An Ugly but Needed Food Source

As part of an emerging news ecosystem, I see WikiLeaks as being equivalent to that which is being fed and fed off of or the middleman that Ingram details in “Is WikiLeaks the Beginning of a New Form of Media?”

Although much has been tossed around for the last year about whether Julian Assange is a journalist or if WikiLeaks is journalism, or the fact that if WikiLeaks is under such scrutiny then so should be The New York Times, it seems quite clear that it is most certainly a component to the news as we now know it.

As Kevin Zeese notes in a guest essay, “If there were ever a doubt about whether the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is “a real journalist,” recent events should erase all those doubts. Indeed, they should put him at the forefront of a movement to democratize journalism and empower people.”

Looking at it simply, WikiLeaks serves as the modern-day replacement for transactions that were taking place in the past within journalism. The articles by Ingram refer to the brown envelope of information that used to be delivered anonymously to newsgathering organizations.  Informants have always been part of the process, so now that the rest of news and the world network and function digitally and interactively, why is not surprising that this too has gone online? It is a way to distribute leaked information quickly and equally.

To be journalistic I don’t think inherently means the act of being a journalist or reporting the news. There are many facets to making and distributing the news and in the case of investigating, obtaining information, and exposing government or business corruption, I think there is most definitely a journalistic aspect to all of these things — They are all necessary to reporting the news. And therefore, WikiLeaks and its endeavors can be defined as journalistic.

Going back to the concept of an ecosystem, not just one animal or plant exists there or it would not be called a system. I agree with PhD student Aaron Bady, who said in the Ingram essays that asked why Assange couldn’t be both a hacker and a journalistic and that society need to protect all acts of journalism, regardless of who is practicing them.  An ecosystem needs many parts to make it work, and WikiLeaks is providing a necessary food source to the emerging news forum, albeit a kind of ugly food source at times, but a source all the same.