
WikiLeaks Releases Fifth Estate Challenger: Mediastan - r0h1n
http://wikileaks.org/WikiLeaks-Releases-Fifth-Estate.html
======
milesf
Give me something I can print off and a way to attach it to a movie poster
without damaging the theatre owner's display case and I'll visit my local
theatres and make sure the URL and QR code to "Mediastan" is visible to all
patron who go to see "The Fifth Estate"

~~~
grumpycord
[http://www.scribd.com/doc/175613597/Wl-
Media](http://www.scribd.com/doc/175613597/Wl-Media)

~~~
milesf
That's kind of the idea, but I'm thinking something that send the message
about 5th Estate being fiction as well, so watch this movie after you see this
one.

Sorry, IANA designer or a copy writer.

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selmnoo
Assange should do a Reddit AMA promoting this movie, seeing as Cumberbatch
just got done promoting The Fifth Estate yesterday on Reddit. The Cumberbatch
AMA was very disappointing, because all upvoted questions were just fawning
compliments from Cumberbatch fans.

~~~
elisee
For what it's worth, he did address a question regarding his portrayal of Mr
Assange with more than a few words:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1o8l5f/i_am_benedict_c...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1o8l5f/i_am_benedict_cumberbatch_ama/ccpqb90)

~~~
selmnoo
Given that he's pretty anti-Manning
([http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/sep/14/benedict-
cumberb...](http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/sep/14/benedict-cumberbatch-
interview-fifth-estate)) I strongly doubt that's a genuine response. Most
likely it was written by a PR manager.

A Redditor made a very discerning comment about possible motives behind the
movie here:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1o8l5f/i_am_benedict_c...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1o8l5f/i_am_benedict_cumberbatch_ama/ccpxfqv)

~~~
geofft
How is that anti-Manning?

The greatness in what Manning did is that she knew that she was breaking a law
and she knew that there was no way she'd be able to avoid punishment and she
did so anyway. To say "she broke a law" and "I don't see why Obama should
grant a pardon" is not anti-Manning in any way. If anything, it recognizes
that she knew what the consequences are when deciding on her actions.

Also, quoting from the first comment by GuardianMod:

> In a note sent to the Guardian after publication of this story, Benedict
> Cumberbatch said:

> > "I feel my views have been misrepresented. Do I think Manning should be
> pardoned? Yes. Do I think that's likely to happen? Sadly no. Re Snowdon I
> said in the interview that the use of threats to life as a reason to erode
> civil liberties through intrusive government surveillance can also be as
> dangerous to democracy as the terrorism such actions claim to be preventing.
> This wasn't printed for some reason."

So I think we're either positing a massive conspiracy where Benedict
Cumberbatch appears to be very pro-Manning/Snowden/Assange but isn't, and
employs a PR manager (with a distinctive writing style) to keep up that
appearance for some reason, or the state of the world in which he actually is.

~~~
anigbrowl
This sort of assumes Manning knew he would get caught, which might have been
something he feared but nevertheless hoped to avoid. Another possibility is
that he took action with the desire to get kicked out of the military role he
was trapped in.

BTW I'm using the male pronoun because all this took place prior to Manning's
announcement of changing gender identity. I don't see any logic in extending
the new identity backwards in time to before it was adopted, an approach which
has made Manning's Wikipedia page much harder to read.

~~~
GeneralMayhem
>I don't see any logic in extending the new identity backwards in time to
before it was adopted

Do you refer to gay people as straight when talking about the time before they
came out?

~~~
jeremysmyth
"He and his then wife..." \- sure, why not?

------
andor
This is a movie about freedom of speech, self-censorship in media, and which
people are really put at risk by publishing cables (hint: corruption and
organized crime).

Short summary, including spoilers:

A group of Wikileaks-affiliated journalists tries to find media partners in
the -stan countries that would publish Wikileaks cables locally. The meetings
with those organizations are set up as interviews about free speech in their
respective countries. As a surprise in those meetings, they are offered the
cables about their own country. They film the initial reactions, try to sign a
gentlemen's agreement about how the cables should be handled, and follow up if
any stories were published. It's really interesting to see what happens. Some
sign the agreement, but don't publish anything. One guy in Kazakhstan actually
says that he doesn't want democracy. The editor of a newspaper in Turkmenistan
that they speak to turns out to be a member of parliament. That newspaper has
a picture of Turkmenistan's president on it's front page every day.

Then, Alan Rusbridger from The Guardian and Bill Keller from the NYT are
interviewed. It's astonishing to see that media in the US and UK have similar
fears than those in the -stan countries. For example, Assange criticized that
The Guardian redacted the names of a mafia boss, who according to cables had
close ties with Uzbekistan's president. They apparently did this because they
fear libel lawsuits, in which the burden of proof would lie on the libeler.

------
teamgb
It's free this weekend for people in the UK, everyone else can rent it online
for just one pound (about $1.50) from Journeyman Pictures.

If you prefer to do things differently, a magnet link is available here:
[http://pastebin.com/6RVSpTAa](http://pastebin.com/6RVSpTAa)

------
aclevernickname
This is currently being shared on The Pirate Bay[1], for those of us not
living in the UK, and too poor to pay for a viewing/DRM.

[1]
[http://thepiratebay.sx/torrent/9039415/Mediastan](http://thepiratebay.sx/torrent/9039415/Mediastan)

~~~
andor
You can also just buy the movie from anywhere in the world, DRM-free, from
vimeo.

[https://vimeo.com/ondemand/mediastan](https://vimeo.com/ondemand/mediastan)

------
charlus
I saw this last week with a really fascinating Q&A from Assange, thought he
was very compelling. I'm not sure how the people of Sixteen Films will feel
about this "challenging" The Fifth Estate though.

It was a worthwhile doc as well, worth the watch - much better than the Alex
Gibney thing earlier this year, which felt very much phoned in.

------
grey-area
This is nothing like Fifth Estate, but it does look really interesting in its
own right. Not a drama so much as the diary of a road trip through central
asia with wikileaks workers along for the ride, interjecting with their own
stories and negotiating with journalists about the cable releases.

I've skipped through a few interviews, and it's enlightening (for me at least)
as an overview of the region's politics and the attitude of journalists to
publishing these cables. I'll be going back to watch it all.

[EDIT] The section on Afghanistan starting at 0:45 or so is particularly
interesting.

------
interstitial
You or someone you know probably suffers from a monoculture, statist-based
education. Dig through some pre-20th century civil thought and you will come
across: "Adversarial Systems"
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adversarial_system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adversarial_system)

There you will find a natural remedy dating back thousands of years that holds
that subservience and conformity are poor forms of governance.

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rwmj
Why doesn't he just release this as a video file?

------
cma
Written by michealochurch?

~~~
Surio
A clever pun/reference to michaelochurch's use of VC-istan here. :)

~~~
anigbrowl
I rather doubt it, given that multiple countries in Central Asia have names
ending in -stan (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan...). It just menas '-land'
in Urdu as far as I recall.

~~~
cma
Pedantistan

------
victorantos
watch it free this weekend if you are from UK
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gbenFTcisY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gbenFTcisY)

~~~
Theodores
Currently at 2426 views.

Only 910,883,012 more views to snatch the number two spot in the 'most watched
on YouTube' charts from Justin Bieber. Should be a snip...

~~~
anigbrowl
One of these things is not like the other.

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askar_yu
This was one of those rare cases where I was ready to pay for the video; but
then I am confronted with _" Sorry, this film is not available in your
region."_ and the buy or rent buttons are disabled. But guess what, somebody
has uploaded it on Youtube:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK6DDC4CV0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK6DDC4CV0s)

------
carlosdp
Why is an organization hell-bent on free information trying to censor a movie
because they don't like it? Isn't that entirely contradictory to their
mission?

~~~
koala_advert
They say it isn't the truth. They aren't trying to censor it, they're trying
to get the truth out. How is that censorship?

------
xanth
Lol, they have it free only if you have a UK ip. Wrong audience to do that to.

------
paul9290
Assange is sure helping with this movie's publicity.

