“Nearly fifty days have passed since the WikiLeaks document release in late November, this one centering on US diplomatic cables and quickly dubbed ‘Cablegate,’” Greg Mitchell writes in his article in "Why WikiLeaks Matters."
So far, WikiLeaks has released less than 3,000 cables from the 251,000-document cache, but already the media, politicians and the public are questioning the value of the leak. “It’s important,” Mitchell writes, “to review a small sample of what we have learned thanks to WikiLeaks since April and the release of the ‘Collateral Murder’ US helicopter video, which showed the killing of two Reuters journalists, among others. It’s necessary to do this because most in the US media, after brief coverage, provided little follow-up.”
Here are a few of the things we have learned from WikiLeaks.
Credit: Reuters Pictures
The NationTwitterFounded by abolitionists in 1865, The Nation has chronicled the breadth and depth of political and cultural life, from the debut of the telegraph to the rise of Twitter, serving as a critical, independent, and progressive voice in American journalism.