by Minh Duc Luong
There were two incidents that have had strong influences on the media world: the WikiLeaks publishing the US top secret documents last year and the Murdoch phone hacking scandal this year. From an observational angle, it could be argued that the subsequent developments of these occurrences were arguments over the power of journalists. It is also argued that the behaviour of Assange and Murdoch's journalists in these incidents resulted from the process of subjective self awareness of power which could not be anticipated by dominant and ethical institutions in society. This understanding refers to some ideas of Foucault, and realism philosophers of human nature. This paper thus approaches the journalist, as the subject of journalism, from the realistic perspective of human nature, typified by Machiavelli, and Foucault's theory of the nature of power, in an attempt to identify the nature of the journalist in social structures. In the latter part, this assignment applies theoretical understanding to explain the Murdoch and WikiLeaks incidents as a practical approach to the human nature of journalists.