WikiLeaks Founder and Director Julian Assange, currently in custody in London awaiting extradition to Sweden related to sex assault charges, has been one of the most talked about controversial organizational leaders in the past few months. Yet, many agree he has gone where nobody else dared to. Arguably for good reason.
WikiLeaks Supports Democracy in Action
At first look, WikiLeaks’ premise seems a noble one, supporting democracy and people participation in action. It has made it its business to publish submissions of otherwise unavailable documents from anonymous sources and leaks. The site launched in 2006, is run by The Sunshine Press and largely depends on donations.WikiLeaks’ database quickly grew to over a million documents.
According to Wikipedia, “WikiLeaks has won a number of awards, including the 2008 Economist magazine New Media Award In June 2009, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange won Amnesty International's UK Media Award (in the category "New Media") for the 2008 publication of "Kenya: The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances", a report by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights about police killings in Kenya. In May 2010, the New York Daily News listed WikiLeaks first in a ranking of "websites that could totally change the news".
WikiLeaks Takes Free Speech too Far
WikiLeaks proves that while free speech and transparency are sacred, one could argue, it can be taken too far. Opponents feel strongly that WikiLeaks sticks its nose where it doesn’t belong. The proof is in the pudding. Most recently, the site published highly sensitive U.S. State department diplomatic cables that were subject to much outrage and condiment among politicians and public alike.
But this is not the first scandal the young organization has brought upon itself. In April 2010, WikiLeaks posted a video from an incident in 2007 in which civilians and journalists in Iraq were killed by U.S. forces. WikiLeaks also posted the Afghan & Iraq War Logs Explorer, which contains documents not previously available for public review. While the site has been taken down in the U.S. and Switzerland, for good reason, all the referenced material is still available via the site’s ftp address and can be searched as such.
While WikiLeaks’ intention to support democracy may be a noble one, any media organization does have a responsibility to filter, not censor, information accordingly. After all, nobody ever questions the fact that most news organizations never reveal the identity of under age sexual abuse victims. The same goes for sensitive diplomatic and war information when it is in fact in the interest of the respective nation or parties involved.
Democracy also assumes the responsibility of security and protection. Democratic republics put in place mechanisms to protect the public. For that reason elected officials have been entrusted with certain responsibilities and judgment to handle sensitive and diplomatic information because, frankly, the general public at large, as WikiLeaks proves, can not.
Britta Stromeyer Esmail - Britta is a bilingual business management professional and executive coach with extensive domestic and international experience in the ...
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