Charlie Beckett is director of Polis, the journalism and society think-tank in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of WikiLeaks: News In The Networked Era (Polity, 2012) and SuperMedia (Blackwell, 2008

Beckett, Charlie

LSE Research Online

7/6/2017 Wikileaks: Lessons for Press Policy & Regulation | LSE Media Policy Projecthttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2012/02/22/charlie-beckett-is-director-of-polis-the-journalism-and-society-think-tank-in-the-department-of-medi… 1/5Wikileaks: Lessons for Press Policy & RegulationCharlie Beckett is director of Polis, the journalism and society think-tank in theDepartment of Media and Communications at the London School of Economicsand Political Science. He is the author of WikiLeaks: News In The Networked Era(Polity, 2012) and SuperMedia (Blackwell, 2008)WikiLeaks has achieved the publication of the biggest leak of confidentialinformation in journalism history. The Afghan, Iraq, and Diplomatic cabledisclosures were on an unprecedented scale and extent. While the information they contained wasnot of the highest security classification it did provide the evidence for an extensive, varied anddetailed critique of American military actions and foreign policy. Putting aside discussion of theiractual political impact, it is fair to say that the leaks were a significant media challenge to theAmerican authorities. The hostile response on the part of governments and corporations to WikiLeakshas implications for press policy and regulation.WikiLeaks was also a challenge to mainstream journalism. Many media organisations also attackedWikiLeaks. Yet despite publishing what appears to be illegally obtained material that has jeopardisedthe information security of governments around the world it has managed to avoid the usual legal,political and commercial restrictions. It appears to be immune from the normal sanctions andlimitations imposed on mainstream media. This alone would pose interesting press policy andregulation questions. The fact that WikiLeaks published most of this material in collaboration withmainstream news organisations makes those questions even more interesting.Yet while WikiLeaks does raise interesting problems in terms of the rights and responsibilities ofjournalism in the Internet era, it might also be a transitory phenomenon that is unsustainable and notreplicable to any significant level. It may simply have been a one-off network exploit. Even then, it ispossible to argue that, more important than its own continued existence, what WikiLeaks signifiesabout journalism and political communications in the digital age may raise broader questions forpress policy and regulation in the networked era.What Was New About WikiLeaks?The philosophy behind WikiLeaks was a mixture of ‘hacktivism’ and traditional radical or alternativejournalism, but there is nothing fundamentally new about leaks or anti-hegemonic political journalism.These have been staples of journalism throughout its history. The novelty of WikiLeaks was threefold:1. The scale of publication through the Internet2. The collaboration of outsider source with mainstream platform3. The immunity of a trans-national media entityIt could be argued that the first is a question of degree and the second is an adaptive rather thanrevolutionary step. However, the immunity does appear to be novel, at least in the context of such amajor act of journalism. All three elements have potential implications for regulation and wider mediapolicy.1. The scale of publication through the Internet7/6/2017 Wikileaks: Lessons for Press Policy & Regulation | LSE Media Policy Projecthttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2012/02/22/charlie-beckett-is-director-of-polis-the-journalism-and-society-think-tank-in-the-department-of-medi… 2/5The volume of the 2010 leaks was astounding. WikiLeaks was handed 91,000 military records fromAfghanistan; 391,000 records from Iraq; and more than 250,000 confidential diplomatic dispatches.Each of those caches of information in its own right would be the largest leak of classified material inhistory. Just a handful of them would have been the basis for a normal front page scoop. Collectively,they formed an almost unimaginably large security breach. It was not intended to publish all of themat once, so this was not a ‘data dump’. However, it would simply have been impossible to pass onand then process so much information without the Internet and the associated information processingtechnologies, not to mention the increased pace at which the material was able to spread.The implication is that it becomes much harder for the authorities to restrict the release of data.Certainly, once it escapes, the material is effectively out of their control. The cost of accepting andpublishing the leak for WikiLeaks was minimal. Publication at scale was instantaneous and global.WikiLeaks supporters and readers actively disseminated the material as well as linking to it.Republishing it by readers was virtually cost-free. It is much harder for authorities to censor or evenmonitor the many channels on the Internet. This is part of the immunity question, but it is also aboutthe speed at which such a large amount of information can be spread.2. The collaboration of source with mainstream platformThe traditional model for leaks in the past had been a highly selective process controlled strictly bythe gatekeeper journalist. With the 2010 stories WikiLeaks worked with mainstream journalists in atense, but highly effective publication process. It meant that the material was sifted, contextualisedand packaged for platforms with large, literate and attentive audiences made up of influential citizens.Gaining access to major media brands leveraged the stories into the wider global mass media asorganisations such as the BBC amplified the coverage. Julian Assange described this as a ‘tactical’alliance and he insisted that it did not compromise WikiLeaks larger goals of disrupting power(political and media). In that sense, he was confirming the critique of many mainstream journalists,that he and WikiLeaks are prepared to work with some mainstream journalists but do not accept thecodes, ethics and limits that shape the rights and responsibilities of traditional liberal journalism.WikiLeaks was prepared to take risks.Assange was clearly less concerned about the physical safety of those referred to in the material. Hewas also generally unconcerned about the consequences the releases would have, for example, onbeneficial aspects of secret diplomacy such as kidnap releases or conflict resolution negotiations. Hedid not have to worry about safeguarding an institution with a board, shareholders or employees. Hewas unaccountable.The debate about the actual impact of the leaks is irrelevant in this discussion: the point is thatWikiLeaks did not have these concerns, while their mainstream media partners did. So, for example,the New York Times was in communication with the State Department about general aspects of thematerial it was handling. Even the Guardian in the UK had limited contact with the US administration.These contacts were informal but are typical of the unofficial relationships that mainstream media haswith authority. It is one of the many lines of communication kept open between the Fourth Estate andGovernment as part of the complex set of both hostile and mutually supportive relationships betweenthe two. These are founded on a legal framework of media law and regulation as well as fiscal andother rules and regulations. But the cultural/political relationship is also important as the whole pointof a ‘free’ press in a liberal democracy is that its operations are not overly governed by statute andregulations. WikiLeaks did not have these concerns and, indeed, rejected them as complicity in theabuse of power by those authorities.WikiLeaks at this time was a Network Exploit. It took advantage of the special nature of the Internetnetworks to provide it with immunity, scale, reach, and cheapness. It was also exploiting the networkof mainstream media for its skills and its power to connect the public to stories. This is typical of7/6/2017 Wikileaks: Lessons for Press Policy & Regulation | LSE Media Policy Projecthttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2012/02/22/charlie-beckett-is-director-of-polis-the-journalism-and-society-think-tank-in-the-department-of-medi… 3/5Hybrid Media – a mixture of diverse individuals and organisations  – often working on the margins aswell as the mainstream – with a variety of formats and through diverse flows of information that canbe both organized and arbitrary. You can see this kind of hybridity playing out in the case ofWikiLeaks as the data it releases passes through networks to appear in everything from a complexinteractive graphic on the New York Times website to a tweet from a WikiLeaks supporter.Part of that hybridity remains within the conventional journalism framework of policy and regulation.However, what is outside of it will be increasingly exploited by mainstream media effectivelycompromising their own position. Another case would be how The Guardian got around the Trafigura‘super-injunction’ when the material was made widely available through the Internet on websiteslinked to via social media networks such as Twitter. At the moment this is largely an exceptionalphenomenon. Mainstream Media may be increasingly ‘networked,’ but it still works largely throughthe usual channels.However, it seems that advocacy groups, campaigners, lobbyists, or simply individuals do now havethe power to follow in WikiLeaks footsteps, even if they do not use WikiLeaks itself. Networkedjournalists will become increasingly adept at mining these sources and those sources will themselvesbecome more adept at disintermediated networking. WikiLeaks collaborated with mainstream mediabecause it needed their resources and audiences to achieve the global high profile impact thatAssange sought. However, the logic of the current evolution of (especially investigative) journalism(constrained by resource problems and increasingly technologically adept) is mainstream media willbecome the curator, connector and therefore agent for these ‘other’ ‘non-journalistic’ bodies. It ispossible that NGOs, companies, lobby groups, councils, unions, etc. will increasingly tradeinformation directly (voluntarily and unwillingly) with platforms like WikiLeaks. In this context, it can beseen that the negative and often dismissive attitude held by many in mainstream media to WikiLeaksis self-defeating. WikiLeaks and other ‘outsider’ and ‘non-journalistic’ organisations are going to be anincreasingly important part of the news information ecology and any effective mainstream mediaorganisation should pay it much more attention and be much more networked into it.This has implications for a whole range of journalism policy issues. At its core is the challenge toideas of objectivity and balance. It is far too early in the process to judge how extensive thisreformation will be or how serious a challenge it is to current norms. It is still very early but the lack ofsuccessful imitators of WikiLeaks so far, for example, suggests that the structural realignment ofjournalism production is more incremental than revolutionary. However, the direction of travel is clearas we move into a period of even greater uncertainty and complexity for journalism as an industryand a practice.3. The immunity of a trans-national media entityIn the case of the 2010 WikiLeaks’ collaborations the mainstream media organisations tookresponsibility and justified the act of accepting illegally-obtained material with the public interestdefence.  A Federal Grand Jury is still considering what actions might be taken against WikiLeaksover the leaks but it does not appear at all likely to act against the New York Times. Julian Assange isfacing personal legal actions by the Swedish legal system that he claims might make him vulnerableto American extradition proceedings but it seems highly unlikely that he will face a charge related tothe leaks and even less likely that one might stick.In the first instance WikiLeaks had a technologically-based immunity. Its source protection softwaresystems meant that technically there was no link between its platform and the leaker. In the case ofthe alleged whistle-blower Bradley Manning it appears that if he was the leaker, he revealed himself.WikiLeaks was also immune from the consequences of direct action against the servers for itswebsite. This was partly because it had servers in different countries. The information was mirrored7/6/2017 Wikileaks: Lessons for Press Policy & Regulation | LSE Media Policy Projecthttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2012/02/22/charlie-beckett-is-director-of-polis-the-journalism-and-society-think-tank-in-the-department-of-medi… 4/5on other hard-drives across the world controlled by supporters and mainstream media collaborators.As WikiLeaks discovered in autumn 2011 this system was not fool-proof. By distributing theinformation and allowing various people passwords it made itself vulnerable. One paradox of theWikiLeaks story is that it exploited the vulnerability of large, complex digital information systems, but itsuffered a similar fate.Organisations that have sought to replicate the WikiLeaks system have struggled to come up with awatertight system for encryption. Technically it is much harder to achieve on a continuous basis,especially when those systems are subject to DOS assault and the threat of hacking. Again theparadox of the WikiLeaks system is that a ‘hacktivist’ enterprise is vulnerable to its own tools.Governments are now spending vast amounts of money on Internet security. Not just to make theirown systems more secure, but also to develop techniques for breaking into others. Small radicalpublishers can not compete with that investment though they can exploit the wisdom of the hacktivistcrowd. They can, like WikiLeaks, be effective enough at producing significant disruption. They havenot managed to institutionalise that process at scale over time but that might be the nature of this kindof radical intervention. It might be transitory and hybrid rather than sustainable.The open Internet that made WikiLeaks possible and that gave it that degree of immunity was alsohelping American foreign policy objectives. The State Department’s 21st Century Statecraftprogramme involves spending billions of dollars on promoting the transfer of skills and technologiesto democracy activists and movements in authoritarian regimes. Many people have pointed out thepolicy contradiction here between an administration that sought to restrict WikiLeaks, but that alsocampaigns for Internet freedom for people in other countries. Fewer people have noticed that theState Department has recognised this tension, too.WikiLeaks and the Open InternetThere is a battle for the Open Internet and the struggle is taking place within governments as well asbetween the authorities and activists or citizens.As Morozov has detailed, governments can use the same technologies to repress freedoms.However, as Timothy Wu has pointed out, future regulation online may be determined by corporatepriorities as much as governments’. So we have the current situation where congress is debating abill to force ISPs to enforce copyright control online to protect commercial interests. The effect ofpassing that law may well be to set a precedent and create a process whereby other restrictions canbe enforced. History tells us that authorities tend to favour control.The Internet gives us the potential for much greater transparency. However, even where that isachieved (for example through putting government data online) it does not necessarily translate intoaccountability let alone democracy (let alone progressive politics). Julian Assange expected directpolitical impacts from the work of WikiLeaks. It was a misunderstanding of the real complexrelationship of communications and power, especially in a networked world.WikiLeaks shows us that we are in an age of great uncertainty for media. Events like the so-calledArab Spring suggest that the growth of social networks combined with new mainstream mediaplayers such as Al Jazeera may be more important for political communications than individual hybridmedia enterprises like WikiLeaks.WikiLeaks was novel in some respects but perhaps its real significance is as a symptom of otherchanges and dynamics. That’s why it’s important to analyse in a detailed and objective way thedynamics of these interactions between ‘new’ media enterprises such as WikiLeaks and mainstreammedia. Outcomes will be shaped not by inevitable technological determinism but by editorial choices,strategic and specific, working within wide regulatory and media policy frameworks.7/6/2017 Wikileaks: Lessons for Press Policy & Regulation | LSE Media Policy Projecthttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2012/02/22/charlie-beckett-is-director-of-polis-the-journalism-and-society-think-tank-in-the-department-of-medi… 5/5February 22nd, 2012 | Guest Blog | 0 CommentsSo what are the policy implications from the perspective of creating sustainable journalism that isresponsible and that has the capacity to provide a public forum that is critical, open and holds powerto account? Put crudely, it is that in the digital era there has to be an acceptance that there is anunregulated and regulated news media. The advantages of allowing that space are too great in termsof freedom, the costs relatively low in terms of harm to individuals or beneficial systems. The realthreat is greater secrecy and manipulation of information, not irresponsible disclosures. A responsiblenews media has nothing to fear from these ‘wild zones’. Yes, the unregulated Internet is very popularand attracts attention. Yes, it can pollute the public sphere with false or dangerous information.However, paradoxically, this makes the regulated and responsible sector even more valuable tocitizens who want verifiable and accountable news platforms. Even Julian Assange recognized that,which is why he chose to work with it. Mainstream media must adapt and embrace these newnetworks, but like good, open governments, it should have nothing to fear.

Wikileaks: Lessons for Press Policy & Regulation

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