Why Wikileaks is Good for America

Via Wired

I agree. Wikileaks has perhaps unnecessarily made a mess with its latest reveals, but its existence is and will be important and valuable as an outlet where information of true significance that cannot appear directly in traditional media can be published.

The push to damage-control over the revelations is understandable but the disproportionate efforts to destroy the website and cut its funding are a reprehensible attack on media freedom. Traditional media should not be so eager in supporting the government in destroying an source of potentially vital information.

Speaking of Conspiracy Theories...

... maybe Walmart started the Iraq war, so they could make despicable Christmas commercials...

Bad Media Critic, Bad!

I know, I know. Where have I been all this time?

The truth is, as an observer of media, I've done a lousy job.

I don't watch TV ( I have a room antenna - no cable), I rarely have time to read newspapers. I mostly only look at magazines for the photography. Online I rarely read about current issues any more. Up until a few days I didn't even have a working computer and I don't like the internet on my phone.

But let's put that aside for now. It may be quite late, but I still have time to look back on a semester of media analysis and come to certain conclusions, make summaries and comparisons.

Let's try blogging at least once a day. I may still make up for some of the lost time.

Wish me luck!

Shoot the Messenger

I've been (somewhat superficially I must admit) following the fallout surrounding the Wikileaks publication of confidential US documents and I'm not as much surprised as I am disappointed by how mainstream media are dealing with the issue.

I mean, I understand the need for governments to keep certain secrets but that doesn't mean that all secrecy is justified. What is in the interest of government is not always in the interest of the people or the country. It is the job of journalists to uncover secrets and confront the government if need be. The Pentagon Papers revealed things successive governments tried to hide. Watergate tapes were something the administration did not want the public to hear. And yet they were important to see and hear. Muckraking reporters have always resorted to various methods to come by such information and these methods are not always commendable, but it's a stretch to liken them to espionage, let alone treason and terrorism.

But the mainstream news media has been downgraded to uncritically reporting official sentiment, without analysis and examining all sides of a story. Sure revealing government secrets has its legal repercussions for those involved, but that doesn't mean that we should disregard what the secrets revealed about the government and pretend nothing has happened.

Analysis in the media has never went beyond whether the documents are embarrassing or damaging for the US to an actual analysis of what American policy is like and whether there is something that needs to be rectified.

On the flip-side, my critique of those who revealed the secrets is that they squandered the opportunity for real effect by revealing information that mostly has entertainment value. It is not an enormous surprise that secret services gather information on foreign officials or that the US administration has rather unfavorable views of certain countries and their leaders. With such privileged access, I'm sure the Wikileaks source night have made more of a difference with some of the difficult issues the US is dealing with. It appears that even the muckrakers have gone soft.

Music... Makes the People Come Together

Some time ago a discovered this British band online. I liked the one song they had at the time, so I followed up on their website, downloaded some free music from their myspace page, became a fan on Facebook. Some videos appeared on YouTube. I put them on my wall. Finally their debut album was released but only in the UK, so it was unavailable on iTunes. Undeterred, I went on Amazon and had a physical CD shipped to me. On Saturday, less then a week after my purchase, the little plastic box, with the album's title "Happyness" across the sleek black and white photo of the band was in my mailbox in Bushwick. The same evening it was in my computer, iPod, phone...

None of these seems out of the ordinary, quite the opposite. However I remember the very first time I was wowed by the internet. It wasn't too long ago and it was also related to music. I still lived in Serbia at the time. As the country was politically and economically quite isolated, most new music could only be bought on pirated CDs. In 1997, one of my favorite singers at the time released a new album and one evening I was sitting with a group of friends at a friend's house trying to figure out lyrics to a song through the thick Icelandic accent. While we were debating the choices and analyzing the meaning of possible metaphors, my friend was fiddling with his computer, his phone and modem buzzed and clicked trying to connect to the feeble beginnings of Serbian internet, which most of us at the time had no access to, and limited understanding of. Soon he printed out the complete lyrics to the song and I was amazed at the idea of all this information available to everyone.

Talking about the evolution of media, what is specific about the latest developments is not merely the extent of change but the pace of it. The introduction of, say, the telephone certainly brought about a revolution in the way people can communicate but it took decades before every household had one. Even television slowly worked its way into every home. In a matter of years however my life became unimaginable without technology that seems to have come completely unforeseen.

Making History

In our ever-accelerating world, next big things do not last too long. Events become History sooner and movies need to be made to commemorate historical events before new history happens and we forget everything else. Hence:

Media Unlimited

Media or the amalgamated "THE Media" are (or is) everywhere around us, filling our senses and our thoughts, shaping how we feel and reason and act more than we are aware or would care to admit. This is increasingly true for every new generation that is being born as the media torrent permeates additional pores of our existence.

Writen in the pre-YouTube or even more importantly pre-Wikipedia and pre-Facebook era, Todd Gitlin's "Media Unlimited" occasionally already feels dated when dealing with the contemporary. In a strange way, however, even this fact speaks of our society. My need to click "Refresh" and get more up-to-date statistics or more relevant celebrity references just reinforces the awareness of how quickly we have become accustomed (if not addicted) to our over-connected world.

On the other hand I enjoyed the historical perspective provided through the works of great social analysts of the the development of our current state. Although I am usually inclined to be critical of media influence this book leaves me with a feeling of inevitability and, with it, indifference. I can still be critical of a certain aspect, snippet, channel, consequence of our media experience but when it comes to media's overwhelming entirety, judgement escapes me.

It seems like media have become another natural element. Like the availability of air that has led to the evolution of lungs that we breathe with, the media do shape us further. Either nothing about human civilization is natural or it is all natural progression and this book leads me to believe that perhaps as a species we are no longer evolving physically but through our technology and with it our media society we are becoming something new. Maybe it is too early, or perhaps beside the point, to judge what that is. Maybe it's what Media want me to think...