Governmental control of the Internet and WikiLeaks: How does the press in four countries discuss freedom of expression?

Abstract

This study looked at how newspapers operating in nations with varying degrees of governmental Internet control discussed Internet freedom of expression within their coverage of Wikileaks. This was done through a thematic analysis of news items about WikiLeaks and Internet freedom of expression in the left-leaning newspapers of The Guardian (Great Britain), Le Monde (France), The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), and The China Daily (China). The analysis revealed that government stances regarding Internet control did not shape the newspapers' discussion about WikiLeaks and freedom of expression on the Internet. Although governments in these countries exercise different levels of Internet control, the newspapers had similar positions about freedom of expression on the Internet and the role of the United States in censoring it. They supported Internet freedom as well as the actions of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange while criticizing U.S. attempts to suppress the online organization and its founder.

Keywords

Democracy censorship newspapers the Internet Wikileaks

The Internet has long been considered a free space where divergent views could be expressed without restriction. Many have agreed that its ability for horizontal dissemination of information has undermined the gatekeeping role of traditional media (Shaw et al., 2006) and has allowed populations worldwide to access wide ranges of sources and create new content (Himelboim et al., 2009). In fact, researchers have asserted that this open communication on the Internet has been particularly important for the development of democracies. They say it has promoted “a more enlightened exchange of ideas” (Papacharissi, 2004: 267), encouraged democratic discourse worldwide (Downing, 1989), allowed users to take part in the formation of public opinion (Sachs, 1995), and helped expose government wrong-doing (Reporters Sans Frontiéres [RSF], 2010).

While the capacity of the Internet to advance free expression and exchanges of ideas has been heralded, concerns have also been raised especially by national governments. Possible national security breaches, the spread of cyber crime and child pornography, as well as the mobilization of anti-government forces are among the raised concerns (Giacomello, 2005; Lipshultz, 2000; RSF, 2011). Stemming from these concerns, Internet censorship has been carried out in more than 60 countries worldwide (RSF, 2010). Authoritarian regimes as well as democracies are exercising some form of control over the World Wide Web, although the extent of control differs (Alexander, 2003; Giacomello, 2005; RSF, 2014).

One of the primary tenets of democratic nations is that of free expression. Thus, how democracies are negotiating seemingly contradictory stances regarding free expression and Internet control is a research realm that is worthy of exploration. In particular, how the press in these nations, which rely on free expression to perform their roles, is approaching the subject matter of Internet content control should be examined. This study attempts to contribute to this area by investigating, through a comparative thematic analysis, how mainstream newspapers in the democratic nations of Britain, France, and Australia have covered Internet freedom of expression within the context of events involving the non-profit whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. To provide a further contrast, how the press in the People's Republic of China (PRC), operating under an authoritarian system with stringent Internet controls, has approached the same subject matter was also analyzed. It was assumed that the governmental stances regarding Internet control in each of these selected nations might be reflected in the manner in which the examined newspapers discussed WikiLeaks and views regarding Internet freedom of expression.

The case of WikiLeaks

Officially launched in 2007, WikiLeaks's main goal has been to publish leaked material on a range of subjects, mainly to expose wrongful doings of governments and corporations. The site gained notoriety in 2010 with its release of a classified video of a U.S. air attack on civilians in Bahgdad and with its later release of part of more than 250,000 U.S. classified diplomatic cables (The Economist, 2011; McGreal, 2010). Shortly following the cables' release, the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, was taken into custody in London after British police received a warrant for his arrest from Swedish authorities; Assange was to be extradited to Sweden on charges of sexually assaulting two women. Maintaining that the charges were politically motivated, the WikiLeaks founder successfully fought imminent extradition and was released from prison on bail at the end of 2010, and placed on house arrest. In July 2011, Assange appeared in a London High Court continuing to argue against extradition and challenging the validity of the arrest warrant in Sweden. Assange has feared that if extradited to Sweden, the U.S. would then seek his extradition to the U.S. over WikiLeaks' leakage of classified U.S. documents (BBC, 2011). In July 2012, Assange lost his appeal to the UK's Supreme Court against extradition and took refuge in the embassy of Ecuador in London, which granted him asylum and where he remains until today (BBC, 2015).

By disclosing the classified intelligence reports and secret diplomatic cables, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange have not only provoked controversy over U.S. foreign policies but also over the future of Internet freedom of expression. The U.S. government, which has ardently promoted the cause of Internet freedom (U.S. Department of State, 2010), has condemned WikiLeaks over the publishing of its classified documents and has looked at ways to prosecute Assange. Observers have expressed concern that the U.S. government's reaction to WikiLeaks could hinder future distribution of truthful political information online, and even radicalize the Internet freedom movements (Bligh, 2011; Gjelten, 2010). In essence, many fear that the case of WikiLeaks might further buttress arguments made by various nations, even democracies, of the need to contain Internet content and activity in the name of national security.

Democracies, freedom of expression, and the Internet

Freedom of expression is viewed as a basic human right to participate in the production and distribution of knowledge (Balkin, 2004). Emerson (1970) called it a system, a network of people interacting with each other, agreeing, disagreeing, supporting, and opposing. Balkin (2004) argued that the purpose of freedom of expression is to promote a democratic culture in which individuals participate in meaning making that establishes them as individuals. He added that a democratic culture is democratic in the sense that everyone, not just the political, economic, or cultural elite, has a chance to participate in the development of societal ideas and meanings. While linked with freedom of the press and the First Amendment in the US, freedom of expression is not exclusively an American value. It has been endorsed as a basic human right by international organizations, and has been recognized in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights since 1948 (Dutton et al., 2010).

Modern conceptions of freedom of expression consist of two general categories of rights (Klang and Murray 2005). The first focuses on access to the Internet, and related information and communication technologies (ICT) (Baer et al., 2009; Dutton, 1999). The second focuses on the rights to use media to support political institutions and processes, such as elections. This is typically associated with freedom of the press, but increasingly freedom of expression is being extended to the right to use the Internet and ICTs for acquiring information and organizing politically, particularly as Internet users take on roles previously reserved to the press (Dutton et al., 2010). The Internet could empower people to inform and educate themselves, express their opinions, and partake in democratic processes to a degree never before possible. Forms of participation like Internet newspapers, blogs, or social networking sites are challenging traditional media by offering new forms of communication, such as enabling users to share, create, or even produce information (Dutton et al., 2010). Balkin (2004) argued that these processes create opportunities for individual participation in the development of culture and thus the possibilities for achieving a truly democratic culture.

Several scholars and practitioners have asserted that in order for the Internet to aid in the production of a democratic culture, freedom of expression should be unrestricted (Balkin, 2004; Beyer, 2014; Dyson et al., 1994). With the advent of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, social activists saw the Internet as a medium for unrestricted communication and were confident that its very design would prevent governments from controlling it. Since then, cyber-libertarian ideas of unrestricted communication have proliferated among youth-dominated, English-speaking online spaces, such as file-sharing sites and “Anonymous” communities (Beyer, 2011). According to Beyer (2014), the idea of freedom of expression means that accurate public information is made widely available without fear of censorship or punishment.

For democratic governments, however, the Internet has brought new challenges in their interpretation of free expression. The availability via the Internet of sexually explicit content, hate speech, and anti-governmental rhetoric has prompted governments to circumvent the tenet of free expression and implement regulatory measures (Akdeniz, 2010). Moreover, in the wake of 9/11, governments around the world have gone beyond being mere regulators and have been actively using the Internet to secure individual safety and national security (Birnhack and Elkin-Koren, 2011). They have increased the usage of filtering systems that use Internet nodes as gateways for filtering out certain information, engaging either in exclusion filtering (i.e., restricting blacklisted websites) or inclusion filtering (i.e., authorizing access only to those websites deemed “safe”) (Deibert, 2009). Governments have also used content analysis as a way of filtering; filtering here takes place by searching for specified keywords or visual graphics that signal prohibited content. In its 2014 comprehensive study of Internet freedom around the globe, the independent watchdog organization, Freedom House, found that Internet freedom around the world is in decline for the fourth consecutive year and that 36 out of 65 countries are experiencing negative trajectories (Freedom House, 2014). The study also found that countries surveyed adopted laws that legitimized existing repression. Governments increased pressure on independent news websites and detained or prosecuted people because of their digital activities more than ever before (Freedom House, 2014).

In the midst of increasing government initiatives to restrict Internet access and content, WikiLeaks entered the global psyche by exposing evidence of U.S. government transgressions. After WikiLeaks began releasing its cache of U.S. diplomatic cables, U.S. governmental agencies immediately banned its federal employees from accessing the WikiLeaks website; the U.S. Air Force even barred its employees from accessing newspaper websites that were covering the WikiLeaks disclosures (Quill, 2014). While implementing these measures, the United States government was also presenting to the world the notion that the actions of WikiLeaks were not only an attack on the United States but also on the international community (Benkler, 2011). As a result, major democratic allies joined the U.S. government's efforts to delegitimize WikiLeaks and situate the organization within the realm of global terrorism. WikiLeaks and its supporters, however, maintained that the organization was simply acting as any other journalistic entity would do when faced with evidence of governmental wrongdoings (Beckett and Ball, 2012). Freedom of expression and free press were heralded as mainstays of any democracy that WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange were determined to uphold.

Wikileaks and news coverage

The case of WikiLeaks offers researchers an opportunity to critically explore how members of the mainstream press based in democratic countries covered WikiLeaks, an organization that touts free expression, while being faced with a situation in which governments, including their own, were calling for a swift shutdown of WikiLeaks and a persecution of Assange due to national security concerns. Some evidence does exist that the U.S. mainstream press, in its WikiLeaks coverage, continued to toe the U.S. government line and provided coverage that tended to favor its own government (Quill, 2014). For example, a study by Handley and Rutigliano (2012) showed that the major U.S. broadcast network news organizations covered WikiLeaks and Assange in a manner that was very much reflective of the U.S. government's stances. According to their findings, the networks constructed an image of Julian Assange as a terrorist and WikiLeaks as a threat to national security. The authors write, “establishment journalists, despite opportunities created for them by the extra-national WikiLeaks, selected which facts to report and how to interpret those facts that made it past the news gates by employing the national narrative as an organizing work tool” (p. 756). Even The New York Times that was among the handful of newspapers that initially worked with WikiLeaks to secure classified information and write investigative pieces eventually distanced itself from WikiLeaks (Handley and Rutigliano, 2012).

Such coverage by the U.S. mainstream press may be understood by considering the findings from previous research on press-state relations. As a number of studies (e.g., Bennett, 2008; Entman, 2004; Luther and Miller, 2005; Nossek, 2004) have shown, when international crisis or conflict is involved, the mainstream news media tend to advocate for its own government's actions and policies, even going as far as allowing restrictions to be placed on their own information-gathering operations (Kumar, 2006). With regard to the U.S. press, Bennett (2008) theorizes that the journalistic norms established by the mainstream news media creates a situation in which a close relationship is established between members of the press and the political elite, leading to an indexing of stories to match governmental stances. Other researchers have posited that in times of conflict or crisis, the mainstream press is less likely to oppose their own government's viewpoints due to a sense of patriotism (Entman, 2004; Luther and Miller, 2005).

Based on the few studies that have investigated U.S. press coverage of WikiLeaks, it appears that the United States, a country which purportedly supports Internet freedom and free expression, was essentially provided a free pass by its own mainstream news media to pursue efforts to bring to demise an online organization that was presenting itself as a champion of democratic ideals. The purpose of this present study was to further the above research by exploring how traditional news media in other democratic countries (namely, Great Britain, France, and Australia), with varying levels of Internet controls, were discussing Internet free expression while covering WikiLeaks during the peak period of global attention on WikiLeaks (2010–2011). By concentrating on mainstream newspapers situated in countries considered to be close democratic allies of the United Sates, this study hoped to further shed light on how mainstream news media in democracies are navigating the intricate dialogues involving Internet freedom of expression versus national security concerns. To provide a contrast against newspaper coverage in democracies, WikiLeaks news coverage in China, an authoritarian system with strict Internet controls, was also examined. The overarching research question that guided this study was: How will newspapers operating in nations with varying degrees of governmental Internet control discuss Internet freedom of expression within their coverage of WikiLeaks?

Method

Selection of countries

In selecting the countries that would be of focus for this study, the level of Internet control that the country's government practiced at the time of the WikiLeaks events was considered using Reporters Sans Frontiers' (RSF, 2010) classification. Primarily an advocate of press freedom, since the arrival of the Internet, the organization¹ has documented Internet censorship and has annually issued a list of countries that are deemed to be not friendly to Internet freedom. The two broad categories that RSF uses to classify are “Internet enemies” and “countries under surveillance” (RSF, 2010). The label of “Internet enemies” indicates strict governmental control of the Internet. “Countries under surveillance” signals that, although not implementing drastic Internet controls, countries coming under this category are introducing measures perceived as highly harmful to freedom of expression. Two of the nations focused upon in this study, Australia and France, consistently have been listed as “countries under surveillance”, while China, another country studied, has been long considered an “Internet enemy”. The remaining nation that is of focus in this study, Great Britain, did not appear on RSF's list of non-friendly nations to Internet freedom in 2010.

To provide insight into RSF's classifications of these nations, the following section provides a brief overview of each selected nation's policies and/or actions in relation to Internet control and censorship up until the year in which WikiLeaks made its controversial disclosures.²

Great Britain: Great Britain has been a proponent of individual rights, including freedom of expression. Along this line, it has preferred self-regularity solutions for Internet content rather than any specific legislation. Following the recommendations of the European Union, Great Britain established its Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) in 1996, an organization set up to identify and report to authorities illegal Internet content, especially those related to child pornography. In 2003, the largest Internet service provider in the UK, British Telecom (BT) in partnership with IWF, set up a content blocking system called Cleanfeed (Deibert et al., 2010b). The British government later urged all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to use this blocking system or an alternative form of blocking (Akdeniz, 2010).

Australia: The Australian government has tended to view all threatening content over the Internet as a matter of national security and has initiated several attempts at curtailing such content. In the early 2000s, under the Broadcasting Service Act of January 2000, the government authorized the Australian Broadcasting Authority (now the Australian Communications and Media Authority – ACMA, a governmental agency with the power to enforce Internet content restrictions) to request ISPs to remove perceived threatening content from the Internet. With civil liberty groups arguing against the restrictions, ISPs mostly ignored the requests (RSF, 2003). In another attempt to control the Internet, the government proposed a plan that would allow government agencies to monitor e-mail, text, and voicemail messages without a warrant. The government, however, yet again failed to attain necessary support to implement the plan (Giacomello, 2005).

In December of 2010, the Australian government announced plans to implement a mandatory filtering system that would force ISPs to ban access to any website deemed as inappropriate by ACMA. While this plan fell through, the government agency still maintains a website blacklist that it makes available for usage with commercial filtering software (Levin, 2010; RSF, 2011). On the blacklist are sites such as YouTube links, gambling sites, and Wikipedia pages.

France: As a liberal democracy, France guarantees freedom of speech and press under its 1789 “Declaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen” or “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” (Deibert et al., 2010c). Nevertheless, within the realm of Internet regulation, France has been spotlighted as a country not adverse to Internet censorship. As an example of the type of censorship the country has engaged in, the French judicial court decided in May 2000, that Yahoo! Inc. should block all access to auction websites that contain Nazi paraphernalia for sale (Akdeniz, 2001). American civil liberties organizations expressed fear that the court order would undermine freedom of speech on the Internet and others were weary that it might set a precedent for governments to restrict online freedoms (Giacamello, 2005).

France was also among the first countries to toughen its electronic communication laws after the 11 September terrorist attacks on the United States. The Law on Everyday Security, passed in November 2001, obliges ISPs to keep records of customers for at least a year and allows judges to order the use of “secret methods (for reasons of national defense) to decode e-mail messages” (Giacamello, 2005: 70). It also gives law enforcement agencies authorization, with court permission, to make remote on-line searches and have access to users' personal data as part of criminal investigations (Deibert et al., 2010a). French citizens have expressed dissatisfaction at these measures. A 2010 global Internet survey conducted by the BBC shows that people in France are among those who agree the least that the Internet is a safe place to express personal opinions (Dutton et al., 2010).

China: China's move toward a market-oriented economy beginning in the 1980s under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping has resulted in a complex system where tensions exist between political demands and economic needs (Chang, 2002; Zheng, 2009). Governmental control mechanisms now co-exist with ever-increasing commercial incentives. Political reform is a topic that has been discussed and debated in China among citizens, social elites, and Chinese Communist Party officials. The extent of discussion, however, is curtailed by the knowledge that reform topics are taboo. A fine line exists that individuals are forbidden to cross (Zheng, 2009).

The arrival of the Internet has made governmental control of topics difficult; even so, the government has managed to attentively stay two steps ahead of the public in controlling the information that is disseminated via the web. Internet control in China takes place at multiple levels with government ministries and Party officials overseeing the control mechanisms. Control is exerted through managing Internet access, licensing and registration requirements, and self-monitoring mandates given to ISPs and content providers as well as users (Deibert et al., 2010a; Lagerkvist, 2010). Online activities or content considered politically subversive or illegal could result in criminal charges. The Chinese political regime “keeps high vigilance” on discussions and takes measures to either “clean” those discussions that are viewed as potentially threatening to the system or take down websites hosting those discussions (Wu, 2009: 79). Internet users in China are often left in the dark regarding such actions. In fact, when users in China cannot access a particular website, they are never quite sure if this inability to access is due to technical problems or due to purposive blocking (O'Hara, 2009).

Selection and analysis of newspaper content

The newspapers selected from each nation were as follows: Great Britain: The Guardian; France: Le Monde; Australia: The Sydney Morning Herald; China: The China Daily. In order to make reasonable comparisons between newspapers in the democratic nations, only left-leaning newspapers were chosen for analysis. The China Daily was chosen for analysis because it would offer a point of contrast. It was also chosen because it is an English-language article that has a formidable national and international readership (Chang, 1989; Krumbein, 2015).

The Guardian is owned by Scott Trust under the Guardian Media Group banner and is categorized as politically left-of-center (Temple, 2008). Internet mogul Xavier Niel, investment banker Matthieu Pigasse, and patron Pierre Bergeand own Le Monde (Reuters, 2011). The newspaper is considered left-of-center (Eveno, 2001). The Sydney Morning Herald is owned by Fairfax Media and is generally categorized as a left-leaning newspaper (Roberts and Nash, 2009). The China Daily is a major English language newspaper in China. Launched in 1981 to assist in China's open-door policy, it has always been allowed to exhibit degrees of “openness and boldness” that normally would be frowned upon in other newspapers (Chang, 1989: 115). According to Krumbein (2015: 160), one of the article's major objectives is to “communicate the policy of the Chinese government to the outside world”. For this study, it was expected that analyzing news items from The China Daily would allow insight into how an article situated in a country that practices Internet and press censorship would present to the international community its take on freedom of expression within the context of WikiLeaks.

To gather news items related to freedom of expression, Lexis–Nexis was accessed for the British, French, and Australian newspapers; Factiva was accessed for The China Daily. The timeframe used was from 1 April 2010 to 31 July 2011. April 2010 was the month during which WikiLeaks released a video of a U.S. attack helicopter aircrew shooting at civilians in Baghdad. July 2011 was the month during which WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appeared before a London High Court to further fight against extradition to Sweden to face sexual assault charges.

Two searches with different key word combinations were used to identify news items.³ The first search used the key words “WikiLeaks”, “Internet”, and “free”, and the second used “Assange”, “freedom”, and “expression”. Duplicate news items, reprints from other sources, and stories from wire services were eliminated. The process resulted in generating 18 news items from The Guardian, 30 from Le Monde, eight from The Sydney Morning Herald, and 14 from The China Daily.

Based on a comparative thematic analysis method used in other research (e.g., Braun and Clarke, 2006), news items were analyzed by identifying, analyzing, and reporting patterns (themes) within the items. The themes were developed after the researchers immersed themselves into the depth and the breath of the content of news articles, engaged themselves in repeated readings of the items, actively searching for meanings and patterns within the single news article, as well as across the whole set of sampled articles. In this regard, a theme was considered as one if it captured something important about the news items in relation to the research question, and represented some level of patterned response or meaning across the collected items. The themes, the components of the themes, and any tension (contradiction) between the themes were noted. The existing thematic patterns were then used to identify the conveyed discourse of Internet freedom of expression. The themes from four newspapers were comparatively analyzed, by looking at similarities and differences between them. If enough evidence was found, similar themes from four newspapers were collated under the same theme. Finally, the researchers defined and named the themes and wrote the analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006).

Findings

Internet Freedom of Expression as Agent of Power Transfer in the Changing World: News items in Le Monde, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Guardian conveyed the idea that digital culture has transferred power from the state to the people. It has turned ordinary people into “informed authors” (Doueihi, 2010) and has given them the possibility to participate in open debates on the Internet, as well as means to act, by confronting facts and interpretations. In one news item in Le Monde, the writer asserts, “In this conversation, the State is not excluded but silent, because it speaks the language of secrets in a zone where the secrets are no longer admissible” (Doueihi, 2010). The general position of Le Monde's news items is that unlike the traditional norm of the news media asking governments for information, governments are now tapping the news media as sources of information. One journalist quotes Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere as stating, “the roles of media and power structures are practically inversed”. Now, its us, the ministries, who demand the access to information from the press (Kauffmann, 2010), while The Guardian notes that this inversed situation allows citizens to “turn their collected eyes back upon the powerful” (Brooke, 2010).

The three newspapers further posit that in this new world, governments are not ready to relinquish the control and are trying to preserve the old world in which in, Sydney Morning Herald's language, authority, respect for borders and law, stability and a life rooted in one place, dominated (Delaney, 2010). In this endeavor, they are confronted with the forces of the new world, which reflects the values of flexibility and freedom of expression and in which WikiLeaks is a dominant player (Delaney, 2010). Seen by the The Guardian as “the guerrilla front in a global movement for greater transparency and participation” (Brooke, 2010), WikiLeaks is portrayed as the epitome of the new digital culture that empowers the citizens to fight for free speech and greater transparency in the government (Shirky, 2011). One news item states, “The days when governments or corporations believed they had a right to secrecy, to protect their narrow interests or save them embarrassment, are gone. …No matter how hard governments try, the genie cannot be put back into the bottle” (Kampfner, 2011).

As an agent of power transfer, free expression on Internet websites, such as WikiLeaks, Facebook, and Twitter, appears as a significant carrier of social change. Discussing the 2011 revolutions in the Arab world, Le Monde's items stress that Facebook and Twitter have played important roles in liberating individuals from dictatorial rulerships (Eudes, 2011a; Mandraud, 2011; Paris, 2011). They provided “an unknown free space which allowed an effective diffusion of information” (Mandraud, 2011) in countries with traditionally lower levels of press freedoms, as well as “unedited sources” in the fight against the “brutality of police oppression” (Eudes, 2011a). According to another Le Monde's news item, some social action was brought after WikiLeaks disclosures. Namely, the United Nations ordered the United States to open an investigation about the torture of Iraqi prisoners by American troops, while the European Parliament demanded an “independent transatlantic investigation” of the case (Eudes, 2010b). In another article, the journalist writes that one German website, inspired by WikiLeaks, has published the documents about a controversial privatization of water services in Berlin, which allowed two private companies to increase their profits. The publications led to a referendum in support of the full disclosure of the problematic contracts between the city and the private companies (Boutelet, 2011).

Julian Assange as symbol of free expression: All articles analyzed in this study dominantly depicted the founder of WikiLeaks in a positive light. For Le Monde, Julian Assange is “an apostle of transparency”, a “man who rattled Western diplomacy” (Le Monde, 2011 ) and has fought the “threats” from the American government which “has launched a frontal offensive on him” (Eudes, 2010d). He is seen as a “brave man”, enjoying “international support” (Eudes, 2010a) a man who has openly “denounced the refusal of Washington to investigate the allegations about prisoners' abuse” (Duparc, 2010). News items characterize Assange as “tall, slim, and elegant”, a “national hero”, “an effective speaker”, “charming and funny”, “well educated”, and a “creative and prosperous software developer” (Eudes, 2010a,2010c). One article notes that Assange “has devoted his life to one sole cause: defending the freedom of expression on the Internet” (Eudes, 2010c).

Similarly, The Sydney Morning Herald views Assange as a spirit of the new age of information freedom. Phrases such as “the modern world nomad”, “fey general”, “The Robin Hood of the cyber world”, paint a picture of a man who believes in freedom of information and ideas that should be accessible to everyone. One writer noted, “Assange dislikes people who get power simply by access to information, and he has the means to break down the barriers by his IT expertise” (McDonald, 2010). The writer then goes on to blame the U.S. government for allowing its sensitive documents to be accessed. He posits,

How you run a huge bureaucracy of that kind where information is the basic lifeblood of it and share it around without it falling into the hands of a maverick or someone with other motivations is something they haven't worked out (McDonald, 2010).

For The Sydney Morning Herald, Julian Assange is a leader of an organization that has made remarkable contributions to free speech, human rights and democracy by exposing corruption and showing all of us that free speech is indispensable. One writer notes that by holding governments responsible for their actions, WikiLeaks has empowered the public to stand up for their rights and “make better-informed democratic choices” (The Sydney Morning Herald, 2011). For The China Daily, Assange is a journalist and his WikiLeaks is a true form of journalism (e.g., Qian, 2010; Yang, 2010; Weihua, 2010b). One of the editors of The China Daily in his piece asserts, “Remember, Assange is a fellow journalist, or a citizen journalist in the age of new media, and uncovering the secrets of governments, corporations and interest groups is part of a journalist's job” (Weihua, 2010b). While building up WikiLeaks as an example of journalism at its best, in a China Daily article, the journalist compares WikiLeaks to bloggers in China “who seem to have taken on the role of being big business, government and media watchdogs” (Quartly, 2011). The journalist writes, “Since WikiLeaks is the new standard bearer for journalism this has got some people in China thinking they have their own shanzhai (copy) versions of Julian Assange, running around, putting things right” (Quartly, 2011). It is interesting to note that one of the blogs, Blog Weekly, which the journalist focuses upon as an example of this is actually hosted by China's State media. Another China Daily writer touts WikiLeaks as being among the “10 hottest terms on the Internet in China” and suggests the popular website is serving as an inspiration to micro-bloggers in China (Qian, 2010). The journalist, however, does not mention that the WikiLeaks site is actually unavailable for access in China.

In hailing Assange and WikiLeaks, one China Daily journalist takes jabs at the work of Western news organizations. He writes,

Jualian Assange and his company of whistle blowers have uncovered the secrets of scientology, released information on nuclear accidents in Iran, a banking collapse in Iceland, published real rather than ‘embedded’ news from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and much more besides (Quartly, 2010).

Assange and WikiLeaks as victims of U.S. government and press: Four newspapers analyzed in this study depicted the United States as victimizing Julian Assange and WikiLeaks even though both were working in the interest of freedom of expression. Le Monde’s news items portray Assange as the victim of overzealousness by the U.S. and Sweden (Eudes, 2010a; Le Monde, 2011; Truc, 2010). One writer states the sexual assault charges against Assange are designed to hurt the creator of WikiLeaks, “a new symbol of free expression” (Eudes, 2010a). Assange, himself, is quoted in the same news item as suggesting the U.S., whose politicians openly “wished for his death”, might have “orchestrated” his legal situation (Eudes, 2010a). The China Daily news items characterized the U.S. as engaging in “ruthless criticism” of WikiLeaks (Cunningham, 2011c). In another news item, The China Daily journalist writes, “The divine comedy of the situation is that those who shout loudest about freedom of the press, the Internet and expression are precisely the same people now trying their utmost to shut down WikiLeaks” (Quartly, 2010). The China Daily news items also take the opportunity to criticize the major world news media, especially that of the United States, as lacking journalistic integrity and as lap dogs of their governments (e.g., Miaofa, 2010; Weihua, 2010a). They connote the idea that members of the corrupt U.S. press have victimized Assange and WikiLeaks. In one news item, the writer equates elite newspapers with tabloids. Focusing on the U.S. press, he contends, “The New York Times, for example, doesn't print photographs of naked starlets, and it tends to deal politely with United States’ allies such as the United Kingdom and Israel, but it takes evident glee in ‘exposing’ the ill-considered deeds of those who dare to challenge American hegemony….” (Cunningham, 2011a). He then goes on to relate:

The New York Times recently bared its fangs in a case of double leak and double betrayal, printing U.S. State Department cables exposed by WikiLeaks, but without the permission of its chief Julian Assange, who they then went on to castigate and humiliate in numerous formats, the most egregious case being a venomous ambush by the then executive editor, Bill Keller, who inserted snarky asides about Assange's body odor and dirty socks.

Referring to WikiLeaks's release of footage showing U.S. forces killing Afghan civilians, another China Daily journalist observes, “Some Western media outlets have condemned China without any concrete evidence but when it comes to the WikiLeaks, they say more evidence is needed to confirm that U.S. troops killed civilians. Is this the objectivity the Western media practices?” (Miaofa, 2010).

Hypocritical U.S. Censoring Wikileaks: All four newspapers analyzed in this study severely condemned the United States for censoring WikiLeaks. The Sydney Morning Herald criticizes the U.S. government for banning students, government employees, and military personnel from accessing the leaked documents, citing linguist and activist Noam Chomsky as commenting, “I can't get any access to WikiLeaks in the land of the free” (McDonald, 2010). Another writer discusses the hypocrisy of the U.S. government condemning countries that try to suppress Internet free speech while at the same time seeking to punish those responsible for the WikiLeaks publication of U.S. documents. He illustrates this by mentioning how in 2004, when Yahoo! Inc acquiesced to a Chinese warrant to hand over user identity codes in order to track down a perceived threat to state security, the U.S. government criticized Yahoo for not standing up to the Chinese. Yet now, according to the writer, the U.S. is acting similarly to the Chinese government by subpoenaing Twitter for specific details of messages related to WikiLeaks. He goes on to state, “There is something unbalanced in the desperate yearning to punish…. Washington would do better to let the WikiLeaks episode flow through, and meanwhile tighten up its security. The WikiLeaks manhunt does it little credit” (The Sydney Morning Herald, 2011).

News items in The Guardian also criticized U.S. attempts at censoring Wikileaks. Phrases such as “hypocritical”, “double standards”, “the so-called liberal democracy”, paint a picture of a country which is easily ready to criticize other countries for suppressing freedom of speech on the Internet, but when something happens at its door step, the response is harsh. One writer comments “the US failed to maintain the principles of Internet freedom at a moment when its own structure of secrecy was threatened” (Sabbagh, 2011). Another writer mocks the U.S. reaction to the leaked documents: “It has been comical watching them and their agencies stomp about the net like maddened, half-blind giants trying to whack a mole” (Naughton, 2011). He goes on to write, “they have obfuscated, lied or blustered their way through. And when, finally, the veil of secrecy is lifted, their reflex reaction is to kill the messenger” (Naughton, 2011). Taking more of moderate tone, one article conveys concern that by carrying out such actions as banning government employees to download the leaked documents and introducing new legislation that would allow the administration to go after Assange, the U.S. has provided justification for authoritarian regimes to stifle activists' Internet activities (The Guardian, 2010).

The strongest accusations of hypocrisy were found in items that commented on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's lectures on Internet freedom. In one item in The Guardian, the journalist quotes Clinton defending free speech and warning that “countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of Internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century” (Sabbagh, 2011). The journalist then points out that while taking this stance, Clinton did not see the U.S. government's reaction to WikiLeaks as oppressing freedom of speech (Sabbagh, 2011). Another news item in The Guardian cites another speech Clinton made in Washington when she talked about the positive role Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks played in Tunisia and Egypt's protests. This speech came at the same time when the U.S. government subpoenaed Twitter for information on Assange's and his coworker's accounts (MacAskill, 2011).

As one of the first newspapers to publish WikiLeaks documents, Le Monde's news items firmly defend the position that the publication of information of government misconduct is the “duty” of the news media (Le Monde, 2011; Ternisien, 2010). The journalists express the idea that Julian Assange, as a source of information of public importance, should be protected by the principles that guard free expression and they criticize the United States for wanting to prosecute Assange. One writer states that the United States “who finances diverse NGOs around the world, which produce software that allow Iranians, Burmese, or Chinese people to get around the systems of Internet censorship cannot refuse Assange the same principles” as those it purports to protect (Le Monde, 2011).

In The China Daily, one of the strongest themes to emerge is the notion of the U.S. pushing for Internet freedom, while at the same time, attempting to bring down WikiLeaks and Assange. The items portray the U.S. as only espousing Internet freedom when it is in its best interest. According to the news items, if Internet freedom appears to be a threat to the U.S. political and economic agenda, the U.S. is willing to use heavy-handed tactics to limit such freedom (e.g., Cunningham, 2010, 2011c; Quartly, 2010; Weihua, 2011). One news item discusses U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton making speeches regarding Internet freedom and represents her as beacon of U.S. hypocrisy. The writer states,

Although the WikiLeaks case found the U.S. government awkwardly on the wrong side of Internet freedom, she [Clinton] has tried to downplay the obvious hypocrisy of her stance – in short, anything that serves United States government interests is enlightened Internet policy (Cunningham, 2011b).

The author goes on to suggest that the true reason for the U.S. to push Internet freedom was to help large U.S. corporations to profit from the sites they establish and support that supposedly give voice to ordinary citizens. He piercingly notes, “What really counts for crony capitalists, inside the Beltway and out, is not so much the freedom of speech but the freedom to advertise, which promotes slavish materialism and ultimately an irresponsible, apolitical way of life” (Cunningham, 2011b). Also connoting U.S. duplicity, another writer notes,

The Assange case reveals such rhetoric is just so much hypocrisy. It is apparent that when Internet freedom conflicts with self-declared U.S. national interests, or when Internet freedom exposes lies by the self-proclaimed open and transparent government, it immediately becomes a crime (Weihua, 2010b).

In discussing the release of U.S. President Obama's “U.S. International Strategy for Cyberspace” report, the writer disparages the report and leads his conclusion about the report with the following:

If there is a pearl of wisdom in the report it is this: releasing information that the U.S. government does not want released is very, very bad, whereas enabling the global spread of information that serves U.S. government interests is very, very good (Cunningham, 2011c).

WikiLeaks and the Tyranny of transparency: Although an overwhelming positive stance toward freedom of expression on the Internet is voiced in four newspapers analyzed in this study, a few isolated voices do appear on the pages of three Western newspapers. In Le Monde, several news items express concern for ‘irresponsible transparency’ (Cordon, 2010; Fourest, 2010; Truc, 2011). Claiming that total transparency can lead to totalitarianism, one journalist reminds that the careless release of WikiLeaks documents has cost the lives Afghan and Iraqi informants (Fourest, 2010). He also notes that a tremendous amount of information published on the Internet could hide information and leave many relevant ones in the dark. Another journalist asserts, “If they are not properly interpreted in the context, abundant information can lead to contra-democracy”’ (Cordon, 2010). Taking a similar position, another writer quotes sources as stating that Julian Assage is “dangerous and irresponsible” (Ternisien, 2010). Yet another article quotes a former French ambassador to Senegal and Gambia stating that WikiLeaks follows a marketing logic – to attract the audience, rather than to serve a noble goal (Rufin, 2010).

In The Sydney Morning Herald, one article was found that was critical of WikiLeaks. In the article, the writer claims that the Wikileaks saga was a “too high of a price to pay for the right to free speech”. He finds WikiLeaks to be unethical and even illegal, stating, “WikiLeaks is not about freedom of speech as it denies individuals the right to free speech by spying on their private conversations” (The Sydney Morning Herald, 2010).

While The Guardian's news items reflect running themes of U.S. government criticism and support of WikiLeaks, it should be noted one article does side with the U.S.'s position regarding WikiLeaks and conveys agreement with U.S. President Barack Obama that sometimes there is a need “to try to impose some order on the chaos” (Jenkins, 2011). The writer compares free speech to a “Hobbesian jungle” where existing rules maintain fair and open competition. He goes on to explain that rules and discipline are what fortifies free speech, and states, “It is the great paradox of democracy. Free speech cannot exist without chains” (Jenkins, 2011).

Discussion

Three shared thematic patterns emerged from the analysis. The first conveyed the idea that Internet speech should not be censored and that those who protect it are heroes. The second suggested that the Internet empowers ordinary people to fight against governments. The third implied that the U.S., as a free speech advocate, is a hypocrite when it tries to suppress Internet free expression in cases in which the content endangers U.S. national interests.

The first pattern reflects the notion that the Internet is now the new watchdog vehicle for monitoring government actions. The news items described how WikiLeaks's documents revealed government misconduct and depicted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as the “real journalist” willing to take on those in power. This finding is interesting considering that researchers have increasingly observed traditional media faltering in their watchdog role. Quality investigative journalism has been shown to be in decline . Expensive and time-consuming coverage, concern for profit, and audience migration to online forums made investigative journalism less attractive (Ettema and Glasser, 2007). The examined newspapers appear to have adopted a view that has been articulated by others (e.g., Benkler, 2006; Lynch, 2010) that the Internet and WikiLeaks-type organizations are increasingly becoming the Fourth Estate.

The second thematic pattern connotes the idea that the Internet and social media have provided people with the means to engage in social change. WikiLeaks is seen as a provider of hidden information, which mainstream media have failed to report. Assange is represented as the protector of the common person, the one who opens the coffers of elite knowledge and brings enlightenment to the masses suffering from critical information famine. This standpoint reflects the argument some scholars (e.g., Cohen and Raymond, 2011; Shirazi, 2011; Young, 2005) have made that the Internet is a powerful tool for repressed and marginalized groups.

The first two thematic patterns found in the analysis echo the tenets of free expression that are found in the principles of democratic nations. Thus, these patterns are not terribly surprising with regard to the newspapers from the democratic states of France, Great Britain, and Australia. The fact that the newspaper from China also exhibited these same themes, however, presents more of a noteworthy finding. China, after all, is an authoritarian country in which strict Internet controls and censorship are practiced. In order to better understand these findings, it must be placed within the context of recent U.S.–China relations.

Since the opening of relations between the United States and China under the leadership of PRC President and Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong and U.S. President Richard Nixon in the 1970s, the two countries have developed various cooperative agreements for pragmatic reasons, mainly pertaining to global security and economic development (Sutter, 2010). Although relations did begin to deteriorate in the late 1980s and into the 1990s due to diverging positions taken by each government on such issues as human rights and the sovereignty of Taiwan and Tibet, strong cooperative dialogues began to resurface in 2003 as a result of mutual concerns over the war on terror and the development of nuclear weapons by North Korea (Sutter, 2010).

By the time that WikiLeaks first released sensitive U.S. government documents in 2010, however, relations between China and the United States were increasingly becoming strained. The United States was intensifying its accusations that China was practicing unfair trade policies, was engaging in Internet censorship and cyber economic espionage, and was allowing infringements on intellectual property rights (Flamini, 2010; Morrison, 2015; Sutter, 2010). The United States was also shifting its geopolitical focus from the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region (Denmark, 2014). While in the throes of withdrawing its military forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States government began to perceive China's increase in military spending and its aggressive claims to disputed territories, including the South China Sea, as threats to regional stability and as a challenge to U.S. leadership in Asia. With a new confidence backed up by its strong economy and military capabilities, China, on the other hand, continued to refute United States' accusations. It viewed the United States' move toward enhancing its Asia-Pacific engagement and establishing close ties with those nations in territorial disputes with China as tantamount to the United States building a strategic alliance against China (Hu, 2014).

Given the tensions in U.S.–China relations that existed during the height of global attention on the WikiLeaks disclosures (2010–2011), the revelations might have been more of an opportunity for the government-subsidized Chinese newspaper to criticize the United States via its verbiage of support for WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. This interpretation is buttressed by the fact that the strongest theme to emerge from the Chinese news items was one that attempted to paint a picture of the United States as hypocritical and only a champion of Internet free expression when it was in the United States' best interest. It was a theme that was also shared by the Western newspapers, making it the third thematic pattern to come forth from the analysis of all of the articles.

The third thematic pattern reveals a portrayal of the United States as a profit driven country that fights for freedom of speech, not as protector of citizen voice, but as guardian of its own interests. The news items emphasized that once Internet freedom conflicts with U.S. interests, the U.S. takes on the role of Internet censor. This thematic pattern aligns well with the critical stance China was taking toward the United States during the 2010–2011 time period. However, the same pattern was also found among the newspapers that reside in countries that are labeled as close U.S. allies. To understand what might be occurring, the concept of “liberal anti-Americanism” can be considered. Liberal anti-Americanism is when non-Americans believe in American social and political ideals, while at the same time, viewing Americans as not living up to those ideals (Katzenstein and Keohane, 2007). Liberal anti-Americanism, which is mainly found in liberal societies of advanced industrialized countries, feeds off of the perception of hypocrisy. The U.S. is seen as a superpower that professes universal freedom, but also as a nation that in its struggle for world dominance, engages in hypocritical actions including the undercutting of freedoms elsewhere to maintain or promote its own national interests (Katzenstein and Keohane, 2007).

It should be noted that the examined news items did not place their criticism of U.S. actions against WikiLeaks and Assange within the context of how governments, including their own government, are curtailing Internet freedom in the interest of national security. In fact, national security was not a major theme to emerge from the news items. The newspapers perhaps were either dismissive of the argument by the U.S. that Internet control is at times necessary for national security purposes or simply did not want to acknowledge that it was an important determinant of government Internet control.

In summary, government stances regarding Internet control did not appear to shape the manner in which the examined newspapers discussed WikiLeaks and freedom of expression on the Internet. Although governments in Great Britain, France, Australia, and China exercise different levels of Internet control, the newspapers had strikingly similar positions about freedom of expression on the Internet and the role of the United States in censoring it. They overwhelmingly supported Internet freedom as well as the actions of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange while severely criticizing U.S. attempts to suppress the online organization and its founder.

A possible limitation of this study is that, in order to enhance the comparability of the newspapers, only those newspapers considered to be left-leaning articles were analyzed. This decision might raise concerns regarding the extent to which the selected newspapers represent the content of other newspapers based in the same nation. It should be stressed, however, that all the selected newspapers have large readerships and were considered to be influential at the time of the analysis (Coddington, 2014; Fairfax Media, 2012; Rushton, 2013; Xing, 2011). Moreover, scholarship (e.g., Atkinson et al., 2014) exists that has demonstrated that in cases of high-salient issues, such as WikiLeaks, consistent patterns of news coverage tend to exist across news outlets. Atkinson et al. (2014) assert that in such instances, relying only on one major news source for analysis is a sound decision (p. 374–375).

Another potential limitation of this study is with regard to the article selected for examination from China. The China Daily, an English-language article said to reflect the voice of the Chinese government, was chosen due to an interest in investigating the type of messages that were being disseminated to the “outside” world by a Chinese newspaper. It should be acknowledged, however, that the rhetoric of Internet expression that was found in this English-language article might not readily appear in Chinese-language newspapers that are primarily designed for domestic audiences. For a future study, it would be insightful to examine how newspapers that are specifically targeting Chinese citizens have covered the subject matter of WikiLeaks and free expression.

Concluding remarks

Although the spotlight on WikiLeaks as an organization has dimmed and news organizations have shifted focus instead on the persona and legal tribulations of Julian Assange (Hindman and Thomas, 2014; Quill, 2014), WikiLeaks and its high-profile disclosures have no doubt had a lasting impact on discussions regarding Internet free expression as well as other important related issues. The case of WikiLeaks has elicited critical discussion of such matters as state secrecy, data mining, intellectual property, impact of capitalism on Internet freedom, and whistleblowers. One could even ponder the possibility that had it not been for WikiLeaks and its release of sensitive U.S. governmental documents, computer analyst and whistleblower Edward Snowden,⁴ would not have been able to muster enough courage to take the bold action of divulging highly classified information regarding the surveillance activities of the United States government and other governments.

In spite of the revelations made by WikiLeaks, and later by Snowden, however, governments for the most part have not attenuated their efforts at Internet control and censorship. For example, in 2014 and 2015, the Australian government introduced new legislation that allows offensive material published on social media networks to be taken down in order to combat online bullying (Wolf, 2014) and laws to block copyright infringements (Malcolm, 2015). In December of 2013, French parliament adopted a Military Programming Law that allows the authorities to spy on phone and Internet communications in real time without asking a judge for permission (Bogdan, 2013). Since Snowden's revelations in 2013, the US passed a Freedom Act in 2015 partially curbing its power to harvest bulk data on the lives of America's citizens. However, the collection still continues. The British government has recently tried to revive the “snooper's charter” bill, which failed in the last parliament in 2012. Among other things, this would give police and secret services more surveillance powers and ban server encryption that could impede surveillance (Jenkins, 2015).

In China, ever since Xi Jinping assumed the office of President in November of 2012, Internet controls by Chinese authorities have intensified. Via China's web surveillance and control system dubbed the “Great Fire Wall,” Chinese authorities have blocked access to U.S.-based social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter (Griffin, 2015). Access to foreign news content that are deemed by the government to be a threat to political and social stability in China has also been severely curtailed. In the past, residents in China were able to access foreign-based sites and content through virtual private networks or VPNs, but those services have now been banned. Moreover, with China being the largest Internet market in the world, the Chinese government has been controlling Internet companies through monetary incentives (Stout, 2015). What the Chinese government has been able to accomplish is something that many thought would be impossible – contain the Internet within its national borders.

Given these recent efforts by governments to continue to control and censor the Internet, opportunities exist for further research into how news media are covering these latest developments, especially within the context of Internet free expression. It would be particularly interesting to examine if the type of news media coverage that is offered is contingent upon the government in question. Does it matter if the government in question is the press' home government or an external government? Investigations of other non-U.S. cases that involve the elements of government-employed whistleblowers, Internet free expression, and national security would add insight into this area of inquiry and possibly add to the literature on press–government power relations.

Characterizing WikiLeaks as a “networked fourth estate,” Benkler (2011) has asserted that to the establishment, “the threat presented by WikiLeaks was not any single cable, but the fraying of the relatively loyal and safe relationship between the U.S. government and its watchdog” (p. 330). As implied by this quote, WikiLeaks and other similar organizations that now exist on the Internet perhaps have subtly disrupted the type of quid pro quo relationship that many scholars maintain exist between mainstream U.S. news media and the U.S. government. This is also another topic area that is ripe for study.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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