Information highway crash

Two muckracking websites are attracting controversy. WikiLeaks.org enables anonymous dissidents to post documents revealing government corruption, and a California judge just shut it down. JuicyCampus.com enables anonymous college students to post grubby gossip like "Top ten freshman sluts" and so far, the site still stands.

WikiLeaks, still available by IP address, allows whistleblowers to safely post documents exposing government and corporate misdoings. Leaks include a document outlining standard operating procedures for Guantanamo Bay and a 2,000 page document presenting "nearly the entire order of battle for US forces in Iraq."

Bank Julius Baer was the first to fight back when someone posted documents alleging that the Swiss bank laundered money and evaded taxes. The bank demanded that the courts close the site and Judge Jeffrey White complied, ordering WikiLeaks to disable its address and stop disseminating disputed documents.

FreePress.net argues that WikiLeak must survive "because it has the potential … to be a potent force for more transparent-and therefore more accountable-government." In a righteously indignant editorial, the New York Times decried White's injunction as unconstitutional: "That was akin to shutting down a newspaper because of objections to one article."

It was also akin to providing free WikiLeak advertising. Now WikiLeak documents are popping up on other websites, and the court has a First Amendment battle on its hands.

If WikiLeaks provides a "global defense of sources and press freedoms," JuicyCampus.com provides a forum to sate people's lust for salacious gossip. Paralleling the new TV show Gossip Girl, the site allows students to anonymously target their classmates by name. The site is unregulated, horrifying and, Dan Belzer writes in the Duke Chronicle, mesmerizing:

One look and I was unknowingly sucked into an addiction. I wanted more. More names, more dirt, more hate. I knew it was wrong, and I couldn't morally justify adding to the hateful insanity, but I also couldn't and can't stop reading.

Saboteurs have hacked the website but unlike Bank Julius Baer, students with slashed reputations have little legal recourse. The First Amendment and Communications Decency Act protect the site, according to Carnegie Mellon's The Tartan.Students who post libelous statements could be subject to prosecution, but the site's anonymity shields them.

JuicyCampus.com and WikiLeaks.org both have a right to cruise the information highway. But when whistleblowers crash and gossipmongers thrive, shouldn't it provoke some thought on how our culture values truth?