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Comment by pg | Hacker News Reader

I've been of two minds about this post. On one hand, it does seem important. But Wikileaks presents it with a lot of propaganda mixed in. They are going far beyond their original role of merely leaking information. So if anyone knows of (or wants to make) a version that's just the original footage, please supply a url and I'll switch the link to that.

Edit: Switched link. Thanks. Please note that many of the comments on this thread refer to the original page.

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This is the unedited video on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is9sxRfU-ik

However it still has the title "collateral murder".

(and I wholly agree; Wikileaks have crossed the line with their presentation here for me. In my opinion it actually harms the impact of the video and is not in keeping with their purported vision as whistle-blowers :()

In addition to providing the original footage, WikiLeaks appears eager to directly combat the misinformation sown by the U.S. government since the incident took place. My guess is that they wanted to refute the official reports step-by-step to maximize the impact of their leak, and so that there would be little chance of it being swept under the rug by yet another official denial.

Yes, it may come off as propaganda, but why would WikiLeaks want to do all of the hard work acquiring the video, decrypting it, and bearing legal repercussions from releasing it only to have the other major news organizations do the analysis and reap the rewards? WikiLeaks is in need of cash, so there's an incentive for them to provide the full report; and additionally, they do seem to be motivated by a sense of justice, so why entrust the same old news media who might not give it the attention it deserves?

Here’s the uncut footage on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is9sxRfU-ik

There is only a reference to the website and to Wikileaks at the beginning, no other editorial content (there are subtitles). Might be a bit too little context, would work great in combination with the old New York Times article, though.

I agree that I wish they had released the video with only subtitles and left out the narration. It's powerful enough on its own, the rest only weakens the impact and introduces wiggle room for authoritarians to squeal about the horror of liberal propaganda.

i agree that they're presenting it beyond their original intent, but i'd also point out that they've been striving for a business model as a pure information source, just to keep the lights on, and it hasn't been working out. this might be their attempt at finding a way to monetize some of their information.

Financial difficulties (which to be honest, I have trouble understanding), does not justify over-hyping and over-editorializing content, it only hurts their image and reputation and means less people will appreciate their work.

Also, if they allow their funding issues to compromise their principles it would be a much bigger issue than if they allow their principles to affect too strongly the way they editorialize.

So if your theory is correct that would be more disturbing, not less.

yeah, it does. the auction wasn't a good idea either. they might be good at what they do, just not good at distribution/monetization/etc..

Agreed. Add in what YouTube does to video and a lot of people are drawing conclusions off a 3rd hand source right now.

The original torrent which I have not yet downloaded but may be better http://collateralmurder.com/file/CollateralMurder.mp4.torren...

I'd like to see the raw video before they edited it and added sub-titles. Thanks for the link -- this one is slightly clearer than the youtube 480p version.

Also, this video of related material for news services just appeared on the channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BflAj2txMVQ

The amount of "hey look at that! isn't that bad?" in the video makes it very hard to look at it as a piece of "leaked" forensic evidence.

--edit-- I see an unedited copy has been released as well.

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