Where do you go to find out the truth about the Iraq war? The non-profit media organization WikiLeaks is the answer. The organization distributes classified information to the public. They receive information from various sources and then the information gets passed on to the volunteer journalists who write the stories. The sources they receive this information from are often referred to as whistleblowers. The definition of a whistler blower is someone who makes a public disclosure of corruption or wrongdoing. It is also important for the organization to protect its journalists and whistle blowers because they can be victims of legal and political attacks.

Although WikiLeaks has no headquarters the central server is located in Switzerland. The Swedish Constitution provides total legal protection to those who leak information. Switzerland is one of two places in the world where it is safe to run this kind of organization.

The website was launched in October 2006. One of the most popular and controversial WikiLeak topics is the Iraq War Logs released in 2010. Around 400,000 documents were released and also revealed every recorded death that occurred in Iraq. The civilian death count then proved to be much higher then previously depicted to the public. U.S. authorities also withheld information and did not report multiple attacks.

There have also been many spin offs of WikiLeaks. More organizations were created that reflect similar structure of the original. One example is OpenLeaks, which happened to be created by a former spokesperson of WikiLeaks. Despite the attempt at making this more successful it still hasn’t made any progress. TradeLeaks was created as a more of a focus on trade and commerce rather than politics. Again, this site failed to be as successful as the original and its users criticized it. Other Spin offs include Friends of WikiLeaks, IndoLeaks, Ruleaks, and Leakymails.

Some people approved of the organization while others bash them. Hillary Clinton sees the organization as a danger and condemned the leaks. Viewing WikiLeaks as a member of U.S. federal government staff is currently blocked. They have been criticized by journalists for the lack of editorial discretion. Personally, I think that it’s important for the public to know the truth. As long as the leaker’s are being properly protected it should continue to develop. There is always going to be an issue regarding validity because we don’t know where these leaks are coming from or if there are true. Still, it opens the publics eyes to all the different perspectives and hopefully helps people realize that you can’t always trust the government.

Wikipedia provides a lot of information about the history of WikiLeaks, reactions of different governments, descriptions of previous leaks as well as upcoming leaks, and most of all how all the legal issues are dealt with.

I don’t regularly use Google News, but I’m convinced that it is an effective way to receive news personalized to my tastes. What makes Google News an adequate article search engine for the average user? It is computer generated, articles from around the world are featured, it’s personalized to each user with a rating system, and all the information is recent and relevant.

It was launched in September of 2002 with an abundance of 4,000 articles available. The creator Krishna Bharat had it in Beta mode until 2006. How it works is, a computer scans through articles and highlights the most recent and relevant stories. All the articles are categorized by topic. Some topics include business, technology, entertainment, world news, regional news etc. There is a variety of different articles on one topic, allowing for the most perspectives to be introduced. Top stories have their own category on the top of main page. There is also a recent and most popular category. There are multiple different news editions to choose from and 19 different languages.

Alltheweb.com was being used before Google News was created. So what makes Google News special? Google News features the most recent stories. Stories are constantly being uploaded. News sources also have the choice of being on Google News. Instead of “hosting” the information the publishers of the articles receive credit. For example most of the links just take you directly to the webpage where the article is located (similar to how Google Search works). It works comparable to a website such as stumbleupon.com where it personalizes the stories that a user receives to their interests. Each user also has his or her own personalized page. A rating system is included utilizing badges and stars to further improve the efficiency of the personalized page.

Not only does Google News include articles but it also throws in YouTube videos and images that are related to particular topics. Sharing is easily accessible through the +1 function. This allows the user’s personal profile appear on search results and ads. This +1 (part of Google+) is currently in beta. I found myself on Google News at one point while doing research. I found that it didn’t prove to be useful when looking for news from the past. It certainly is effective for those who are looking for everyday news from around the world. Here is a walk through on how Google News works:

The current top story as of today (February 10, 2012) is the RCMP shooting suspect published by the CBC. Underneath the headline on the Google News homepage there are multiple photo links to other news sources that feature this story as well. It also lists that there are 439 other news sources covering this story. This article was posted only 28 minutes ago. There are buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Email and +1 before you even read the article. When I click on the article it takes me directly to the CBC News website. On the right hand side of the article there is a reappearance of these social networking buttons and also gives a count of how many shares there have been. +1 has zero. Again at the bottom of the article there are duplicates of these buttons. Back onto the Google News homepage the article post also includes the same story on the most credible or popular news sources such as the Vancouver Sun and Toronto Star. Links to related articles are given at the right hand side “Royal Canadian Mounted Police” “Alberta” and “Edmondton.” Again this link was only updated 3 minutes ago and refreshing the page after only a few minutes theres now a new Top Story demonstrating the efficiency of Google News.