Am I the only one who is unimpressed by the Wikileaks scandal? OK, let me rephrase that – obviously not the scandal as a whole. I, like any other person remotely interested in the world around me, have been closely following the latest developments. I too have gasped, shaken my head and cringed at the US’ diplomatic dirty laundry being hung out to dry. I have to admit, I was more moved by the previous batch of leaks – personally I think it’s more interesting that hundreds of civilian deaths have gone unreported in Afghanistan, than that a US diplomat has labelled Sarkozy “thin skinned and authoritarian,” but that’s beside the point. Any story that can make the Guardian front page appear even the tiniest bit sensationalist is a story worth following.
No, what I’m unimpressed about is what this whole debacle says about the state of modern journalism. The Guardian has been praised with snatching up the most important scoop of the past few years. The problem I have with this is that it wasn’t really a scoop at all. Not in the traditional sense of the word anyway. The fact of the matter is that the Guardian, along with The New York Times, Spanish El Pais, German Der Spiegel and French Le Monde (notice the nice regional spread) were served up the story of a lifetime on a silver platter. Heck, they even got a bottle of champagne and some canapés thrown in there. The digging that was supposed to be done by journalists, by the free press, has been done for them by Julian Assange’s band of merry whistleblowers.
Many would argue that that’s the way journalism has always worked. You have your contacts, you get your leads, and in some cases, you get given more or less full stories ready for print from anonymous sources who want to ensure that the information gets out there but don’t want to put their name to it. I’m not debating that. What I am saying, however, is that in this case we also have to take into account the scope and nature of the Wikileaks revelations. This is where the real warning signs pop up. There have been repeated coalition attacks on Afghan and Iraqi civilians. The US secretary of state has effectively sanctioned spying on UN staff, including Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon. The fact that before Wikileaks came along, a combined global press did not launch a mass enquiry into this is deeply disturbing and, quite frankly, worrying. What is the point of the free press, if not for exposing the injustices of society? The information was there to be found, as is painfully evident by the very existence of Wikileaks. If there are people who are willing to publish classified documents in full, you can bet there are people who would be willing to talk to a journalist about the same things, had they been propositioned. The problem is, it seems they weren’t.
Now, in all fairness, it has to be said that the modern press is really not as free as we would like it to be. With seemingly every other newspaper struggling to make ends meet, the death grip of the horrendously strict libel laws is making every publication think twice about printing anything that might potentially set them up for a costly court case. In this climate Wikileaks stands out as some sort of beacon of truth and accountability. For all we know, there’s really only a matter of time before the whistleblower website might decide to cut out the middleman completely. I fear this is another nail in the coffin for the contemporary media as we know it. Now, the next question is whether that is a good or a bad thing…