WikiLeaks And The Future Of Journalism: An Interview with Scott Shane
by Mary Slosson
(Editor's Note: Blog for Iowa met Mary Slosson in conjunction with work she was doing for the Arms Control Association in Washington D.C. last spring. We are following this rising journalist in her embrace of digital media and solid reporting on foreign affairs topics. This article was originally posted on Neon Tommy: Annenberg Digital News).
An excerpt Slosson's interview with the New York Times author Scott Shane:
“While Wikileaks – a rogue band of volunteer activists who have sacrificed safety and stability in the pursuit of open government – and the New York Times – the revered establishment journalism newspaper – are “not equivalent historically or in terms of philosophy,” said Shane, “in this particular project, they’re doing almost literally the exact same thing as us.”
With traditional journalists becoming increasingly averse to losing access with officials for a good story (the negativity over Wikileaks is not the first or even the most egregious example of this – remember Lara Logan’s remarks that Michael Hastings had “never served his country the way McChrystal has” because of his critical profile of the General?), the future of journalism might lie somewhere between the nexus of old school institutions like the New York Times, with their wide readership and deep pockets, and computer-savvy and politically passionate internet activists like the rogue band of volunteers who run Wikileaks.”
Read Mary Slosson's entire interview of the New York Times' Scott Shane here. ~Mary Slosson is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles, where she is an Annenberg Fellow at the University of Southern California's Annenberg Graduate School for Journalism. She also serves as the Executive Producer for Annenberg Digital News. Learn more about her at maryslosson.com.
Blog For Iowa 
Wikileaks went to far and as an Iowa Democrat I support our government going after it, and anyone connected to it. I hope the government is able to make it's case, and he ends up either in our prison or where he can not travel the world and or able to promote anythingon the internet again.
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First, let me thank you for reading Blog for Iowa.
I agree, that if there were crimes committed, they should be prosecuted. We live in a society of laws and any sense of fair play is eradicated if we do not prosecute criminal activity, whether it is sensational like WikiLeaks or out of public view.
What I thought was interesting about Slosson's article was that the New York Times writer compared what that institution does to WikiLeaks. Slosson hits a core concern we should have with the “embedded” journalist. To what extent are these embeds co-opted to the military point of view? This is a key question, and the comparison between Lara Logan (60 Minutes) and Michael Hastings (Rolling Stone) is appropriate. Logan played by the rules of being an embed, and Hastings less so.
The US military has developed a process for journalistic embeds. It has changed a lot since the days of Sander Vanocer in Vietnam.
If you want to learn more, read the book by General Sir John Hackett, Third World War: August 1985. This is a seminal book in that it described how media on the battlefield would influence future wars. The military studied and learned from this, and fast forward to Lara Logan speaking in dramatic tones and there is an asserted gravitas that is smoke and mirrors, with message mostly controlled by the military. Not journalism at all.
I read some of the first batch of WikiLeaks memos and they seemed much like the classified reports I wrote when I went on missions with other NATO countries during the Cold War. Nothing too secret about this stuff in the big picture. My impression from the diplomatic memos is that folks in the diplomatic corps should stick to declarative sentences in this type of traffic. With a quarter million memos though, it is hard to tell.
Thanks again for reading and commenting.
Regards,
Paul Deaton
Weekend Editor
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