The WikiLeaks releases are a pivotal moment in the future of journalism. They raise any number of ethical and legal issues for journalists, but one is becoming paramount.
As I said last week, and feel obliged to say again today, our government — and its allies, willing or coerced, in foreign governments and corporations — are waging a powerful war against freedom of speech.
WikiLeaks may well make us uncomfortable in some of what it does, though in general I believe it’s done far more good than harm so far. We need to recognize, however, as Mathew Ingram wrote over the weekend, that “Like It or Not, WikiLeaks is a Media Entity.” What our government is trying to do to WikiLeaks now is lawless in stunning ways, as Salon’s Glenn Greenwald forcefully argued today.
These are also acts of outright censorship. No, Amazon is not bound by the First Amendment. But if it’s bowing to government pressure, it’s helping a panicked government tear up one of our most basic freedoms.
— Dan Gillmor
Salon.com
2 thoughts on “Worth repeating”
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It’s actually hard to believe that the rest of the world finds the US so scary that they’re willing to cave in to US pressure to freeze Wikileaks and free speech out so thoroughly.
And it was listening to Glen Greenwald on the radio yesterday that confirmed for me that my small donation to Wikileaks was the right thing to do even if the Swiss froze his Datacell account the very next day.