Will Wikileaks Rock Traditional Media Too?

Jul 26 by Navneet Alang | 1 comment

Now that 90,000 military documents about US military activity in Afghanistan, you can almost be assured that some revelation will come out that will embarrass or worse.

But what will Wikileaks do to traditional media?

After all, had these documents been leaked by the New York Times or The Guardian, we would have gotten some choice details, but – due to journalistic ethics – would never have seen the full data-set (though, to be clear, Wikileaks has censored names it feels would be endangered if released).

Some, like Alexis Madrigal states on the The Atlantic tech blog, feel the rules that state journalism is neutral and objective are changing.

Others, like the folks at the Nieman Journalism lab, wonder what happens when journalism becomes about huge amounts of data rather than just good old fashioned reporting.

And of course, it’s important to note that traditional media still plays a key role; the documents were, after all, distributed to the NYT, Guardian and German newspaper Der Spiegel.

What do you think? While it’s clear that Wikileaks won’t simply ‘make old media obsolete’, what will the effect of the web and events like this be on journalism?

WRITTEN BY NAVNEET ALANG

Navneet Alang is a technology-culture writer based in Toronto. You can find him on Twitter at @navalang

COMMENTS
  • Kelly Fiber

    Traditional media outlets like newspapers and television networks need to understand times are changing. Whether it be allowing your articles to be found by Google and read or what kind of information is provided they need to embrace this and make it work for them. Journalism as it is/was is going away quickly.