Posted on 08/01/2003 3:33:34 PM PDT by quidnunc
'We start where the media stop.' The slogan is more than just a promise emblazoned on top of the main page at Debkafile, the independent online publication in Israel that has been likened to the Drudge Report for information on Central Asia and the Middle East.
In fact, it seems to have become the gospel for the trail-blazing news Web site, which has gained fame in recent months for its scoops on stories including the Bush-Putin pact to support the War on Terror and the Chinese military presence with al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Debkafile operates out of a Jerusalem neighborhood centrally located between the Old City and Palestinian settlements. First opened to the public in the summer of 2000, it was created by two former Israel-based correspondents for The Economist who had experience covering intelligence activity during the Cold War and the 1990s.
It was during this period that the two founders, Chief Editor Giora Shamis and English Editor Diane Shalem, cultivated many of the growing number of sources that they now utilize in reporting for the site.
Since its launch, Debkafile’s unique goal has been to combine first-rate reporting with a lack of verbal frills; euphemistic language and vaguely obtuse generalities are not part of the game plan.
The editors attribute their breakthrough journalistic successes to pursuing specific stories not covered by the mainstream media, as well as picking up trends from the field rather than from official sources and, most importantly, teamwork rather than solo performances.
The anti-glamour group reporting philosophy carries through to the finished product; as at The Economist, all articles are unsigned, making the publication itself wholly responsible for the information expressed within the body of the piece.
Shamis and Shalem chose to publish on the Internet because they believe the medium is the most effective way for them to communicate with their audience. A truly digital publication, the half dozen full- and part-time reporters and editors are spread out across the world, utilizing the Jerusalem headquarters simply as a base.
However, practicing journalism online has not been without its share of obstacles. 'The main difficulty is that it requires round-the-clock attention in consideration of global time zones, creating staffing problems,' Shamis said. The benefit, however, 'is the limitless spread of subject matter and audience.'
The Web site itself, which now features patriotic red and blue headlines on an off-white background, is rudimentary at best. At first glance, one might be forgiven for believing that the professionalism of its reporting may be obscured by the lo-fi approach to its design. Indeed, it provides a jolt of nostalgia to many veteran Internet surfers, reminding them of how most of the World Wide Web looked back in, say, 1994.
An unsophisticated layout, however, has had no impact on Debkafile’s content, which is published simultaneously in both English and Hebrew language editions. The Web site has broken a number of stories that were later picked up by more traditional media concerns, including The New York Times and CNN.
Debkafile’s exclusives have included, among other stories, how terrorists planted a digital mole in the White House and Saudi Arabia's refusal to let the U.S. use its air bases during the current campaign in Afghanistan.
According to the editors, the current thrown-together look of the Web site will soon be tweaked as a long-overdue plan to spruce up its layout is now in an advanced stage. In the coming months and years, Debkafile intends to expand into more fields and languages; increase its specialized staff of reporters, editors, and analysts; and further build its customized base of individual and corporate clients who are willing to pay to receive the publication's reporting, in more detail, before anyone else.
Over the past year and a half the publication, which is named after a popular Middle Eastern dance that embodies the complex nature of the region, has grown exponentially in size and buzz, now reaching approximately 150,000 regular readers and receiving over 1.2 million hits each week. The majority of the site's audience is American, with 30% logging on from Israel and another 8% from 96 other countries throughout the world.
Debkafile is self-supporting, establishing a revenue stream with subscriptions to its weekly e-mail newsletter (there are now several 100 readers paying $120 each year to receive in-depth analysis, details, and prognoses via e-mail that cannot be found on the Web site), along with money made by providing a customized news service for individuals and corporations.
Readers include military and intelligence officials, financial and academic leaders, as well as interested students and curious skeptics. An interactive relationship with its audience has encouraged plenty of dialogue, suggestions, and, after careful checking, even published reports based on tips initially sent in by readers.
Much attention has been focused on Debkafile by both American and international media outlets since Sept. 11, alternatively lionizing it for its aggressive, take-no-prisoners approach to news gathering and condemning it for what some say is more often than not conspiracy-minded and inaccurate reporting.
The New York Observer led the domestic media blitz in an October 1st 'Off the Record' column that called the Web publication 'just plain scary,' filled as it is with 'the kind of stuff that makes you want to close your eyes and hide under your desk' — dispatches from around the world, warning of suicide bombers already planted in the United States and awaiting orders, as well as an assassination campaign planned against political leaders of several countries in Western Europe.
Although the Observer allowed that the accuracy of Debkafile’s information is difficult to assess, it noted that the site must be doing something right if so many military and intelligence officials, as well as journalists make up its core audience.
Wired chimed in a few days later, on October 5th, by describing the 'free-wheeling' Web site as 'a blend of anonymous tips, unsubstantiated rumors and chilling, detail-laden stories.' Attributing the publication's on-the-fly, Internet-time reporting to its airing of rumors along with legitimate news, Wired deemed Debkafile, despite its flaws, indispensable in a post-Sept. 11 media world where mainstream outlets were being perceived as timid and ineffective.
In December, Forbes.com weighed in on the debate, describing the publication as one of the best on the Internet, but warned its readers that Debkafile’s reporting could not always be trusted.
Soon after, L.A. Weekly's Jonathan Gold explained that 'only half of the ultra spooky stuff' in the publication will turn out to be true, so the problem becomes 'figuring out which half.'
At least one critic, Brian Whitaker at The Guardian ,dismissed Debkafile outright back in early April of last year, long before the hype began. Condemning its use of anonymous intelligence sources as 'a useful standby in the absence of any firm evidence' in its reporting, he claimed that the publication's mix of 'fact, fantasy and propaganda [makes] it difficult to separate one from the other.'
'One of the problems with [Debkafile] is that its stories usually have just enough of a factual basis to sound plausible — indeed, some of them may even be true,' Whitaker fumed at the time. 'They are also sufficiently well told and interesting to trickle out into popular gossip and occasionally into the mainstream media.'
When reached nine months later, Whitaker reaffirmed his opinion on the Web site, claiming that a recent report on Saudi Arabian royals being evacuated to Switzerland was 'complete bunkum.'
'A few simple checks would have revealed that King Fahd was in Riyadh and chairing a cabinet meeting at the time the piece appeared,' he wrote from London via e-mail.
Together, these attacks on Debkafile’s journalistic integrity have prompted a passionate defense from Shamis and Shalem. Both claim to possess extensive wartime journalistic experience, having covered eight and five conflicts respectively.
In an interview with the Washington, D.C.-based Hill News on October 10th, Shamis responded to criticism by noting that there is no compulsion to believe anything in his publication. 'But if you are really curious about what is going on today, pick one or two items on our site and check them out over a period of time,' he said. 'At the end of that process, you will either confirm our stories for yourselves...or as happens quite often lately, the big guys follow in our wake — sometimes with a different slant.'
As for an Israeli bias, Shalem believes the accusation to be misguided. '[Debkafile is] a truly international service which also criticizes the Israeli government when it sees fit, as has been shown frequently, and reflects no Israeli body, organization or political trend,' she said, while still admitting that 'almost every word on the Middle East published anywhere reflects some bias or other.'
But, then again, as far as Debkafile’s reporting is concerned, its supposed bias and sporadic inaccuracy may not matter because the select group of people in the military, intelligence, and media worlds that are reading it are, for the most part, professionally trained to know better than to take anything written by the press for granted.
So, yes, Debkafile’s readership does include influential spies, political operatives, and foreign correspondents, but they most likely use the site only as a tip sheet, not a publication of record.
Jessica Steinberg, an Israeli correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and business reporter for the Jerusalem Post, is representative of this particular segment of the Web site's audience. She is not a regular reader or a newsletter subscriber but glances at the publication on occasion.
'While I sometimes use it as a launching point for my own reporting, I don't trust its scoops,' she said. Like many others, Steinberg admires Debkafile’s commitment to in-depth news coverage on topics overlooked by larger media outlets, but is put off by what she sees as 'the personal opinions of those writing for the site.'
'I don't think the foreign journalists based in Israel rely heavily on the [publication],' she added. 'It is too knee-jerk, right-wing for them.'
But for now Debkafile continues to publish at a ferocious pace, updating its Web site several times each day, on occasion inaccurately but always with a dogged commitment to uncovering the true facts of undeniably slippery and complex situations in the 'not-so-grey area,' as Jonathan Margolis put it when discussing the publication on November 28th in the London Evening Standard as 'where journalism meets intelligence work.'
"tens of thousands of heathen chinee troops massing on Israel's borders- film at eleven."
And who can forget Rense.com?
Yeah, well, people laugh about the Enquirer, but they pay people good money to get the scoop. I remember they were way ahead of the lamestream press on the O.J. trial, and alot of their stories come out in the lamestream a couple of weeks after they published it. (plus I like looking at the pictures)
NOW LEAVE MY ENQUIRER ALONE! J/k
Careful! There are some FReepers who consider Rense as gospel. You see some of them posting to some science and medical threads references to Rense as a legitimate source.
Actually, Debka reported that at thousands of Chinese troops had crossed into Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban against U.S. forces.
Debka is not much more than a rumor milll, and sometimes the rumors are right to varying degrees and often they are dead-wrong.
With Debka it's a crap shoot.
I did a Google search and it seems to the consensus of opinion around the blogsphere that Debka is too unreliable to be considered a solid source of information.
And how do we know for a certainty how many journalists and military and intelligence officials are in its core audience?
The first I heard of Debka was soon after 9/11 when Michael Medved referenced a sensational Debka article in which it was alleged, among other things, that a U.S. nuke sub had to return to port because of a virtual mutiny by Muslim crew members.
At the time Medved said that Debka claimed to be 93% accurate.
Callers took Medved apart on the air and he never has mentioned Debka since insofar as I have heard.
I believe that Debka deliberately airs those wild rumors as fetchers while at the same time putting out mundane, uninteresting stuff gleaned from news reports in order to be able to claim it has a good accuracy record.
Debka is totally self-serving.
Denizens of Free Republic need to know that Debka is of questionable reliability and that caveat lector (let the reader beware) is the order of the day when reading stuff from there.
You may be getting the inside skinny, but then again it may be pure bullbleep and there's no sure way to know which it is.
I think a good rule of thumb is that the more sensational the article the less likely it is to be factual.
The National Enquirer doesn't purport to be anything more than a scandal sheet which practices checkbook journalism.
Debka makes for interesting reading sometimes, just so long as one remembers that what one is reading has a 50-50 chance of being pure bollocks.
semper ubi sub ubi... *grin*
Getting a scoop on a 100% false story is something to be proud of? There was no Chinese military presence with Al Queda in Afghanistan.
Unless you're dumb enough count having Chinese small arms ammo as a "military presence" in which case there's a Chinese "military presence" in Wal-Marts and basements all over this country.
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