As Julian Assange enjoys his first weekend of freedom in years, there appeared to be no question in the mind of his wife, Stella, about what the family’s priorities were.

The WikiLeaks co-founder would need time to recover, she told reporters after they were reunited in his native Australia, after a deal with US authorities that allowed him to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified defence documents.

What comes after that is one of the most intriguing questions for anyone familiar with how the site he founded in 2006 utterly changed the nature of whistleblowing. Will it return to its original mission?

James Harkin, the director of the London-based Centre for Investigative Journalism, (said) “In retrospect, it’s striking that everything WikiLeaks published was true – no small feat in the era of “disinformation” – but the tragedy is that much of its energy and ethos has now passed to blowhards and conspiracy theorists. Perhaps, in the light of our tepid new involvements in the Middle East and Ukraine, we need a new WikiLeaks.”

  • sandbox@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    arrow-down
    6
    ·
    5 months ago

    I don’t understand why Julian Assange gets any credit for Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton, because that should clearly go towards the mainstream media.

    So much ink was wasted by the press over Hillary’s nothingburger email scandal. I think it’s something like 50 headlines in the New York Times over a single month?

    Not to mention James Coney’s part to play, basically he hates Hillary Clinton so just took any opportunity to sink her election chances. He holds much more blame for Trump’s election than Julian Assange.

    I wonder why, out of all the journalists who could be blamed for Trump, Assange gets so much more hate? I suspect a lot of it is because there’s already so much anti Assange propaganda because he damaged the hegemonic interests of the US.

    • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      7
      ·
      edit-2
      5 months ago

      Liberals are unable to cope with their awfulness so their only retort is to blame anyone to the left of them.