Review "Aaron Swartz's Last Gift: Site Launches Whistleblower Safe House" (Common Dreams, (5/17/13)

Here's an article about something I haven't even heard of! (I clicked the link, but it appears to be broken at the moment...or out of business?) Aaron Schwartz's "one last gift to journalists and whistleblowers worldwide and the open-source internet community," appears to be exactly like WikiLeaks in essence. After so much uproar about sites like WikiLeaks, it's not surprising that newsrooms are calling for more security. The anonymity that sites like Deaddrop will allow is essentially a journalist's dream; the ability to write freely, but to avoid persecution and other threats. And not just journalists, but sources too? Obviously it's better for sources not be kept anonymous, but if it means the difference between an important story not being published, this website could help a lot of people!

Review "WikiLeaks and the Global Future of Free Speech" Michael Moore and Oliver Stone (NY Times, 8/20/12)

This op-ed is an interesting read! Filmmakers Michael Moore and Oliver Stone's support for WikiLeaks totally makes sense, as they claim that we, the news media, often fail to inform the country of "the uglier actions of our own government." WikiLeaks' mission is exactly the opposite.

Though WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange isn't really around to supervise, WikiLeaks is still in full throttle, producing more secret government documents for the country to see all the time. I wouldn't say Assange is a "high-tech terrorist," but I do understand why the government is calling him that. WikiLeaks can't win. Either they don't post documents and the public isn't aware of "the uglier actions" of their own government, or they do post them and are actually putting the public's lives in danger!

A bigger problem that is discussed in the op-ed is what would happen if Assange was prosecuted in the US:

"If Mr. Assange is extradited to the United States, the consequences will reverberate for years around the world. Mr. Assange is not an American citizen, and none of his actions have taken place on American soil. If the United States can prosecute a journalist in these circumstances, the governments of Russia or China could, by the same logic, demand that foreign reporters anywhere on earth be extradited for violating their laws. The setting of such a precedent should deeply concern everyone, admirers of WikiLeaks or not."

Free speech for the entire world sounds like it could be so easy if Britain and Sweden cooperated, but it's much more complicated to obtain, and is most likely to never happen at all.

Review "Real News from Beyond the Front Page" Eli Pariser (NY Times, 10/22/12)

Eli Pariser's New York Times opinion piece immediately start out spot on. As a journalist, and someone who lives and breathes for hard-hitting news, it disheartens me when stories like Pariser mentioned about Syria receive less attention than entertainment related articles like the Jerry Seinfeld letter to the editor. Not only that, but the Syria article was an A1 story, and the Seinfeld letter was A26, hence the title for Pariser's opinion piece, "Real News Will Come From Beyond the Front Page of the Newspaper." And even though I read the news often, I'm guilty of how Pariser says that "more traffic is coming to news sites "sideways" -- via direct links to articles and videos, rather than via the front page."

I think Pariser's wager that by 2016 "high-quality, public issue-focused content online" coming from social media is a fair assumption to make. Currently existing nonprofit and advocacy groups already have a huge following, and it is only safe to assume they will grow. Pariser ends by saying, "the only thing worse than hearing one view on an important issue is hearing none at all." That alternative is a scary one that I'm sure all journalists can agree is the worst case scenario, and one much worse than a Jerry Seinfeld article getting more clicks than one on Syria.