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Thursday, December 23, 2010

WikiLeaks - The Future of 'Crowd Sourced' Journalism?

WikiLeaks is certainly not the first whistle-blower organization, this has a long history; however, it has a high profile because it comes at a time when technology has created instant news and an immediate global reach. Researchers need information and good data and these documents have already lead to some published, peer-review assessments. Once the dust settles, it will be interesting to see what the long-term impact of this is. Certainly, the government will be tightening down their security procedures and hopefully somehow we might see increased transparency as officials realize that making information public still has value in a democratic society. I was able to write up a brief summary about WikiLeaks for Information Today's NewsBreaks on "WikiLeaks-A Critical Catalyst, But for What End?" that was just posted today. I learned a lot from some very interesting, smart people. I'd be interested in your comments as well!

4 comments:

  1. I really liked the comments, but I wonder if these were really leaks or if they were planted. I can't believe there isn't something more sensitive in all these documents. I'm not a conspiracy type, but it makes me wonder. Thanks for the summary.

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  2. Leaking is inherently an anti-authoritarian act. It is inherently an anarchist act.

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  3. The problem isn't the web site, it's with the system and with those you leak stuff. Think about times when having whistle-blowers really helped people. And every article I've read came from papers like the New York Times - would they publish something without thinking it was true? This is supposed to be a democracy isn't it? I like what they are doing.

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  4. Wikileaks is considered by many journalists as a non reliable source i.e. all theses reports and cables are written by the US army...Do not expect to read in these reports "yeah well today we have had permission to shoot on civilians just for the fun of it", these reports are "politically correct" so at the end of the day, wiki is just airing politically correct cables and reports...among the hundred of thousands stuff they aired only a few are really valuable.

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