To Publish or to Suppress?

Caroline Glaser
cg112210@ohio.edu

Would you rather know the truth or have information hidden from you to protect national security and the government? This is a question that is very prevalent when people criticize people who leak information through sources such as WikiLeaks and many more. I have always been all for protecting national security, however I believe that no information should be hidden from the public. We have a right to know what is taking place in our government considering we live in a democracy. There is information that I think should be censored before released, but I think the whistle-blowers and people who release the information have a right to do so.

Our Job As a Journalist
We as journalists were granted the opportunity to write under the First Amendment, which gave us as writer’s great freedom. Many journalists view WikiLeaks with different opinions of weather or not the release of such information is ethical or not. We as journalists want to be sure our writing is not harmful to the public, so if the release of such legal documents could potentially harm national security, we are faced with the question of whether it is ethical? When information is leaked the journalist has to be sure to check the facts before publishing the information. If this process is skipped the journalist's job could be on the line for publishing false information.

Government Secrets

Last year I decided to write an English paper on the topic of WikiLeaks and was astonished by what I found out. WikiLeaks is a website that was created to publish hundreds of private documents not intended for the eyes of the people. The government tried several times to stop the spread of this information, but more websites copied the information and it was spread. WikiLeaks felt that they had the right to release some of the information they had because in some cases it was information about the suppression of people.  Through WikiLeaks it showed us that citizens were not the only ones hiding secrets from the government, but the government had several secrets as well.

Most of us have heard of the release of the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg. These papers were published on the front page of The New York Times in 1971. In these papers it stated that our president at the time, Lyndon Johnson, had lied to the public about what was taking place in the Vietnam War. This issue became a huge legal dispute of weather the release of these papers harmed national security, but it was later ruled that they did not.

Julian Assange is an Australian editor, activist, publisher and journalist. He is known as the editor-in-chief and founder of WikiLeaks, which publishes submissions of secret information, news leaks and classified media from anonymous news sources and whistleblowers. Assange is a man under great scrutiny in the public eye. He is currently undergoing legal repercussion for people disagreeing with his choice to publish such information. Most people believe that Assange is not a true journalist and deserves any repercussions headed his way.

Journalist or Criminal?

There are always going to be people who will try to dictate who is and who is not a journalist. Most ethical journalists will not classify WikiLeaks as a journalistic website and will not associate them with resourceful information. However, it comes back to the question of whether or not the public should be informed of the information that is being hidden from them. Without people like Assange the public would not know any of the hidden information and would continue to live ill-informed of governmental secrets.