WikiLeaks

Julian Assange is the famous founder of the website WikiLeaks, whose activities around the world forced him to take refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012, where he still resides to this day. Assange established WikiLeaks in 2006 in an attempt to find a way to publish and release sensitive information about governments around the world. It is essentially a non-profit whistle-blowing organization. Anyone from anywhere in the world can submit information to the website to be published. In 2010, WikiLeaks published information titled “Afghan War Diaries” and a video titled “Collateral Murder,” which featured information and footage of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. After that, the U.S. and other governments opened criminal investigations against Assange. Two women in Sweden also file charges against Assange for refusing to take an STD test after he had sex with them. Assange was placed in jail for a short amount of time and then released on bail, after which he was placed on house arrest. The investigation has been frozen since 2010. At one point, Assange tried to force his employees to sign nondisclosure agreemenst but many refused, arguing that he was asking them to do the same kind of thing that their organization was trying to uncover. According to friends and colleagues, Assange became arrogant and secretive.

            I think that WikiLeaks is a whistleblower. The organization, in several instances, released sensitive information to the public in several different countries, including the United States. According to Investopedia.com, a whistleblower is “anyone who has and reports insider knowledge of illegal activities occurring in an organization. The video “Collateral Murder” showed American soldiers killing innocent civilians in Afghanistan. The soldiers thought the civilians were enemy combatants, but they were really journalists. Though the video and war diaries included names of people in the U.S. military who could potentially become targets, Assange decided to publish the information on his website because he believed that the good outweighed the prospective harm. In addition to publishing the information on his website, Assange worked with media outlets like The Guardian and The New York Times. While Assange was subjected to a criminal investigation for the publication of this material, the newspapers were not.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that WikiLeaks is a spy because there is a difference between a whistleblower and a spy. A spy is someone who actively works against a country or organization (with that country or organization’s enemy) to obtain information about or against that country. In contrast, a whistleblower releases the information they find to the media and to easily detectable places, whereas a spy gives the information they attain directly to whoever they are working for. Assange worked in tandem with different newspapers to release the information about the war in Afghanistan and published information openly on his website, with the possibility that he would be criticized in the media and arrested for his actions. A distinction must be made here, however. Assange is the founder of WikiLeaks and published the information he found on the WikiLeaks website, but some of his actions as a human being, separate from his website, were not very commendable. Journalists must maintain a constant balancing act between reporting the truth to the public and minimizing harm to the public. In the instance of the Afghan War Diaries, Assange decided to publish information that could potentially bring harm to different people. He fulfilled his journalistic obligation of reporting the truth but also allowed possible harm to come to multiple people. Assange also refused to take an STD test, as was demanded by the Swedish police and the two women that he slept with there. Though Assange’s actions outside of WikiLeaks were not admirable, WikiLeaks itself was and is acting as a whistleblower exposing the secrets of governments and corporations.

I believe that WikiLeaks has the right to reveal classified and hidden secrets of governments and corporations. If WikiLeaks is truly acting in the form of a whistleblower, then it is fulfilling its role of reporting the truth. After all, journalism’s first obligation is to the truth. As stated before, I do think there is sometimes a line that shouldn’t be crossed when releasing sensitive information. Journalists should aim to minimize harm to the public with which it is reporting information to, so I think that a whistleblower should weigh the possible consequences of reporting information that could bring harm to someone.