WikiLeaks wins Australia's highest journalism award

[jimmy olsen]

Discuss


http://www.walkleys.com/2011winners#most-outstanding-contribution-to-journalism

Most outstanding contribution to journalism

WikiLeaks

This year's winner has shown a courageous and controversial commitment to the finest traditions of journalism: justice through transparency.

WikiLeaks applied new technology to penetrate the inner workings of government to reveal an avalanche of inconvenient truths in a global publishing coup.

Its revelations, from the way the war on terror was being waged, to diplomatic bastardry, high-level horse-trading and the interference in the domestic affairs of nations, have had an undeniable impact.

This innovation could just as easily have been developed and nurtured by any of the world's major publishers – but it wasn't.

Yet so many eagerly took advantage of the secret cables to create more scoops in a year than most journalists could imagine in a lifetime.

While not without flaws, the Walkley Trustees believe that by designing and constructing a means to encourage whistleblowers, WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief Julian Assange took a brave, determined and independent stand for freedom of speech and transparency that has empowered people all over the world.

And in the process, they have triggered a robust debate inside and outside the media about official secrecy, the public's right to know, and the future of journalism

[DGuller]

Before Assange went on a jihad against America, and brought down the credibility of the WikiLeaks, that might have been actually warranted.  Now, bullshit.

[The Minsky Moment]

Don't you have to be journalist to win a journalism award?

Providing a electronic drop box for people to post stolen documents is not journalism.

[The Brain]

I just remember WikiLeaks revealing a lot of documents, not any meaty news. What were the three most important news items revealed by WikiLeaks?

Swedish media's analysis of the little Sweden-related stuff was completely off the mark and totally retarded.