Nov 03 2010
Media Ethics, WikiLeaks, and Spongebob
Yes Spongebob. I could not help, but think about this particular episode after reading the chapter on Media Ethics. As dorky as it is it does touch on a number of issues from the chapter such as values, loyalty, and principles. Enjoy.
The ethics of Spongebob aside, I would like to answer my questions for the week in relation to the information we have seen regarding Wikileaks and the ethics that fall around it.
In our theory book, it says that when confronting an ethical dilemma one should take into account one’s values. However, it fails to mention which values. Did it mean personal values or the values of society? I suppose that is up to the person in the dilemma. Regarding Wikileaks, based on the articles we have read and the videos we have watched, I can see three major values at work in their decision making process.
The first value and the most prominent is “the people have a right to know”. I say this is the most prominent value because it provides the foundation for their entire operation. Since their inception, Wikileaks has made dangerous and powerful enemies around the world. Should the true structure of their organization be reveled, chances are they would be attacked on many fronts and dismantled as a result. With this threat looming over their heads, the producers for Wikileaks must value their mission above all else. Should someone turn the foundation would crack and the organization would collapse.
The threat of enemies to the site leads into the next prominent value of Wikileaks: secrecy. As we have stated in class, an irony of Wikileaks is that it promots transparency, yet their organization is opaque to the outside world. The some of the reasons for this opacity are stated in the above paragraph. Another reason I would like to add to this list is the nature of Wikileaks sources. To obtain such information as Wikileaks has, it is obvious that some of their sources are located in the very organizations who they have released information on. Even with the security the Wikileaks tries to provide, there is always a risk that sources can be discovered. A recent example is the source of the Afghanistan papers released earlier this year. The source of this information was discovered, ironically, by another hacker who states he had been in contact with the leaker.
The third value to mention and the most gray area of these values is that utilized to determine what to post on the site. I am not a Wikileaks user so I cannot say what values, if any, guide their decision making process. However, as Assange stated in his TED talk video, they do not have the man power to post everything they receive. Thus, there must be some system in place to decide what to post. Regardless of their system, it can be argued that this is where Wikileaks runs into most of their ethical dilemmas. As to the factors they take into account, we can only speculate as outsiders.