What is the hallmark of good journalism? Objectivity would be one of the standard replies: neutral journalism that is not partisan and that steers clear of disseminating personal opinions.

Actually, the answer is just not quite as simple as that. Hang on to your hats, people, it's time for an ethics class...

Wait a second, I hear you cry, before you take me back to journalism school - what's wrong with objectivity? Here's the thing: now it's obligatory for every journalist to have their hand hermetically sealed to a smartphone so they can dutifully maintain a Twitter account. It is becoming increasingly essential and easy to maintain an online presence; you need a Facebook page, a Linkedin profile and a FourSquare account. These are all useful tools in their own way. However, all this social media activity means that it is becoming ever harder to deny the fact that journalists are people. Shocking, I know, but it's true. Journalists are people - and people are not objective.

Nobody can accuse Wikileaks of being afraid of the spotlight. The whistleblower organization hit the headlines again this month as the un-redacted US Embassy cables became available online, and old arguments about its status as an institution resurfaced. Many have scrambled to have their say, but few have given the matter as much thought as Charlie Beckett.

Beckett is founding director of POLIS, the journalism think-tank in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics. An award-winning journalist, he is currently writing a book about Wikileaks to be published by Polity in the autumn. He talks here about how we shouldn't see WikiLeaks as an 'aberration' but as part of the changing landscape of modern journalism.

Beckett will be chairing a panel at the 18th World Editors Forum in Vienna this October about journalism "after WikiLeaks" and how newspapers should respond.

WAN-IFRA: You've described WikiLeaks as an example of "the new forms of journalism that are emerging from and reshaping the news ecology and the nature of news itself". How has news media changed in response to WikiLeaks?

The not-for-profit organisation America Abroad Media (AAM) has been forced to declare its connection with two Pakistani journalists who were receiving funding from the organisation whilst working for other news outlets.

After being contacted by The Christian Science Monitor, the AAM has now declared its connection to the two journalists, Huma Imtiaz of Express News and Awais Saleem of Dunya News. However, the most contentious issue is that the U.S. Department of State is heavily involved in funding the project, and therefore these journalists.

Is it acceptable for the U.S. to effectively finance foreign journalists who are writing about the US? Many people would respond with an instinctive, authoritative 'no'; but as Christine Fair, an assistant professor at Georgetown University, Washington, highlights in a Zeenews.com article, this question is more complex than you might think.

Fair claims that the money given to these journalists actually produces a more balanced media, as much of the media in Pakistan has a strong anti-American voice and anti-American stories are often planted by Pakistani security sources.

Anette Novak, Editor-In-Chief of local Swedish paper Norran believes that newspapers should be harnessing the power of social media. In 2009 she introduced a live chat function to her paper's website so that readers can talk to journalists in the newsroom, as long as it is manned. She says the change has not only proved popular, it's also "good for democracy."

Novak is scheduled to speak at the 18th World Editors Forum in Vienna (12-15 October) about how to build a community around your newspaper.

WAN-IFRA: Today lots of people read the news in a different context: online, on their phones, on tablets. What does this mean for newspaper editors who want to build a community around their papers?