News Reporting in an Age of Transparency EMU grad students research how media framed the WikiLeaks controversy


A


ccording to students in professor Gregg Barak's


graduate class in “Media, Crime and Justice,” the recent WikiLeaks controversy represents a crucial step in citizen journalism, and its portrayal in the media largely depends on the age and ideology of the reporting newspaper, TV station or online site. The EMU team of Steven


Navarro, Chris Jenkins, Michele Kuzila, Robert Zaremba, Crystal Muthleb, Ryan Helms and Michaelena Creamer completed a project entitled “WikiLeaks: Will the Public Remember?” The project has been featured on the research blog Crime Talk (www. crimetalk.org.uk/). The controversy stemmed


from two confidential, raw document caches published on the WikiLeaks website in 2010: a string of military intelligence reports from U.S. troops in Afghanistan and a series of sensitive diplomatic cables from government embassies around the world. Founder Julian Assange


says that WikiLeaks “creates a better society for all people ... [producing] reduced corruption and stronger democracies.” Affected governments predictably take the opposite position, saying that the leaked documents harm international relations and can endanger undercover agents. The group sought to explore


content and issue framing— commonly called “spin”—in both long-established media sources such as newspapers and magazines and in new media sources such as blogs or recently established TV sources.


Among the group's findings: n Digital media were much more receptive than television


and newspapers to WikiLeaks. n Nearly half of the 360 data


sources relayed a negative tone towards WikiLeaks or Assange. Seventeen percent had a positive


governing values such as First and Fourth Amendment rights and the traditional watchdog element of public-service journalism. Conservative sources often associated WikiLeaks with a threat to security.


transformed into a political target, resulting in trumped-up charges at the behest of irate international leaders. The group concluded that


at a time and place where investigative journalism had almost vanished, WikiLeaks has provided new energy. Still, WikiLeaks represents just part of the citizenry's potential to report on its government. “The Age of Transparency


is here not because of one international online network


Student researchers at EMU concluded that, while investigative journalism has almost vanished, WikiLeaks has provided new energy.


tone and the rest were neutral. n A moral panic was not


present, nor was there a media- wide attempt at the creation


of one. n The tone of new media


outlets reflected their conservative or liberal affiliation. Liberal sources exhibited a pro-WikiLeaks stance, noting


n Media framing often


produces varied perceptions of the same event. According to the report, “In the case of Julian Assange, his sexual assault proceedings can be presented either as the man who leaked government secrets also turning out to be a sick, sexual deviant, or as the whistleblower


called WikiLeaks, but because the knowledge of how to build and maintain such networks is widespread,” Navarro said. “This kind of far-reaching transparency is a given. Efforts to stop it will fail, just as efforts to stop file-sharing by killing Napster or Netflix failed.” —Geoff Larcom


Eastern | SUMMER 2011 7


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