6 ms·

Or option C: a propaganda arm of the Russian Government. EDIT: downvoters aren't offering a response, so I'll just hope or assume that they want evidence: [1]

Or option C: a propaganda arm of the Russian Government. EDIT: downvoters aren't offering a response, so I'll just hope or assume that they want evidence: [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/07/putin-dismisses-panama-papers-as-an-attempt-to-destabilise-russia https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/07/putin-dismisses... [3] http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.771716 http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.771716 [4] http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/25/politics/cambridge-analytica-julian-assange-wikileaks-clinton-emails/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/25/politics/cambridge-analyti... [5] https://sunlightfoundation.com/2016/07/28/on-weaponized-transparency/ https://sunlightfoundation.com/2016/07/28/on-weaponized-tran... [6] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-secret-correspondence-between-donald-trump-jr-and-wikileaks/545738/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-sec...

Chris_Chambers 8y ago
MUH RUSSIA
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
DINKDINK 8y ago
Do you mind enlightening us how Wikileaks was a propaganda arm of the Russian government when they released video of US war crimes (murder of journalists in the Collateral Murder video)? If another news organization received the DNC leaks and chose to not publish them, do you think that would have been ethical? Is your position that, one cannot be a US citizen and oppose the US government and if you do you're a Russian agent?
- rosser 8y ago
  The selectivity of Wikileaks' leaks put the lie to their claim of being a journalistic entity. Julian Assange has an agenda against certain people/parties, and has demonstrably leaked things that support that, and not leaked things that refute it. I say that as a detractor of many of the same people and institutions Assange dislikes, so check your assumptions of bias before you throw them, please.
  - vkou 8y ago
    > The selectivity of Wikileaks' leaks put the lie to their claim of being a journalistic entity. It really doesn't, though. You don't have to be unbiased to be a journalist, a journalistic entity, or whatever you want to call it. Fox News, biased as it is, is still news.
    - rosser 8y ago
      Fox News isn't journalism. It's opinion wrapped around selective "reporting". EDIT: Yes, of course it's impossible to eliminate bias. To extrapolate from that to accepting overtly biased and selectively published content as journalism is unsupported, at best. It's the selectivity of reporting that compromises the claim of journalism, not the bias. When you don't report on things that don't support your narrative, you're no longer reporting.
      - EdSharkey 8y ago
        American journalism is pathetic. I hope you're just using Fox News as an example and not singling them out as the only exemplar.
        rosser 8y ago
        Of course not. They're among the worst offenders, they're far from alone in playing that game.
  - woah 8y ago
    Weird definition of a "journalistic entity" I don't think that any news source satisfies your requirement that it be complete non-partisan, even such a thing was even logically possible.
    - rosser 8y ago
      I don't expect journalism to be non-partisan. I expect it to be affirmatively transparent about its partisanship. You're right, though, that nothing actually meets that bar. It's a human institution; it's necessarily flawed. That's why you source across biases and ideologies, and correct accordingly. The thing I'm talking about is instead the deliberate pretense of not being partisan. Fox News calling itself "fair and balanced", or claiming "We report. You decide." are just particularly egregious examples. When you aren't presenting enough of the picture for someone to form an informed opinion, you're peddling propaganda. I know the propagandist can't admit that's what he's doing, so I hold journalism to the standard of integrity of knowing, and owning, its biases. But it's ultimately a spectrum, and it's on me to gauge where on that spectrum any given source lands. Some things are more propaganda than journalism. Some things are more or less one or the other to different degrees on different topics, at the same time. Sometimes they're at different points on the same topic, on different days, or in different stories. It's complicated, sure. But, holding as nuanced an appreciation of this mess as I hope I've implied, I hope also that you'll give me the credit of not merely talking out my ass when I say I find Assange to be towards the propagandist pole.
- rspeer 8y ago
  The WikiLeaks that released the "Collateral Murder" video was a very different thing from the Russian organization that exists today. That WikiLeaks even had a wiki.
  - gowld 8y ago
    WikiLeaks has a long and ongoing history, and Assange founded it long before the Russia stuff. When and how did it change?
colordrops 8y ago
Calling wikileaks a propaganda arm of the Russian Government is just US propaganda. 1984 double-speak here. Can you point to ANYTHING that wikileaks has reported or released that is untrue?
- abiox 8y ago
  does anything necessarily need to be 'untrue'? (a lot of propaganda is 'true')
- alpha_squared 8y ago
  You can tell the truth and still be deceitful. Claiming to have had evidence on Russian corruption and publicly declaring an intent to release followed by silence and unwillingness to do so indicate two things, to me anyway. 1. The original claim is a lie. There is no evidence of Russian corruption and the claim was made for attention or some other purpose. Remind me, again, how many lies it takes to make someone untrustworthy? 2. The original claim is true, but something or someone prevents information from being released. This is the more insidious reason. It means that the organization will only release "the truth" that jibes with the messages/agenda they want to push, which is propaganda. Regardless of whether or not Russia has a direct influence of the release is unknown, but it becomes propaganda nonetheless. My personal opinion is that Assange is virtually inseparable from Wikileaks and appears to have a god complex, using the platform as his mouthpiece on his view of the state of things while enjoying the comforts of avoiding consequence.
  - colordrops 8y ago
    By that measure, the New York Times, Fox News, Washington Post, CNN, and Wall Street Journal are all propaganda.
    - abiox 8y ago
      they have their moments. they all tend to be good at cheerleading war, for example. msnbc fired phil donohue for being against the iraq war. last election, the washington post (in)famously ran a glut of anti-sanders material in a short time span (16 articles in 16 hours, i believe it was).
LMYahooTFY 8y ago
What evidence? None of your links contain any "evidence". Evidence shouldn't be difficult to explain. Loosely connected assumptions, however, are often difficult to articulate. The argument you propose is that practically anyone who exposes corruption in western organizations could be Russian government propagandists.
admiralEyebrows 8y ago
Before scrambling to gather a handful of news articles (though no proof) which confirm 'option C' to avoid down votes, are you certain that you are not regurgitating the propaganda of a different government or corporation? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_U...
vkou 8y ago
Good God. I don't like Wikileaks, but even if they are a 'propaganda arm of the Russian government', they still have First Amendment rights, and they are still a news organization.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > they still have First Amendment rights, and they are still a news organization I agree. But the First Amendment doesn’t protect individuals or companies from any and all prosecution.
zeth___ 8y ago
Dear god this thread is being hit hard by people pushing the US government narrative. I'm not saying you're all paid trolls, but HN is to the tech scene what reddit was 10 years ago which is when we first saw shilling hit it hard and fast.
- Cacti 8y ago
  Look in the mirror, man. You're accusing people, without a shred of evidence, of being government shills simply because you disagree with them.
  - zeth___ 8y ago
    I'm looking at your post history. At the point when you have posted 17 times in a thread with half of them being a literal copy of what the prosecution is charging him with, while by omission implying that the information there is somehow impartial, the fact of being a paid or unpaid shill is immaterial. You are the only person in this thread pushing the government narrative and taking their words at face value. Anyone who has kept track of these persecutions knows that unmentionable facts are thrown in constantly to try and get the defendants to break. Viz, Daniel Ellsberg being called a homosexual.

Chris_Chambers 8y ago

MUH RUSSIA

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

DINKDINK 8y ago

Do you mind enlightening us how Wikileaks was a propaganda arm of the Russian government when they released video of US war crimes (murder of journalists in the Collateral Murder video)? If another news organization received the DNC leaks and chose to not publish them, do you think that would have been ethical? Is your position that, one cannot be a US citizen and oppose the US government and if you do you're a Russian agent?

rosser 8y ago
The selectivity of Wikileaks' leaks put the lie to their claim of being a journalistic entity. Julian Assange has an agenda against certain people/parties, and has demonstrably leaked things that support that, and not leaked things that refute it. I say that as a detractor of many of the same people and institutions Assange dislikes, so check your assumptions of bias before you throw them, please.
- vkou 8y ago
  > The selectivity of Wikileaks' leaks put the lie to their claim of being a journalistic entity. It really doesn't, though. You don't have to be unbiased to be a journalist, a journalistic entity, or whatever you want to call it. Fox News, biased as it is, is still news.
  - rosser 8y ago
    Fox News isn't journalism. It's opinion wrapped around selective "reporting". EDIT: Yes, of course it's impossible to eliminate bias. To extrapolate from that to accepting overtly biased and selectively published content as journalism is unsupported, at best. It's the selectivity of reporting that compromises the claim of journalism, not the bias. When you don't report on things that don't support your narrative, you're no longer reporting.
    - EdSharkey 8y ago
      American journalism is pathetic. I hope you're just using Fox News as an example and not singling them out as the only exemplar.
      - rosser 8y ago
        Of course not. They're among the worst offenders, they're far from alone in playing that game.
- woah 8y ago
  Weird definition of a "journalistic entity" I don't think that any news source satisfies your requirement that it be complete non-partisan, even such a thing was even logically possible.
  - rosser 8y ago
    I don't expect journalism to be non-partisan. I expect it to be affirmatively transparent about its partisanship. You're right, though, that nothing actually meets that bar. It's a human institution; it's necessarily flawed. That's why you source across biases and ideologies, and correct accordingly. The thing I'm talking about is instead the deliberate pretense of not being partisan. Fox News calling itself "fair and balanced", or claiming "We report. You decide." are just particularly egregious examples. When you aren't presenting enough of the picture for someone to form an informed opinion, you're peddling propaganda. I know the propagandist can't admit that's what he's doing, so I hold journalism to the standard of integrity of knowing, and owning, its biases. But it's ultimately a spectrum, and it's on me to gauge where on that spectrum any given source lands. Some things are more propaganda than journalism. Some things are more or less one or the other to different degrees on different topics, at the same time. Sometimes they're at different points on the same topic, on different days, or in different stories. It's complicated, sure. But, holding as nuanced an appreciation of this mess as I hope I've implied, I hope also that you'll give me the credit of not merely talking out my ass when I say I find Assange to be towards the propagandist pole.
rspeer 8y ago
The WikiLeaks that released the "Collateral Murder" video was a very different thing from the Russian organization that exists today. That WikiLeaks even had a wiki.
- gowld 8y ago
  WikiLeaks has a long and ongoing history, and Assange founded it long before the Russia stuff. When and how did it change?

colordrops 8y ago

Calling wikileaks a propaganda arm of the Russian Government is just US propaganda. 1984 double-speak here. Can you point to ANYTHING that wikileaks has reported or released that is untrue?

abiox 8y ago
does anything necessarily need to be 'untrue'? (a lot of propaganda is 'true')
alpha_squared 8y ago
You can tell the truth and still be deceitful. Claiming to have had evidence on Russian corruption and publicly declaring an intent to release followed by silence and unwillingness to do so indicate two things, to me anyway. 1. The original claim is a lie. There is no evidence of Russian corruption and the claim was made for attention or some other purpose. Remind me, again, how many lies it takes to make someone untrustworthy? 2. The original claim is true, but something or someone prevents information from being released. This is the more insidious reason. It means that the organization will only release "the truth" that jibes with the messages/agenda they want to push, which is propaganda. Regardless of whether or not Russia has a direct influence of the release is unknown, but it becomes propaganda nonetheless. My personal opinion is that Assange is virtually inseparable from Wikileaks and appears to have a god complex, using the platform as his mouthpiece on his view of the state of things while enjoying the comforts of avoiding consequence.
- colordrops 8y ago
  By that measure, the New York Times, Fox News, Washington Post, CNN, and Wall Street Journal are all propaganda.
  - abiox 8y ago
    they have their moments. they all tend to be good at cheerleading war, for example. msnbc fired phil donohue for being against the iraq war. last election, the washington post (in)famously ran a glut of anti-sanders material in a short time span (16 articles in 16 hours, i believe it was).

LMYahooTFY 8y ago

What evidence? None of your links contain any "evidence". Evidence shouldn't be difficult to explain. Loosely connected assumptions, however, are often difficult to articulate. The argument you propose is that practically anyone who exposes corruption in western organizations could be Russian government propagandists.

admiralEyebrows 8y ago

Before scrambling to gather a handful of news articles (though no proof) which confirm 'option C' to avoid down votes, are you certain that you are not regurgitating the propaganda of a different government or corporation? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_U...

vkou 8y ago

Good God. I don't like Wikileaks, but even if they are a 'propaganda arm of the Russian government', they still have First Amendment rights, and they are still a news organization.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> they still have First Amendment rights, and they are still a news organization I agree. But the First Amendment doesn’t protect individuals or companies from any and all prosecution.

zeth___ 8y ago

Dear god this thread is being hit hard by people pushing the US government narrative. I'm not saying you're all paid trolls, but HN is to the tech scene what reddit was 10 years ago which is when we first saw shilling hit it hard and fast.

Cacti 8y ago
Look in the mirror, man. You're accusing people, without a shred of evidence, of being government shills simply because you disagree with them.
- zeth___ 8y ago
  I'm looking at your post history. At the point when you have posted 17 times in a thread with half of them being a literal copy of what the prosecution is charging him with, while by omission implying that the information there is somehow impartial, the fact of being a paid or unpaid shill is immaterial. You are the only person in this thread pushing the government narrative and taking their words at face value. Anyone who has kept track of these persecutions knows that unmentionable facts are thrown in constantly to try and get the defendants to break. Viz, Daniel Ellsberg being called a homosexual.