WIKILEAKS: Chapter One ...

Just as anyone was, I was surprised to find The Sunday Star-Times revealed an exclusive story they had been hiding under their hats for quite sometime - the information relating to New Zealand in over 1500 cables from Wikileaks.
In short, the website (which has since been shut down) launched in 2006 for the purpose of publishing submissions of private, secret and classified media from anonymous news sources - more commonly known as the "government secret-spilling" website. With over 1.2 million documents the site was founded by a large group of people including journailsts, mathematicians, activists, and start-up company technologists from all over the world.
Recently, the legal action against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has made serious headlines globally, but wasn't as much of a shocker in New Zealand until some of our dealings with the US were revealed - rumours that we are pro-American circulating in full force.
Currently, there is a Twitter account with over half a million followers and the tagline "We open Governments". The activation of this account has been key in how the events have unravelled into the news. Users followed Assange's bail hearing online up to the minute after the judge gave journalists to tweet updates from inside the courtoom, one reporter saying it was 'an amazing nod to the fact we now live in digital age'.
I think this will be looked back on as one of the key defining moments to answering the question - "How were the barriers of news journalism broken down?". There is much more to this story that is yet to come, and we all watch with great anticipation.
Written by Jess Miller.