| The example you give is frequently used as an example of Wikileaks being the cause of atrocities rather than the one revealing the atrocities. Wikileaks has been under attack by various governments for a long time, eventually resulting in Assange losing his freedom. But more importantly, the big news orgs (NYTimes, WaPo, etc.) who had initially partnered with WL on the war logs were pressured into ending their journalistic cooperation with Wikileaks. Both papers went on to assassinate Assange's character at every turn after that, conveniently omitting the unique definition of rape in Swedish law, etc. In case my point is not clear, the idea is that the NYT should have been proofreading the release to be sure that all of the appropriate redaction occurred, but it couldn't do this because it had already taken sides with the US Government and other corrupt governments against Wikileaks. Worse yet, the papers follow the lead of US officials in focusing their reporting on Assange's personality while ignoring most of the actual information that was leaked. Regardless of what you think about Assange or WL, it's pretty hard to argue that the so-called journalists from our once-great newspapers did anything but a horrible and irresponsible job of covering the leaked information. So strong is the intimidation created by the government that even the Snowden leaks could not be accurately published in The Guardian. How is it possible that people don't see the obvious... things that WL publishes embarrass governments and officials because they reveal very serious crimes. But I suspect nobody will address this last point because like the papers, most opponents of Assange really want the story to be about Assange and not about the deeply concerning information that he heroically made available to us. |