by Currie Jean

Created on: February 06, 2011   Last Updated: February 22, 2011

Our first task in answering the question, "Is WikiLeaks a journalistic organization?" is to find a reliable definition of the word 'journalism.' Wikipedia's public editability makes it the best source for defining by public consensus, and it defines journalism thusly: "a journalist collects and disseminates information about current events, people, trends, and issues. His or her work is acknowledged as journalism." Does WikiLeaks fit this definition? Does its founder and spokesperson, Julian Assange, 'count' as a journalist? Yes and yes, if the organization functions in ways that fit this definition.

Assange has been described as a non-journalist, even a "terrorist," mainly by the United States State Department and its friendly media pundits who, considering WikiLeaks' American-related releases of 2010, have an obvious interest in negatively manipulating the public's perception of WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks has been publishing leaked documents on its website since 2007, and the staff have accompanied leaked documents with journalistic writeups. WikiLeaks' millions of published pages address American diplomacy, war logs and official war strategies (which in several cases violate international codes of ethics), the internal documents of Scientology and other abusive cults, text messages from September 11 2001, Icelandic banking fraud, Bilderberg meeting minutes, Kenyan police killings, and even, humorously, a US intelligence internal report on WikiLeaks itself. The list is far longer than that, and can be found at Wikipedia.

It should be noted that Julian Assange co-published his first book, "Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier," in 1997. He is also a member of Australia's Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance (MEAA), which protects him under their code of rights for journalists.

Amnesty International, a world-renowned human rights organization, considers Julian Assange a journalist as well. In 2009 it awarded him its UK media award, the purpose of which is to "recognise excellence in human rights journalism." Assange is also recognized as a journalist by the London-based Center for Investigative Journalism, has given presentations about WikiLeaks at the Center for Investigative Journalism, and it is Vaughan Smith, a journalist himself and the owner of London's Frontline Club for journalists, who offered Assange a place to stay while he dealt with the Swedish legal issues that forced him to reside in the UK.

WikiLeaks has been

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