Wikispeaks is a non-profit online current affairs magazine for writers who wish to remain nameless. Our aim is to provide an anonymous platform for people with both something to say and something to lose by saying it. All articles are nameless to allow the writer as much freedom and security as possible. We believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant and that publishing a wide and diverse range of opinions and testimony can assist democracy and transparency everywhere.
In the last decade the nature of national and international news coverage has been revolutionised by anonymous blogging. We live in a time when almost anybody can write almost anything they like. Or at least that's what we would like to believe. However many people, in both the developed and developing world could retain their jobs, or at worse their freedom, if they exercised total freedom of speech?
A freedom that is in our eyes: priceless. As well as being a brilliant by product of this freedom, all art, literature and poetry stems from the human imagination. The reason for this vivid imagination is simple. As individuals we make thousands of decisions each and every day, from what to put in a sandwich to taking or rejecting a job offer. Our imaginations allow us to predict the consequences of the choices we make to help us make the best decision possible. If a society permits all opinions to be expressed and judged on their merits then it allows itself to make the best-informed judgments possible. To compromise freedom of speech is to deny our own collective imagination and the consequences of narrow-minded autocratic decision-making can be derived from the poor standards of living within fundamentalist totalitarian societies.
It is that most important of freedoms, the freedom of expression that paves the way for justice and progress. It is my fear that freedom of speech has been circumscribed for many of us in hazy and subtle ways. Many of us would risk losing our livelihoods if we exposed inefficiency or wrongdoing within the organisation we worked. In many corners of the world the picture is much darker, and speaking out openly can be a very dangerous endeavour. While I'm aware Wikispeaks appears in no way revolutionary after years of anonymous online blogging all over the world, I believe that having a single distinct archive to share such stories has the potential to expand the influence of first hand citizen testimony. After all Jimmy Wales might not have invented online research, but his website, Wikipedia has done more then most universities to advance the way the majority of the human race understands the world around it.
I've worked inside government, businesses, and NGO's. What has struck me is the collective knowledge of almost every person at every level of every organisation. Be it right at the bottom or somewhere in the middle, I believe that the people working within organisations know when things are going wrong and what could be done about it. However, many have lots to loose. That could mean having a family to support, and bills to pay so they begrudgingly get on with their jobs inside stagnant, wasteful, and sometimes corrupt institutions.
Here in the developed world the press does a fairly decent job of scrutinising governments, corporations, and almost any thing else that influences our way of life. In the third world however, things are very different and there is much work to be done in the name of justice and transparency. This is why Mr Headlong, a fellow media student, and myself have created Wikispeaks www.wiki-speaks.org an online platform where nameless bloggers can write with confidence. While I'm aware Wikispeaks appears in no way revolutionary after years of anonymous online blogging all over the world, I believe that having a single distinct archive to share such stories has the potential to expand the influence of first hand citizen testimony.
Wikispeaks was also conceived with the journalist in mind. Reporters, whose job it is to prove that sunlight is the best disinfectant, are too often circumscribed by the office politics of the newsroom. Over the summer, I was lucky enough to (very briefly) meet Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye. He describes his publication as "the dustbin of Fleet Street", a place where frustrated journalists can write with impunity. What I want to do with Wikispeaks is not only create a dustbin for every newsroom in the world, but build a resource for investigative journalists in need of a story where each unnamed article is a clue with the potential to be the tip of a massive iceberg.
As it stands Wikispeaks is a university project we are treating as an experiment/protest. We want to find out how willing people are to speak out against and unmask the unfair aspect of the societies we live in, as well as test the democratic principles of the Internet. At the moment we don't really need much money, however, there is something else we want that is much more important. We want you. We need as many contributors as possible to help us get the ball rolling. So whether you have a story to tell that you can't tell anywhere else, or you simply want to get an opinion off your chest, Wikispeaks wants you.
By Nicholas Barratt editor@wiki-speaks.org
© 2011 JNM