center for Public Integrity, which is funded by i.a. The Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation and a host of globalist foundations. https://www.publicintegrity.org/about/our-work/supporters https://www.publicintegrity.org/about/our-work/supporters
- creaghpatr 9y ago
  Bingo, weaponized journalism from some very familiar names. Similar to Fusion GPS.

291 points by sasvari 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

So what is the answer to the question how a German Newspaper became the go-to place for leaks like the Paradise Papers? The article doesn't explain anything. It just states what happened as a list of totally unrelated things.

QAPereo 9y ago
At its best, the New Yorker presents well thought-out pieces with an artistic flair. At the worst, you get this kind of "action painting with words" nonsense which adds up to nothing and goes nowhere. I wouldn't mind if they at least added a link at the bottom to some actual information, with a a little note saying, "Oops, sorry we disappeared up our own bungs again!" Since they won't do it... https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/paradise-and-panama-papers-a-look-into-how-s%C3%BCddeutsche-zeitung-kept-the-leaks-a-secret-/s2/a713035/ https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/paradise-and-panama-papers... It's not perfect, but it's a place to start.
tonfa 9y ago
I wonder if it's just a coincidence with the fact that germany is one of the countries where tax authority can use (and pay for) stolen banking data. https://www.thelocal.de/20170705/german-investigators-pay-5-million-for-panama-papers-to-hunt-global-tax-criminals https://www.thelocal.de/20170705/german-investigators-pay-5-...
hanbura 9y ago
>The article doesn't explain anything. Now you at least know why the New Yorker didn't. Joking aside: Probably because they did a good job with the Panama Papers. So it's a mix of strategic investment in investigate journalism and a bit of luck.
- dna_polymerase 9y ago
  Actually they do a pretty bad job. Most of the stuff they have is only available to subscribers [0] (Watch out for SZPlus). This topic is too big to put it behind a paywall, but in Germany the whole thing is already out of the focus of MSM. [1] (CTRL-F : Paradise) [0]: https://projekte.sueddeutsche.de/paradisepapers/politik/die-recherche-der-sueddeutsche-zeitung-e585964/ https://projekte.sueddeutsche.de/paradisepapers/politik/die-... [1]: http://www.tagesschau.de/ http://www.tagesschau.de/ EDIT: I just saw, they made more stuff available to the public, yet the concrete pieces on people using the system are paywalled.
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > but in Germany the whole thing is already out of the focus of MSM because in Germany the coalition bartering takes precedence at the moment (where, like the election of the catholic Pope, every tiny signal is massively amplified to keep the buzz going), and it doesn't exactly help that Trump spews out new nonsense every other day, and the neo-nazis from the AfD can be counted upon to do the same if there is nothing newsworthy at the moment... And the AfD is actually a major part of the problem - they have shifted the discourse from "ultra rich vs poor" to "everyone against Muslims/refugees" pretty successfully and that's shame enough.
    - sdoering 9y ago
      Not to give the AfD (German right wing 'tea party') any benefits, but the necessary discussion of social allocation of income and such is one that is buried under crap news in Germany as a long standing tradition. Your analysis is on the point, but I believe that the AfD is more of a symptom and not much of a cause.
      - majewsky 9y ago
        Precisely. Most Germans still remember how the socialist GDR failed, and seem to infer from this that anything that is not neoliberalism is bound to fail (or, alternatively, a pipedream of some delusional leftist students that's not worth trying).
sabertoothed 9y ago
This is not true. There are quite a number of reasons to be found in the article. They are just not listed for you using bullet points. E.g.: Focus on investigative journalism - << After publishing the Panama Papers, in 2016, Krach declared Der Spiegel’s monopoly on investigative journalism in Germany over. Part of this push, he said, arose from the need to secure the future of the paper. “The only strategy to survive in the long run in this very complicated and economically difficult environment is that we have to differentiate ourselves from others, so that people can find in our newspaper something they cannot find anywhere else,” Krach said.>> And then further arguments: Success with the Panama papers, etc. etc.
clort 9y ago
They have them because they published the Panama Papers before. They had them because they recognised the name of a secretive law firm and took the John Doe seriously, which other organisations had not.
qznc 9y ago
Title says "how", not "why". ;)
watbe 9y ago
It seems pretty clear that there is a reason why they got the leaks - they paid attention: > Obermayer told me that his source for the Panama Papers, whom he refers to as John Doe, had tried to get the attention of several large international outlets, including a U.S. paper, before he got in touch with him. “The leaker didn’t say, ‘Here’s the biggest leak in history, are you interested?’ ” Obermayer said. The first documents that John Doe offered him were not journalistically compelling, at first glance. But Obermayer recognized that they had come from Mossack Fonseca, which he knew operated in extreme secrecy. “I thought, If somebody has obtained data from inside Mossack Fonseca, this could be really interesting,” he said. Knowing the implications of the firm’s name, Obermayer speculated, may have been why he ended up with the Panama Papers.
michaelt 9y ago
I once read an interesting article about a journalist who had reported on a lot of corruption in FIFA. He asked a question at a press conference to the effect of "there are a lot of rumours you are corrupt, do you have any comment?" - but his motivation to ask that question wasn't that he expected a good answer. Rather, he was advertising his interest in the story to anyone who had info they'd like to leak. And just like that, he starts getting tips and leaked documents. Süddeutsche Zeitung is in a similar position. By handling previous leaks well they've advertised several things: (a) They have the knowledge to recognise the importance of such documents, (b) they consider such content within the remit of their paper, (c) they won't bury the story out of fear of the rich and powerful (or on the advice of a risk-averse legal team) and (d) they can do an adequate job of OpSec and source protection. For a leaker, the choice between Süddeutsche Zeitung and Teen Vogue is obvious.
- cyphunk 9y ago
  I'm not sure how one evaluates that they do good OpSec? Even firstlook failed and accidentally got Reality Winner arrested. So how does one know? Personally the question of OpSec gets more intense when A) I learn they let in a reporter from the New Yorker in to do, well, basically it's a Cribbs episode. And 2) when I learn that the group managing critical leaks is on the same floor as everyone else. Could you please protect your sources at least as well as Apple protects the Animoji release?

caoilte 9y ago

If they weren't so far lost they would stop to applaud the German peoples' disdain for state surveillance. It makes Germany a safer base of operations than the US or UK.

heavenlyblue 9y ago
Well, at least they don't try to bad porn over there.

f_allwein 9y ago

Really glad Sueddeutsche Zeitung is getting international attention. They traditionally were vastly important for the intellectual life in Munich (e.g. many families had a subscription for the printed version and get it delivered to their doors in the morning). They do do excellent jorunalism, including on the local area around Munich. So, even though I have lived abroad, I am still a paying subscriber. Quality journalism is useful and great, as are the investigative projects they have been engaged in. Moral? Do support quality journalism in your area if you can.

mschuster91 9y ago
> Do support quality journalism in your area if you can. And to be fair, the "clickbaiters" from Buzzfeed and friends also do some high quality investigative pieces, financed by the mentioned clickbait. Makes me wonder if this will be the future of journalism...
- Maarten88 9y ago
  Where do you think they will cut costs when their clickbait income disappoints sometime in the future? Also, I think that given enough financial interest, media businesses like that can be pressured into not publishing/investigating something. They won't take on big financial interests, because in the end, readers are their product, not their reporting. So I sure hope that will not be the future of journalism.
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > They won't take on big financial interests, because in the end, readers are their product, not their reporting. That's the problem we have with nearly all media businesses these days. The exception are the various public media institutions (eg NPR, BBC, ARD/ZDF) because they do not depend on advertising, but they are subjected to pressure by politicians in leadership positions...
  - sliverstorm 9y ago
    Eh, they might have an eye to "graduate" to journalism. Ego can get involved. Plus, clickbait might not work forever.

ImaCake 9y ago

One of the best things about learning German has been the access to German news media. I find Suedeutsch Zeitung and a few others hold themselves to a higher quality than almost any english newspaper I've read. It's good to see english media take note!

patall 9y ago
As a german, its nice to hear something like that since people here also complain about the quality of journalism going down. People are also complaining that public broadcasting (and having to pay for it) but I think that they are the one of the reasons we have good journalism as the set a standard which you will lose audience to if you report too much bias or show too much advertising.
- chiaro 9y ago
  I think no people anywhere at any time has been happy with their media.
- emsy 9y ago
  This is certainly true. One channel broadcasts the evening news (Abendschau) from 20 or so years ago and you can clearly see how diligently they try to adhere to journalistic objectivity (in choice of adjectives for example) whereas today it seems they don't even try it anymore.
- FRex 9y ago
  Having a public broadcaster means nothing. We (Poland) also have one but the quality of their websites and TV channels was always painfully average and since 2015 it's outright propaganda.
- futurix 9y ago
  Well, German public TV and radio isn’t nearly as good as the newspaper cited in the article. Compared with BBC - it’s certainly is not a great example of spending public funds.
  - deleted 9y ago

davidad_ 9y ago

Did anyone else notice the claim that “The computers had never been connected to the Internet,” followed in the next paragraph by “On another screen, Obermayer opened iHub, the encrypted Facebook-like forum that the ICIJ created to make collaboration easier across borders”? Something doesn’t add up here...

nabla9 9y ago
They have different computers. Some are not connected to internet, some others are.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

_jal 9y ago

Have the raw dumps from either of the Paradise/Panama Papers been released?

johannes1234321 9y ago
No, and they won't. Reasons certainly include monopolization of the information but also protection of the leakers and others. Protecting the sources is one of the key things good journalism has to do.
- mtve 9y ago
  some digital proof would be more convincing, like "at time X we got archive with merklehash H of all documents (https://opentimestamps.org/ https://opentimestamps.org/), and this information Y is from this source file hash F proved by this tree T".
  - johannes1234321 9y ago
    For proving what? - I haven't seen anybody that their reports are inaccurate. The only possible critisicm might be that they maybe don't tell everything to protect individuals. (Which I don't believe they do) But even there it won't help if they publish everything as we can't have a prove it's everything.

d2kx 9y ago

As a Sueddeutsche Zeitung subscriber, yeah I am happy with them.

thatsadude 9y ago

Maybe that German paper is just an outlet of German secret service.

danielovichdk 9y ago

I do believe Germany has the best protection laws for keeping sources secret. Not sure it says in the article. I haven't read it yet.

yAnonymous 9y ago

I think this is more a decision for a country rather than a newspaper. A raid on a newspaper like in England with the Guardian is pretty much unthinkable here. German newspapers are just as biased as those in other countries. Süddeutsche is no exception.

Certhas 9y ago
Do you know newspapers in other countries? Having lived extensively in the UK and in Germany I can not agree. Imagine BILD being a moderate high quality newspaper. Think I'm exagerating? Imagine BILD frontpage with constitutional judges pictured and headline "Volksfeinde": https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CwXwe6AXUAQsiCp.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CwXwe6AXUAQsiCp.jpg

haraldini 9y ago

All great, but one thing to question is who influences the "International Consortium of Investigative Journalists". ICIJ was launched as a project of the Center for Public Integrity, which is funded by i.a. The Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation and a host of globalist foundations. https://www.publicintegrity.org/about/our-work/supporters https://www.publicintegrity.org/about/our-work/supporters

creaghpatr 9y ago
Bingo, weaponized journalism from some very familiar names. Similar to Fusion GPS.