Who to believe?
The recurring question for any serious person trawling the net is this: how does one know what to believe? It's tricky enough with established newspaper brands, but in the internet's republic of paranoia, disinformation and fantasy lurk behind every unassuming URL.
Debkafile (debka.com) is based in Jerusalem and receives more than 1.2m visits a week, mostly from the US. It is edited by Giora Shamis, a former Economist foreign affairs reporter, and is named after a dance that is popular across the middle east and central Asia. As it is performed differently in each country and by every ethnic group, it was chosen to reflect the complexity of this region. It's inflationary self-description is of a "self-supporting internet publication devoted to independent, investigative reporting and forward analysis in the fields of international terrorism, intelligence, Islam, military affairs, security and politics."
Despite an incredibly ugly design, it is often absorbing and currently has the intriguing story that Osama Bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri and their top lieutenants were last month reportedly sighted at different places between Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jammu and Kashmir.
Forbes magazine (forbes.com) recently identified Debkafile as one of the best websites for military intelligence. Yet there are reasons to be very cautious. Most of its stories come from unidentified sources and, as befits a publication based in Jerusalem, it is extremely hawkish. Another cause for scepticism is that Debka has a partnership with the fanatically right-wing news site worldnetdaily.com for a subscription product. Its critics point out that it often misspells Arabic names, is obsessed with the improbable idea that the PLO, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Hizbullah have formed an intelligence alliance against Israel and makes a habit of blending propaganda, fantasy and fact. Despite its bias, however, Debka has had scoops: in October last year, USA Today and CNN reported that US and British forces were in Afghanistan seeking out terrorist hiding places; Debkafile had the same story days earlier, with additional details about Russian secret-service operatives and German commandos joining in. It also ran a piece that Saudi Arabia had denied the US the right to launch attacks on Afghanistan from bases there, beating the New York Times by 48 hours.
(A much better brand than Debkafile is Jane's Defence Weekly, whose site (janes.com) is less politically partisan and therefore feels more reliable. Although expensive subscription is required to access full stories, there is a plenty of free material to fascinate and, occasionally, alarm.)
They may be unsavoury, but as long as sites like Debka break a few small stories a year, not only will they survive, their influence will probably grow.
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