What is Wikileaks?

By Jonathan Fildes Technology reporter, BBC News
25 July 2010

Whistle-blowing website Wikileaks is once again at the centre of attention as it makes public more than 90,000 secret records of incidents and intelligence reports from the US military about the war in Afghanistan.

It is the latest in a long list of "leaks" published by the secretive site, which has established a reputation for publishing sensitive material from governments and other high-profile organisations.

In April 2010, for example, it posted a video on its website that shows a US Apache helicopter killing at least 12 people - including two Reuters journalists - during an attack in Baghdad in 2007. A US military analyst is currently awaiting trial, on charges of leaking the material along with other sensitive military and diplomatic material.

In October 2009, it posted a list of names and addresses of people it claimed belonged to the British National Party (BNP). The BNP said the list was a "malicious forgery".

And during the 2008 US elections, it published screenshots of the e-mail inbox, pictures and address book of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Other controversial documents hosted on the site include a copy of the Standard Operating Procedures for Camp Delta, a document that detailed restrictions placed on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Legal wrangles

It provoked controversy when it first appeared on the net in December 2006 and still splits opinion. For some it is lauded as the future of investigative journalism. For others it is a risk.

In mid-March 2010 the site's director, Julian Assange, published a document purportedly from the US intelligence services, claiming that Wikileaks represented a "threat to the US Army".

The US government later confirmed to the BBC that the documents were genuine.

"The unauthorised publication of Army and DoD sensitive documents on Wikileaks provides foreign intelligence services access to information that they may use to harm Army and DoD interests," a spokesperson told BBC News.

The site now claims to host more than one million documents.

Anyone can submit to Wikileaks anonymously, but a team of reviewers - volunteers from the mainstream press, journalists and Wikileaks staff - decides what is published.

"We use advanced cryptographic techniques and legal techniques to protect sources," Mr Assange told the BBC in February.

The site says that it accepts "classified, censored or otherwise restricted material of political, diplomatic or ethical significance" but does not take "rumour, opinion or other kinds of first hand reporting or material that is already publicly available".

"We specialise in allowing whistle-blowers and journalists who have been censored to get material out to the public," said Mr Assange.

It is operated by an organisation known as the Sunshine Press and claims to be "funded by human rights campaigners, investigative journalists, technologists and the general public".

Since it appeared on the net, it has faced various legal challenges to take it offline.

In 2008, for example, the Swiss Bank Julius Baer won a court ruling to block the site after Wikileaks posted "several hundred" documents about its offshore activities.

However, various "mirrors" of the site - hosted on different servers around the world - continued to operate.

The order was eventually overturned.

Future role

Wikileaks claims to have fought off more than "100 legal attacks" in its life, in part because of what is described as its "bulletproof hosting".

The site is primarily hosted by Swedish ISP PeRiQuito (PRQ), which became famous for hosting file-sharing website The Pirate Bay.

"If it is legal in Sweden, we will host it, and will keep it up regardless of any pressure to take it down," the ISP's site says.

The site also hosts documents in other jurisdictions, including Belgium.

Its experience of different laws around the world meant that it was drafted to help Icelandic MPs draw up plans for its Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI).

The plan calls on the country's government to adopt laws protecting journalists and their sources.

"[To] keep our sources safe, we have had to spread assets, encrypt everything, and move telecommunications and people around the world to activate protective laws in different national jurisdictions," Mr Assange said at the time.

"We've become good at it, and never lost a case, or a source, but we can't expect everyone to go through the extraordinary efforts that we do."

Despite its notoriety, the site has faced financial problems. In February, it suspended operations as it could not afford its own running costs.

Donations from individuals and organisations saved the site.

Mr Assange told the BBC that the site had recently gone through "enormous growth" and had received an "extraordinary amount of material".

"It exceeds our ability to get it out to [the] public at the moment," he said in February.

As a result, he said, the site was changing and hoped to set up a number of "independent chapters around the world" as well as to act as a middle-man between sources and newspapers.

"We take care of the source and act as a neutral intermediary and then we also take care of the publication of the material whilst the journalist that has been communicated with takes care of the verification."

"It provides a natural… connection between a journalist and a source with us in the middle performing the function that we perform best."

The latest documents - released in partnership with the New York Times, the Guardian and the German news magazine Der Spiegel - appear to be the first high-profile example of this new tactic.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10757263

Credit: Arif Rajani

Comments Please!

Breaking News: Media Ethics died with 152 people on a plane crash on 28th July 2010!

Disclaimer: This post is not against any particular TV channel.

"Breaking News: Media Ethics died with 152 people on a plane crash on 28th July 2010!"
(This news is exclusively brought to you by Media Baithak.)

Sensationalism vs Reporting of facts have been a big debate in our class and between other media critics. Yes my all media industry related friends will raise their fingers on me again for finding another clue to take on the media scene but hey.. Did the media put itself in the shoes of these bereaved families before airing their so called reporting of facts.

I'm not an aviation expert so we won't be discussing on what wen't wrong and what could have been done to prevent this. Life has no undo buttons. But being a student of media ethics, I felt I should critically analyse the way media handled this incident. Ok considering the fact that this was the worst Flight accident in the history, this was the opportunity for the media to exploit this incident to gain TRPs.

Not just me.. a lot of people were disappointed the way media covered this whole scenario. Lets take it step by step.

Act 1:
Air Blue Plane crashed in Islamabad. (I can smell reporting of facts her)

Act 2:
Five Survivors were rescued from the crash site. (1st scene where news where aired without verification)
Result: Desperate relatives rushed to hospitals and Airports after learning from the channels that some passengers of the Flight ED-202 had survived and were being brought to hospitals.
Now don't come up with the justification that media did what it was being told. I've heard this one a lot of times.

Act 3:
Blackbox found - Kaira

Act 4:
Blackbox is yet to be found - Kaira

Act 5:
Conspiracy theories were discussed in talk shows. I'm not saying that people don't want to know what actually happened. But let the CAA / Air Blue officials conduct their investigation!

Act 6:
Approaching the family of the deceased.. a person who's already in a shock and you start asking questions like "Was he your only son..." "Did she used to cook dinner for the family" and blah blah. This has nothing to do with REPORTING OF FACTS and has to do more with hurting the families of the deceased.

I expressed my views and its not necessary that you agree with every bit of it. Maybe I'm getting too emotional. But The purpose is to start the debate on what was right or wrong. I invite your comments in agreement or disagreement

P.S
Thanks to Asim Noman and Evelyn Gill for reminding me to take this up on Media Baithak. I dedicate this post to Late Andaleeb Mami (My Aunt and a mother of 3 kids under age of 12 who was also among the passengers) and to All those who passed away in that tragic Accident. May Allah Bless the souls of The departed and give patience and Strength to the bereaved families.

By Owais Moeen

Please leave a comment!

Of blood is a better story to sell, or should it?

One of the fundamental problems with Pakistani media is to treat news more as a commodity than as a social good. This crude concept leads journalists to use fancy words, metaphors, proverbs, and emotionally-charged arguments etc which exaggerate or misrepresent the meaning. For example, “When we say ‘the man is a lion’, we use the image of a lion to draw attention to the lion-like aspects of the man. The metaphor frames our understanding of the man in a distinctive ‘yet partial way’. One of its interesting aspects is that it always produces this kind of one-sided insight. Another interesting feature rests in the fact that metaphor always creates distortions. The man is a lion. He is brave, strong, and ferocious. But he is not covered in fur and does not have four legs, sharp teeth, and a tail!” states Morgan in ‘Images of Organization

The commodity concept also pushes TV journalists to use high pitched tones – often choosing to report heavily on juicy aspect of stories with shock value rather than reporting on more pressing issues to the general public. One might say that if media is reflecting the society, then these sensational ways of speaking are justified, considering that Pakistanis are nonetheless loud and emotionally charged people, relative to say the British. But then there is something called ‘Adab-e-Mehfil’: simple things like not speaking before one’s turn, not speaking loudly and so forth. Plus, it would not hurt to ask TV guests to present cultured and educated way of argumentation, based on facts and logic, instead of campaigns of slander, filled with cheap tricks and mocking undertones.

A related part of the problem is: ‘If It Bleeds, It Leads’ to borrow the title of Mathew Kerbel’s famous book. This implies that media in Pakistan is obsessed with the short end of the problem, or the symptom as it is quite rightly said. The challenge of social inequities, usually the root cause, rarely gets air time ¦at best a personalized story or a documentary and then, move on to something more exciting such as a blast.

Selective freedom

Then there is the question of selective freedom, that is, Pakistani media criticizes the government a lot for its wrongdoings, but when it comes to highlight-ting the wrongdoings of private firms, it’s a big hush. These double standards perhaps stem from the premise that one mustn’t bite the hand that feeds. However, if Pakistani media is really as righteous as it claims, then it should as an industry, also raise issues relating to the corporate sector.

Advertisements would still come if all media firms unite and eventually corporations would have to mend their act to be responsible citizens. But wait a minute. This situation is more complex, because most big Pakistani media firms have ‘other’ businesses too, thereby creating a big question on their so-called independence.

Let ethics decide newsworthiness

It might be of public interest to show that a certain building made by a certain contractor collapsed, or a certain man opened gun fire in a shopping mall; but it is certainly not in the public interest to show a zoomed close up of a weeping mother, a bleeding child, or scenes of guns going rampant. A wide angle shot will do just as good.

When it comes to grief there is a simple principle: let mourning be private. And when there is violence: speech is better visuals. These might be moral limitations, but the general finding from a great deal of research is that exposure to violent portrayals (includes related grief) in the media increases the probability of several negative affects. The most often tested affect is learning to behave aggressively. Two other affects – desensitization and fear – are also becoming increasingly prevalent, according to James W. Potter on Media Violence.

This implies that in newsrooms, when evaluating the newsworthiness of a story or footage – the morality of the situation should be assessed first before editors evaluate other journalistic ethics such as accuracy and so forth.

Lack of sincere efforts

Disregarding whether media ethics is subjective or not, the case against the Pakistani media is their lack of empathy towards its critics. At one end they would construe government regulations as a clamp on free expression, but at the other end there are no visible and concrete signs of self regulation. There is hardly a media organization which has an ‘ethics and compliance department’; a department which is independent of, and has the right to supersede over-eager editors trying their best to sell their news; a department which must be consulted by reporters and editors in case of ethical dilemmas, without any regard to timeliness of the scoop.

The following suggested measures can mend this problem:

Set up an ‘ethics and compliance department’, which, besides the functions discussed above, should also offer a ‘hotline’, where anonymous calls can be made for any query regarding a dilemma or a complaint against any employee and so forth. Subsequently, consider failure to report by an employee having knowledge of an unethical behavior, as an accomplice to the issue.
Draft case studies of ethical dilemmas and take opinion polls on those issues in order to understand how the public expects media to behave on challenging controversial content. Blogging is also an option in this regard.

 Set aside a section of the newspaper/air time (weekly/fortnightly or whatever deems fit initially) where a panel of experts shall discuss the errors made during the period under review, debate controversial issues and take questions from viewers. One might also like to consider that the panel should not be of senior journalists posing as polymath experts, but those having adequate academic and practical understanding of society, morality and ethics.

 Lastly, it is pertinent to note that, barring few exceptions, media organizations (even giants, which have ample funding available) barely invest in human capital. Most training sessions are typically confined to technical aspects of production, in the case of e-media; the print media rarely sees this, thanks to the declining state of the industry. In this context, media firms should ensure that journalists should have at least some sort of academic understanding of their main beats. Learning on the job without having a basic understanding of the subject and its history, is clearly unsuitable in present times.

These measures of course are not the end in themselves, but the means to an end and thus they have to be improvised further. And although these tools will not help completely eliminate the grey, it would certainly aid the industry to at least identify and derive general guidelines for subsequent use.

Yet with all its fallacies, the Pakistani media is perhaps the last straw to keep our country as crippled democracy, afloat. And it can also be a strong voice of reason much needed in these disillusioned times of political and economic turmoil. Let us work together and let us not shun it.





Provided By: Zahra Lallani
http://www.tbl.com.pk/clashing-views-on-media-ethics-in-pakistan/

Ethics Case Studies: Using this Process to Craft a Policy

WHAT: Think of all the types of situations in which you might need a policy to help you decide, for instance, whether to use an anonymous source, or whether to let a source review what you’re planning to write. List all the angles. Enlist other people in your discussion, including — if you can — people who aren’t journalists. In policy decisions, the question usually comes up front.

Let’s say you want to write a policy for your newspaper or magazine about pre-publication review, or that you as a free-lancer want to have a policy for yourself that’s well thought-out. Here you start with the question: Do we let sources see what we’re planning to write? And if we do, when?

It used to be that a reporter would absolutely NEVER let a source check out a story before it appeared. But there has been growing acceptance of the idea that it’s more important to be accurate than to be independent. Attitudes have changed because of the importance of credibility. And there are some very complicated topics where it is probably a good idea to go back to your source and say something like: “Here’s what I understood you to say about down pillows and bird flu. Do I have it right?” Stories involving figures — budgets, taxes, business reports — are ripe for errors. Sometimes you’re unsure whether a source said “an important thing” or “unimportant thing.”

WHO: This is the sort of decision that should involve a large and representative sample of the people who will have to follow it. Ultimately, the decision may be made by the highest level of management, but it should be an informed and collaborative decision.
Consider, too, the people outside the media organization who will be affected by what policy you decide to follow.

Even if you’re a lone free-lancer, you’d be wise to consult a few others in arriving at your personal policy for pre-publication review. Discuss. Argue. Test your ideas. Pre-publication review may give a source confidence that the reporter cares about getting it right. It could enhance your credibility and reputation. Offering to let them check what you’ve written may get them to open up. On the other side of the argument are tradition, and the worry that sources will want to take control of your story. They’ll try to change what you’ve written, to put themselves in the best light. They, and your colleagues, will think you have no backbone or professional pride.

WHY: These are principles (standards) you will use in deciding what to do. In most cases, it comes down to a balance between telling the truth and minimizing possible harms. Identify these and other moral responsibilities. The best decision is the one that does the greatest good for the greatest number of stakeholders.

You might want to consider what others have done, and what standards they used. Steve Weinberg, former head of Investigative Reporters and Editors, is quoted in one journalism ethics textbook as saying, “I have practiced PPR as a newspaper staff writer, a magazine free-lancer and a book author. Never have I regretted my practice. What I do regret is failing to do it during the first decade of my mindless adherence to tradition.”

Jay Mathews, a veteran education reporter for The Washington Post, shows whole stories to sources, even though it makes his editors uneasy. He wrote about that in The Post’s May 31, 2003, edition.
“I have shown every story I have written to all the sources I could find,” he said. “... They are welcome to argue about the tone, the analysis or anything else that bothers them, but I change only the things that I am convinced are inaccurate.”

The balance here is between being as accurate as possible in truth-telling, and maintaining your independence as a journalist.

HOW: How do you achieve the outcome you’ve identified as the best? This is definitely a situation where you want to write it down, and consider sharing it with your readers and audience.

Here’s one possible policy for pre-publication review:
1. Make it clear to your source that only you or your editor can change what you’ve written.
2. The review is for accuracy only. Just the facts, not context, tone or organization.
3. Don’t change direct quotes. You should have them on tape. But it’s OK to negotiate if the source says his first quote was wrong.
4. The best time to double-check is during the interview.
5. It’s best to review specific passages; not the entire story.
6. Remember: YOU DON’T HAVE TO CHANGE ANYTHING! But if it’s wrong, you certainly should.


Please Leave A Comment!
Source: http://www.spj.org/ecs6.asp

No. 1 Nation in Sexy Web Searches? Call it Pornistan

By Kelli Morgan

Published July 13, 2010| FoxNews.com

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/07/12/data-shows-pakistan-googling-pornographic-material/

They may call it the "Land of the Pure," but Pakistan turns out to be anything but.

The Muslim country, which has banned content on at least 17 websites to block offensive and blasphemous material, is the world's leader in online searches for pornographic material, FoxNews.com has learned.

“You won’t find strip clubs in Islamic countries. Most Islamic countries have certain dress codes,” said Gabriel Said Reynolds, professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Notre Dame. “It would be an irony if they haven’t shown the same vigilance to pornography.”

So here's the irony: Google ranks Pakistan No. 1 in the world in searches for pornographic terms, outranking every other country in the world in searches per person for certain sex-related content.

Pakistan is top dog in searches per-person for "horse sex" since 2004, "donkey sex" since 2007, "rape pictures" between 2004 and 2009, "rape sex" since 2004, "child sex" between 2004 and 2007 and since 2009, "animal sex" since 2004 and "dog sex" since 2005, according to Google Trends and Google Insights, features of Google that generate data based on popular search terms.

The country also is tops -- or has been No. 1 -- in searches for "sex," "camel sex," "rape video," "child sex video" and some other searches that can't be printed here.

Google Trends generates data of popular search terms in geographic locations during specific time frames. Google Insights is a more advanced version that allows users to filter a search to geographic locations, time frames and the nature of a search, including web, images, products and news.

Pakistan ranked No. 1 in all the searches listed above on Google Trends, but on only some of them in Google Insights.

“We do our best to provide accurate data and to provide insights into broad search patterns, but the results for a given query may contain inaccuracies due to data sampling issues, approximations, or incomplete data for the terms entered,” Google said in a statement, when asked about the accuracy of its reports.

The Embassy of Islamic Republic of Pakistan did not reply to a request for an interview.

In addition to banning content on 17 websites, including islamexposed.blogspot.com, Pakistan is monitoring seven other sites -- Google, Yahoo, Bing, YouTube, Amazon, MSN and Hotmail -- for anti-Islamic content, the Associated Press reported in June.

But it’s not to censor the Pakistani people, Reynolds said. It’s to shut out the rest of the world.

“[It] could lead to conversion, which would undermine the very order of the state,” he said. “Part of protecting the society is making sure that there is no way it could be undermined in terms of foreign influences.”

Pakistan temporarily banned Facebook in May when Muslim groups protested the “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” page, where users were encouraged to upload pictures of the Prophet Muhammad. The page remained on Facebook, but Pakistani users were unable to view it, said Andrew Noyes, manager of Facebook’s Public Policy Communication.

And while Pakistan is taking measures to prevent blasphemous material from being viewed by its citizens, pornographic material is “certainly” contradictory to Islam, too, Reynolds said.

The country’s punishment for those charged with blasphemy is execution, but the question remains what -- if anything -- can be done about people who search for porn on the Web.

“It’s a new phenomenon,” Reynolds said.

The above article was published on the FOX NEWS website found by our very own Owais Moeen. Please leave your comments on the article.

Clause 27, PAMERA Ordanance

Prohibition of broadcasts or CTV operation The Authority shall by order, giving reasons in writing for declaring the order, prohibit any broadcaster or CTV operator from broadcasting or re-broadcasting or distributing any programme if it is of opinion that such particular programme is likely to create hatred among the people or is prejudicial to the maintenance of law and order or likely to disturb public peace and tranquility or endangers national security

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