Researching Julian Assange and Wikileaks

A clear understanding of the story which is currently thriving in the news and a better background check on Wikileaks is key so that our information is correct.

As the story is currently very active in the news, the obvious route is to watch the news daily and on more than one news channel. BBC, Sky and CNN are all covering the story daily so I will check up on them regularly to see the progress in the story about Julian's Assange's public exposure.

''On Sunday 28th November 2010, WikiLeaks began publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into the US Government’s foreign activities.'' - Wikileaks

From watching the latest news on television, Julian Assange is currently fighting against expedition to Sweden where he faces charges for sexual assaults. It is questioned if these assaults occured, as it is suspicious that this story gets brought up at the time of the US diplomatic cable leaks. It may be a way of oppressing Assange in the time where he continues to threaten governments confidential files. He is now currently living in England where he faces these trials, fighting against expedition; for several reasons. The reason he states is that expedition is not a fair way to conclude his actions. Potentially the US want him in their country, where it is rumoured he could face much more severe charges than those in Sweden. It is mentioned that by going to Sweden, it would be an easier task for the US government to get him on trial in their own country. Assange now threatens to leak further cables, ones including nuclear information.



I have also been checking articles online and newspapers, mainly The Times to follow further opinions and leaked stories. As the story develops I will be continuing to monitor the progress of Julian Assange.

Here is the link to a couple of BBC online articles I have been reading:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12024203
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12072504
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11946652
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11945952

Background of Wikileaks:

I have also researched Wikileaks itself, and what they are about and what type of documents they leak. By simple going onto their website ( http://213.251.145.96/ ) you can view all their information. I have also been regularly checking their status on their twitter @ http://twitter.com/wikileaks. By the news being mainly dominated by public and political opinion it is important to balance all sides of the story, and this is done by also listening to Wikileaks and Assange's opinion.

The obvious point here is that the internet is a very powerful tool, capable of a lot of things.

Contacting Mr Clarke

Through contacting Mr Clarke's PA, Debbie, we were able to get hold of an address to contact him. We then wrote up a letter to send to Mr Clarke which will go to his office in the House of Commons.

Here is the write up of this letter:

Dear Mr Clarke

We are a group of 6th Form media students from Heathside School, Weybridge.
For our media A level coursework we have been asked to film a section of a documentary. We have chosen to create a documentary on the recent Wikileaks story and how the government have been handling it. In the section we would like to include a description of what’s happening and why, and include an interview with a well respected politician such as your self.

The interview will only last 15 minutes and will include questions on what control the government have over breaches like these, we would be very happy to send you a list of the questions which we have prepared.
We feel as though you are the most relevant to our documentary as you have a lot of experience in politics and are the current Minister of Justice so have a relevance to how the government should deal with criminal offences such as Julian Assange’s.

Unfortunately this is a no budget shoot however it would help us greatly in completing our media coursework and we would be very grateful to have the participation of such a well known public figure such as yourself. The documentary will only be seen by our fellow media classmates, teacher and examiner and will not be shared publicly.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter.

Yours sincerely


Calum Bowen, George Nicholls and Zoe Woodbridge

UPDATED: 13th Jan.

Fortunately we got a reply offering us a slot at 11:50 (his last appointment) in his surgery on the Saturday morning of January the 22nd. His surgery is placed in his constituency in Nottingham. The surgery is where local residents of his constituency come forward with questions and ideas which may be on their mind. They are held once a month, so he has a very busy schedule and we are very grateful for the 15 minute slot he has offered us.

The Plan

Now we have our idea which we are sticking with, we have created our plan for the production of our documentary.

First, here is a scan of the storyboard:

Side 1

Side 2

As you can see in our storyboard there are several spaces which are scenes yet to be decided, and are will be done with the editing so it isn't too much of a problem for us to complete. For example one blank scene in our storyboard will be the title of our documentary, yet to be confirmed.

The first view scenes will be the introduction to the documentary, highlighting the key issues, with factual information. Zoe will be our presenter in front of camera and our locations were decided for these scenes, in London outside parliament. For our 4th scene we are looking at the merging of two clips of footage, one being websites of the internet and government shots, both relevant to the voice over in this scene. We then addressed our interviews, with the public and their view of the WikiLeaks Story. Questions such as: Have the government got any control over the internet? and What is your view on the sexual assault charges of Julian Assange? Our other footage we will be doing is that infront on computers, for our voice over explaining the background on the WikiLeaks story.

We then came to the decision that we need a credible opinion to balance the topic. Therefore the scene of an interview with a politician and one we had in mind was Kenneth Clarke, MP of Rushcliffe and cabinet member and Lord Chancellor. As one of the most respected MP's in the British Government he was ideal for the role as a government opinion.

Locations thus far:
- London's South Bank & Parliament
- Dark Room with accessible computers (School)
- Interview room of MP

We also need to note the timing of this and respect the fact that if/when we get an interview with an MP we may have to do it straight away or wait a while. Our back up plan is to use an actor, pretending to be a member of parliament. All the filming is aimed to be achieved from the beginning of January untill the end of the month.

Change of plan

We have decided to change the topic of our documentary. Throughout the past few weeks, the groups ideas have been clashing and we haven't been happy with the initial idea of our global warming topic. As expressed previously, we thought the topic was a little too generic and not a strong enough idea for us to produce an interesting documentary on. So we started to brainstorm a collection of ideas again. We had an idea of expoliting a norm, and making a funny but also addressing an issue sort of theme in the documentary. We discussed the possibility of a documentary on 'Phobias', listing people we knew who had phobias and possibly taking time out to see them. We wrote out a rough plan of what the documentary could entail:



However, after further conversation, we scrapped this idea as we didn't have enough content for it. Zoe wanted to push forward her idea of Education and looking at the University prices inflating. Whereas Myself and Calum disliked the idea and maybe a split in the group was looming. After a couple of hours discussing, we decided to stick as a group as a split was not necessary and we had come up with an idea we all were pretty excited about.

We wanted to produce a documentary on something which was current in the news, a big story, and one which could address a wide range of audiences. The topic we chose was the Governments lack of control on the internet, and the mainstream story that is the leaking of government classified documents, WikiLeaks.

We researched the story which was ringing around the news that Julian Assange had leaked thousands of government documents of United States Embassy cables. Nothing like this had been done before and it was a very much dominant news story which threatened a big part of our society. The leaking of cables allowed anyone in the world to view this confidential files which belonged to one of the most powerful nations in the world. This has led onto several other stories, of further hackers causing chaos around the internet, effecting banking websites. Julian Assange is now also fighting the case against his sexual crimes in Sweden, where he is fighting a case against extradition to Sweden. Currently safe in England he opposes the chance of getting charged in Sweden and potential seen moving to United States from Sweden where he would face heavier charges. The story was in no doubt an interesting one, and could support our view that the government's crisis on the control over the internet.

In evaluaion, our plan was to produce a documentary about the governments control over the internet, using the Wikileaks story as our example of what threat the internet poses. Our plan was:

- Start our storyboard
- Timeline
- Plan locations
- Compose scripts
- Interview members of public
- Gather archive footage of news stories
- Politicians view, getting an interview with MP

Here is our Vlog which evaluates the situation of the change of plan and our own views: