“Yeah, can it possibly be true; it’s a worry isn’t it? That the rest of the world’s media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more of [classified] information than the rest of the world has combined” – Julian Assange

“Light them all up. Come on, fire!” – U.S. Soldier before opening fire on Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen 

Wikileaks, one of the most controversial websites of the 21^st century, describes itself as a non-profit media organization which was created by the Australian hacker and activist Julian Assange, who also serves as the face of the organization in public. Assange has also risen to worldwide fame and he generates massive media attention for his project, also because he currently awaits a decision of British courts, as he is charged with sexual molestation and rape charges in Sweden and want to extradite him. Assange also recently announced that he plans to run for a seat in the Australian Senate.

Wikileaks task, as they see it, is to distribute private, classified information of government or corporate misbehaviour to the public. And they have been very successful in doing so. In 2010 they released classified information about the Iraq War they obtained through PFC Bradley Manning, who was stationed near Baghdad in 2009/10 and is now in military jail, which apparently “isn’t really a fun place to be”. He confessed his “treason” to hacker Adrian Lamo, who in return revealed this fact to the U.S. authorities. As Wikileaks has no control over the behaviour of a source, it would be unfair to blame them for his arrest, although one of the major issues Wikileaks faces is the safety of their sources. Another person who came to fame by assisting Wikileaks would be Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer. Wikileaks faces hard times as many major credit card companies and banks refuse to collaborate, because of international, mostly U.S. pressure.

By October 2010 Wikileaks had released 400,000 classified documents, which included the footage of the Reuters journalists being shot and revelead that over 15,000 civilian casualties have not been reported by the U.S. Forces. Furthermore it showed the ignorance the Coalition forces had towards the investigation of war crimes commited by both foreign and local military and police forces.

Most of the involved countries disapproved of the release; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that it “puts the lives of United States and its partners’ service members and civilians at risk”.

Wikileaks does not, or if so only barely, act as a journalistic organization, as they usually publish their data to several global media partners. The respective journalists then examine the data they received and produce stories and headlines. In the case of the Iraq War files Wikileaks partners were The New York Times , The Guardian and Der Spiegel.

This behaviour was repeated when Wikileaks released the U.S. Diplomatic Cables, so called Cablegate, in 2010/11, with additional media partners from France and Spain.

The most recent, publicly noticed release were the “Global Intelligence Files” which included private emails from American intelligence company Stratfor.

If you want to know more about Wikileaks, the documentary Wikirebels is highly recommended.

Misachi Ogawa

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” – Bill Clinton

Without doubt, the Lewinsky Scandal was one of the most controversial as well as discussed scandals in recent U.S. political history. But how did such a private matter become public?

Obviously Miss Lewinsky had an urge to talk about her affair with a married man, so she told to one Miss Linda Tripp about it without saying who this married man was. Miss Tripp showed great interest in the matter, even more so once she found out who exactly Miss Lewinsky’s affair was, and as we all know now he was the best man that happened to America between the warmongering Bushes. Miss Tripp, who since then gained an infamous high profile tried to leak the story to widely respected political magazine Newsweek, although the magazine’s editors decided NOT to report on the story due to the enormous impact the revealing of the story would have, thus forsaking one of the biggest stories of the decade. But eventually the affair went public. Driving force behind the revealing was Mr. Matt Drudge, an independent journalist,  who got word of the story and wasted no time to create his website, the Drudge Report to tell this very sensational story, which consequently led to Bill Clintons very famous TV appearance first rejecting those allegations, but eventually, equally famous, coming clean and telling the world that he indeed did have an inappropriate affair.

Since then Mr. Drudge’s website, which is simple in style and layout, but features catchy headlines and images as well as multiple updates a day, has been hugely popular among political interested citizens. Mr. Drudge is set to push the limits of what can be reported to new levels, as he is interested in reporting the truth, no matter what. He disproved allegations of being a biased conservative journalist with by featuring reports about GOP’s presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s recent affair. Matt Drudge is one of the most influential persons in citizen journalism today as well as living proof that one man can make a tremendous difference in a nation’s political process. In addition to that it is no secret that Mr. Drudge is opinionated in his reporting, as he is in charge of what he uploads on his website and what he doesn’t.

To add a little correction, to the apart from this little flaw, excellent presentation of Mr. Berson and Mr. Stillman (I am so very sorry Adam and Martin), the Drudge Report includes advertisement on the website. Actually it is very eye-catching right on top of the site as well as a couple of ads if one scrolls down the site. But that is just a minor error and I don’t think this influences your performance review, at least I sincerely hope so.

FYI, the popularity of the Drudge Report can be seen in these statistics (Source: intermarkets.net):

Traffic statistics

•             13.3 million monthly unique visitors

•             1.9 million daily unique visitors (weekday)

•             1 million daily unique visitors (weekend day)

•             797 million monthly page views

•             2.6 billion monthly ad impressions