Winds of “WikiLeaks’ War‎” in the EuroMed press – Part II

Demonstration supporting Wikileaks in Malaga @elmundo.es

The buzz around WikiLeaks’ cables and the website’s founder Julian Assange keep on feeding our media all over the globe. Recently, Facebook 26-year-old founder Mark Zuckerberg was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year 2010, beating the popular favourite, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, which lead to a global controversy about the “political” choice of the magazine. Last week Assange, who is still under house arrest and faces an extradition hearing in Janurary, walked out of the London court as a free man.

Last week EMAJ Magazine proposed a first overview of reactions in the EuroMed press with France, Turkey, Sweden and Egypt. Read now the reactions in Romania and Spain.

Winds of “WikiLeaks’ War‎” in the EuroMed press – Part I

Map of WikiLeaks mirror websites @liberation.fr

Four European media were chosen by the website WikiLeaks to receive the 251.287 diplomatic documents of the US-American State Department, written between 2004 and March 2010 for 90% of them: The british daily The Guardian, the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel, the Spanish daily El Pais and the French daily Le Monde. The Guardian transmitted the information to the New York Times.

Some journalists have labeled the website attacks surrounding the WikiLeaks controversy to be the first global cyberwar. But no matter how we define it and the outburst around it, the buzz generated by WikiLeaks in the international media, that has already lasted for weeks, seems far from being over yet.

How did the media react to the WikiLeaks publication in their home countries? Here is an overview of reactions in France, Turkey, Sweden and Egypt, gathered by the correspondents of EMAJ Magazine.