Wikileaks Banned From UN Conference on Wikileaks
Wikileaks Banned From UN Conference on Wikileaks
UNESCO opens 2-day media conference in Paris
- Common Dreams staff
WikiLeaks has lodged a strong protest with the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) for banning it from an international conference it is hosting at its headquarters in Paris on the impact of the whistleblower websites activities.
It said the U.S. organizers of the two-day conference, which opened on Thursday, had stacked it with WikiLeaks opponents and blocked all speakers from WikiLeaks, stating that the decision to censor WikiLeaks representation was an exercise in 'freedom of expression... our right to give voice to speakers of our choice'."
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UNESCO describes the 2-day conference on their website:
The conference The Media World after WikiLeaks and News of the World aims to gather leading media representatives, professional and citizen journalists and media law experts to exchange views on these issues and to discuss good practices in traditional professional journalism and citizen journalism in the digital era.
With a stunning 2 billion persons estimated to be using the Internet and producing 156 million public blogs in 2011, there has been a surge of social networks, user-generated content and micro-blogging that has enabled all Internet users to become public communicators. Along with the spread of the Internet, WikiLeaks' release of a massive number of classified government documents and its initial collaboration with traditional news media has modified the media landscape and raised crucial questions for journalism. ..................(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/16-5
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/16-5