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Wikileaks said when publicizing the video that the leaker himself asked for it to editorialized for largest media impact. Which kinda makes sense when reading t
by yread 16y ago
Wikileaks said when publicizing the video that the leaker himself asked for it to editorialized for largest media impact. Which kinda makes sense when reading the transcripts of idealistic Manning confessing to Lamo that he gave it to them to start "worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms"
- tptacek 16y agoNOT. RELEVANT. An ideal-Wikileaks would not taint every subsequent disclosure it had a hand in by overtly participating in the editorialization of the information it was disclosing. From now on, every time they publish anything we have to wonder not only whether the leaker is giving us the whole story, but whether Wikileaks is being faithful to the material as well. An ideal-Wikileaks would stay out of the story and allow third parties to maximize the media impact. The real-world Wikileaks wants to sit across from Stephen Colbert.
- niels_olson 16y agoah, no. As I'm sure you know, true neutrality is rare, and in a social system, where people come and go, neutrality is an unstable equilibrium. There is a story about a Soviet diplomat and an American diplomat at a treaty conference. The Russian observes "I envy your propoganda. In the USSR, at least we know Pravda is lying. In the US, you don't even know that." I would prefer Assange's idea: admit that neutrality is unstable and instead, take a stand, but back it up by publishing your source material. This is precisely what scientists do. Rare is the scientific article that publishes all the data from the study. Instead, they publish their analysis of the data: graphs, tables, words. The WikiLeaks model is actually more rigourous than most scientific literature: they publish the whole dataset on top of the analysis and editorial."