Wikileaks

I had always thought that governments were supposed to work for the people they represent... how wrong was I?! People are supposed to be able to trust their governments but it makes it so hard to trust them when they constantly deceive the very people that elected them to power. It is expected that there is a certain level of government transparency. While it is somewhat expected that governments don’t tell their people everything they loose more than trust by hiding information in shadows rather than by releasing the news to the public. It will cause more public backlash simply because they try hiding the information and expect no one will realise what they are doing.  It is people like Julian Assange and the other workers of Wikileaks that reveal just how deceptive our governments are. However, there is a fine line between the government making information available to citizens and maintaining national security. As stated by Bertot social media “offers a contrasting view to balance the media coverage”. It does so by combining collaboration, participation, empowerment and time. Social media gives user a platform to voice their opinions (Bertot, Jaeger and Grimes 2010). Wikileaks is a prime example of how technologies can reveal corruption.

Wikileaks exposes unethical behaviour in governments and corporations, they do so by publishing and commenting on leaked documents on their web page. Its the newest form of investigative reporting. What Julian Assange and the rest of the Wikileaks team can be compared to the works of I.F Stone (Izzy Stone)Throughout Izzys early career he was criticised and blacklisted, Izzy filed, cross referenced and contextualised what governments say and published his own Weekly news, called ‘IF Stone’s Weekly.  Very similar to what Wikileaks does now, except Wikileaks has the assistance of computers and the internet to assist them (and a wider audience due to the ease of accessibility of the internet).

While war mongering countries like America have the most to lose with Wikileaks around they will stop at nothing to put Julian Assange behind bars. Julian Assange stands as an honest man, revealing classified information to the people, who have the right to know what is happening with the tax payers money. While not every country has freedom of speech Julian Assange and Wikileaks go to extensive lengths to make sure their facts are checked and not to defame anyone.  Currently Julian Assange is in the middle of a court case regarding extradition to Sweden.

Update: Assange lost the court case, but hope remains he can still appeal the decision to the European Court of Human Rights.

References:

Bertot, J. C., Jaeger, P. T. and Grimes, J. M. Using ICTs to create a culture of transparency: E-government and social media as openness and anti-corruption tools for societies Government Information Quarterly 27 (2010)

http://alanknight.wordpress.com/2010/12/10/wikileaks-and-investigative-journalism/#more-628