In the past and present world, media has remained extremely vital for providing valuable information to the public and government agencies. With more space concerning the freedom of speech and publication, media has been able to reveal critical government information that have led to suspicion among countries in the globe (Karhula 2012).
Even though there have been constitutional guarantees on a free press, the US government has taken some steps to limit what media publishes due to security reasons and to avert any situation where citizens can lose faith and develop mistrust to its governance.
WikiLeaks, for instance, exercised the press freedom by sidestepping constraints on technology and releasing sensitive information, which touched on the past and future plans of the US government (Cull 2011).
Although it remains the media’s right to make public any information, the entire concept has attracted equal support as well as opposition thus prompting the question as to whether the government should censor WikiLeaks or the publisher should do so to the government.
Theory
Whistle blowing has been a common practice in all sectors in the society, especially in companies in order to mitigate malpractices that can arise within the management. From one perspective, censoring WikiLeaks will amount to infringement on freedom rights of the whistleblower website, which has been making citizens aware of internal government deals.
According to Julian Assange, the self-proclaimed founder of WikiLeaks, if citizens become aware of internal government affairs, they can help to reform the government by keeping checks and balances on its progress (The WikiLeaks Battle: Should Information Be Shared or Censored? 2010).
Clearly, censoring media will make governments engage in nasty deals that can harm the lives of other people in the world through torture, corruption, and hypocrisy. When WikiLeaks came into force in January 2007, its main objective was to expose the oppressive regimes in the Middle East, Sub-Sahara Africa, and Asia.
When WikiLeaks posts classified United States’ documents in a public website, it destroys international relations (Whalen 2013). For instance, the act of revealing the US military strategies on how they attacked and occupied Iraq made US troops vulnerable to external attacks, as terrorists and militias could plan how to counter their progress.
Besides, the diplomatic success in solving the perennial conflict between Israel and the Arab world at Camp David could not have been realised if WikiLeaks could have released all the documents to the public domain (Wing 2010). For sure, WikiLeaks could have disclosed all progress in the dialogue such as compromises that the concerned parties were making thus involving the public in influencing the final decision.
From this point, it is essential for government to censor WikiLeaks in order to enhance success in solving numerous conflicts in the world (Radack 2010). WikiLeaks have also caused threat to both national and world security. For example, the revelations of the US and Israel’s roles in disclosing Iran as a militant nation made Arab nations believe that the tensions in the Middle East were due to US and Israel’s under-deals.
Literature: Method
Basic data collection methods that will assist in analyzing the feasibility of the research question are content analysis and filter bubble. Content analysis is a methodology that can study the content and effects of WikiLeaks’ data over the internet. Since the research question touches on blogging and contents in an online database, filter bubble will be effective in evaluating the content that matters to the public.
Filter bubble will pre-determine information content that users will like to view. This methodology will assist in gauging whether the public have interests on the information that WikiLeaks publishes or not. In addition, using algorithms, the system will reveal what the internet hides from users and evaluates the likes and dislikes of users.
Afterwards, the results will prove whether the government should censor WikiLeaks for protecting public’s interests. This method of collecting data will expose issues and effects of media violence on children and even old people (Thierer 2004).
For instance, repercussions that WikiLeaks contents have on the public and the government agencies. The results obtained at this stage will aid in deciding whether the government should guarantee media’s protection for its role in society or not.
Implications
From the aforementioned results, it is evident that media plays significant roles in protecting the society from bad governance. WikiLeaks revealed that over 100,000 Iraqi citizens died during the ousting of Saddam Hussein, the number is actually 15,000 higher than the earlier reported value (Baghdad War Diary 2010).
Chronologically, the world disintegrated into two: the East and the West, with different economic ideologies communists and capitalists respectively. WikiLeaks could be working with the Eastern block to discredit the activities of the Western block that comprises majorly of the US. Activists who publish documents in the website can act under influence from other blocks in the world (Josh & MacAskill 2010).
In the Iraqi Invasion, the US planned to end the bad governance in the Middle East nation and eliminate weapons of mass destruction. WikiLeaks owners must understand that the US achieved its goal in Iraq. In my opinion, the government should censor WikiLeaks in order to control information content that it releases to the public.
The Australian government and other nations should also encourage Julian Assange to publish information that he deems fit, but should also monitor the content the whistle blowing website is publishing (Chin 2010).
Conclusion
In attempting to censor WikiLeaks, the US and Australian government will be limiting the freedom of the press. Civil right groups world over will strengthen their supervision roles on government functions (Sewell 2013). In addition, most media firms will feel insecure when publishing their collected information for fear of victimisation by government agencies.
References
Baghdad War Diary 2010, WikiLeaks. Web.
Chin, J. 2010, ‘China Trying to Plug Wikileaks?’, The Wall Street Journal, vol. 3. Web.
Cull, N. 2011, ‘WikiLeaks, public diplomacy 2.0 and the state of digital public diplomacy’, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 7, pp. 1-8, via The Place Branding and Public Diplomacy database.
Josh, H., & MacAskill, E. 2010, WikiLeaks shutdown calls spark censorship row, The Guardian. Web.
Karhula, P. 2012, What is the effect of WikiLeaks for Freedom of Information?, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). Web.
Radack, J. 2010, Censorship: U.S. to Government Employees – No WikiLeaks on Personal Computers, Government Accountability Project. Web.
Sewell, A. 2013, ‘Video: Assange speech on WikiLeaks film censored by Oxford Union’, Digital Journal, vol. 1. Web.
The WikiLeaks Battle: Should Information Be Shared or Censored? 2010, Knowledge@Wharton. Web.
Thierer, A. D. 2004, Censoring Violence in Media, Cato Institute. Web.
Whalen, J. 2013, ‘Fugitive Gets Advice, Aid from WikiLeaks’, The Wall Street Journal, vol. 1, pp. A4. Web.
Wing, N. 2010, ‘Allen West: Government Should Be Censoring The American News Agencies That Collaborated With WikiLeaks’, The Huffington Post.