From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week, President Obama said this about the vast network of tax shelters and money laundering operations exposed by a massive leak called the Panama Papers.

Global tax avoidance generally is a huge problem.

But?

A lot of this stuff is legal, not illegal.

Legal, but still embarrassing and potentially career-ending if you're a politician.

Among those named in the leak was British Prime Minister David Cameron,

who admitted, finally, that he reaped profits from shares his father stashed in Panamanian tax shelters, but he sold all that years ago.

Rules have changed and cultures changed, and as I say, I welcome that. I want to be as clear as I can about the past, about the present, about the future, because I don't have anything to hide. Of course, you know, Iceland's Prime Minister, Sigmundar Gunn Lassen, resigned

after he was found to have squirled away cash during his country's banking collapse. Plucky little

Iceland. Don't hold your breath waiting for any of the other named politicians, 143 and counting to step down.

I mean, Syria's Bashar al-Assad, the king of Saudi Arabia, the presidents of Argentina and Ukraine,

Vladimir Putin, also on the walk of no shame, Jackie Chan, FIFA, and Simon Cowell.

By the way, did you know American Idol ended this week? Oh, how the mighty have fallen. It was a very big leak. In fact, the biggest

ever, more than 11 million documents from a Panama-based law firm called Mossack Fonseca, leaked over time by

a Mr. John Doe to the German newspaper, Soudoicha Saitung. Overwhelmed, the paper sought help

from the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which enlisted

almost 400 journalists from some 100 news outlets worldwide.

Does this augur the future of journalism?

Bigger and bigger leaks, larger and larger consortiums?

Maybe it's very complex and technically challenging work, because though they're called documents, it doesn't necessarily follow that you can read them.

As Gerard Ryle, the head of the Consortium of Investigative Journalists, explains.

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