Who’s Afraid of Wikileaks?
December 4, 2010 by SocProf and tagged Media, surveillance society
That is the title of a short piece by Manuel Castells (via)
The money quote:
“El drama no ha hecho más que empezar. Una organización de comunicación libre, basada en el trabajo voluntario de periodistas y tecnólogos, como depositaria y transmisora de quienes quieren revelar anónimamente los secretos de un mundo podrido, enfrentada a aquellos que no se avergüenzan de las atrocidades que cometen pero sí se alarman de que sus fechorías sean conocidas por quienes los elegimos y les pagamos. Continuará.”
Rough translation:
“The drama has only just begun. A free media organization based on the voluntary work of journalists and technicians, functioning as a repository and transmitter for those who want to anonymously reveal the secrets of a rotten world, facing those who are not ashamed of the atrocities they have committed but are alarmed that their crimes might be known by those who elect and pay them. To be continued.”
Although Castells is wrong on that last part. At this point, you would have to be willfully ignorant to not know anything about torture, rendition, etc. The majority of Americans simply do not care. It is true though, that the power elite (political, military, media, corporate) does not like to have its dealings exposed to day light.
No wonder then when political and military information is revealed, the media and corporate sides of the power elite rush to the rescue of the others: the media by shifting the issue to shooting the messenger, and the corporate side by kicking Wikipedia off its servers.
And the strident reaction from media organizations exposes their lapdog status once and for all. It is up to civil society organizations such as Wikileaks to watch the watchers (literally), at their own perils, of course.
Or maybe Julian Assange might be the 21st century Emmanuel Goldstein, and the cable news networks are running the long version of the 2 minutes of hate.
Posted in Media, Surveillance Society | 2 Comments »
December 4th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
What amazes me is that the media would be up in arms if the gov’t (or governments around the world) were treating a “normal” media organization like this for printing an incriminating leak. So what makes WikiLeaks different? It’s not as though they’re really doing anything illegal since they’re not stealing the documents. Yet for some reason, despite being highly responsible in the distribution of these documents, they’re being blocked by PayPal, having their websites shut down in a big game of Internet Whack-a-mole and they’re being attacked by hackers (which I cannot fathom given that you’d think hackers would be all about the freedom of information).
The most revealing part of all of this? Tehran and Washington DC are shoulder-to-shoulder on their stance towards Wikileaks (despite it being politically beneficial for Ahmedinejad). Dictators and “democracies” all know that the freedom of information is dangerous.
December 4th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
I guess we’re all learning something important about how shallow democracy is.
Corporations protect governments from the distribution of information
Governments protect corporation through bailouts and other goodies.
The rest of us are too busy shopping.