The WikiLeaks Paradigm by Stephen M. E. Marmura

Author:Stephen M. E. Marmura
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783319971391
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Total articles reviewed

276

Articles focusing on content of leaked cables

132

 Articles referring to Iran

49

 Articles referring to other countries

83

Articles focusing on other aspects of leak

144

 Legal/practical and dramatic aspects of attempts to shut down WikiLeaks

57

 Implications for US diplomacy and/or other WikiLeaks targets

54

 Freedom of speech and challenges to journalism

18

 Human interest and popular culture

15

The line separating news pieces dealing with cable content and those addressing other aspects of the leak in State’s Secrets is sometimes blurry. For example, as indicated above, documents dealing with the reactions of foreign governments to Cablegate were placed in the same category as those dealing with other aspects of the leak’s implications or “impacts”. However, the reactions in question often pertained to specific cable content. These news pieces were classified as they were because their content focused less on the political significance of relevant statements or related policies themselves than on the potential embarrassment or negative diplomatic fallout that their disclosure might have caused. Articles in this category tended to play up the human-conflict aspect of reactions to leaked material while engaging in speculation as to whether the leak would have more than a temporary or superficial impact on US diplomacy.

There are several reasons to expect that a large portion of the reporting would focus on matters other than the cable content per se. First, much of the “diplomacy” in question was likely mundane, involving little more than communications on routine matters. By contrast, contemporary journalism tends to emphasize the dramatic, novel, entertaining and human-interest related aspects of issues and events as a means of encouraging and retaining the interest of readers or viewers (Curran 2005). This was clear in the case of reporting on the tit for tat “cyber-warfare” engaged in between organizations like Paypal and Visa on the one hand and Anonymous on the other. Similarly, as Beckett and Ball (2012, 85–86) point out, after Dec. 7, 2010, when Assange was arrested in England due to allegations of sexual misconduct made against him in Sweden, debates about WikiLeaks in the media became far more personal. While news coverage of WikiLeaks itself is not the main concern of this chapter, this observation is consistent with the extensive attention given to Assange’s legal problems, character and personality quirks in State’s Secrets.

It must also be acknowledged that many of the topic areas identified above did deserve substantial coverage when considered in terms of the public interest. Numerous articles address such matters as the strength or weakness of the state’s case against WikiLeaks, and related ethical and legal concerns surrounding freedom of speech. And defences of press freedom were often vigorous. A guest editorial entitled A Clear Danger to Free Speech (Stone 2011) strongly criticized the “Shield Bill” then being introduced in Congress in response to Cablegate. As the article’s author, Prof. of Law, Geoffrey R. Stone, points out, the bill would have amended the Espionage Act of 1917 to make it a crime for any person to knowingly and wilfully to disseminate, “in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of

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