WikiLeaks has been much in the news, and I have blogged about it several times (see my most recent posts).
The subject is very polarizing – you have the anarchists such as the hackers (who are launching attacks on perceived enemies of the site) on one side, and many more in the middle or on the right who are opposed to WikiLeaks and its founder.
I had drinks the other night with a couple of very liberal friends, and even they seemed uncomfortable about WikiLeaks. On the other hand, as the New York Times reported, many Europeans wonder what all the fuss is about.
I just can't understand why WikiLeaks is put on a pedestal by many. Exactly what important principles are they championing? There's no good answer in my mind, unless you really believe that the US Government is inherently evil and needs to be exposed and harmed in the process.
Having said all that, the New York Times media critic David Carr had an excellent analysis in his article WikiLeaks Taps the Power of the Press earlier this week.
It charts the evolution of WikiLeaks from a user-edited site that just kind of lets it all hang out to one that has leveraged mainstream media to reach a wider audience.
In reading the following passage, it made me think about PR:
Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’s founder and guiding spirit, apparently began to understand that scarcity, not ubiquity, drives coverage of events. Instead of just pulling back the blankets for all to see, he began to limit the disclosures to those who would add value through presentation, editing and additional reporting. In a sense, Mr. Assange, a former programmer, leveraged the processing power of the news media to build a story and present it in comprehensible ways.
We can save for another day the debate about whether the news media should be a willing participant, or whether this is a good thing – let's just say for now that there is a lesson to be learned here about the enduring power of traditiional media and PR amidst the growth of social media.
