The new website Wikileaks (wikileaks.org) allows whistleblowers to anonymously upload confidential government and corporate documents on to the web for public analysis.

The site’s main goal – to protect journalists and whistleblowers from being jailed for emailing classified documents – gives governments a run for their money, making it more difficult for web content regulation.

Developed in part by Chinese dissidents, Wikileaks employs secret and unidentified staff, and uses cryptographic technology to ensure the anonymity of its users.

Aimed primarily at oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet Bloc, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, the site will no doubt also be used to challenge corruption in Western governments.

According to the site, “public leaking [is] an act of ethical defection to the majority… by nature a democratising force”.

Much like Wikipedia, Wikileaks is a collaborative forum that allows hundreds of editors to analyse politically significant leaked documents in a way never before possible.

But many believe the site could potentially open up a whole new can of worms. Open-government advocate Steven Aftergood, who heads the Federation of American Scientists (an organisation that works to reduce government secrecy), is sceptical about the secretive methods used by Wikileaks.

“There’s a difference in unauthorised disclosure from an authoritarian state versus disclosure from a democracy,” said Aftergood in a Federal Times article.

“In a democratic system, people have the opportunity to define their own disclosure standards. If you violate those standards or encourage others to do so then you are in effect undermining the democratic process."

Beating off competition from such world-changing technological advances as a shirt that simulates hugs from a friend, online video-sharing network YouTube has been named Time magazine’s 2006 Invention of the Year.

Time’s Lev Grossman wrote that while YouTube was started by Steve Chen and Chad Hurley – two Californians in their twenties who wanted an easier way to share videos online with their friends – “the rest of us, in our basements and bedrooms, with our broadband and webcams, invented it”.

From a single video in April last year, YouTube now airs 100 million videos every day; and every day its users add 70,000 more.

On October 16 Chen and Hurley sold YouTube to Google for $1.65billion. Within days the company had formed lucrative partnerships with content providers like Universal Music, Sony BMG and Warner.

It’s evidence of a cultural shift, as consumers seek out authentic voices and experiences over the one-way delivery of information from mainstream media.

So what does YouTube mean for journalists? According to Grossman, now that citizens break as many stories as journalists, the challenge isn’t the obvious one of safeguarding intellectual property.

“It’s figuring out what to do when the rest of us make something better,” he writes. How can the media create news content with value distinct from the news being broken by citizen journalists?

The recent murders of award-winning Russian reporter Anna Politkovskaya and Anatoly Voronin, the deputy director of news agency Itar-Tass, have again highlighted the dangers for journalists doing their jobs in Putin’s Russia.

Politkovskaya, an investigative reporter for Novaya Gazeta and long-time critic of the government, was shot outside her Moscow apartment on October 7. Voronin was found in his apartment with multiple stab wounds on October 16 and police are treating his death as premeditated murder. Voronin had worked at the news agency for 23 years.

Their deaths came just before the second anniversary of the assassination of Belarus reporter Veiranika Charkasava and shortly after the sixth anniversary of the kidnapping and murder of Ukrainian journalist Gyorgy Gongadze.

The two recent killings in Russia have sparked a reaction from local journalists. The Russian Union of Journalists says that in times of danger and crisis in the profession, special issues of Obshaya Gazeta (The Common Newspaper) are published by news workers from across Russia’s newspapers.

The International Federation of Journalists has called on European Union leaders to demand that Russia act to protect journalists and protect press freedom. IFJ general secretary Aidan White says: “No-one says that Russia’s leaders pulled the trigger that killed Politkovskaya, but their neglect of democratic rights and press freedom is undeniable. They have created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation inside Russian media in which dissent and expression of critical opinion has become almost impossible.

“Government must set standards of pluralism and respect for basic rights so that journalists are free to be independent and professional. They can start by delivering on promises to find the killers of our colleagues. There will never be press freedom so long as impunity reigns.”

Make Cakes Not War, Judy Horacek’s sixth book, celebrates all that we love about Judy, including her anti-conflict and pro-pastry delicacies. Launched by cartooning legend Bruce Petty in November, he described Judy’s work as both insane and relevant, with a mixture of puns and human experience, both epic and minute. Make Cakes Not War is published by Scribe, RRP $27.95.

The argument was lively when the Walkley Foundation and Ernst & Young hosted a debate on the government’s new media laws on  November 1. The panel, which included reporters, media bosses and a politician, agreed on few areas of media reform, except perhaps that the Howard government’s changes are flawed.

Jenny Brockie of SBS’s Insight moderated the debate. Panellists included Senator Stephen Conroy, the shadow spokesman for communications and information technology. John Porter, the chief executive officer of Austar, and Richard Freudenstein, the newly appointed CEO of News Digital Media.

Journalists on the panel were Quentin Dempster of ABC TV, Jane Schulze of The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald’s Anne Davies.

Porter felt there was no proper business model for the operation of digital television, although he believed that a consolidation of Australian media would promote competition. Freudenstein said that the explosion of websites and blogs on the internet was a positive sign for promoting “voices” in the landscape. However, Dempster was concerned that the digital options promoted by the government were among the most expensive for consumers and so delayed digital take-up.

Senator Conroy believed the legislation seriously undermined media diversity in Australia and that it had consequences for democracy. Davies and Schulze both spoke about concerns regarding the regulation of media now that many of the big media players had positioned themselves to pounce on vulnerable media assets once the new legislation is proclaimed. The latest developments in the media ownership fall-out from the legislation can be seen at www.xmedia.org.au.

Meanwhile, the US Federal Communications Commission is conducting “town hall” meetings to debate its proposals to relax media ownership rules. Just as the Australian legislation has sparked activity from media moguls operating in the Australian environment, the US is seeing plenty of activity from business barons willing to swoop on US media assets. Former head of General Electric, Jack Welch, is negotiating to buy The Boston Globe from The New York Times Company. Co-founder of Dreamworks SKG, David Geffen, is thought to be considering a bid for the Los Angeles Times from Tribune Co, with two other Tribune newspapers, The Baltimore Sun and The Hartford Courant, also being circled by potential buyers.

But the spate of purchases in the US in recent months has sparked fears of cutbacks, with the new owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer, a local advertising executive, warning the company doesn’t have enough cash to make interest payments in 2007. The Inquirer was part of the Knight Ridder group that was broken up after pressure from private investment funds.

There are fears that over-borrowing by media players in any future Australian takeovers sparked by the government’s new media laws may prompt a similar round of aggressive cost-cutting.

Mark Knight, of Melbourne’s Herald Sun, took the top honour at the 22nd Stanley Awards, being named The Age Cartoonist Of The Year in Ballarat on November 4.

Knight also won the Stanley for best Editorial/Political Cartoonist and Single Gag.

The Jim Russell Award for a lifetime contribution to cartooning went to Paul Rigby.

Tony Lopes won Best Comic Strip for “Insanity Streak”, while News Limited’s Eric Lobbecke took out the Caricaturist Stanley.

Melbourne freelancer George Haddon was named best Humorous Illustrator, Queensland’s Tony Bela best Digital Illustrator, and Sydney freelancer Peter Sheehan was deemed the best General Illustrator.