Media historian Frank Luther Mott defines sensationalism as: "crime news, scandal and gossip, divorces and sex, and stress upon the reporting of disasters and sports” (Campbell 2003).
One of most sensationalized piece news this year was the WikiLeaks controversy. As posted on their website, at 5pm EST Friday 22nd October 2010 WikiLeaks released the largest classified military leak in history.
Jacinda Woodhead (2010) states that, “With the media's addiction to sensationalism... we have seemingly descended into the world of yellow journalism, so popular at the turn of the last century.”
WikiLeaks claims to be an anonymous online database designed to allow the ‘leaks’ of otherwise unavailable documents into the public arena (Nart 2010).
If this is true then I assume that the website wants to provide information to the public because they feel that they have a right to know. However, there are others besides government officials that are not happy with the leak.
A poll carried out by YouGov show that more than 40% thought that it was wrong to publish the Iraq documents, while only 34% thought that it was right.
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| Source: yougov.co.uk |
Normally the website’s credibility would have been its main downfall, considering that it was anonymous, if it wasn’t for the fact that they collaborated with The New York Times, Der Spiegel, and The Guardian when releasing the documents (The Listening Post : WikiLeaks and the media 2010).
There is another story of how Bradley Manning, had been detained after he "boasted" in an Internet chat of leaking to WikiLeaks the now famous Apache Helicopter attack video (Greenwald 2010). Greenwald says that “...isn't it easy to see how these screeching media reports - WikiLeaks source arrested; worldwide manhunt for WikiLeaks; major national security threat - would cause a prospective leaker to WikiLeaks to think twice...”
It is hard to determine whether or not to demand that all journalistic sources be revealed or to have websites like WikiLeak continue in their quest to “reveal the truth” and “protecting their sources. As Richard (2005) states, social responsibility theory poses a number of practical dilemmas for a journalist who attempts to act in a socially responsible manner.
I personally think that any single piece information, whether anonymous or credited, should not be swallowed as a whole but instead, taken into consideration. Then that information should be compared to other sources and other viewpoint before fully believing in it.
For more on WikiLeaks:
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Campbell, WJ 2003, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies, Greenwood Publishing Group, USA.
Woodhead, J 2010, New media, old journalism, ABC.net.au, viewed 9 November 2010, <http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/35380.html>.
Nart, N 2010, WikiLeaks controversy, YouGov, viewed 10 November 2010, <http://today.yougov.co.uk/life/wikileaks-controversy>.
The Listening Post : WikiLeaks and the media 2010, television program, Aljazeera, 30 July.
Greenwald, G 2010, The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks, Salon.com, viewed 10 November 2010, <http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/18/wikileaks>.
Richards, I 2005, Quagmires and quandaries : exploring journalism ethics, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney.
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