3 ms·

But it's still important to be aware of the bias in a source. Supposed I'm biased against you and I report that you hacked into Bob's computer and I have evide

But it's still important to be aware of the bias in a source. Supposed I'm biased against you and I report that you hacked into Bob's computer and I have evidence to prove it. I paint that to make you look like some kind of cyber villain and neglect to report the important fact that Bob asked you to do it. If the reader knows about my bias towards you then they know to take my reporting with a grain of salt because even if it is true, it might not be the whole story.

belorn 9y ago
you mean like this map (http://wilkins.law.harvard.edu/projects/2017-08_mediacloud/Graphics/Fig7_11.pdf http://wilkins.law.harvard.edu/projects/2017-08_mediacloud/G...) created by a harvard study? You are right of course, it is important to know the bias of sources which is why so many fact checking sites popped up after 2016. Before then I would always go wikipedia for unbiased information. Sadly we live in a time where the majority of news papers has a clear and sometimes publicly stated political leaning and bias. Often this can be traced through ownership since many are now owned by the same entity. If the emails and documents was leaked today then hopefully fact checking sites would be all over it and pulling it apart regardless who originally published them. I do recall a few people were looking at checksum and correlate statements to previously public information, but nothing news worthy came out of that.
- wybiral 9y ago
  It's impossible to eliminate bias. Even if it's not political bias some people just naturally agree more with one side of an issue or are more interested in certain subjects. But that doesn't mean that bias is irrelevant. In my opinion, having followed WikiLeaks over the years, I think it's safe to say that they have an anti-western intelligence/military bias. That doesn't mean that what they publish is untrue. It just means that I'm skeptical about their motives and sources when they release something and I make it a point to try and find a good counter-balance to their take on the issue. Because they probably only presented a tiny portion of the truth that fit their agenda.
  - belorn 9y ago
    My interpretation of events is that before 2010 wikileaks operated mostly like a dumb disk drive that publish whatever with minimal editorial. The War documents leak established them in international news, which change wikileaks tactic to more editorial style. This then resulted that they got the cable leak the next year. After this there were internal fighting, blocking, ddos, economical blockades, volunteers being detained at airports and a lot of intelligence agency taking a lot of interests. The new "editorial" style also meant that they now held on to leaks rather than publishing. And then we had the Swedish investigation and all that mess. Calls for assassinations, "enemy combatant", drones, diplomatic back channels, all contributed to a very antagonistic/paranoid relation between the US government and Assange personally. At this point there is nothing resembling the original style of wikileaks. I see it less like a "anti-western intelligence/military bias", but rather a anti-Hillary/US government bias.
    - wybiral 9y ago
      > I see it less like a "anti-western intelligence/military bias", but rather a anti-Hillary/US government bias. I can't disagree with that. Then there are things like the Vault7 leaks, which were stoked by teaser announcements and theatrics. And while they did contain some surveillance tactics that seemed interesting they mostly contained tools and internal communication that was clearly sensitive and generally not information that the public even cared about (their exact code obfuscation algorithms?). The net effect is that most people didn't care much while anti-western intelligence groups probably had a field day. And given the sophistication to obtain the data it likely came from a nation state in the first place wishing to accomplish exactly that goal. There's no way they didn't realize what they were doing. They played part in an attack. Meanwhile Assange yawns at the Panama papers...
fareesh 9y ago
That doesn't apply here. The content here is raw emails from prominent Democrats discussing things like cheating in debates to favor Hillary Clinton, telling each other about how Hillary Clinton has really bad judgment, and an orchestrated campaign with friends in the media to discredit her primary challenger. There can't really be any "bias" in this kind of primary source information. What would you argue here? That candidate Sanders wanted this to happen? We already know from Donna Brazille's book that this is all true, and there is no other side of this story. Would you argue that folks like Neera Tanden were emailing wisecracks about Hillary Clinton's poor judgment (while publicly saying the opposite), is somehow mischaracterized? Contrast this with how the RNC treated their frontrunner - they publicly criticized him at every opportunity, and nobody rigged the RNC primary to favor candidate Trump - in fact, they did the complete opposite rather publicly, all but endorsing his opponent. If equivalent information was in the RNC's emails, it was not brand new information to the public, because they were saying those things in public about their candidate, while the DNC did it in secret.

belorn 9y ago

you mean like this map (http://wilkins.law.harvard.edu/projects/2017-08_mediacloud/Graphics/Fig7_11.pdf http://wilkins.law.harvard.edu/projects/2017-08_mediacloud/G...) created by a harvard study? You are right of course, it is important to know the bias of sources which is why so many fact checking sites popped up after 2016. Before then I would always go wikipedia for unbiased information. Sadly we live in a time where the majority of news papers has a clear and sometimes publicly stated political leaning and bias. Often this can be traced through ownership since many are now owned by the same entity. If the emails and documents was leaked today then hopefully fact checking sites would be all over it and pulling it apart regardless who originally published them. I do recall a few people were looking at checksum and correlate statements to previously public information, but nothing news worthy came out of that.

wybiral 9y ago
It's impossible to eliminate bias. Even if it's not political bias some people just naturally agree more with one side of an issue or are more interested in certain subjects. But that doesn't mean that bias is irrelevant. In my opinion, having followed WikiLeaks over the years, I think it's safe to say that they have an anti-western intelligence/military bias. That doesn't mean that what they publish is untrue. It just means that I'm skeptical about their motives and sources when they release something and I make it a point to try and find a good counter-balance to their take on the issue. Because they probably only presented a tiny portion of the truth that fit their agenda.
- belorn 9y ago
  My interpretation of events is that before 2010 wikileaks operated mostly like a dumb disk drive that publish whatever with minimal editorial. The War documents leak established them in international news, which change wikileaks tactic to more editorial style. This then resulted that they got the cable leak the next year. After this there were internal fighting, blocking, ddos, economical blockades, volunteers being detained at airports and a lot of intelligence agency taking a lot of interests. The new "editorial" style also meant that they now held on to leaks rather than publishing. And then we had the Swedish investigation and all that mess. Calls for assassinations, "enemy combatant", drones, diplomatic back channels, all contributed to a very antagonistic/paranoid relation between the US government and Assange personally. At this point there is nothing resembling the original style of wikileaks. I see it less like a "anti-western intelligence/military bias", but rather a anti-Hillary/US government bias.
  - wybiral 9y ago
    > I see it less like a "anti-western intelligence/military bias", but rather a anti-Hillary/US government bias. I can't disagree with that. Then there are things like the Vault7 leaks, which were stoked by teaser announcements and theatrics. And while they did contain some surveillance tactics that seemed interesting they mostly contained tools and internal communication that was clearly sensitive and generally not information that the public even cared about (their exact code obfuscation algorithms?). The net effect is that most people didn't care much while anti-western intelligence groups probably had a field day. And given the sophistication to obtain the data it likely came from a nation state in the first place wishing to accomplish exactly that goal. There's no way they didn't realize what they were doing. They played part in an attack. Meanwhile Assange yawns at the Panama papers...

fareesh 9y ago

That doesn't apply here. The content here is raw emails from prominent Democrats discussing things like cheating in debates to favor Hillary Clinton, telling each other about how Hillary Clinton has really bad judgment, and an orchestrated campaign with friends in the media to discredit her primary challenger. There can't really be any "bias" in this kind of primary source information. What would you argue here? That candidate Sanders wanted this to happen? We already know from Donna Brazille's book that this is all true, and there is no other side of this story. Would you argue that folks like Neera Tanden were emailing wisecracks about Hillary Clinton's poor judgment (while publicly saying the opposite), is somehow mischaracterized? Contrast this with how the RNC treated their frontrunner - they publicly criticized him at every opportunity, and nobody rigged the RNC primary to favor candidate Trump - in fact, they did the complete opposite rather publicly, all but endorsing his opponent. If equivalent information was in the RNC's emails, it was not brand new information to the public, because they were saying those things in public about their candidate, while the DNC did it in secret.