Wikileaks has been (and will continue to be) a controversial matter, each person that reads about it has their own opinion on it. News outlets, however small or relatively insignificant, will - without fail - protest their innocence with regards to sway and favour, so how can two apparently factual reports leap to such differing conclusions as the examples of PBS and Forbes? Forbes' articles on the saga are, whether justified or not, grotesquely biased in favour of Assange and his plans, while PBS recently aired a stinging documentary deriding and criticising the founder and the idea behind WikiLeaks.
While I couldn't possibly condone or condemn any act of civil disobedience, else I'd be practicing exactly what I'm saying Forbes and PBS shouldn't, I did enjoy seeing PBS' website subjected to an alarmingly efficient hack in which the attackers posted a false story on Tupac Shakur. Taking the personal bias out of this, I enjoyed seeing the success of such an obviously false news story as the rapper trended on Twitter. If a rabble of computer hackers can present such an overtly falsified story as fact and get away with it, imagine what PBS and Forbes can do to suit their own respective agendas; be it slamming the notion of freedom of press and transparent politics in PBS' case, or glorifying criminals and painting a dramatic Robin Hood-style portrait of hackers in Forbes' case.
In the end the "citizen" is the one with the remote.
ReplyDeleteHeard about this Tupac thing earlier! Great blog man, keep it up :)
ReplyDeleteGreat blog! +1 follower
ReplyDeletewikipedia is the lesser evil
ReplyDeleteI think journalistic "objectivity" is a joke - we ALL have built-in biases and prejudices that come out subconsciously, and slant things the way we want them to be.
ReplyDeleteTo say you neither "condemn nor condone" something is rubbish - unless you're totally indifferent.
I say - be honest and open about your biases - and dump that pious routine.