Do you support WikiLeaks?
Centered beneath the brand title of the WikiLeaks homepage is the quote from Time Magazine that Wikileaks “… could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act.” I believe this to be true. Since its inception in 2006, the site has built a database of documents that runs into the millions. According to founder and director Julian Assange, WikiLeaks in 2009 published more classified documents that the rest of the world’s media combined.
After the publication of documents from the Afghanistan War and the now infamous 2007 footage of an Apache helicopter mowing down people (including children and two Reuters journalists) in Iraq as US soldiers laugh, WikiLeaks is at the centre of an ongoing furor that has cemented Assange as a target of government venom. They are charging soldier Bradley Manning who is suspected of being the source for the video footage and over 90,000 leaked military documents, and considering whether the site and its founder can be charged under the 1917 Espionage Act. The White House dismissed WikiLeaks’ actions as being potentially dangerous to soldiers on the ground and to innocents and civilians included in the releaased information, and damaging to relations with other nations. WikiLeaks argues that it protects its sources with the upmost secrecy, and that their scrutiny of established institutions is necessary and defensible on moral grounds. The question of how to deal with whistleblowers has always been a contentious one. WikiLeaks aims to ensure that whistleblowers are not jailed for emailing sensitive or classified documents, as happened to Chinese journalist Shi Tao, who was sentenced to 10 years in 2005 after publicising an email from Chinese officials about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Does WikiLeaks’s growing following and power mark a landmark shift in the way media is presented to us and, more important is it a positive shift? It is a debate that will prove itself one way or another over the tests of time. But for my part, I am glad for it. Check out this TED release, where you can see Assange interviewed and find out for yourself some of the positive effects that have come out of WikiLeaks publications in countries such as Kenya and Iceland. His self-belief and brave desire to nurture victims by “policing perpetrators” is admirable.
And if you want more… here’s a three-part interview with Assange courtesy of Democracy Now!
