Wikileaks – the new fifth estate?

Too much has been written about wikileaks.

There has been much controversial debate about the public sphere of wikileaks. Most of the debate is about the legalities and the moralities of what wikileaks brings and its means to the future of the fourth estate. (Benkler 2011) Do we live in a world where news being feed to us is honest and fully transparency without any disclosures? It’s no wonder why there have been many critiques about the emergence of wikileaks as it has exposed the media for what it is, the government – a generating smokescreen machine.

Wikileaks was created in 2006 by Julian Assange, a former computer hacker alongside a group of anonymous political activists who sought to expose/leak sensitive documents globally. The site was originally intending to function based on information being uploaded, reviewed and posted alongside with journalists as a form of a news release. (Coddington 2012) After 4 years of leaking documents on the global network, wikileaks have showed its debut by uploading one of the most contentious news in 2010; regarding the video of U.S. soldiers killing Iraqi civilians in cold blood.

Although, the exposition of this transparent news has gained its large feed of agreement, it has also received many negative critiques. Many are criticizing that, by exposing highly sensitive documents globally, it is not only prevailing the act of full transparency but it has also invaded personal privacy as well. By publishing libellous material, it has also violated intellectual property rights. (Karhula 2011)

Now we have to ask, what are the possible impacts that wikileaks bring? Is it going to create a new era of free speech and advance transparency on sensitive documents? Or is it going to have an opposite effect; where free speech is being restricted and a decrease of transparency in the fourth estate?

Much is to say about the critiques of wikileaks but, if you were to take a step back and look at it without any prejudicial judgments, you would see that wikileaks has taught us many lessons. One of the few lessons that it has taught is that transparency comes first and the people has the right to know everything, despite the volatility of the information. It is deemed that publishing (leaked material) does improves transparency, and evidently this transparency helps create a better society for all people. Such scrutiny can be a leading role in helping to reduced corruption and promote stronger democracies in all society’s institutions.(Fenster 2012) Apart from this judgement, the publishing world has changed and people are no longer depending on the traditional news media in the fourth estate for news. The internet has revolutionized how/where people are sourcing news from as the web is faster, easily accessible and has an unlimited depth of information which can be searched. Wikileaks act both as a publisher of content, as well as a channel for people to source information from. (Lynch 2010)

With all of this in mind, where is your stand on wikileaks? Would you stand to vote for a world of free press and full transparency or a world that information is kept in a secretive manner that is censored?

 

References

Benkler, Y 2011, ‘A Free Irresponsible Press: Wikileaks and the Battle over the Soul of the Networked Fourth Estate’,Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, vol46, pp376-379, accessed 3/4/2014, http://harvardcrcl.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Benkler.pdf

Coddington, M 2012, ‘Defending a Paradigm by Patrolling a Boundary: Two Global Newspapers’ Approach to WikiLeaks’, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 2012, pp382-383, accessed 3/4/2014, https://moodle.uowplatform.edu.au/pluginfile.php/195077/mod_resource/content/1/Week2_Coddington2012-AssangeBoundary.pdf

Fenster, M 2012, ‘Disclosure’s effect: Wikileaks and transparency’, Iowa Law Review, vol97, pp782-788, accessed 3/4/2014, http://www.uiowa.edu/~ilr/issues/ILR_97-3_Fenster.pdf

Karhula, P 2011, ‘What is the Effect of Wikileaks for Freedom of Information?’ International Federation of Library Associations, accessed 3/4/2014, http://www.ifla.org/files/assets/faife/publications/spotlights/wikileaks-karhula.pdf

Lynch, L 2010, ‘We’re going to crack the world open: Wikileaks and the future of Investigative reporting’, Journalism Practice, pp3-4, accessed 3/4/2014, http://www.caerdydd.ac.uk/jomec/resources/foj2009/foj2009-Lynch.pdf