Cross- and extra-national journalistic partnerships

Abstract

This study examines the extra- and cross-national journalistic partnership that emerged in 2010 when WikiLeaks, an organization of hackers, formed relationships with newspapers in Europe and the United States to release secret information to the world. It asks: How did news organizations partner with each other and with WikiLeaks? What stories did these newspapers construct out of the diplomatic cables, and what do these stories suggest about the impact of the cross- and extra-national partnership on the national outlook? The study finds that it will take a lot more than cross-national partnerships to erode the nation as journalism's unit of analysis, and argues that the nation as a unit of judgment organizes new journalistic practices in a way that allows it to defend the nation.

KEYWORDS:

• cross-national journalism
• framing
• global journalism
• global outlook
• national narrative
• news sociology

Notes

1. See http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/01/26/magazine/1248069587816/wikileaks-the-back-story.html?nl=todaysheadlines.