WikiLeaks: Friend or foe to professional media?

WikiLeaks is an international, online, self-described not-for-profit organisation publishing submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under the Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more than 1.2 million documents within a year of its launch (Chatriwala, 2010).

Source: article-3.com

The WikiLeaks website says their goal is "to bring important news and information to the public. One of our most important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth" (Khatchadourian, 2010).

Julian Assange, Founder of WikiLeaks. Source:  telegraph.co.uk

Another of the organisation's goals is to ensure that whistleblowers and journalists are not jailed for emailing sensitive or classified documents. However, the major stumbling block which WikiLeaks faced was when Chinese journalist Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in 2005 after publicising an email from Chinese officials about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre (Bradner, 2007).

Rather than leaking directly to the press, and fearing exposure and retribution, whistleblowers can leak to WikiLeaks, which then leaks to the press for them. The group located its headquarters in Sweden because it has one of the world’s strongest shield laws to protect confidential source-journalist relationships (Hennigan, 2010).

In August 2009 in the Scandinavian nation Iceland, Kaupthing Bank secured a court order preventing Iceland's national broadcaster, RÚV, from broadcasting a risk analysis report showing the bank's substantial exposure to debt default risk ( Sigurgrimsdottir, 2009). This information had been leaked by a whistleblower to WikiLeaks and remained available on the WikiLeaks site; faced with an injunction minutes before broadcast, the channel ran with a screen grab of the WikiLeaks site instead of the scheduled piece on the bank. Citizens of Iceland were reported to be outraged that RÚV was prevented from broadcasting news of relevance (Singel, 2010). 

source: eurovoix.com

Therefore, WikiLeaks has been credited with inspiring the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a bill meant to reclaim Iceland's 2007 Reporters Without Borders ranking as first in the world for freedom of speech. It aims to enact a range of protections for sources, journalists, and publishers; this, in my opinion marks the largest impact WikiLeaks has had on professional media apart from sparking other models of similar goals in various countries across the globe.

References

1. Chatriwala, O. 2010. "WikiLeaks vs the Pentagon". Al Jazeera blog. Retrieved 25 June 2012.

 2. Khatchadourian, R. 2010. "No Secrets: Julian Assange's Mission for total transparency". The New Yorker. Retrieved 25 June 2012.

 3. Bradner, S. 2007. "Wikileaks: a site for exposure". Network World (Framingham, MA). Retrieved 25 June 2012.

 4. Hennigan, W. J. 2010. "WikiLeaks' new home is in a former bomb shelter". Los Angeles Times technology blog. Retrieved 25 June 2012.

 5. Sigurgrimsdottir, H. 2009. "Iceland court lifts gag order after public outrage". The San Diego Union-Tribune. Associated Press. Retrieved 25 June 2012.

6. Singel, R. 2010. "Wikileaks Reopens for Leakers". Wired (New York). Retrieved 25 June 2012.