the war logs
Jul. 26th, 2010 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmThis is a post all of its own, because it's important.
It's not just about what's really going in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) and why the Taliban is stronger than it's been since 2001 despite all the money we're spending and all the lives we're losing.
It's also about the nature of journalism. It's been a long time since we've had a leak event of this scale, and it's arguably the most significant one we've had in the age of digital journalism, i-reporters (damn you, CNN!) and the like.
The documents, which were released simultaneously to The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel a few weeks ago with a simultaneous embargo to prevent anyone from scooping anyone else, come from an organization known as WikiLeaks that seeks to "combat unethical behavior by governments and corporations."
Of course, some argue that WikiLeaks endangers the privacy of others for the sake of self-promotion. Others wonder, even if that's true whether it matters and should instead be considered an acceptable price for honesty about a war the general public has never quite understood or paid enough attention to.
We spend a lot of time as a culture and as an Internet culture talking about The Media as if it is a single, large, amorphous machine with specific, agreed-upon and unwavering agenda. In the age of marketing the media as entertainment (not a new phenomenon at all, merely one we've cycled through to varying degrees of obviousness for centuries), this isn't totally wrong, but it also contradicts everything I understand and believe as someone who has trained and worked both in and about the media.
If you talk about The Media like it's a single entity -- like the guy who won a bunch of awards for coverage in Rwanda didn't sit across from me way back when with a bottle of booze in his desk just like every fucking journalism movie cliche you can think of -- it's time for you to do just a little more work than usual.
This matters. This is about the young women and men fighting in our name in Afghanistan and a war that may be doing anything but keeping us safe or helping the Afghan people.
This is also about the practices of companies like BP, before and after shit breaks.
And this is, potentially most critically, about the future of journalism.
Read this. Pay attention to it. Form some opinions. Talk about them.
Civic duty, folks. I'm not even kidding.
It's not just about what's really going in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) and why the Taliban is stronger than it's been since 2001 despite all the money we're spending and all the lives we're losing.
It's also about the nature of journalism. It's been a long time since we've had a leak event of this scale, and it's arguably the most significant one we've had in the age of digital journalism, i-reporters (damn you, CNN!) and the like.
The documents, which were released simultaneously to The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel a few weeks ago with a simultaneous embargo to prevent anyone from scooping anyone else, come from an organization known as WikiLeaks that seeks to "combat unethical behavior by governments and corporations."
Of course, some argue that WikiLeaks endangers the privacy of others for the sake of self-promotion. Others wonder, even if that's true whether it matters and should instead be considered an acceptable price for honesty about a war the general public has never quite understood or paid enough attention to.
We spend a lot of time as a culture and as an Internet culture talking about The Media as if it is a single, large, amorphous machine with specific, agreed-upon and unwavering agenda. In the age of marketing the media as entertainment (not a new phenomenon at all, merely one we've cycled through to varying degrees of obviousness for centuries), this isn't totally wrong, but it also contradicts everything I understand and believe as someone who has trained and worked both in and about the media.
If you talk about The Media like it's a single entity -- like the guy who won a bunch of awards for coverage in Rwanda didn't sit across from me way back when with a bottle of booze in his desk just like every fucking journalism movie cliche you can think of -- it's time for you to do just a little more work than usual.
This matters. This is about the young women and men fighting in our name in Afghanistan and a war that may be doing anything but keeping us safe or helping the Afghan people.
This is also about the practices of companies like BP, before and after shit breaks.
And this is, potentially most critically, about the future of journalism.
Read this. Pay attention to it. Form some opinions. Talk about them.
Civic duty, folks. I'm not even kidding.
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-26 05:53 pm (UTC)2. i've been paying more and more attention to wikileaks, even before this last round. it's weird. the hacker culture angle, the connection to iceland, it's all so ... a bruce sterling novel.
3. it's also really important, as you say. i was listening to npr's reflections on daniel schorr this weekend -- his leaking of the pike committee report on illegal cia activities to the village voice seems echoed here.
4. a high school friend of mine works for the NYT primarily as a software engineer. he's on the byline for this story: he helped build tools they used to analyze this data. *that's* an interesting redefinition of journalism right there ...
no subject
Date: 2010-07-26 05:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-26 06:00 pm (UTC)there's also a "holy shit, someone i knew at 14 is involved in the biggest intelligence leak story of our generation" reaction. because wow!