There is something that shaking the world deeply, and especially in these days that’s cause is Wikileaks. Hearing from everywhere that something was called Wikileaks, but what is it? There is a man, his name is Julianne Assange, and he is the head of the Wikileaks.
He can qualify as an internet activist, he announces the secret documents of the governments via Wikileaks, and he defends transparent governments. Also, Wikileaks is an international, Swedish-based organization which published many secret documents of governments. As a result, there is two important question; Is Wikileaks journalism, and is Julianne Assange really a journalist? If they are, are they relevant for journalism ethics and what is the code of the journalism?
Julianne Paul Assange is an Australian internet activist. Lots of website and news call him as a journalist, but I do not think that he is. J. Paul Assange was a hacker and a computer programmer, before taking on his current role as spokesperson and editor in chief for Wikileaks. I defend he is a politician. As every politician he makes what business men say; because in the world money controls everything. J.P. Assange is just a new face of the business men’s power.
Assange finds the secret information of the governments and publishes on his web side. He does not supervises the code of the journalism. A real journalist have to care about:
– Seek truth
– Investigation
– Minimize harm
– Act independently
– Be accountable.
However Julianne Assange does not seek truth, he just publishes what he had found. He publishes the documents sequentially, and does not explain the aim of the sequence, also, he threaten’s the governments, and statesmen with using the media.
Apparently, it seems journalism which enclose some questions such as what, where, when, why, who. All its papers include these questions. However, Wikileaks is not journalism, the website can have important news but they share the news because somebody says so. Journalism brings freedom inside but what Wikileaks makes, have not any freedoms or any self confidence. They are just playing with power balance of the world. Besides, journalism has ethical structure, but Wikileaks does not. Wikileaks is not an ethical web side about journalism, but it is a voice that against to the governments forces to break them. It is not ethic, but it is free; it is one of the web page which has freedom that much. There is no journalistic institution or web page like Wikileaks that can challenge the governments.
As a result, Wikileaks is not journalism and Julianne Assange is not a journalist, but if it can evaluated as a media power, Wikileaks is the most powerful media arm in the world now. There is some countries that try to block Wikileaks like Hungary which is try to block it with laws, and like Turkey which blocked to enter the Wikileaks’ web side; but there is some countries that believes the public freedom like Sweden. They thought that it is humanity right that to know the truth. However, the most important things are benefits in the world for everything and everyone. There is new news about that Julianne Assange found new documents interested with Sweden, maybe Sweden’s approach will change after these documents.