le060610@ohio.edu
The United States has to be the most desired country for a journalist to live in. Because of the writes given to us in the First Amendment, we basically have free reign to say and report on whatever we want. Granted, our publication's audience may not agree with the things we say or do. If this is the case, we will surely hear about it. That is the beauty of free speech in America. The conversation isn't just a two-way street anymore. You can put a story out there and get millions of pieces of feed back.
However, as a journalist, it is also our duty to balance freedom of speech with national security. This is one area that the government has put it's foot down several times to stop publication of certain information. But, sometimes that doesn't matter. There have been several cases throughout history that important government information has been leaked. WikiLeaks is a media organization that is famous for doing just that.
What is WikiLeaks?
I'm going to be honest. Somehow I was able to live my life up until my sophomore year of college without even hearing about WikiLeaks. Yes, I know, I'm sure this shocked many of you. Even after hearing about the organization, I didn't research it until I began to write this blog post.
So, for the few people like me that are clueless here is a run down:
They are a non-profit organization that accepts leaks on secret and private information by anonymous sources. Basically they accept submissions of leaked information and then spend time on reviewing the documents to decide if they are legitimate. If they decide they are, WikiLeaks proceeds in publishing the private information to the public. You can visit WikiLeaks website for more, detailed information on their process.
What do I think?
As a current journalism student, I find myself having mixed feelings about the topic of leaks and the WikiLeaks organization.
On one hand, I'm thinking "Is WikiLeaks taking the jobs of journalists?" Isn't it investigative journalists job to dig deep and uncover stories that the public has a right to know about but are being hidden? So even though the folks at WikiLeaks do not claim to be journalists, in my eyes they are kind of doing the work of a journalist.
Another concern of mine is obviously, national security. Is it okay that some really important information gets out to the public? It's very scary to think that if WikiLeaks or any other source gets ahold of a dangerous piece of information,our whole country could be compromised. We could be exposed and vulnerable to an attack by another country. The most alarming aspect is that this is even an issue! If this information is supposabley classified government information, then how the heck to it get to an outside source to be leaked in the first place!?
Lastly, as a journalist I think it is important to protect our freedom of speech. We can't let the government pull the "national security" card too often, or when it doesn't actually apply. Without the leak of the Pentagon Papers we would have never known about the corruption that was occurring.
In all honesty, it's just a balancing act that journalists have to face. I'm not sure that I could give an answer on how I would deal with a similar situation in my professional career.
No comments:
Post a Comment