To see oursels as ithers see us!
-- Robert Burns "To A Louse"
Our plans for the rest of the semester are changing. If you've been following the WikiLeaks story in the news, you'll know why. Most of the big issues we've been studying this semester are involved in one way or another.
Count 'em: (1) new media vs. "gatekeepers," internet technology; (2) cross-platform convergence as newspapers publish the document dump; (3) what John Vivian -- remember him? -- calls "Global Mass Media" in Chapter 17"; (4) what he calls "Mass Media and Governance" in Chapter 19; (5) and "Mass Media Ethics" in Chapter 20, which is all over the WikiLeaks story. There's even a whiff of what Neil Postman says about American media being too entertainment-oriented to play their role in a democratic system. Oh really? How are they doing with this story? Let's evaluate them. How do you think they're doing? And that's just for starters. Since I'm planning to draft our final exam questions this week, I will be looking at the WikiLeaks story
So let's get started. I'm going to use this post as a portal to coverage ov the ongoing WikiLeaks document dump in Great Britain, the United States, Germany, France and Spain. That's where the five newspapers are located that are publishing the leaked documents. Judging by the coverage on the World Wide Web, I'd have to say it's a bigger story so far in Europe than it is in the U.S. So far. But it could have profound effects on international relations, and that could change rapidly if relations with North Korea, Iran or Pakistan go off a cliff.
(Which is why a lot of the links you'll be following are to British news organizations. The Brits have done a better job with the story than we have. Not a whole lot better, but enough to make a difference. Besides, I think it always makes sense to check out the overseas press on a story involving U.S. politics and government. That's why I put the Robert Burns quote at the top of this post.)
CNN News has a good basic explanation of WikiLeaks on its website. Let's pay attention to how it's set up. Like Wikipedia, but secret. Weird, huh?
Links here to the five newspapers that are publishing excerpts from the documents. We'll look at them in class. Compare the play given to the story on each of the five webpages:
- The Guardian. Published in London and considered one of the best news sources in the world. It's "center-left" in its editorial policy, but reasonably objective in news coverage. Home page at http://www.guardian.co.uk/
- The New York Times. We all know about the New York Times, right? Sometimes known as the "gray lady" for its kinda blah coverage of the news. But how blah is it? Link to http://www.nytimes.com/
- Der Spiegel. Published in Hamburg, its nameplate translates as "the mirror." Considered Germany's leading weekly news magazine, comparable to Time or Newsweek. Has an English-language website. Very thorough. Factual. Entertaining? http://www.spiegel.de/international/
- Le Monde. Published in Paris. Means "the world" in English. No English website, but you can still get a sense of how it's playing the story by looking at the headlines and pictures. What angles are the French interested in? http://www.lemonde.fr/
- El Pais. Published in Madrid, means "the country" or "nation" in English. If you can read it, be thankful for the time you spent in high school Spanish (or the Quad-Cities). If you can't, you can still get an idea of what they're reading in Spain from looking at the headlines. http://www.elpais.com/global/
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