The problem is that there is rarely hard evidence for anything before you get the grant to study the issue. The more uncertainty there is, the more room there is for politics and personal prejudices.
After reading through your entire post, I notice that you never actually mention what distinguishes Wikileaks from other types of journalism. Do you know yourself?
You ARE aware that Wikileaks does reporting and commenting besides publishing leaked documents, aren't you?
...do journalists need special bonus rights over and above the standard package? What is the problem to which this is the solution?
The problem of bringing critical information to the public's attention.
The special rights are not for the journalist's sake; it is for the sake of public interest: for exposing corruption, incompetence and just plain mistakes that those in power would wish to hide.
You are always required to follow the safety regulations of the country where the car is sold, since each sovereign nation has authority over what happens on their own soil.
For the very same reason, Australia has sole authority over what happens on Australian soil, and an Australian citizen in Australia (i.e, Julian Assange) only needs to follow Australian law.
I'm scared by the number of U.S. citizens who believe their laws apply to the whole world. I'm scared that they will start throwing around bombs when they don't get their way, like a spoiled child.
Sweden does not have any laws requiring ISPs to block certain sites. The police maintains a list of alleged child pornography sites, but at least in theory, ISPs are not required to block them. However, almost all Swedish ISPs do, possibly because they fear the public opinon, and possibly because they fear legislation if they refuse to do it "voluntarily".
The Pirate Bay was placed on this list once, due to having torrents with names which sounded like child pornography. It was quickly removed after loud protests about government censorship.
There was also a court order that forced The Pirate Bay's ISP to shut down the site (which quickly came up again with another ISP), but that's about it.
However, we are not exactly immune to government censorship. For example, there are high-ranking Swedish politicians who want to block foreign gambling sites. The official reason is to bring the "dangerous" gambling under government control and protect people from gambling addictions. The real reason is to keep money from flowing out of the country, and let it flow into the state's gambling monopoly instead.
To be honest, I'm not sure which country could be most trusted with the Internet. Right now, Iceland looks like a good bet.
They also asked human rights organisations for help in going through the documents, but failed to raise any interest. In the end, they went through the documents themselves, and manage to edit out most personal information. They missed some information that may indirectly identify informations, like names of villages, but so far, there is no evidence that anyone has actually been hurt by the leak.
Political special interest groups are spreading a lot of misinformation about Wikileaks to draw the attention away from the war crimes that Wikileaks exposed, to the organisation itself.
Anyway, all of this has absolutely nothing to do with whether what they're doing is valid journalism or not. You can't outlaw something just because you think it's bad journalism; that would set a precedent for outlawing any opinion you don't like. If you don't want news sites to publish classified documents, then simply make it illegal to publish classified documents. Don't create arbitrary distinctions between "proper" and "non-proper" news organisations, because those arbitrary distinctions will only be used by the government to censor opinions they don't like.
Wikileaks provides *both* original documents, and their own reporting on them, so people can decide for themselves if their reporting is accurate. I think that is more honest than providing *only* the reporting, like traditional news sources do.
But that's not really the issue. Even if Wikileaks only put up leaked documents and nothing else, it would still be news. It would be new information of interest to the public. Giving the government the power to decide what "proper" journalism is, based on its quality, would be very arbitrary, and could easily be mis-used to censor criticism against the government.
If the law really said that it was illegal to disseminate non-classified information that could, indirectly, aid enemy troops, it would indeed be a "stoopid" law.
However, I do not believe that Australian law is that stupid. I believe a few vocal special interest groups, primarily in the USA, are desperately trying to mis-interpret the law in order to discredit Assange.
My interpretation is supported by the fact that the Australian government has, indeed, not issued an arrest order for Assange.
Assange broke the laws of Australia, where he is a citizen, when he released another country's secrets.
Wrong. The Australian government hasn't even issued an arrest order for Assange, much less convicted him of any crime.
I'm guessing you're thinking of this Australian lobby group's claims that Assange committed treason by releasing the documents. But they can claim anything they want; unless the courts believe them, it's just wishful thinking on their part.
Australia, like most countries, has laws against aiding and abetting the enemy in wartime, but that doesn't mean a journalist is prohibited from releasing information just because it could indirectly aid the enemy. That interpretation would be ludicrous; it would mean the law could be used to silence any criticism of the war efforts, since it could always be said that criticism demoralises the troops.
In all modern democracies, freedom of speech has a special status which allows it to override most other laws. This is true for the USA too; a law which unduly limits freedom of speech is deemed unconstitutional, and if another part of the constitution would ever come into conflict with freedom of speech, the Supreme Court would have to weigh them against with each other. This provides a safety net, so the government can't bend existing laws in order to silence criticism.
That's a false analogy. The police is public, while security firms are private. Wikileaks and traditional news organisations are both private. Discriminating between them means discriminating between different private firm. And in this case, the reason for discriminating at all seems to be that many Americans don't like what Wikileaks is doing.
I'd say that the slippery slop is discriminating between different news organisations, while treating them the same is the safe road.
How much grant money would you get if you (hypothetically) found indications that man-made global warming may be wrong, and wanted to do research to confirm it?
Even if they don't agree with what Wikileaks is doing, it's hard for me to see how a reasonably well-educated person could deny that Wikileaks is doing journalism. Whether you like it or not has nothing to do with it.
If a neo-nazi group set up a site with biased news items where they slandered all immigrants and blamed society's ills on them, it would be bad journalism - but it would still be journalism, and the law would have to treat it the same as all other news sources.
You can't give everyone an exemption or they'll claim they were "reporting" when they drunkenly bragged that they knew who killed Mr. Body. That's the problem with the shield law idea.
This may come as a surprise to you, but other civilised nations have had source protection for journalists for decades, and it's worked perfectly well. No drunken braggarts have been able to avoid the law by claiming they were "reporting", since talking to people in private falls outside the definition of "reporting".
In fact, the United States is unusual for not protecting the sources of journalists.
But not too much, because clearly there are criminals, like Assange, who will masquerade as "journalists" to commit their crimes.
When I read things like this, I have to remind myself that not all Americans are as ignorant.
For the millionth time: Julian Assange has not broken any laws. He is an Australisan citizen, and there is no Australian law that forbids him to expose the military secrets of other nations. What he has done is no more, and no less, than ordinary journalism. A lot of Americans may not like his journalism, but that doesn't change what it is.
Wikileaks digs up new facts which they present to the public. That alone puts them ahead of many print journalists who merely reiterate what they've read in other newspapers or in press releases.
You can have opinions on how responsible it was of them to release the Afghani documents in the way they did, but that has nothing to do with whether it's journalism or not.
I mean, Wikileaks shakes up the social order by publishing things the people in power don't want to be known, and offend people by espousing opinions they don't already have. How could that possibly be confused with real journalism?
Christianity and Islam belong to the same group of religions, together with Judaism - the Abrahamitic religions. They all share belief in a single, exclusive deity (although Christianity says their single deity is at the same time trifold). They are all authoritarian and based on revelation - i.e. their important tenets were handed down by God, not discovered by men. They are all patriarchal and place women in a subservient role to men.
There are also lots of differences, like: In Christianity, the Bible is inspired by God, while in Islam, the Quran is dictated by God. Christianity emphasises faith, i.e, belief in God as a way to salvation in itself, while Islam emphasises devotion and servitude to God. Depending on your perspective, these differences may be seen as large, or as minor variations between similar religions.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, you're right.
Regardless, that doesn't mean he should use the Wikileaks site for promoting his own innocence.
I think the Slashdot crowd just don't want the slightest risk of someone being fooled by a hypothetical smear campaign.
It's not a neo-con thing, it's a politician thing.
Dude, there is no law preventing Icelandic politicians from commenting on Swedish police investigations. They're different countries.
You're icelandic?
What about your "Modern Media Initiative"? It looks promising.
The problem is that there is rarely hard evidence for anything before you get the grant to study the issue. The more uncertainty there is, the more room there is for politics and personal prejudices.
This.
Wikileaks is not journalism.
After reading through your entire post, I notice that you never actually mention what distinguishes Wikileaks from other types of journalism. Do you know yourself?
You ARE aware that Wikileaks does reporting and commenting besides publishing leaked documents, aren't you?
...do journalists need special bonus rights over and above the standard package?
What is the problem to which this is the solution?
The problem of bringing critical information to the public's attention.
The special rights are not for the journalist's sake; it is for the sake of public interest: for exposing corruption, incompetence and just plain mistakes that those in power would wish to hide.
You are always required to follow the safety regulations of the country where the car is sold, since each sovereign nation has authority over what happens on their own soil.
For the very same reason, Australia has sole authority over what happens on Australian soil, and an Australian citizen in Australia (i.e, Julian Assange) only needs to follow Australian law.
I'm scared by the number of U.S. citizens who believe their laws apply to the whole world. I'm scared that they will start throwing around bombs when they don't get their way, like a spoiled child.
Sweden does not have any laws requiring ISPs to block certain sites. The police maintains a list of alleged child pornography sites, but at least in theory, ISPs are not required to block them. However, almost all Swedish ISPs do, possibly because they fear the public opinon, and possibly because they fear legislation if they refuse to do it "voluntarily".
The Pirate Bay was placed on this list once, due to having torrents with names which sounded like child pornography. It was quickly removed after loud protests about government censorship.
There was also a court order that forced The Pirate Bay's ISP to shut down the site (which quickly came up again with another ISP), but that's about it.
However, we are not exactly immune to government censorship. For example, there are high-ranking Swedish politicians who want to block foreign gambling sites. The official reason is to bring the "dangerous" gambling under government control and protect people from gambling addictions. The real reason is to keep money from flowing out of the country, and let it flow into the state's gambling monopoly instead.
To be honest, I'm not sure which country could be most trusted with the Internet. Right now, Iceland looks like a good bet.
They also asked human rights organisations for help in going through the documents, but failed to raise any interest. In the end, they went through the documents themselves, and manage to edit out most personal information. They missed some information that may indirectly identify informations, like names of villages, but so far, there is no evidence that anyone has actually been hurt by the leak.
Political special interest groups are spreading a lot of misinformation about Wikileaks to draw the attention away from the war crimes that Wikileaks exposed, to the organisation itself.
Anyway, all of this has absolutely nothing to do with whether what they're doing is valid journalism or not. You can't outlaw something just because you think it's bad journalism; that would set a precedent for outlawing any opinion you don't like. If you don't want news sites to publish classified documents, then simply make it illegal to publish classified documents. Don't create arbitrary distinctions between "proper" and "non-proper" news organisations, because those arbitrary distinctions will only be used by the government to censor opinions they don't like.
Wikileaks provides *both* original documents, and their own reporting on them, so people can decide for themselves if their reporting is accurate. I think that is more honest than providing *only* the reporting, like traditional news sources do.
But that's not really the issue. Even if Wikileaks only put up leaked documents and nothing else, it would still be news. It would be new information of interest to the public. Giving the government the power to decide what "proper" journalism is, based on its quality, would be very arbitrary, and could easily be mis-used to censor criticism against the government.
Nah, you're getting it wrong. Obviously, military spending destroyed ancient Greece ;)
If the law really said that it was illegal to disseminate non-classified information that could, indirectly, aid enemy troops, it would indeed be a "stoopid" law.
However, I do not believe that Australian law is that stupid. I believe a few vocal special interest groups, primarily in the USA, are desperately trying to mis-interpret the law in order to discredit Assange.
My interpretation is supported by the fact that the Australian government has, indeed, not issued an arrest order for Assange.
Assange broke the laws of Australia, where he is a citizen, when he released another country's secrets.
Wrong. The Australian government hasn't even issued an arrest order for Assange, much less convicted him of any crime.
I'm guessing you're thinking of this Australian lobby group's claims that Assange committed treason by releasing the documents. But they can claim anything they want; unless the courts believe them, it's just wishful thinking on their part.
Australia, like most countries, has laws against aiding and abetting the enemy in wartime, but that doesn't mean a journalist is prohibited from releasing information just because it could indirectly aid the enemy. That interpretation would be ludicrous; it would mean the law could be used to silence any criticism of the war efforts, since it could always be said that criticism demoralises the troops.
In all modern democracies, freedom of speech has a special status which allows it to override most other laws. This is true for the USA too; a law which unduly limits freedom of speech is deemed unconstitutional, and if another part of the constitution would ever come into conflict with freedom of speech, the Supreme Court would have to weigh them against with each other. This provides a safety net, so the government can't bend existing laws in order to silence criticism.
That's a false analogy. The police is public, while security firms are private. Wikileaks and traditional news organisations are both private. Discriminating between them means discriminating between different private firm. And in this case, the reason for discriminating at all seems to be that many Americans don't like what Wikileaks is doing.
I'd say that the slippery slop is discriminating between different news organisations, while treating them the same is the safe road.
How much grant money would you get if you (hypothetically) found indications that man-made global warming may be wrong, and wanted to do research to confirm it?
Even if they don't agree with what Wikileaks is doing, it's hard for me to see how a reasonably well-educated person could deny that Wikileaks is doing journalism. Whether you like it or not has nothing to do with it.
If a neo-nazi group set up a site with biased news items where they slandered all immigrants and blamed society's ills on them, it would be bad journalism - but it would still be journalism, and the law would have to treat it the same as all other news sources.
You can't give everyone an exemption or they'll claim they were "reporting" when they drunkenly bragged that they knew who killed Mr. Body. That's the problem with the shield law idea.
This may come as a surprise to you, but other civilised nations have had source protection for journalists for decades, and it's worked perfectly well. No drunken braggarts have been able to avoid the law by claiming they were "reporting", since talking to people in private falls outside the definition of "reporting".
In fact, the United States is unusual for not protecting the sources of journalists.
But not too much, because clearly there are criminals, like Assange, who will masquerade as "journalists" to commit their crimes.
When I read things like this, I have to remind myself that not all Americans are as ignorant.
For the millionth time: Julian Assange has not broken any laws. He is an Australisan citizen, and there is no Australian law that forbids him to expose the military secrets of other nations. What he has done is no more, and no less, than ordinary journalism. A lot of Americans may not like his journalism, but that doesn't change what it is.
Wikileaks digs up new facts which they present to the public. That alone puts them ahead of many print journalists who merely reiterate what they've read in other newspapers or in press releases.
You can have opinions on how responsible it was of them to release the Afghani documents in the way they did, but that has nothing to do with whether it's journalism or not.
I mean, Wikileaks shakes up the social order by publishing things the people in power don't want to be known, and offend people by espousing opinions they don't already have. How could that possibly be confused with real journalism?
Christianity and Islam belong to the same group of religions, together with Judaism - the Abrahamitic religions. They all share belief in a single, exclusive deity (although Christianity says their single deity is at the same time trifold). They are all authoritarian and based on revelation - i.e. their important tenets were handed down by God, not discovered by men. They are all patriarchal and place women in a subservient role to men.
There are also lots of differences, like: In Christianity, the Bible is inspired by God, while in Islam, the Quran is dictated by God. Christianity emphasises faith, i.e, belief in God as a way to salvation in itself, while Islam emphasises devotion and servitude to God. Depending on your perspective, these differences may be seen as large, or as minor variations between similar religions.
Maybe we should send in some lawyers to rescue them?