The Associated Whistle-Blowing Press (AWP) is a not-for-profit information agency dedicated to bringing forth and analyzing leaked information coming from different sources. It aims to have a solid network of prominent journalists, researchers, lawyers and media activists working together to provide society with a trustful and friendly source of analysis of information leaked by whistle-blowers around the world. The AWP will also provide a news-wire service, where news written by its members and collaborators can be bought by media subscribers in order to publish in their channels.

The AWP is structured as a network that functions on a global level, with platforms focused on specific local contexts working with different languages. We will provide professional design, analysis and media strategies to create a solid and respectable source of journalistic analysis and academic research focused on whistle-blowing in different societies. Through these nodes, contacts in local media outlets will be made in order to coordinate the submission, analysis and publishing of leaked information.

It is important to note, however, that the AWP is a not-for-profit media organization, meaning that its primary goal is not financial. All income, coming from donations or others will be used to pay for infrastructure costs vital for the project such as servers, office space and the necessary legal costs. Should the income exceed those costs, we plan to pay our writers and technicians a variable amount, depending on their contributions.

We believe this is the correct way to proceed since we know from experience the amount of time and effort required to lift such a project from the ground; we need a solid institution and dedicated workers in order to fulfill our true goal, which is to help create a transparent flow of information to raise awareness on crucial issues that are hidden systematically from the general public.

As of 2012, the process of globalization has not only taken over financial and cultural markets, it has also monopolized the global news flow. On a transnational level censorship is daily practice in the mass media – as crucial information is neglected and apathy is encouraged – . This is designed to maintain or increase the power of the media’s owners, as well as the socioeconomic environment they are a part of.

This closed structure systematically blocks any information that could go against the special interests behind it, preventing most citizens from reaching unfiltered and unbiased information about political leaders and corporations. These normalized dynamics actively create an order of the day suited to the needs of governments and big business, which are currently behind most traditional media outlets in the world. This fact, added to the age-old culture of secrecy in public and private institutions, has created a situation that taints the very nature of journalism: to provide accurate, impartial information in order for citizens to govern themselves properly.

One of the solutions against this vicious cycle is the liberation of internal information, published on moral or legal grounds in order to inform society of activities that are being hidden consciously from the public. The current means, however, of both publishing and publicizing leaked data are highly ineffective. Promises of a revitalized praxis of citizen journalism are stagnating for various reasons, such as the movement made by the commercial media to solidify their hold on news-making primacy or the trend towards blog-style writing instead of hard news and unbiased information. The format of many leaks does not help either: torrented email spools and Pastebin texts tend to be amplified but not acted upon in social media. Furthermore, while leaks may provide an important bulk of data for the public sphere, it is hard for most people to assimilate information in these formats. In this sense whistle-blowing continues to depend on commercial media to bridge the gap between raw data and news. Therefore, we believe that an effective media strategy is needed, both to channel and encourage the process of social news-making on the Internet (the latter will be done through the AWP’s news-wire), as well as to increase popular awareness through dedicated analysis, research and efficient broadcasting.

In the long run the AWP will make the whistle-blowing community more robust by automatizing the dissemination process and minimizing the effort needed for sources and analysts to make their work reach a wider audience. At the same time it will gather whistle-blowers, IT experts, researchers, activists and journalists under a formal structure, increasing the repercussion of their efforts in media channels, independent Internet sites or blogs. Thanks to this we believe the general cause for freedom of speech and information will be strengthened.