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.”

  • hark@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    It takes surprisingly little for people who claim to support journalists to turn around and hate on a journalist for exposing corruption. The “national security” angle never seems to fail.

      • hark@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        “Domestic” billionaires interfere with our elections far more to the point where it makes what Russia does look like nothing, but you decide to focus on a journalist who exposed information, a fraction of which is information that you think might have helped Russia. I wonder if it’s because of the billionaire-backed media machine telling you to care about this particular instance.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Whataboutism + claim of motivated reasoning.

          You buddy need a basic class on logic. It will prevent sad displays such as your last post. Maybe it will make you less likely to support a Russian spy in the future.

          • hark@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Logically we should care more about the ones who have more influence on our elections. If you actually cared about election interference, you’d want to address the primary source of it, i.e. billionaires. Just because Assange revealed information which might have damaged Hillary’s already garbage campaign, doesn’t mean he’s a Russian spy.

            • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              That’s nice. Now did he tease more data dumps against Clinton a month before the election yes or no?

              Little honesty test. Can you tell the truth?

              • hark@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                Assange’s hatred of Hillary existed long before the election. He’s not a Russian spy. Just because goals overlap, doesn’t mean they’re allies. It also doesn’t invalidate all the other insightful leaks he helped publish. You speak of honesty yet ironically frame a question in a dishonest manner.