04-08 WikiLeaks Challenges Media's Gatekeeper Function, Draws Attention to Press' Fealty & Allegiance to Power. Citizens who are concerned with the state of media and democracy in the United States have gathered in Boston to talk about how to reform media. People are here to dig into some of the biggest developments in media, technology and democratic society to get closer to a truth, which can help citizens take action and improve and transform media in their communities. One of the panels at the conference, "WikiLeaks, Journalism and Modern-Day Muckraking," offered attendees a chance to discuss how WikiLeaks has forced journalists to rethink their role in society and how, in an age of radical transparency, the need for muckraking journalism is greater than ever.
Participating panelists included Greg Mitchell of The Nation, Micah Sifry of the Personal Democracy Forum, Christopher Warren of Australian Media and the Entertainment & Arts Alliance, Emily Warren of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, and Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com. Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! NYT and the Julian Assange Smear Campaign. Anonymous: the amorphous ungroup. From Judith Miller to Julian Assange. The Times's Dealings With Julian Assange. 01-12 Frontline Club: WikiLeaks: Holding a mirror up to journalism? Last night in London the Frontline Club presented its first "On the Media" event of 2011, hosted by the club's founder, Vaughan Smith. The topic was WikiLeaks and its relationship with and impact on conventional journalism.
The panel was chaired by Richard Gizbert, presenter of The Listening Post on Al Jazeera English. Panel members were: Ian Katz, deputy editor of the Guardian David Aaronovitch, author and columnist for the Times (London) Gavin MacFadyen, director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism Mark Stephens, media lawyer and attorney for Julian Assange Video and text summary of the discussion Reflections from Dominique Jackson of Babel @ Bedlam, who was present at the event. Citizen Journalism (Chat Logs) Late last night Wired editor Evan Hansen responded to Glenn Greenwald’s request for Wired to release the full Lamo-Manning chat logs with a pretty broad personal attack Glenn.
It was heavy on melodrama, light on details. Not exactly an Edward R. Murrow moment. In his post, Hansen says: The bottom line is that Wired.com did not have anything to do with Manning’s arrest. Ironically, those ethics are now being pilloried, presumably because they have proven inconvenient for critics intent on discrediting Lamo. Note the “discrediting Lamo” link: it goes to the FDL page that logs key articles and interviews regarding Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and Wikileaks.
In his own words. Over the past few days, FDL readers have worked hard to transcribe every available recorded interview with Adrian Lamo, and their work has made it manifestly clear that Lamo consistently makes contradictory claims for what appears in the chat logs. Greenwald responds to Wired here and here. Greenwald quits CREW over WikiLeaks - Ben Smith. December 13, 2010 The Salon blogger and civil libertarian (and sometime POLITICO critic) Glenn Greenwald has quit his post on the board of the liberal ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington over the group's criticism of WikiLeaks.
Greenwald writes in his letter of resignation: [T]he recent condemnation of WikiLeaks by Anne Weismann, purporting to speak on behalf of CREW, is both baffling and unacceptable to me. It is baffling because I cannot fathom how a group purportedly devoted to greater transparency in government could condemn an entity that has brought more transparency to governments and corporations around the world than any single other organization by far. Weismann, CREW's chief counsel, sharply criticized WikiLeaks on Huffington Post, approvingly quoting a condemnation of the group as "among the enemies of open society because it does not respect the rule of law. " Greenwald's full letter is after the jump.
December 12, 2010 Very truly yours, U.S. journalists take the Fifth. WASHINGTON — Not so long ago, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could count on American journalists to support his campaign to publish secret documents that banks and governments didn't want the world to see. But just three years after a major court confrontation that saw many of America's most important journalism organizations file briefs on WikiLeaks' behalf, much of the U.S. journalistic community has shunned Assange — even as reporters write scores, if not hundreds, of stories based on WikiLeaks' trove of leaked State Department cables. Some call him a traitor, responsible for what's arguably one of the biggest U.S. national security breaches ever. Others say a man who calls for government transparency has been too opaque about how he obtained the documents. The freedom of the press committee of the Overseas Press Club of America in New York City declared him "not one of us.
" WikiLeaks "takes secrets. Greenwald rejects that argument. Job of the media (Jenkins) Is it justified? Should a newspaper disclose virtually all a nation's secret diplomatic communication, illegally downloaded by one of its citizens? The reporting in the Guardian of the first of a selection of 250,000 US state department cables marks a recasting of modern diplomacy. Clearly, there is no longer such a thing as a safe electronic archive, whatever computing's snake-oil salesmen claim. No organisation can treat digitised communication as confidential. An electronic secret is a contradiction in terms. Anything said or done in the name of a democracy is, prima facie, of public interest. In this light, two backup checks were applied. The state department knew of the leak several months ago and had ample time to alert staff in sensitive locations.
The revelations do not have the startling, coldblooded immediacy of the WikiLeaks war logs from Iraq and Afghanistan, with their astonishing insight into the minds of fighting men seemingly detached from the ethics of war.