Charlie Beckett2013-05-22T20:35:51-04:00Charlie Becketthttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=charlie-beckettCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Charlie BeckettGood old fashioned elbow grease.Marie Colvin: What She Would Have Wantedtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.12931332012-02-22T07:08:45-05:002012-04-23T05:12:01-04:00Charlie Becketthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/charlie-beckett/Marie Colvin, or consumed her extraordinary output knew she was more than just a great journalist. She was also a huge personality bursting with compassion for the suffering that her reporting showed us. She was a compelling writer with an eye for the human detail and a strong sense of the urgent narrative of conflict. But she also believed passionately in the importance of what she and other journalists covering conflict were doing.
There was no doubt from her last reports from Homs in Syria that she thought this was as desperate a situation as any she has covered over the decades.
Perhaps she was also naive, reckless and selfish. How could she put herself at such risk for journalism? Is any story really worth a life? Does this kind of bravado encourage less experienced journalists to put themselves in the line of fire?
Colvin would be the first person to agree with all that. She would also point out that it is the civilian casualties that matter. She would also tell you to pay attention to the translaters, fixers, camera crews and citizen journalists who die trying to tell these stories.
Most 'war reporters' I've met don't actually like to be given that label. They know that they are in a unique field but they don't want to be treated as 'special'. That is true. We don't want to foster a macho, gung-ho cult of the hack with a helmet. But war reporting is different and especially dangerous.
The best memorial to her would be to renew and expand our commitment to 'conflict journalism'. There have been great improvements over the last few years by media organisations in promoting safety but still every year many journalists are killed around the world. Governments and criminals kill them as well as soldiers. Let us pay tribute to Marie Colvin, but let us also support those trying to tell us the truth from the most dangerous places in the world.
Polis published a report on journalism safety here.
This post was first published on Charlie's blog and can be read here.]]>Assange TVtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.12282432012-01-24T12:34:40-05:002012-03-25T05:12:01-04:00Charlie Becketthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/charlie-beckett/
There is nothing wrong with wanting to be in the limelight and I am sure it will be compelling viewing. This is being billed as a radical alternative giving a platform to revolutionary voices. It's the 'People's Parkinson' or 'Marr for Marxists'.
But is it really breaking new ground? There is nothing novel about charismatic, self-obsessed TV inquisitors. Our TV studios are littered with self-regarding stars who want to set the agenda.
However, even the most ego-centric interviewers learn how to let other people speak. They can, at least, feign an interest in what their victims have to say - especially when they disagree with what is said. Sir David Frost was a master of this. Will Julian Assange be able to pull off that trick?
Whenever I have seen Assange debate in public or be interviewed he has not engaged with a different viewpoint. Like a well-trained MP or senator he sticks to his script. So I will be intrigued to see if he invites on people who don't share his particular world-view. The omens are not good. It sounds like we are going to get supporters rather than critics or opponents. So expect John Pilger, not Bill Keller from the New York Times. I doubt we'll see many Swedish feminists or Norwegian diplomats on the show either.
I have just written a book about WikiLeaks that argues that we should be grateful for what Julian Assange has done. The challenge that WikiLeaks has set for mainstream media and traditional politics is to be more open and to win the trust of the public. Both are a long way from achieving that at present.
But it seems that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have also fallen into the trap of believing their own propaganda. They portray themselves as heroic victims of a global conspiracy. They want the right to free expression without the responsibilities that go with it. They want the power to disrupt politics without having to justify their own acts. It will be good if Julian Assange can debate some of these topics on his new show.
Charlies book Wikileaks: News in the Networked Era is out now]]>Should the Latest leak about WikiLeaks Change our View of Julian Assange and his Whistle Blowing Website?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9799482011-09-25T19:00:00-04:002011-11-25T05:12:02-05:00Charlie Becketthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/charlie-beckett/
WikiLeaks is a profound challenge to the status quo in journalism and politics. It has achieved the biggest disclosure of classified information in modern history. In my new book I look at whether it is a one-off freak or a model for the future of political communications. But this latest volume - and because of its controversial genesis it should be treated with caution as evidence - gives us the voice of the man behind the most sensational media adventure of the digital age.
It's clear that Assange, like most of us, was shaped by his upbringing. He tells a story of a socially marginal, disrupted family life. He asserts that it was happy and creative but with threads of violence and constant upheaval. Computer hacking with all its online camaraderie and the almost infinite potential power it offers for subverting authority becomes his early adult world, replacing reality.
His world-view is extremely simplistic. He describes a universal conspiracy of power that denies justice. As an Internet geek obsessed by breaking in, it's not surprising that he sees information disclosure as the way to destroy these structures of iniquity.
But it's clear that he's not a politician. As he describes how WikiLeaks began its task of bringing secrets into daylight, it's obvious he has no sense of how people or institutions actually work.
His goal is the release of information with little interest or understanding of its effects. The only baggage he carries is stuffed into a rucksack with no room left for moral scruples, tactical considerations or accountability.
He blunders into Africa, then the Middle East with limited knowledge and almost no self-awareness. He rarely leaves his ever-changing accommodation and his eyes are always glued to his lap-top screen. Assange gives no reason for why he's doing this beyond an abstract sense that he is fighting a lonely, pure battle against Power.
Of course, that is why WikiLeaks was so successful. Firstly, it had created a secure system for uploading classified documents. Secondly, it was beyond the reach of any normal legal sanction thanks to its global mirrored servers. But it was Assange's disregard for the usual journalistic checks, context and balance that really gave it the ability to challenge mainstream media and some of the most powerful nations in the world. That and one extraordinary massive leak of information, allegedly from a private in the US army.
Amazingly, just about everyone he works with falls out with him. But this is all their fault. Always. Nowhere in the book does he accept responsibility in any real sense. He is so obsessed by the process of what he does and feels so justified by his lofty aims that he doesn't or can't cope with the impact on people or politics.
That's not so unusual, of course. Most great investigative journalists are weird and often vicious, despite their claims to moral, professional and political superiority. Some of the other hacks he bumps into such as John Pilger, Heather Brooke or David Leigh are also 'colourful' characters.
Tone here is important. Assange may be a computing genius but he comes across as a half-baked intellect that has picked stuff up as he goes along without putting anything together coherently or critically.
He associates himself with literary giants. Wilde, Dickens, Solzhenitsyn, Orwell, Burns, Horace, Shakespeare and even Milton all get name-checks. And inevitably the Messiah complex emerges, especially in the passages where he rages against his arch-nemesis Bill Keller of the New York Times.
His style is quaint. It's not his fault, let alone that of his ghost-writer Andrew O'Hagan, that this rough draft has emerged without the benefit of proper editing of what is, at times, a dull, hectoring, somewhat pompous monologue.
But perhaps this is the authentic Assange voice. The register moves from a stilted, self-concously old-fashioned rhetoric to blind, almost biblical rage.
It's not surprising that such a showman sees his life as a drama. Assange is right that people have described WikiLeaks according to their own prejudices. Many have attacked him out of fear rather than any real love of freedom. His project has been assaulted by corporations, governments and the intelligence services. And now, of course, there is the personal legal threat from the Swedish sex allegations. Rival mainstream media have been happy to feed off the leaks but then delight in his self-destructive mistakes.
In the end WikiLeaks itself might be a journalistic Yellow Brick Road that travels no further because Assange as the Wizard of Oz is a brilliant manipulator rather than someone capable of building a sustainable institution. But that, of course, is also its strength. Its counter-cultural image has enormous resonance amongst a sceptical global public. And if WikiLeaks doesn't have a proper organisation then that makes it all the harder to take down.
It doesn't appear from this book that Assange is particularly prone to real reflection. WikiLeaks will continue but let's hope better disruptive journalism emerges elsewhere. It would be a tragic waste if we don't learn the lessons of WikiLeaks and seize the opportunities for a new kind of more transparent politics in the networked era.
* 'WikiLeaks: News In The Networked Era' by Charlie Beckett with James Ball is published by Polity Press this December.