LiveLeak is a British video sharing website that lets users post and share videos. The site was founded on 31 October 2006, launched as a tamer version of the Ogrish.com shock site; it aims to take reality footage, politics, war, and other world events and combine them with the power of citizen journalism. The site is estimated to be the 957th most popular website in the world as of May 2017. Hayden Hewitt of Manchester is the only public member of LiveLeak’s founding team. The site has sparked much controversy, mostly due to its graphic and political content. The site came to prominence in 2007 following the unauthorized filming and leaking of the execution of Saddam Hussein, and was referred to by White House Press Secretary Tony Snow and then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair. On 30 July 2007, the BBC programme Panorama broadcast a show about how young people were getting physically assaulted and knocked unconscious.When Panorama queried the "extremely violent videos" that had been posted to LiveLeak's website, co-founder Hayden Hewitt refused to take them down, stating, "Look all this is happening, this is real life, this is going on, we're going to show it." LiveLeak states there are relatively few such videos on the site and should the uploaders be found to have participated in the violent attack or filmed it themselves, it would aid the police with any prosecutions.
