Item — HN Reader

The question is whether WL has passively (or worse, actively) allowed its position as a conduit of information to be leveraged by malevolent actors to shape (or distort) the truth?

Obviously leaks that reveal actual wrongdoing are an unalloyed good. When the leaks that merely provide voyeuristic windows into the routine business of institutions (e.g. the diplomatic cables), the social value of the visibility becomes less clear. When leaks of that sort dominate, and consistently target American and western interests we have to question the motives and the integrity of the conduit.

Truth is power, yes, but is that power being granted to you, or used over you?

2 comments

I don't understand how publishing primary source documents, even selectively, can be called distortion of truth.

The cablegate dump had many interesting revelations https://theweek.com/articles/488953/wikileaks-cablegate-dump...

Some may believe it is in the public interest to hide US aggression to protect ourselves from repercussions. I think it is necessary to expose US aggression to public light to minimize its use altogether. If you can't justify an action to the public, perhaps you should not be spending taxpayer dollars to do it clandestinely.

Selectively publishing primary source documents definitely _can_ be a distortion of truth. To take the most salient example: It seems reasonable that the internal sausage-making most political parties is similar - there are power dynamics, personal (and possibly institutional) preferences, etc. If WL were to receive leaks internal communication from two opposing parties, and only publish one while allowing the opposing side to maintain it's facade, that would clearly be a distortion of truth, right?

I'm not insinuating that WL was actually presented with that decision in 2016, but it seems clear their acknowledged selectivity in publication is capable of distorting the true state of affairs.

If both parties are withholding the truth from the public, revealing accurate documents is removing the distortion of truth (at least for one party).

If WL had information about another party and chose not to release, it's not a distortion: the distortion already existed. But it would arguably be unethical to not act to end the distortion, if WL was capable of doing so.

If by American and Western interests, you mean the values western society is built on, the answer should be pretty simple: national security is no excuse for secret courts, secret prosecutions and secret rulings. It's also to be expected that this society is going to provide more opportunities for leaks in the first place, as opposed to more totalitarian societies. Not that there isn't sufficient grounds for arguing that distinction has already blurred for the most relevant purposes.

It's also to be expected that WL's every move is scrutinized. But anti-WL action went much, much further, including a complete financial boycott from above. That was years before any allegations of Russian meddling ever entered the picture. The US has openly targeted them for years, but if they hold any grudge about this in return in the form of not pulling punches and maximizing publication impact, it is supposed to reflect badly on them? That seems more than a little unbalanced.

The skepticism only goes one way. WL has a perfect track record in accuracy. Their own story however is regularly misrepresented and misstated. Plus, never forget that it was a Guardian journalist who was dumb enough to leak the crucial password to the full diplomatic archive, in the same book where they admitted to being too dumb to Google how to open a 7zip file. Such their missteps from the traditional press are casually excused in a game of closing ranks that reminds one more of cops than renegades. So much for the enlightened and free press: they needed a bunch of crypto nerds to show them how it is done, after the tech industry stole their collective lunches, and they handed over control of their platforms and income to hordes of shady surveillance capitalists.

The traditional press' warmongering and American mythologizing is also a naked fact. So much that they even held off on the Trump bashing for a while, when he was banging that drum, calling it "presidential".

So who is really using power over whom? Who is using truth for whuch cause, and who is publishing self serving fluff pieces instead? Why should we worry about WL, when the American fish is clearly rotting from the head down, and those who are supposed to stop that are incapable of doing so?

Wikileaks is the most effective journalistic organization on the planet and the political entertainment 'news' shows hate them for being so much smaller yet so much more effective.

Very well put.