91,000 reports, one disgruntled soldier, one career hacker with twisted vision of what should be public and we have yet another other blow to… not the national security but to citizen journalism. Julian Assange’s Wikileaks is precisely the reason masses will begin to see the dark side of citizen journalism. If you are confused, I am talking about Afghan War Diary released by Wikileaks that tells the story of “Afghanistan Policy Gone Wild.”
New York Times, Washington Post etc but a highly classified report is released by a website that was unknown to most of us. You can also call that instant gratification. Going to a well known news media outlet and navigating through the bureaucracy would have taken a lot of time; maybe that’s the justification for instant gratification.
I am all for freedom of speech and transparent information but not everything is for public eye. No one will even remember that the biggest leak in the U.S. History was uncovered by an unknown website. That’s because there was nothing new in the leak reports. There were quite a few assumptions that were proven right, that’s all.
Every one has an agenda, Wikileaks is new and it’s unclear what their agenda is. From what I see, it seems to me that their initial purpose was to expose Chinese government by leaking all their information but it was so difficult to get anything out of China that instead the founder focused his attention on the U.S and decided that Palin’s emails are worth leaking.
Julian Assange has blood on his hands and he will be made an example every time citizens get involved with journalism. Julian Assange was successful in showing the world the dark side of citizen journalism.
