TWEETING TO FREEDOM 12
As May Boeve, executive director of 350.org, a grassroots organization focused on
climate change, said, “By backing campaigns and mass actions aimed at stopping
the world’s most dangerous fossil-fuel projects . . . Break Free hopes to eliminate the
power and pollution of the fossil-fuel industry, and propel the world toward a more
sustainable future.” Bill McKibben, the co-founder 350.org, said, “There’s never been
a bigger, more concerted wave of actions [most of it launched from online platforms]
against the plans of the fossil fuels industry to overheat our earth” (Oghifo, 2016).
Julian Assange and WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks is an international nonprofit organization that aims to keep citizens
informed by sharing confidential documents on its website, WikiLeaks.org. Aus-
tralian Internet activist Julian Assange founded the group in October 2006, and he
acts as the director and self-proclaimed editor-in-chief. This media outlet vows to
continue keeping the public updated with news by serving as a watchdog of soci-
ety. Although its stated goals are set for the greater good, skeptics say it is debatable
whether this type of activism can be classified as journalism.
WikiLeaks claimed to have amassed a database of more than 1.2 million docu-
ments within a year after starting up. The site has become famous after releas-
ing several significant documents which have, in turn, become top news stories.
Among these WikiLeaks releases have been gunsight video footage from a July
12, 2007, airstrike in Baghdad, which resulted in the deaths of many noncomba-
tants, including some Iraqi journalists. The airstrike was carried out by an AH-64
Apache helicopter, and the video became known as the “collateral murder” video.
Other releases included documentation of costs for equipment in the Afghanistan
war, and a compilation of about 77,000 documents about that war, which had
previously remained hidden from public view. WikiLeaks teamed up in 2010 with
major news organizations around the world to release U.S. State Department dip-
lomatic cables in an edited format.
“WikiLeaks is a giant library of the world’s most persecuted documents,” Assange
told a reporter for the German magazine Der Spiegel. It is a statement that appears
on the WikiLeaks site. “We give asylum to these documents, we analyze them,
we promote them and we obtain more” (WikiLeaks Staff, 2015). WikiLeaks has
developed contracts and other agreements with over 100 major media companies
internationally. Without these agreements, the organization would not have the
worldwide reach or information footprint and impact that it enjoys.
“Although no organization can hope to have a perfect record forever, thus far
WikiLeaks has a perfect [record] in document authentication and resistance to all
censorship attempts,” Assange says (WikiLeaks Staff, 2015). Among the awards
WikiLeaks has won are the following:
The Economist New Media Award (2008)
The Amnesty New Media Award (2009)
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