“The task of good journalism is to turn this material — who, when, where, how, how many — into something which emotionally engages people," – Jullian Assange in reference to the release of Afghan war docs to the NYT, Der Spiegel, The Guardian
Who is Jullian Assange? Where does Wikileaks get its information, and why does it even matter to a member of the “”public?” Most people who read their news offline with a cup of coffee have no idea what in the world a Wikileak is or why they should bother themselves with knowing, but quite the opposite is true, for Wikileaks is changing journalism, internet legislation, and most importantly – attitudes.
Wikileaks began in 2006 and is an international project that aims to make public documents of an otherwise secret nature. These can be Transportation Security Administration documents or highly encrypted (and deciphered) video of military personnel firing mistakenly upon journalists in Afghanistan. The most important stipulation being they must contain information of “political, diplomatic, or ethical interest” (1). Their most recent large release was that of 90,000 classified documents concerning the war in Afghanistan, concerning IED detection among other sensitive topics.
It’s spokes person – not founder – is Jullian Assange, a Canadian who along with other anonymous people make up the advisory board of Wikileaks. Their aim is to prevent access to information and the jailing of journalists for publishing information they believe to be in the public interest. He is a cunning computer expert (2) and is avowedly anti-war, and believes that by making sure the public is privy to the information he receives, will help to end it.
Many international government’s have shown an interest in what he publishes, lending verity to the source of the site’s content. Wikileaks is also at odds with the traditional mainstream media, collaborating to release the “Collateral Murder” video but also remaining divorced from the idea that it’s a news site. Assange himself has asserted that he’s not a journalist, but an activist. (3)
Is Wikileaks a new form of journalism? Surely they are at least media, as they believe wholy in the idea of an informed public, but they’ve also editorialized the content they’re sent, adding a fetching title “Collateral Murder” and adding in titles along with editing the footage into a youtube consumable format; asking the question of objectivity despite the video’s obvious relevance.
What Wikileaks may or may not be has yet to be seen definitively, they do however represent a radical departure from anything the world has known as “news” and are making the traditionalists of print media both angered and skeptical. One thing is known however, Wikileaks is here to stay.
(3) http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article7094231.ece
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