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Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

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Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#161

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

monetus wrote: post #129
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he did achieve his specific goal of tanking Clinton's campaign. I read thru that interview and wasn't able to suss out where Assange asserted he had a goal of tanking the Clinton campaign. Could you repost those lines here for us?

There is no confession if that is what you are asking for. His credibility relies on that not being his goal. Thanks for the polity - the undertone of your question implies he has to confess that word for word for that to be his intent.

> There is no confession if that is what you are asking for.

Your parent said:

but he did achieve his specific goal of tanking Clinton's campaign [here is an] Old interview of him talking about it: (link)

That seems to clearly imply that Assange would talk about his specific goal of tanking Clinton's campaign.

>Thanks for the polity - the undertone of your question implies he has to confess that word for word for that to be his intent.

The article fairly well debunks the source for those narratives (that Assange tanked the DNC on behalf of Russia). Here is the relevant quote.

Outraged the Clinton campaign swiftly ascribed the leaks to Vladimir Putin's intelligence apparatus as part of an operation to secure Trump's victory. The accusation was fueled by forensic analysis from the DNC's cybersecurity consultants, from CrowdStrike, detailing the potential links between the leaks and the Russian government.

Testifying under oath in a closed-door session before the committee in 2017, CrowdStrike’s chief security officer Shawn Henry admitted that he had no “concrete evidence” that the Russians had stolen the emails, or indeed that anyone had hacked the DNC’s system.

This crucial interview remained locked away until 2020. The press did little to acknowledge it; the testimony failed to attract even a passing mention in the New York Times, the Guardian, or any other mainstream outlet that had previously charted the Russian hacking story.

Do I think Assange targeted the DNC? Perhaps in the larger context of targeting powerful entities who hide details that directly affect the non-powerful. As to claims that Assange was directly working for the Russians, I strongly recommend reading the article all the way through.

sidebar: I like the work polity, btw. I can't recall coming across it before.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#162

Post by PicassoCTs »

mhh__ wrote: post #30
superkuh wrote: post #2

It's pretty clear what happened. People started to view the reporting of Wikileaks as evil or fake as soon as it negatively impacted $theirpoliticalside. Once these perceptions fell into place it was easy to disregard all the good, villify him personally, and ignore the authoritarian and illegal actions taken against him.

WikiLeaks arguably helped people to do that quite effectively. They've never really claimed to be neutral but especially around 2016 they were either getting played by or explicitly choosing to aid the trump campaign via the Russian state (at best as a messenger). III.B.3 of the Mueller report I don't know if they are evil but I find it very hard to view them as anything other than selectively truthful at best.

The press is not to have sides. Its to be a loose cannon in a democracy, firing at all and everybody who has power.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#163

Post by starkd »

mopsi wrote: post #133
starkd wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was still a basis on which talks could have been opened up. The fact they were entirely nixed shows they are not interested. 200,000 Ukrainian deaths when they can't even define what victory looks like beyond slogans. They are trying to fight a war on the cheap so long as no American casualties happen, but they are perfectly fine so long as they are Ukrainian casualties. At least, they could at least define wha…

There's nothing to negotiate at this point. Either Russia moves its guns and tanks and soldiers out of the whole Ukraine like they retreated from around Kharkiv, or Russia gets defeated on the battlefield. Anything else would leave Ukrainians in occupied territories to be wiped out by Russians. Russian hopes of a favorable peace deal is nothing but a coping mechanism, just like top Nazis hoped to reach a peace deal i…

And that completely ignores how the world really works. You are perfectly content to risk WWIII. It is not 1945 anymore. You are risking a nuclear conflict that would be absolutely horrific.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#164

Post by yucky »

chpatrick wrote: post #53
starkd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And notice how these fatal errors are still occurring. The moment you question the proxy war in Ukraine, you are immediately labelled a Putin apologist. No calls for diplomacy. Meanwhile, 200,000 Ukrainians have been led to their deaths.

And yet only one belligerent invaded the other. There aren't two sides to this.

Are you referring to the US invasion of Iraq or the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It's impossible to tell the difference anymore.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#165

Post by jcranmer »

starkd wrote: post #123
misnome wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One side could unilaterally end the war in one word. Strange that it’s only in the interests of that side that people call for this.

that's not how the world works. Peace deals can happen, but everyone has to put everything on the table. When people dig in and are stubborn, that's when we get hundreds of thousands of deaths.

> When people dig in and are stubborn

Such as when you decide to announce a rushed annexation of your enemy's lands after your army suffers the biggest rout of the 21st century? While claiming that this war isn't about trying to annex your enemy's lands, after all...

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#166

Post by yucky »

ramchip wrote: post #47
starkd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And notice how these fatal errors are still occurring. The moment you question the proxy war in Ukraine, you are immediately labelled a Putin apologist. No calls for diplomacy. Meanwhile, 200,000 Ukrainians have been led to their deaths.

I... what? Around me, questioning the war gets you labelled as Putin critic, not an apologist. He literally started the war.

  > He literally started the war.
When do you think the war started?

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#167

Post by naasking »

monetus wrote: post #146
naasking wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware, I'm just curious what the OP specifically finds "evil" in these or other actions. Most journalists preferred Hillary, Assange likely did not, and his journalism hindered her campaign. OK, where is the "evil" specifically?

I can't speak for op and evil is subjective - If I have to take a stab at their thoughts, it would be along the lines that he was being a useful idiot for an entity whose goal was to harm a society. You can debate those points; what questions he should have asked, if what the Mueller report says about his sources is true, if he had any actual malice - evil is too strong a word for my taste, as I use it for sadism. He…

Retribution for what? I'm just not sure what relevance any of this has anyway.

The only questions that are relevant for journalism are, "is the information correct?", and "is the information of interest to the public?".

Every source has their own motives, as does every journalist, and no story is so detailed as to paint the full picture. These questions are ultimately all irrelevant.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#168

Post by yucky »

mint2 wrote: post #28

Is it really a mystery why people turned on assange? In his later years his work became similar to that of breitbart, James okeef, and tucker Carlson. Regardless of what one thinks of those, There’s no question that their publications and intentions are extremely slanted. No surprise most of the country dislikes him

You mean Wikileaks released info that was incorrect, or just that they released info that makes people you support look bad?

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#169

Post by naasking »

zzzeek wrote: post #140
kerkeslager wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a preference you don't like is pretty different from "doing evil". I mean, I don't like that preference either, but the documents leaked were real, and I haven't heard that Wikileaks/Assange had equivalent dirt on Trump they could have leaked and didn't.

well a lot of us think Trump was pretty much the definition of evil, i mean, extorted an entire country with the threat of illegally withholding US military aid unless they made up political campaign propaganda for him, sometimes you have to just draw a line, like when it's blindingly obvious Assange preferred helping to install a corrupt grifter to run the US government into the dirt. He hates the US government. A l…

Responses like this are just so bizarre to me. Do you think other Presidents didn't extort other countries for various concessions, even selfish ones that help their political ambitions? Do you think other Presidents were not grifters? Perhaps you should look into Obama's and the Clinton's net worth before and after their presidency.

What really broke people's brains about Trump is that he was openly rude and obnoxious and unapologetic about it, and so didn't hide the self-serving behind a polite facade that preserved the collective fiction that politicians were looking out for the people and not themselves. That's what people both love and hate about him.

Re: Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

#170

Post by BashiBazouk »

superkuh wrote: post #2

It's pretty clear what happened. People started to view the reporting of Wikileaks as evil or fake as soon as it negatively impacted $theirpoliticalside. Once these perceptions fell into place it was easy to disregard all the good, villify him personally, and ignore the authoritarian and illegal actions taken against him.

I thought the disillusionment around here with wikileaks had more to do with the way they had changed from careful curation, removing the personal information of those not involved, to just bulk dumps. Less that Hillary's emails were leaked and more that the personal information of lesser figures in and donors to the DNC were also released in mass. They had changed in perception from journalism to personal revenge against Hillary for her pursuing Assange as Secretary of State. The fact that the RNC had been hacked but emails not released helped in this perception...
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