251,287. That’s the number of confidential U.S. diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks claims to have obtained. 1,897. That’s the number of confidential U.S. diplomatic cables that, according to WikiLeaks’s own count, have thus far been published on its website: not even 1 percent of the reported total. At the current rate of publication, the much vaunted “over 250,000” documents should be online and available to the public in their entirety by sometime in 2021—supposing the WikiLeaks website still exists at that time.

But whereas WikiLeaks has withheld the documents from the public, five handpicked media organizations have enjoyed exclusive access to the complete stash. A more glaring violation of WikiLeaks’s supposed commitment to “radical transparency” could hardly be imagined. Moreover, the selection of the five newspapers enjoying privileged access has clearly not been arbitrary.