DOCSLIB.ORG

A Free Irresponsible Press: Wikileaks and the Battle Over the Soul of the Networked Fourth Estate

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
A Free Irresponsible Press: Wikileaks and the Battle Over the Soul of the Networked Fourth Estate A Free Irresponsible Press: Wikileaks and the Battle Over the Soul of the Networked Fourth Estate The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Yochai Benkler, A Free Irresponsible Press: Wikileaks and the Battle Over the Soul of the Networked Fourth Estate, 46 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 311 (2011). Published Version http://harvardcrcl.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Benkler.pdf Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:10900863 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Open Access Policy Articles, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#OAP \\jciprod01\productn\H\HLC\46-2\HLC209.txt unknown Seq: 1 6-JUN-11 13:54 A Free Irresponsible Press: Wikileaks and the Battle over the Soul of the Networked Fourth Estate Yochai Benkler* [I]t is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck- rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck-rake, speedily becomes, not a help but one of the most potent forces for evil. There are in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man, whether politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, business, or social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform or in a book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful.1 Wikileaks was born a century after President Theodore Roosevelt deliv- ered the speech that gave muckraking journalism its name, and both hailed investigative journalism and called upon it to be undertaken responsibly. In 2010, four years after its first document release, Wikileaks became the center of an international storm surrounding the role of the individual in the networked public sphere. It forces us to ask how comfortable we are with the actual shape of democratization created by the Internet. The freedom that the Internet provides to networked individuals and cooperative associa- tions to speak their minds and organize around their causes has been deployed over the past decade to develop new, networked models of the fourth estate. These models circumvent the social and organizational frameworks of traditional media, which played a large role in framing the balance between freedom and responsibility of the press. At the same time, the Wikileaks episode forces us to confront the fact that the members of the networked fourth estate turn out to be both more susceptible to new forms of attack than those of the old, and to possess different sources of resilience in the face of these attacks. In particular, commercial owners of the critical * Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies, Harvard Law School; Faculty Co-Director, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Univer- sity. I am grateful to Bruce Ackerman, Marvin Ammori, Jack Balkin, David Barron, Fernando Bermejo, David Isenberg, Susan Landau, Micah Sifry, Jonathan Zittrain, and Ethan Zuckerman for comments and criticisms. 1 Theodore Roosevelt, Address of President Roosevelt at the Laying of the Corner Stone of the Office Building of the House of Representatives: The Man with the Muck-Rake (Apr. 14, 1906), available at VOICES OF DEMOCRACY, http://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/theodore- roosevelt-the-man-with-the-muck-rake-speech-text. \\jciprod01\productn\H\HLC\46-2\HLC209.txt unknown Seq: 2 6-JUN-11 13:54 312 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review [Vol. 46 infrastructures of the networked environment can deny service to controver- sial speakers, and some appear to be willing to do so at a mere whiff of public controversy. The United States government, in turn, can use this vul- nerability to bring to bear new kinds of pressure on undesired disclosures in extralegal partnership with these private infrastructure providers. The year of Wikileaks began with the release of a video taken by a U.S. attack helicopter, showing what sounded like a trigger-happy crew killing civilians alongside their intended targets. It continued with two large-scale document releases from Iraq and Afghanistan, about which Defense Secre- tary Robert Gates wrote to the Senate, representing that “the review to date has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compro- mised by this disclosure.”2 The year ended with the very careful release of a few hundred (as of this writing, it has risen to over 1900) cables from U.S. embassies in cooperation with five traditional media organizations. At the time of the embassy cable release, about two-thirds of news reports incor- rectly reported that Wikileaks had simply dumped over 250,000 classified cables onto the Net.3 In fact, Wikileaks made that large number of cables available only privately, to the New York Times, the Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and El Pa´ıs , and later to other media organizations. These orga- nizations put their own teams to work to sift through the cables and selected only a few, often in redacted form, to publish. Wikileaks then published almost solely those cables selected by these traditional organizations, and only in the redacted form released by those organizations.4 Of this release, Secretary Gates stated: “Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.”5 Despite the steadily more cautious and responsible practices Wikileaks came to adopt over the course of the year, and despite the apparent absence 2 Adam Levine, Gates: Leaked Documents Don’t Reveal Key Intel, But Risks Remain, CNN (Oct. 16, 2010, 8:25 AM), http://articles.cnn.com/2010-10-16/us/wikileaks.assessment_1_ julian-assange-wikileaks-documents. 3 See media analysis infra, text accompanying notes 108–124. R 4 See detailed description and sourcing infra, notes 53–55. R 5 U.S. Dep’t of Defense, News Transcript, DOD News Briefing with Secretary Gates and Adm. Mullen from the Pentagon (Nov. 30, 2010), available at http://www.defense.gov/ Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=4728. Gates said at a Pentagon press briefing on the day of the release: Now, I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think -- I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets. Many governments -- some gov- ernments deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispen- sable nation. So other nations will continue to deal with us. They will continue to work with us. We will continue to share sensitive information with one another. Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign pol- icy? I think fairly modest. Id. \\jciprod01\productn\H\HLC\46-2\HLC209.txt unknown Seq: 3 6-JUN-11 13:54 2011] A Free Irresponsible Press 313 of evidence of harm, the steady flow of confidential materials through an organization that was not part of the familiar “responsible press” was met by increasing levels of angry vitriol from the Administration, politicians, and media commentators. By the end of the year, U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden responded to the quite limited and careful release of the embassy cables by stating that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is “more like a high- tech terrorist than the Pentagon Papers,”6 leading to predictable calls for his assassination—on the model of targeted killings of Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Afghanistan—by Fox News commentators and likely Republican presidential candidate Sarah Palin.7 The New York Times’ flagship opinion author, Thomas Friedman, declared Wikileaks one of the two major threats to a peaceful world under U.S. leadership, parallel to the threat of an ascen- dant China.8 The rhetorical framing of Wikileaks in the socio-political frame of global threat and terrorism, in turn, facilitated and interacted with a range of responses that would have been inconceivable in the more factually appro- priate frame of reference, such as what counts as responsible journalism, or how we understand the costs and benefits of the demise of more traditional models of journalistic self-regulation in the age of the networked public sphere. On the legal front, the Department of Justice responded to public calls from Senator Dianne Feinstein and others and began to explore prose- cution of Julian Assange under the Espionage Act. The military held (and continues to hold as of this writing) the suspected source of the leak in soli- tary confinement for over eight months, while the leading Republican presi- dential candidate at that time, Mike Huckabee, called for his execution.9 The sociopolitical framing makes more comprehensible the vigilante responses in other subsystems of the information environment.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Oil and Gas Industry Investments in the National Rifle Association and Safari Club International Reshaping American Energy, Land, and Wildlife Policy
    JOE RIIS JOE Oil and Gas Industry Investments in the National Rifle Association and Safari Club International Reshaping American Energy, Land, and Wildlife Policy By Matt Lee-Ashley April 2014 WWW.AMERICANPROGRESS.ORG Oil and Gas Industry Investments in the National Rifle Association and Safari Club International Reshaping American Energy, Land, and Wildlife Policy By Matt Lee-Ashley April 2014 Contents 1 Introduction and summary 3 Oil and gas industry investments in three major sportsmen groups 5 Safari Club International 9 The National Rifle Association 11 Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation 13 Impact of influence: How the oil and gas industry’s investments are paying off 14 Threats to endangered and threatened wildlife in oil- and gas-producing regions 19 Threats to the backcountry 22 Threats to public access and ownership 25 Conclusion 27 About the author and acknowledgments 28 Endnotes Introduction and summary Two bedrock principles have guided the work and advocacy of American sports- men for more than a century. First, under the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, wildlife in the United States is considered a public good to be conserved for everyone and accessible to everyone, not a commodity that can be bought and owned by the highest bidder.1 Second, since President Theodore Roosevelt’s creation of the first wildlife refuges and national forests, sportsmen have fought to protect wildlife habitat from development and fragmentation to ensure healthy game supplies. These two principles, however, are coming under growing fire from an aggressive and coordinated campaign funded by the oil and gas industry. As part of a major effort since 2008 to bolster its lobbying and political power, the oil and gas industry has steadily expanded its contributions and influ- ence over several major conservative sportsmen’s organizations, including Safari Club International, or SCI, the National Rifle Association, or NRA, and the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation.
    [Show full text]
  • Copyrighted Material
    1 The Duality of Peer Production Infrastructure for the Digital Commons, Free Labor for Free‐Riding Firms Mathieu O’Neil, Sophie Toupin, and Christian Pentzold 1 Introduction There never was a “tragedy of the commons”: Garrett Hardin’s overgrazing farmers were victims of a tragedy of self‐management, as they failed to collectively regulate, as equals, their common pasture. When Elinor Ostrom was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009, the immemorial notion that there are only two types of goods in the world – private and public, coordinated by markets or the state – was finally put to rest. In the most general terms, peer producers are people who create and manage common‐pool resources together. It sometimes seems as if “peer production” and “digital commons” can be used interchangeably. Digital commons are non‐rivalrous (they can be reproduced at little or no cost) and non‐excludable (no‐one can prevent others from using them, through prop- erty rights for example). So, practically speaking, proprietary objects could be produced by equal “peers,” however we argue that peer production has a normative dimension, so that what chiefly char- acterizes this mode of production is that “the output is orientated towards the further expansion of the commons; while the commons, recursively, is the chief resource in this mode of production” (Söderberg & O’Neil, 2014, p. 2). Though there are many historical antecedents, the term “peer pro- duction,” as an object of public and scientific interest, is historically situated in the early 2000s.1 The meanings associated with a term that is deeply connected to the Internet as it was 20 years ago are bound to change.
    [Show full text]
  • HARD, SOFT and DARK MONEY Introduction Early Political Scandals
    HARD, SOFT AND DARK MONEY Introduction Early political scandals involved money used for bribery or buying votes. Modern day scandals involve the appearances of corruption depending where gifts and campaign money came from. The U.S. Supreme Court has made a number of controversial decisions expanding the amounts of money in politics by characterizing political donations and expenditures to be exercises of freedom of speech. Among other results, those decisions have created a large and growing category of election related donations and contributions called “dark money.” Important Terms Defined Terms relating to money in politics that are used in this paper have definitions more exactly set out by law. These terms are fully addressed in the MIP paper Definitions for Money in Politics, Disclosure Requirements for PACs The relationships of PACs to their disclosure requirements are shown in the chart below. May Funding Disclosure Donations coordinate Corporations Sources required limited with can donate candidate Political parties PAC’s Super Pac’s 527’s 501(c)’s Dark Money Twenty-nine types of corporations are listed in §501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) as qualified for nonprofit status. Social Welfare Organizations under §501(c) (4), Labor Unions under §501(c)(5), and Trade Associations under §501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code are not required to report from whom they get their donations. Hence these donations are referred to as dark money. Since social welfare or business interests often intersect with political issues, these groups are allowed to use funds to influence elections, but there is otherwise no dollar limit on how much that can be, and they only need to report the majority of their expenditures in general terms.
    [Show full text]
  • Ethics in Photojournalism: Past, Present, and Future
    Ethics in Photojournalism: Past, Present, and Future By Daniel R. Bersak S.B. Comparative Media Studies & Electrical Engineering/Computer Science Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003 SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES AT THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY SEPTEMBER, 2006 Copyright 2006 Daniel R. Bersak, All Rights Reserved The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. Signature of Author: _____________________________________________________ Department of Comparative Media Studies, August 11, 2006 Certified By: ___________________________________________________________ Edward Barrett Senior Lecturer, Department of Writing Thesis Supervisor Accepted By: __________________________________________________________ William Uricchio Professor of Comparative Media Studies Director Ethics In Photojournalism: Past, Present, and Future By Daniel R. Bersak Submitted to the Department of Comparative Media Studies, School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences on August 11, 2006, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Comparative Media Studies Abstract Like writers and editors, photojournalists are held to a standard of ethics. Each publication has a set of rules, sometimes written, sometimes unwritten, that governs what that publication considers to be a truthful and faithful representation of images to the public. These rules cover a wide range of topics such as how a photographer should act while taking pictures, what he or she can and can’t photograph, and whether and how an image can be altered in the darkroom or on the computer.
    [Show full text]
  • The Pulitzer Prizes for International Reporting in the Third Phase of Their Development, 1963-1977
    INTRODUCTION THE PULITZER PRIZES FOR INTERNATIONAL REPORTING IN THE THIRD PHASE OF THEIR DEVELOPMENT, 1963-1977 Heinz-Dietrich Fischer The rivalry between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. having shifted, in part, to predomi- nance in the fields of space-travel and satellites in the upcoming space age, thus opening a new dimension in the Cold War,1 there were still existing other controversial issues in policy and journalism. "While the colorful space competition held the forefront of public atten- tion," Hohenberg remarks, "the trained diplomatic correspondents of the major newspa- pers and wire services in the West carried on almost alone the difficult and unpopular East- West negotiations to achieve atomic control and regulation and reduction of armaments. The public seemed to want to ignore the hard fact that rockets capable of boosting people into orbit for prolonged periods could also deliver atomic warheads to any part of the earth. It continued, therefore, to be the task of the responsible press to assign competent and highly trained correspondents to this forbidding subject. They did not have the glamor of TV or the excitement of a space shot to focus public attention on their work. Theirs was the responsibility of obliging editors to publish material that was complicated and not at all easy for an indifferent public to grasp. It had to be done by abandoning the familiar cliches of journalism in favor of the care and the art of the superior historian .. On such an assignment, no correspondent was a 'foreign' correspondent. The term was outdated.
    [Show full text]
  • Running Head: Wikileaks and the Censorship of News Media in the U.S
    RUNNING HEAD: WIKILEAKS AND THE CENSORSHIP OF NEWS MEDIA IN THE U.S. WikiLeaks and the Censorship of News Media in the U.S. Author: Asa Hilmersson Faculty Mentor: Professor Keeton Ramapo College of New Jersey WIKILEAKS AND THE CENSORSHIP OF NEWS MEDIA IN THE U.S. 1 “Censorship in free societies is infinitely more sophisticated and thorough than in dictatorships, because ‘unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without any need for an official ban’.” – George Orwell Introduction Throughout history, media has been censored or obscured in different ways which seem to fit the dominant ideology or ruling regime. As William Powers (1995) from The Washington Post said; the Nazis were censored, Big Brother was a censor, and nightmare regimes such as China have censors. Though we are all aware of censorship around the world and in history, little do we look to ourselves because as Powers writes, “None of that [censorship] for us. This is America” (para. 3). People in America have long been led to believe that they live in a free world where every voice is heard. It is not until someone uses the opportunities of this right that we see that this freedom of speech might only be an illusion. The emergence of WikiLeaks in 2010 and the censorship exercised against this organization by the United States’ government exemplifies the major obstacles individuals can face when seeking to expose potential wrongdoing by public officials. Through questioning of media’s power as whistleblowers it is hinted that there are institutions which may carry more weight than the truth in making decisions that affect that public interest.
    [Show full text]
  • In Re Motion of Propublica, Inc. for the Release of Court Records [FISC
    IN RE OPINIONS & ORDERS OF THIS COURT ADDRESSING BULK COLLECTION OF DATA Docket No. Misc. 13-02 UNDER THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT IN RE MOTION FOR THE RELEASE OF Docket No. Misc. 13-08 COURT RECORDS IN RE MOTION OF PROPUBLICA, INC. FOR Docket No. Misc. 13-09 THE RELEASE OF COURT RECORDS BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE THE REPORTERS COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND 25 MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS, IN SUPPORT OF THE NOVEMBER 6,2013 MOTION BY THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, ET AL, FOR THE RELEASE OF COURT RECORDS; THE OCTOBER 11, 2013 MOTION BY THE MEDIA FREEDOM AND INFORMATION ACCESS CLINIC FOR RECONSIDERATION OF THIS COURT'S SEPTEMBER 13, 2013 OPINION ON THE ISSUE OF ARTICLE III STANDING; AND THE NOVEMBER 12,2013 MOTION OF PRO PUBLICA, INC. FOR RELEASE OF COURT RECORDS Bruce D. Brown The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press 1101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 1100 Arlington, VA 22209 Counsel for Amici Curiae November 26. 2013 TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................................ ii TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ......................................................................................................... iii IDENTITY OF AMICI CURIAE .................................................................................................... 1 SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT ............................................................................................. 2 ARGUMENT .................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Wanting, Not Waiting
    WINNERSdateline OF THE OVERSEAS PRESS CLUB AWARDS 2011 Wanting, Not Waiting 2012 Another Year of Uprisings SPECIAL EDITION dateline 2012 1 letter from the president ne year ago, at our last OPC Awards gala, paying tribute to two of our most courageous fallen heroes, I hardly imagined that I would be standing in the same position again with the identical burden. While last year, we faced the sad task of recognizing the lives and careers of two Oincomparable photographers, Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, this year our attention turns to two writers — The New York Times’ Anthony Shadid and Marie Colvin of The Sunday Times of London. While our focus then was on the horrors of Gadhafi’s Libya, it is now the Syria of Bashar al- Assad. All four of these giants of our profession gave their lives in the service of an ideal and a mission that we consider so vital to our way of life — a full, complete and objective understanding of a world that is so all too often contemptuous or ignorant of these values. Theirs are the same talents and accomplishments to which we pay tribute in each of our awards tonight — and that the Overseas Press Club represents every day throughout the year. For our mission, like theirs, does not stop as we file from this room. The OPC has moved resolutely into the digital age but our winners and their skills remain grounded in the most fundamental tenets expressed through words and pictures — unwavering objectivity, unceasing curiosity, vivid story- telling, thought-provoking commentary.
    [Show full text]
  • Book Review – Yochai Benkler, the Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
    CLPE Research Paper 6/2007 Vol. 03 No. 02 (2007) James Brink Book Review – Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom Keywords: networked economy, internet regulation, peer production JEL Classification: K10, K29, K42 Osgoode Hall Law School, York University 4700 Keele St., Toronto, ON, Canada M3J 1P3 Email: [email protected] Published in (2006) 7 German Law Journal 853, online: http://www.germanlawjournal.com/article.php?id=765. 967505 CLPE Research Paper 6/2007 Vol. 03 No. 02 (2007) James Brink BOOK REVIEW – YOCHAI BENKLER, THE WEALTH OF NETWORKS: HOW SOCIAL PRODUCTION TRANSFORMS MARKETS AND FREEDOM Benkler argues that the West is engaged in an escalating culture war between the industrial information economy—a one-way, capital- intensive, and professionally-produced model that has held sway for 150 years—and the networked information economy (NIE)—a many- to-many, low-capital, and cooperative model that has been emerging in the last 15 years. The NIE is built on the infrastructure of the internet and is characterized by characterized by (1) non-proprietary strategies, (2) rising non-market production, and (3) more effective, large-scale cooperative efforts; in other words, “peer production of information, knowledge, and culture.” These aspects challenge our economies and our polities, and hold significant promise for enhancing personal autonomy; however, Benkler, in writing what amounts to a manifesto for the internet, pays little attention to the way in which the NIE is vulnerable to technical capture in the same way the industrial information economy is vulnerable to capital capture, taking a “wait-and-see” approach to regulatory intervention.
    [Show full text]
  • Combatting Fake News
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Southern Methodist University Science and Technology Law Review Volume 20 | Number 2 Article 17 2017 Combatting Fake News: Alternatives to Limiting Social Media Misinformation and Rehabilitating Quality Journalism Dallas Flick Southern Methodist University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.smu.edu/scitech Part of the Internet Law Commons Recommended Citation Dallas Flick, Combatting Fake News: Alternatives to Limiting Social Media Misinformation and Rehabilitating Quality Journalism, 20 SMU Sci. & Tech. L. Rev. 375 (2017) https://scholar.smu.edu/scitech/vol20/iss2/17 This Comment is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at SMU Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Science and Technology Law Review by an authorized administrator of SMU Scholar. For more information, please visit http://digitalrepository.smu.edu. Combatting Fake News: Alternatives to Limiting Social Media Misinformation and Rehabilitating Quality Journalism Dallas Flick* I. INTRODUCTION The continued expansion and development of the Internet has generated a malicious side effect: social media intermediaries such as Facebook and Google permit the dispersion of third-party generated fake news and misin- formation. While the term “fake news” tends to shift in definition, it most frequently denotes blatantly false information posted on the Internet intended to sway opinion.1 The social and political implications for
    [Show full text]
  • The Life and Death of an Icon Facil Ute Core Core Tie Modiam, Conulla
    WW | xxxxxxxx THIS STORY ALWAYS HAD everything, didn’t it? The blushing young innocent who transformed herself into the most adored – and most hunted – woman in the world. The Cinderella who found her Prince Charming – or thought she did – and then entered the palace via the golden carriage. The fairytale but fraudulent wedding of the century, followed by that grim parable of death in the Paris tunnel. The romance, the adultery, the royal intrigue, the eternal, hopeless quest for love, the media’s crazed preoccupation and pursuit. TIn her lifetime, Diana was the People’s Princess who, in death, became the Sleeping Beauty and the Lady of the Lake. She was the stuff that myths are made of and, like her or not, believe it or not, hers was a tale of epic, monumental proportions, that mesmerised the world for 16 years – from the time she walked down the aisle in St Paul’s Cathedral to the time of her funeral in Westiminster Abbey, witnessed by, what was it, a quarter of the world’s population? permafrost and the duke’s Teutonic coldness Think of Marilyn Monroe, Princess Grace, to Diana’s single-minded pursuit of Prince Greta Garbo, Jackie Onassis, perhaps even Charles and her elder son, William’s, interest Mother Theresa, and roll them into one in becoming governor-general of Australia. iconic figure, and you might approach the The Diana Spencer that emerges from fame, the celebrity of Diana Spencer, the pages of Tina Brown’s The Diana Celebrated editor Tina Princess of Wales. As Martin Amis, the Chronicles is at once childish, scheming, Brown’s sensational new writer, once said, “Madonna sings.
    [Show full text]
  • Wikileaks, the First Amendment and the Press by Jonathan Peters1
    WikiLeaks, the First Amendment and the Press By Jonathan Peters1 Using a high-security online drop box and a well-insulated website, WikiLeaks has published 75,000 classified U.S. documents about the war in Afghanistan,2 nearly 400,000 classified U.S. documents about the war in Iraq,3 and more than 2,000 U.S. diplomatic cables.4 In doing so, it has collaborated with some of the most powerful newspapers in the world,5 and it has rankled some of the most powerful people in the world.6 President Barack Obama said in July 2010, right after the release of the Afghanistan documents, that he was “concerned about the disclosure of sensitive information from the battlefield.”7 His concern spread quickly through the echelons of power, as WikiLeaks continued in the fall to release caches of classified U.S. documents. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the slow drip of diplomatic cables, saying it was “not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests, it [was] an attack on the 1 Jonathan Peters is a lawyer and the Frank Martin Fellow at the Missouri School of Journalism, where he is working on his Ph.D. and specializing in the First Amendment. He has written on legal issues for a variety of newspapers and magazines, and now he writes regularly for PBS MediaShift about new media and the law. E-mail: [email protected]. 2 Noam N. Levey and Jennifer Martinez, A whistle-blower with global resonance; WikiLeaks publishes documents from around the world in its quest for transparency, L.A.
    [Show full text]