Wikileaks is named the top newsmaker of 2010 by Al Jazeera and senior editors at Postmedia Network newspapers and canada.com.
“Assange’s organization indisputably demonstrated the emerging power of social media, while illustrating the risks governments run when they say one thing in private and another in public,” said Marlon Marshall, managing editor of the Regina Leader-Post.
“This was a game-changer in terms of citizen journalism, as well as marking a shift in the balance of power between government, big business and the collective citizenry via social media,” agreed Patricia Graham, editor-in-chief of the Vancouver Sun.
Bloomberg announced that Novaya Gazeta, the Moscow newspaper controlled by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and billionaire Alexander Lebedev, will collaborate with Wikileaks to publish material specifically about Russia.
The weekly newspaper is known in an industry dominated by state-run companies for its critical reports of the Kremlin and investigative coverage of Russian affairs.
Novaya Gazeta received unlimited access to the WikiLeaks database, which has a “wide range” of materials, including documents about Politkovskaya’s murder as well as information about Russian politicians’ ties to organized crime, Nadezhda Prusenkova, a Novaya Gazeta spokeswoman, said by phone from Moscow. The newspaper will start releasing materials next month.
President Dmitry Medvedev said the documents published by WikiLeaks don’t hurt Russia’s interests and that the Russian authorities don’t care what’s being discussed in diplomatic circles.
The Age reports that the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance in Australia have waived Julian Assnge's fees for a year.
Australia's media union has waived Julian Assange's fees for a year after MasterCard cancelled his credit card. ...
Louise Connor, the union's Victorian secretary, said Assange had been a union member since 1997. She said Assange had not breached the journalists' code of ethics and that he continued to protect his sources and publish in the public interest.
FAIR summarizes the cablegate coverage in the US mainstream media, concluding:
These conclusions represent an extraordinarily narrow reading of the WikiLeaks cables, of which about 1,000 have been released (contrary to constant media claims that the website has already released 250,000 cables). Some of the more explosive revelations, unflattering to U.S. policymakers, have received less attention in U.S. corporate media.
After listing a very good summary of essential cablegate revelations that have been largely ignored by the US media the article finishes with a reminder of the statement from the NY Times explaining why they had published some cable information:
The "duplicity" of other countries can be illuminated by the cables, while the U.S.'s secret wars are evidence of "diplomacy." That principle would seem to be guiding the way many U.S. outlets are interpreting the WikiLeaks revelations.
When Julian Assange was arrested beginning of this week, all newspapers were all over the story. Suddenly Norwegian and Swedish media erupted in yet another frenzy regarding Assange and Wikileaks. Unfortunately that excitement seems to have died of a bit. It actually seems that it has become completely forgotten by the media at this point. I have visited some of the biggest newspapers online in Norway and Sweden and I can't find any stories regarding Assange or Wikileaks -- unless I check their weekly archive.
Extremist opposition to Wikileaks by American career politicians may not be entirely out of a stated concern for American national security. A credible argument can be made that, instead, some political self-interest might be involved
Death to Julian Assange, his offspring, the Wikileaks board, all of us, the internet, etc. Contrary to what these clowns have learned from video games and Hollywood, most countries do have laws. And public opinion works both ways. This is a list of the ghouls and it will soon contain what can be done about them. Sadly, I expect it to grow faster than the NOD. While reading this sickening post, please keep in mind that no one associated with Wikileaks has broken any laws, and Wikileaks’ work over the past four years has caused no physical harm to anyone.
While some of his colleagues are calling for Julian Assange to be prosecuted as a terrorist or assassinated, in an interview on Fox News' Freedom Watch on Thursday, Republican Rep. Ron Paul said that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks should get the same kind of protections as the mainstream media when it comes to releasing information.
"In a free society we're supposed to know the truth," Paul said, quoted by Politico. "In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it."
"This whole notion that Assange, who's an Australian, that we want to prosecute him for treason. I mean, aren't they jumping to a wild conclusion?” he added. “This is media, isn't it? I mean, why don't we prosecute The New York Times or anybody that releases this?"
"What we need is more WikiLeaks about the Federal Reserve," he added. "Can you imagine what it'd be like if we had every conversation in the last 10 years with our Federal Reserve people, the Federal Reserve chairman, with all the central bankers of the world and every agreement or quid-pro-quo they have? It would be massive. People would be so outraged."
In a Twitter post on Friday, Ron Paul wrote: "Re: WikiLeaks — In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble."
The first wave of Wikileaks' Cablegate ground ashore Sunday night. (To search, visit rpgp.org's full text search site.) Coverage has been generally good. I have found Der Spiegel and The Guardian's websites invaluable.
During its Afghanistan War Log Releases, WikiLeaks carelessly/wantonly/maliciously failed to redact the names of soldiers/informants, or hold back more sensitive information that might endanger lives.
The allegation has circulated that WikiLeaks would not consider any restraints in the release of its Afghanistan War Log releases, and its Iraq War Log releases. It is now considered common knowledge that WL released both sets of War Logs without any provisions for protecting sensitive identities within them. This is simply not true.
This falsehood was developed opportunistically by the Pentagon, and by media organizations friendly to official Washington. The falsehood was afterwards propagated by careless repetition by other news sources, and was passed on by netizens in internet communities and on comment streams, with little regard for its veracity.
The claim is false. WikiLeaks has clearly conducted harm minimization on all of its War Log releases. These harm minimization measures included:
Today, Wikileaks’ Twitter account made two enigmatic announcements about its plans for future disclosures, and thereby, in usual style, confused the professional journalism sector. The comments hint at a future release of information that far eclipses the public interest value of 2010′s high profile Wikileak releases.
Glenn Greenwald tweeted a link to an article on FoxNews, by Christian Whiton, in which Whiton calls for executive action on the threat that Wikileaks poses to the United States. The article is riddled with factual errors. For example, it perpetuates the false belief that the Iraq War Logs, released by Wikileaks on Friday, contains the names of informants, who might therefore be in danger. It has been well publicized by now that the Iraq War Logs are thoroughly redacted, but this doesn’t stop the propaganda apparatus in the United States pretending otherwise.
Please find below a number of further media resources on WikiLeaks.
News resources
So where does that leave Adrian “my sincere desire” Lamo? Or Jonah “it’s a serious question” Goldberg, John “rattle a bullet around his skull” Hawkins, Christian “non-judicial actions” Whiton, and Marc “wide range of options” Thiessen?
The Telegraph: WikiLeaks release: Timeline of the key WikiLeaks revelations
The Telegraph's John Swaine looks at nine WikiLeaks releases, including the Guantanamo Bay operating procedures, the BNP membership list, the Trafigura report, 'Climategate' emails, war logs and more.
Read more
El Mundo: El destape en periodismo
Hernan Mira on investigative journalism and why WikiLeaks provides a much needed service: "The indignation at the [Iraq] leaks is not the most relevant issue, points out journalist Enrique Valiente, with whom I agree. What is absurd is to minimize the facts revealed. The kind of journalism that makes public the behavior of governments is very important. Access to information and transparency are essential to a free society. It is as if people had allowed torture and murder to "put on a form of suicide, which is the suicide of one's values," said Valiente."
Read more
The Voice of Russia: WikiLeaks, Part 2: Extracts of GI reports
Ignat Kulagin's second installment looking at cases from the Iraq War Logs delves into civilian death incidents. "It’s not hard to hide information about civilian losses during wartime. It is enough just to lay blame on insurgents. In fact, this gets two birds with one stone: you reaffirm the righteous path of the war machine, both with the local civilians and the world community, all the while “cleaning up” the statistics, since soldiers are penalized for civilian casualties."
Read more
Upcoming release coverage
The international press has picked up quickly on the WikiLeaks statements on Twitter about their upcoming release, prompting massive speculation about the nature and subject of the release, and sometimes making assumptions presented as fact. While we have listed a few articles on the topic in previous posts here and here, please find below some additional references:
USA Today: WikiLeaks says next release will be 7 times larger than Iraq war logs
TIME: WikiLeaks: You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet
CTV: WikiLeaks says next leak 7 times size of Iraq files
Sydney Morning Herald: WikiLeaks to drop another bombshell
Antiwar News: WikiLeaks Promises ‘Seven Times Bigger’ Leak
Truthdig: WikiLeaks Promises Biggest-Ever Leak
Nouvel Observateur: WikiLeaks annonce la publication "dans les prochains mois" de nouveaux documents
France 24: WikiLeaks promet de nouvelles révélations fracassantes
El País: WikiLeaks anuncia que publicará nuevos documentos en los próximos meses
El Universal: WikiLeaks advierte que próxima filtración será siete veces mayor que la de Irak
La Tercera: WikiLeaks anuncia nueva difusión masiva de documentos secretos
Netzwoche: WikiLeaks will die Geschichte neu schreiben
Netzwelt: WikiLeaks: Veröffentlichung von 2,8 Millionen Dokumenten geplant (Update)
Once upon a time, the citizens of a country looked up to the members of its ruling class. What they wore, what they said, who they married, who they were friends with and who they fought with. If someone was overlooked for a favour, there would be conversations behind hands about a woman they both loved, or a piece of land in dispute. Gossipy, yes, but useful information, especially in a dictatorship where it paid to know who was in and who was out. Who has the ear of the king, could indicate this year’s laws. Very useful.
While yesterday the Swedish press publicised a DN story erroneously reporting that WikiLeaks had moved all its servers out of Sweden (much to the surprise of WL's current Swedish ISP, Bahnhof), and then had to recant it (e.g.: Svenska Dagbladet, Aftonbladet), WikiLeaks' Twitter announcement earlier today of its upcoming release prompted another round of conjecture:
The Daily Mail titled its report WikiLeaks set to release new Iraq war logs 'seven times bigger than the first', while CNN stated in its article that "WikiLeaks indicated Monday that it is preparing to release a new batch of previously classified U.S. military documents." The Telegraph titled its report WikiLeaks to release three million secret US documents.
The WikiLeaks statements in no way indicated that the new release is related to either Iraq or US classified military documents. You can verify this directly here and here. While it is not impossible that the release may be related to those subjects, this is all the information currently available. We would like to remind the reader to check the sources whenever possible.
Coverage in March:
Jon Dillingham on the absence from the US public debate of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:
"But we in the press often do Washington’s bidding: The politicians don’t talk about these things, so neither do we. We’ve rendered ourselves, and this entire exercise in democracy, null and void. We may prattle on about health care reform or human rights in China, but if the press and the public don’t push back against America’s crimes of aggression and the mass killing of innocents, then we’re nothing more than obscene jingoists.
Our silence, that of the people and the press, has quickened our country’s slide into what military historian Andrew Bacevich calls “permanent war.”"
Read the full article here: TruthDig
Hacks/Hackers Boston, in partnership with the Boston University School of Communication, Department of Journalism, and the Society of Professional Journalists, is presenting a panel discussion on "Legal liability in the age of WikiLeaks."
The panelists will be First Ammendment attorneys Jon Albano of Bingham McCutcheon and Robert A. Bertsche of Prince Lobel. The panel will be moderated by Dan Kennedy, assistant professor at Northeastern's School of Journalism.
The panel discussion will take place at the Boston University Student Lounge at 6pm. Please find further event details here.
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