Paul Lashmar, an Investigative Journalist who is admittedly “startled” by WikiLeaks ability to publish such material, gives his two cents on the issue of Funding:

"[Web] users aren't interested in how the people behind sites make their money. "The problem for the self-funding model is that sites like WikiLeaks will not find it easy to attract funding through advertising. At some point people who care about free speech will realize that free speech has to be funded, otherwise it's not free."

Lashmar makes a good point regarding the price of freedom of speech. For WikiLeaks, the cost of running the website, even without paying its staff amounts to $200K annually, and to make matters worse, each published story brings with it the risk of a lawsuit.

Julian Petley, chair of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, speaking with BBC News, praises the website explaining that “WikiLeaks has established a good name for itself and broken some good stories." These stories include the hacked e-mails of Sarah Palin, the U.S's plans to kill nonprofit torrent sites, and even the leak of the website's own donor e-mail addresses.