Archive for October, 2012

Can a Hacker become a Hack?

Posted: October 3, 2012 in Business, Futurist, ICT, Media, Newspapers
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

The life and times of Julian Assange, one of the founders of WikiLeaks, is so fantastical and filled with paranoia that it should be made into a movie; oh wait it has. The movie titled ‘Underground: the Julian Assange Story’ is a feature length biopic about the early years of Assange. I believe the movie will show him as a gifted youth with a passion for the truth and a desire to unmask the secrecy and lies in the corridors of power.

While this is not far from the truth the more pertinent question that has been raised about Assange is whether or not he is a journalist or just a source? Does the existence of WikiLeaks and the track record of Assange releasing secret and sometimes damming documents to the public make him a journalist? Assange calls himself the Editor-in-Chief of WikiLeaks. However, there are many voices that believe he is more of a high-tech source in the digital era rather than a true Journalist.

It is interesting to note that Assange came to prominence or infamy, depending on how you perceive it, in the mid 1990s. Julian and fellow hackers broke into the master terminal of Nortel, a Canadian telecom company. This was one of many activities of the Cypherpunks group of which Julian was a member.

The attack on Nortel was not malicious and in my mind shows two things: Julian is very intelligent and he has a clear disrespect of authority. This incident would bring Assange to the attention of only a handful of people in Australia. However, in 2007 when WikiLeaks, the website set up for dissemination of confidential information, released the Guantanamo Bay operating procedures the world sat up and took notice. In 2010 the release of the ‘Collateral Murder’ and later the ‘Afghanistan War Logs’ was instrumental in stirring up a hornets’ nest in the United States of America. And when the USA is upset the World takes notice.

Thus the saga began: Assange was accused of being a terrorist, a woman in Sweden accused him of rape, and he decided to seek political asylum and to avoid extradition by entering the Ecuadorian embassy in the UK. All this after he received the Martha Gellhorn Journalism Prize and divided opinion in the Journalism community as to his status as a bonafide Hack or a hacker with an agenda.

There are so many holes in the Assange story and dubious claims that it is hard to consider Julian having any integrity and the big issue with releasing sensitive information: Duty of Care. Duty of care is a core component of being a good journalist. As David Conley states Assange isn’t a journalist by practice, education or training. He is a convicted hacker who uses WikiLeaks to publish all information even information that is harmful and jeopardises the life of Afghan informants and soldiers. If Assange were a journalist he would need to have a duty of care as a hacker he does not.

Among all the dissenting voices weighing in on the debate Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, does not believe that WikiLeaks is journalism but data dissemination. I agree with this sentiment and I also believe that Assange is a revolutionary in some ways such as providing a platform for encrypted dissemination of documents. Assange needs to take the time to read the sources and present the information in an unbiased tone of voice while protecting the lives of the innocent. Only then will Assange go from being an ‘Australian diva with his secrets’ to a true leader of the revolution of journalism in the digital age.

From Fit to Print to Fit to Click: The Old Gray Lady reinvents herself

Posted: October 3, 2012 in Business, Futurist, Media, Newspapers
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

From its Inception in 1851 the New York Times has collected accolades as though they are going out of style. The NYT has received 108 Pulitzer Prizes and had more than two (2) million papers printed daily. Today the circulation has dropped to just around 1.5 million copies daily making it the third largest newspaper in the United States of America. The excellent documentary Page One highlighted the tumultuous time that saw the closure of many Newspapers across the USA. It was a time when even the venerable New York Times was shaken and stirred especially the uncertainty that seemed to permeate the news makers working in the News Room.

The News Room or Engine Room of the New York Times was for many years seen as the pinnacle of Journalistic achievement. To have made it in Media or as a serious journalist you had to be working at the New York Times.

What made the Old Gray Lady so special? It is not as though the New York Times (NYT) was the first to hire a woman journalist. While Jane Grant was one of the first female Journalists at the NYT her experience at the NYT was less than satisfactory. It was not until 2010 that the NYT had its first Female Executive Editor in Jill Abramson. So the NYT was not at the forefront of equal opportunity.

The NYT was not the first to introduce colour photographs in fact the paper was one of the last in the USA to have colour photographs. A point that may seem innocuous today but was quite an ‘un-revolution’ back in the day. Again the NYT was not the first to embrace new technology.

Perhaps the fact that the NYT has been at the forefront of breaking scandals and exposing the underbelly of political, economical and social injustice has given the paper a sense of gravitas. From the exposé of the Pentagon Papers when Daniel Ellsberg, a former State Department official, leaked papers that had damming evidence of the USAs time in Vietnam War. To the exposé of the ‘Collateral Murder’ video that showed the US airstrikes on civilians that were carrying cameras instead of guns from the whistleblower website Wikileaks.

Both the stories brought to light the lies and shameful conduct by the US government. These well researched and thoroughly fact checked stories were well written and were beyond reproach in journalistic integrity.

So is the NYT all about exposé’s and being the voice against the US government? Looking at the history of coverage by the NYT and some of the cadre of personnel who work at the prestigious address; 620 Eight Avenue, Manhattan NY it is clear that trustworthiness makes the NYT such an institution.

The motto ‘All the news that is Fit to Print’ ran deeper than just a catchy slogan. While the web is a place that anyone can post anything, the integrity and trustworthiness of the NYT online content brings a sense that the principles that governed the print version also undergirds their online content.

Moving into the digital age and user pays subscription model has been a master stroke. A move that no one would predict the Old Gray Lady would undertake. But go online she did. Dusting off her old fashioned bonnet and cardigan the Gray Lady embraced a quite unfashionable position: Paid online content. Surely news on the internet is free?

But 30 million unique site visitors a day shows that the admirers have continued to come because what the NYT brings to the Media world is not just style or a unique voice but substance. The Old Gray Lady has come a long way.