NYTimes: ClimateGate vs. WikiLeaks

When hacked emails began to appear on the web in 2009, suggesting that climate scientists at East Anglia had falsified global warming data, the New York Times refused to publish them. Why?

The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.

But on Sunday, the online site WikiLeaks unveiled hundreds of thousands of classified government documents, many of which represented potential threats to national security; the New York Times immediately published the information.  Why?

The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match.