Wall Street Journal turned down WikiLeaks’ offer to view docs

WikiLeaks may have snubbed the New York Times — which got its State Dept. cables from The Guardian this time around — but the online whistle-blower did reach out last week to a Times competitor: the Wall Street Journal.

The Journal's Russell Adams and Jessica Vascellaro wrote that WikiLeaks offered the paper "access to a portion of the documents it possesses if the Journal signed a confidentiality agreement." The Journal declined.

A Journal spokeswoman confirmed to The Cutline that WikiLeaks offered some of the documents to the Journal.

'We didn't want to agree to the set of pre-conditions related to the disclosure of the Wikileaks documents without even being given a broad understanding of what these documents contained," the spokeswoman explained.

In addition to the Times and Guardian, three other publications got an advance look at the diplomatic cables: El Pais (Spain), Le Monde (France) and Der Spiegel (Germany).

The Journal reported that CNN "also declined to make an agreement with WikiLeaks." CNN previously declined an offer from WikiLeaks to view the Iraq cache the group obtained in advance of publication last month.

(This post was updated after getting full Journal statement and adding reporting on CNN)