The Guardian's Complicated Relationship With Julian Assange 237
Sonny Yatsen writes "Vanity Fair has published an interesting behind-the-scenes look at the unlikely and tumultuous working relationship between WikiLeaks' Julian Assange and The Guardian as the Iraq War Logs were being published. The piece highlights the differences and conflicts between the Guardian's journalistic standards and WikiLeaks' transparency. Particularly interesting is the revelation that Julian Assange threatened to sue The Guardian if they publish a portion of Iraq War Logs leaked to them by a disgruntled WikiLeaks volunteer, claiming 'he owned the information and had a financial interest in how and when it was released.'"
And the rumor of Assange being an informant (Score:4, Interesting)
is being spread through Cryptome. The rumor that he is an informant for the Austrlian Federal Police does seem to be backed up by the story about him receiving warnings from Austrlian intelligence about dirty tricks.
This is something worth looking into. Whether or not there is any truth to it or not, it's worth looking into for that reason but also to determine whether or not it is a smear campaign or global conspiracy to break Assange.
Read this before judging... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://wlcentral.org/node/839 [wlcentral.org]
The Guardian do not have clean hands in this matter.
Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:1, Interesting)
But I thought information wanted to be free? Isn't that what Julie has been telling us all along? Is it possible he is using all of this for his own personal gain?
And "The Guardian" is not plural. It is a newspaper. It DOES not have clean hands.
Re:Aww poor Assange has to deal with leakers. (Score:4, Interesting)
Reason (Score:2, Interesting)
I have a feeling the financial interests he was referring to could potentially be money given to him by other media outlets so they too can print the cables.
Wikileaks requires funding and with paypal etc cutting it he could well be using the media as a substitute to donations, which isn't necessarily bad.
If the Guardian was to publish documents before he was able to get them to other paying outlets that would cause them to get stroppy as they are no longer able to be first equal to print highly sought after information. This could then be viewed as favorite to one media outlet hurting not only relations with outlets but Wikileaks reputation.
The way he said it could be easily misconstrued but it really sounds more like sheer anger and bad wording rather then anything else.
TL;DR: Guardian printing out of turn would cause a Charlie Foxtrot situation in many ways and Julian was angry at the thought.
Re:Aww poor Assange has to deal with leakers. (Score:5, Interesting)
Transparency isn't a product
No, it's a commodity. To be bought and sold like everything else.
Like, really?!? (Score:4, Interesting)
Smells of bullshit to me.
Re:Aww poor Assange has to deal with leakers. (Score:2, Interesting)
New years resolution was to stop caring about wrongs on the internet but what the hell:
How is this bullshit modded insightful?
The only reason anyone dares leak to wikileaks is Assange.
You think anyone is stupid enough to send sensitive material to some anonymous "me toos" that might crack after 2 seconds of government pressure?
Well OP might be I guess.
Successful censor is successful. (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you see what's going on here?
The Character assassination plot on Assange was a major success. He's been in jail not so long, and the story is slowly going cold. Nobody is discussing it so eagerly anymore. Also, Julian's public image went down. Regardless of whether what The Guardian is saying is true or not, 30 days ago virtually nobody on /. would have bought the Guardian's story. Or we would've at least questioned it, not taking it as fact.
Julian is in jail. Nobody believes in him anymore. Wikileaks is dead, and nobody even noticed. The CIA pulled yet another successful operation on its own people and the world, and the press took care of cleaning up after them. And nobody gives a fuck.
I see very few people here that understand this. As usual, we are a minority, but when even in /., when everybody here is a minority, you can only see a minority of the minority display any kind of reasoning skills, you can tell something's fucked up.
Re:Aww poor Assange has to deal with leakers. (Score:2, Interesting)
Leaks happen all the time. Wikileaks has lasted for four years and most people hadn't heard of it until a few months ago. Yeah, this leak was big, but we have no proof the leak wouldn't have happened without Assange. Given that the leaker was showing off to a stranger (and hence basically turned himself in) lends evidence that it *would* have happened without Assange. Either way, we're working with a sample size of 1 here.
Financial interest (Score:3, Interesting)
According to Wired, back in 2008 Wikileaks had a plan to sell exclusivity to certain documents [wired.com] to the highest bidder. These documents were embargoed, which meant eventually they'd be fully released, but until then the lucky winner would be able to report on them without competition.
Which does make me wonder about the "financial interest" angle mentioned in the Vanity Fair piece... are any of these media outlets paying for access to the current set of leaked documents?
Re:Aww poor Assange has to deal with leakers. (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, he lost the geeks by doing that but he got mainstream, he got published in 5 major newspaper almost daily with that scheme while he never managed to get any press before that. I think it is pretty clear the the ideal approach just doesn't work. Ultimately we need to go in that direction, but by taking smaller steps, Assange manages to have a political weight. kudos for him. The fact that people calling themselves journalists are afraid of a lawsuit about publishing a leak is just hilarous. The fact that the threat comes from wikileaks adds irony to hilarity. It just shows how low journalism has fallen these days.
Assange is not noble, nor are his actions (Score:3, Interesting)
Every time I post on this, I get modded toll by somebody with an agenda, but I think it's important so I try again.
Assange is a narcissist. He isn't doing anything honorable by dumping all this classified stuff. Leaking information which reveals wrongdoing is noble, wholesale dumping of classified material is chaos. Some secrets are secret for good reasons. For example:
What good comes from leaking the cables of a diplomat clandestinely investigating human rights abuses? It simultaneously gave the oppressive regime a reason to be more oppressive and the names of people to go after, but Assange knows best - people have a right to know! See WikiLeaks just made the world more repressive [theglobeandmail.com]
How about undermining a democratic reformer in Zimbabwe [theatlantic.com]? Did that do any good? I have a good friend in Zimbabwe, he's in enough danger already just for supporting the MDC. Now a cleptocratic tyrant has the excuse he needs to hold on to power, prolonging the misery of an entire country, and my friend might end up in jail, or dead. But I suppose the death and deprivation of faceless Africans won't keep Julian up at night.
Oddly, one case where Mr. Assange saw fit to withhold information was the "Collateral Murder" video. Not because it could endanger somebody, but because it didn't fit with the narrative he constructed. Rather than objectively present the video with the relevant context, he purposefully left out any mention of the convoy that was approaching or the attacks that had recently occurred that same day, implying that the helicopter was just randomly firing at a group of people. He implies that the pilot's identification of weapons was incorrect, but fails to provide a copy or even a link to the report [scribd.com] (which was released, though names are redacted), which details fun facts like the RPGs and AKs they found on and around the "civilians". He doesn't mention that the Reuters employees had not told anyone where they were going to be, and were not wearing ANY press identification. I could go on...
The point is that Assange has always had an agenda, and it certainly isn't exposing government wrongdoing, or even presenting the uncolored, unfiltered truth (if it doesn't suit him). I don't know why so many people here idolize him.