Wednesday, April 27, 2011

WikiLeaks: Whistleblowing in the Digital Age

Ben Carter
bc172708@ohio.edu
popozao_panther on Twitter

Rarely in history can one find a justifiable reason to call a technological advancement so radical that it dramatically changed the nature of human interaction. However, those of us lucky enough to have lived through the '90s have a legitimate innovation to call just that-- the internet. The world wide web has thoroughly transformed the title world it ensnared in almost every facet: and as every person who would read this blog should know, journalism is no exception. In fact, the journalism industry probably has one of the more drastically morphing definitions.

As a couple of the articles for May 5th were keen to remind us, the military did a lot of the work in developing the internet and making it an extremely decentralized system, laying the groundwork for the open marketplace of ideas that anyone can utilize we know today. Also as the articles suggested, perhaps no one has put the power of the new medium in perspective quite like Julian Assange with WikiLeaks. Clearly the situation holds momentous implications for the future of the love/hate triangle between the government, the media, and sources, and ethical issues are no small part of this fact. Therefore, in the spirit of Professor Rogus' enthusiasm for case studies I though it would be interesting to to do a brief version of a case study on WikiLeaks from the view of a traditional media outlet.

WikiLeaks can potentially can deal serious damage to the security and authority.


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