WikiLeaks, Journalism and Modern-Day Muckraking
Presenters
- Emily Bell
Tow Center for Digital Journalism
Emily Bell is director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. The Tow Center provides journalists with the skills and knowledge to lead the future of digital journalism and serves as a research and development hub for the profession.
Prior to her current position, Bell was director of digital content for Britain's Guardian News and Media from 2006 to 2010. Previous to that post, Bell was editor-in-chief of Guardian Unlimited from 2001 to 2006. Under Bell, the Guardian received numerous awards, including the Webby for a newspaper website in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009, and British Press Awards for Website of the Year in 2006, 2008 and 2009. Bell first joined the Observer newspaper, which became part of Guardian News and Media, in 1990, as a business reporter specializing in media business, marketing and technology. Bell is a leading media commentator in the U.K., writing about broadcasting and media policy issues. She is a 1987 graduate of Christ Church, Oxford University, where she earned a master's degree in jurisprudence.
- Amy Goodman
Democracy Now!
Amy Goodman is the executive producer and co-host of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on more than 800 TV and radio stations in North America.
Goodman is the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including, most recently, Breaking the Sound Barrier. She co-authored the first three books with her brother, journalist David Goodman: Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times (2008); Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back (2006); and The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them (2004). She writes a weekly column (also produced as an audio podcast), for which she won the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Reporting.
Goodman is the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood Award. She is also one of the first recipients of the Park Center for Independent Media's Izzy Award, named for the great muckraking journalist I.F. Stone. She has received the American Women in Radio and Television Gracie Award; the Paley Center for Media's She's Made It Award; and the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship. Her reporting on East Timor and Nigeria won the George Polk Award; Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting; and the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Award. Goodman also received the first-ever Communication for Peace Award and was honored by the National Council of Teachers of English with the George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language.
- Glenn Greenwald
Salon
Glenn Greenwald is a contributing writer at Salon. His political reporting and analysis have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, The American Conservative, and numerous congressional reports.
A New York Times best-selling author, Greenwald has written three books: How Would a Patriot Act? (Working Assets Publishing, 2006); A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency (Three Rivers Press, 2007); and Great American Hypocrites (Three Rivers Press, 2008). He was previously a constitutional law attorney. - Greg Mitchell
Editor and author
Greg Mitchell, a longtime magazine editor and the author of 10 books, writes the daily media blog for The Nation, concentrating in recent months on WikiLeaks and related issues. He was the editor of Editor & Publisher from 2002 to 2009. He has published two books on Wikileaks: The Age of Wikileaks and a brand new book Bradley Manning: Truth and Consequences. Previous books include Why Obama Won; So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits and the President Failed on Iraq; and Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady. His Goldsmith Award-winning book, The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics, appeared last fall in a new edition. He has also written two books with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America and Who Owns Death?
- Micah Sifry
Personal Democracy Forum
Micah L. Sifry is co-founder and editor of the Personal Democracy Forum, a website and annual conference that covers the ways technology is changing politics, and TechPresident.com, its award-winning group blog on how the American presidential candidates are using the Web and how the Web is using them. Sifry also consults on how political organizations, campaigns, non-profits and media entities can adapt to and thrive in a networked world. In that capacity, he has been a senior technology adviser to the Sunlight Foundation since its founding in 2006. The Avi Chai Foundation is also currently a client. In the past, he has consulted for the New York State Senate CIO's Office, Air America, the Campaign for America's Future, the Brennan Center, and the Regional News Network.
A featured speaker at dozens of national and international conferences and events, Sifry also appears in and writes for many media outlets. Recently, he appeared on PBS' NewsHour debating the impact of the Internet on democracy, and he has written for numerous publications over the course of his career, including the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and Salon, among others. He has appeared on CBS' This Morning, MSBNC, C-SPAN, BBC, Sky News, MTV News, NPR, CBC Radio, Air America and many local talk radio programs.
From 1997-2005, he was a senior analyst with Public Campaign, a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Washington, D.C., working on comprehensive campaign finance reform. Prior to that, Sifry was an editor and writer with The Nation magazine for thirteen years. He is the co-author with Nancy Watzman of Is That a Politician in Your Pocket? Washington on $2 Million a Day (John Wiley & Sons, 2004), author of Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America (Routledge, 2002) and co-edited The Iraq War Reader (Touchstone, 2003) and The Gulf War Reader (Times Books, 1991). In June 2008, his latest book, Rebooting America, an anthology of writing on how the Internet and new technology can be used to reinvent American democracy, co-edited with Allison Fine, Andrew Rasiej and Josh Levy, was published. He is also an adjunct professor at the Political Science Department of the City University of New York/Graduate Center. His personal blog is at micah.sifry.com.
- Christopher Warren
Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance
Christopher Warren is the Federal Secretary of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance, the union of people who inform and entertain Australia and New Zealand. As Federal Secretary, he is responsible for coordinating the industrial and professional campaigns of the organization on issues to build a strong and independent media and entertainment sector that provides fair wages and conditions for creative workers. He has spoken and written widely on issues affecting the sector. A journalist, Chris is also CEO of the Walkley Foundation for Excellence in Journalism and a long-time trustee of the $3 billion Media Super, a pension fund for media and arts professionals. He is immediate past president of the International Federation of Journalists.
Video
Audio
- When
- Friday, April 8, 11:00am - 12:30pm
- Where
- Cityview Ballroom
map (pdf) - Track
- Journalism and Public Media
Wikileaks has sent shockwaves through the diplomatic community worldwide, but it has also raised fundamental questions about how journalism is done in an age of digital whistleblowers and online leaks. From its partnership with legacy media organizations like the Guardian, Le Monde and the New York Times to First Amendment questions about reporting on confidential information, Wikileaks has forced journalists to rethink their roles and responsibilities in an age of radical transparency. However, the release of these documents has also reinvigorated the great journalistic tradition of muckraking, as thousands of journalists, citizens and nonprofits have pored over Wikileaks’ documents. Complicating matters further, attempts by governments and corporations to silence and marginalize Wikileaks and moves by Amazon and major credit card companies to cut off the flow of funds raise concerns about the digital infrastructure that new journalism efforts rely on.
