INSIDE THIS ISSUE: WIKILEAKS: Journalism and the 21St Century Mediascape 2 Global Media Journal Contentsaustralian Edition Vol 5.1
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VOL 5 ISSUE 1 INSIDE THIS ISSUE: WIKILEAKS: Journalism and the 21st Century Mediascape 2 Global Media Journal CONTENTSAustralian Edition Vol 5.1 5 Editorial Hart Cohen and Antonio Castillo 8 Refereed Papers 8 Weeding out WikiLeaks (and why it won’t work): legislative recognition of public whistleblowing in Australia A. J. Brown – - John F Kearney Professor of Public Law, Griffith University, Australia 27 Globally Networked Public Spheres? The Australian Media Reaction to WikiLeaks Terry Flew & Bonnie Liu Rui – Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, Australia 49 The Political Economy of WikiLeaks: Power 2.0? Surveillance 2.0? Criticism 2.0? Alternative Media 2.0? Christian Fuchs – Chair in Media and Communication Studies, Uppsala University, Sweden 77 “Call me, Love, Your Wife”: Wikileaks, the 9/11 Pager Messages and the framing of ‘history’ Lisa Lynch – Department of Journalism, Concordia University, Canada 95 Propaganda and the Ethics of WikiLeaks Randal Marlin – Carleton University, Canada 108 WikiLeaks and Mega Plumbing Issues – Unresolved Dilemmas Revisited Rod Tiffen – University of Sydney, Australia 126 Internet Piracy as a Hobby: What Happens When the Brazilian Jeitinho Meets Television Downloading Vanessa Mendes Moreira De Sa – University of Western Sydney, Australia 142 Cries from Babylon: The Problem of Compassion in Australian Refugee Policy Jonathan Foye & Paul Ryder – School of Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney, Australia 157 Essays 157 Can we Handle the Truth? Whistleblowing to the Media in the Digital Era Dr Suelette Dreyfus, Dr Reeva Lederman, Dr Rachelle Bosua, Dr Simon Milton - The University of Melbourne, Australia ISSN: 1835-2340 Volume 5, Issue 1: 2011 WIKILEAKS: Journalism and the 21st Century Mediascape Global Media Journal © 2011 Global Media Journal Australian Edition Vol 5.1 3 166 WikiLeaks in Mexico: a penetrated State, the fall of an ambassador and a frustrated president Claudia Magallanes Blanco and Ana Lidya Flores Marín – Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla, México 174 “If they’re collecting all of this information, they’re surely using it, right?” WikiLeaks’ Impact on Post-Soviet Central Asia Christopher Schwartz – Managing Editor NewEurasia (English) 192 Fiction 192 The Big Geek Christopher Kremmer 199 Presentation 199 ‘How Wikileaks will transform mainstream media’, Introduction by Peter Fray, Presentation by Kristinn Hrafnsson. USYD Package – A Sydney Ideas lecture co-presented with the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney, Australia 218 Postgraduate Submissions 218 An examination into Australian news coverage of Papua New Guinea Jessica Carter — University of Sydney, Australia 228 Can WikiLeaks Save Journalism and Democracy? Josh Rosner — University of Canberra, Australia 239 Book Reviews 239 David Leigh & Luke Harding WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy Reviewed by Hart Cohen — University of Western Sydney 240 Yahya R. Kamalipour (Ed.) Media, Power, and Politics in the Digital Age: The 2009 Presidential Election Uprising in Iran Reviewed by Tim Hamlett — Hong Kong Baptist University, HK 242 Carl Hoffman The Lunatic Express: Discovering the World . via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and Planes Reviewed by Rob Ewing — Hong Kong Baptist University, HK 245 Lindsay Tanner Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy Reviewed by Myra Gurney — University of Western Sydney, Australia Global Media Journal 4 Australian Edition Vol 5.1 250 Daniel Domscheit-Berg Inside WikiLeaks Andrew Fowler The Most Dangerous Man in the World Reviewed by Tim Hamlett — Hong Kong Baptist University, HK 253 Micah Sifry WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency Reviewed by Xanthe Kleinig 255 Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies Reviewed by Reisa Levine 259 Suelette Dreyfus & Julian Assange Underground: Hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier Reviewed by Catriona Menzies-Pike — Managing Editor, New Matilda 261 Film Review 261 The War You Don’t See Reviewed by Juan Salazar — University of Western Sydney, Australia About Global Media Journal: Australian Edition Global Media Journal: Australian Edition invites the submission of essays and research reports that focus on the field of Communication, Media and Journalism. The online journal hosted by the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney (UWS) is led by an editorial committee from UWS and the University of Sydney and assisted by an advisory board made up of national and international scholars. The journal is part of the international Global Media Journal network. The Australian Edition of the Global Media Journal (GMJ/AU) has published online since 2007. The journal publishes essays, commentary, postgraduate papers, book reviews and interviews including the Australia Media Monitor, an update that covers contemporary issues in the Australian media. The GMJ/AU editorial team is composed of Associate Professor Hart Cohen, Dr. Antonio Castillo, Dr. Juan Salazar, Dr. Tim Dwyer, Dr. Milissa Deitz, Dr. Rachel Morley, Ms. Myra Gurney, Mr. Roman Goik and Ms. Lisa Kaufmann. http://www.commarts.uws.edu.au/gmjau Global Media Journal 5 EDITORIAL Australian Edition Vol 5.1 WIKILEAKS: Journalism and the 21st Century Mediascape This issue of Global Media Journal, Australian edition, has taken a significant step in choosing to focus its attention on the WikiLeaks phenomena. The call for papers for the issue elicited a strong response. We were aware that WikiLeaks has provoked significant controversy in its relatively short existence. The refereed papers, essays, book reviews and presentation by Kristinn Hrafnsson – the spokesperson of WikiLeaks - all reflect the robust debates currently circulating around the WikiLeaks phenomenon. In some respects, the emergence of WikiLeaks was tailor-made for public media exposure and analysis. Despite an early lack of interest by the mainstream media, Wikileaks persisted until it won due recognition with its web-based whistleblowing model and significant assault on classified files – most from the alleged whistleblower, Bradley Manning, the US army private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks. Our interest in WikiLeaks stems from the impact it has generally had on the contemporary mediascape, and in particular on the practice of investigative journalism. It may be a fitting engagement for our Australian-based journal for as Lisa Lynch has written, the Australian context was one of the earlier sites for a WikiLeaks revelation: On March 19, 2009, Australian citizens learned that their government was considering a mandatory national filtering system that would prevent them from accessing websites ostensibly identified as having connections to child pornography. This revelation, which engendered substantial political fallout, was remarkable to some observers because of the way the story emerged. The plan was made public neither through a leak to a print journalist nor through a whistleblower’s televised press conference, but instead via a copy of the filter list posted anonymously on Wikileaks, a Swedish-hosted website run by an international collective dedicated to untraceable document-leaking.1 While Assange has likened himself – in his role as WikiLeaks founder and chief spokesperson – to a journalist and publisher, questions persist as to the lines he draws between source, reporter and publisher. This is a line increasingly blurred by the Internet-led methodology deployed by WikiLeaks. Our interest in WikiLeaks was emphatically brought into focus by the emotive and devastating images of the so-called “Collateral Murder” video, provided by a whistleblower/Pentagon insider and uploaded and then redistributed virally via YouTube. Our immediate sense of the video material was not shock, but recognition. David Finkle’s remarkable book, The Good Soldiers, treated this episode in 2009. In a passage over about nine pages, Finkle reproduced the banter and invective on the sound track of the video as the Apache helicopter’s crew moved on their targets/victims. The Good Soldiers was published well in advance of the release of the “Collateral Murder” video and herein lies one of the extraordinary aspects of WikiLeaks: its capacity to transform revelations and exposures of secrets to a global audience numbering in the millions. Compared to book circulation, this is attention-getting on a massive scale. Global Media Journal 6 Australian Edition Vol 5.1 Our second encounter with WikiLeaks was with its next major operation – the release of the Afghan War Logs in the context of their publication by The Guardian in August 2010. The expanded edition of The Guardian released on that day with its pages of analysis of the logs, was an extraordinary publishing moment for the mainstream media – with participation by The New York Times and Der Spiegel. These deals between the mainstream media and WikiLeaks – generally thought of as the most politically liberal and progressive news organisations – have both expanded and contracted in the latter stages of the engagements by WikiLeaks – one punctuated by a controversial release recently of yet another round of embassy cables. This new release moved a number of our authors for this issue to revise their contributions –awakening yet another series of questions about the management (or mis-management) of information of this kind. The Guardian was critical of WikiLeaks for releasing the un-redacted cables and Julian Assange has countered