Week 10 Response

So, this week, I am not going to directly answer the questions I asked earlier this week.  Instead, I want to reflect on the topic, reading and discussion that I found very interesting this week– Wikileaks.

Before this class, Wikileaks was not something that I heard about often, but it has intrigued me.  Is it good journalism, or anti-patriotic?  Is Julian Assange a hero or a traitor?

I watched a video a few weeks ago when Wikileaks released the Iraq Logs.  It was an interview with CNN in which the interviewer asked Assange about the charges being held against him.  He refused to answer the question.  The journalist then rephrased her question, giving Assange a chance to defend himself.  He got more upset, and after a brief verbal back-and-forth with the journalist, Assange ripped off his mic and walked off the set.  This interview gave me a very negative impression of the man behind Wikilieaks.

This week in class, we watched an interview with Assange from TED Talks.  Though this interview painted him in a better light, I am still not decided on my feelings toward the man or the organization.  When this interviewer asked the audience if they thought Assange was a journalistic hero or government traitor, the response was overwhelmingly in favor of the hero persona.  It appeared that only a few people, in comparison, thought of him as a traitor.  In this interview, Assange discusses the process they go through to verify their stories.  In fact, when something has not been verified, they let their readers know.  Assange even shared this piece of infomration in a way that got a laugh from the crowd.  This part of the interview was very humanizing.  On a whole, this video was a much more flattering portrayal of Assange.

We also discussed this week the great marketing that Wikileaks does before they release a big piece of information.  For instance, for weeks before the Iraq Logs were posted, there was discussion around are-they-or-aren’t-they.  There was a lot of hype before any information was shared with the public.  In addition, Wikileaks gave an exclusive to four of the biggest and most influential newspapers in the world.  This worked as a cascade model effect– information was given to a select number of people who have the power to pass it along to large numbers of people.

It is clear that Wikileaks is controversial, and has positive and negative attributes.  However, it is a good example of the trend of the watchdog model not only keeping an eye on the government, but also on the mainstream media.

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