Media and Democracy - WikiLeaks has created a new media landscape

WikiLeaks has created a new media landscape (Guardian online article)

By avoiding national secrecy laws, WikiLeaks has begun a publishing trend that no regime can stop
Read the full article here.

Extract:
WikiLeaks affects one of the key tensions in democracies: the government needs to be able to keep secrets, but citizens need to know what is being done in our name. These requirements are fundamental and incompatible; like the trade-offs between privacy and security, or liberty and equality, different countries in different eras find different ways to negotiate those competing needs.

In the case of state secrets v citizen oversight, however, there is one constant risk: since deciding what is a secret is itself a secret, there is always a risk that the government will simply hide an increasing amount of material of public concern. One response to this risk is the leaker, someone who believes that key elements of political life are being wrongly kept from public view, and who circulates that material on his or her own.

Because this tension between governments and leakers is so important, and because WikiLeaks so dramatically helps leakers, it isn't just a new entrant in the existing media landscape. Its arrival creates a new landscape.

This transformation is under-appreciated. The press often covers WikiLeaks as a series of unfortunate events, one crisis or scandal after another. And Julian Assange, of course, is catnip – brilliant, opinionated, a monocle and a Persian cat away from looking like a Bond villain. The press has covered him as dutifully as any movie star, while paying too little attention to what his invention means about the wider world.

Media and Democracy - WikiLeaks backlash

Media and democracy VERY essential reading for students:
http://www.digitalpercept.com/tag/mark-townsend/

This article titled “WikiLeaks backlash: The first global cyber war has begun, claim hackers” was written by Mark Townsend, Paul Harris in New York, Alex Duval Smith in Johannesburg, Dan Sabbagh, Josh Halliday, for The Observer on Sunday 12th December 2010 03.00 Asia/Calcutta

Julian Assange and Wikileaks

Live updates from this Guardian online page.

Julian Assange urges supporters to protect WikiLeaks. Read it here

Wikileaks - a good thing or not?

This is such an important topic! Should we have such documents leaked onto the internet? Is it putting informants and soldiers at risk?

Listen to Julian Assange, creator of Wikileaks, by clicking on this link from Ted.com.

You will find number of divided opinions in newspapers and online about this debate.
Besides being a fascinating story (and controversy), it also makes a great case study for A2 Media in the Online Age.

Information from Ted.com about this debate:
The controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and video. Founder Julian Assange, who's reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED's Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished -- and what drives him. The interview includes graphic footage of a recent US airstrike in Baghdad.