Comment by c3o | Hacker News Reader

Comment by c3o | Hacker News Reader

While there's no sign the emails published by WikiLeaks were doctored and it's concerning that the Clinton campaign made such a baseless claim, it's similarly concerning to me that WikiLeaks itself created/spread false interpretations of the emails they published.

Here's what happened:

* Conservative commentator Ben Domenech goes on Fox News Sunday show and quotes what he read on The Daily Beast: "We saw this week reporting that a pro-Clinton super PAC had paid more than a million dollars to have supporters of her online push back against Bernie supporters" (Transcript: https://t.co/7IuO1c7j7N)

* DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schulz had appeared on an separate, earlier segment of the same show. Likely because of that, a DNC staffer writes a bullet-point transcript of the panel debate and sends it around internally with the subject "FNS [date]", subheaders like "Panel" and comments like "I didn't catch everything [in this part]" – very easy to identify as a transcript: https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/8351

And yet WikiLeaks spun it on Twitter as if it were a smoking gun:

"DNC knew of Clinton 'paid troll factory' fighting Sanders supporters #FeelTheBern" https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/757077620928512000

So they misrepresented a transcript where some random person quotes some other news source as a statement by the DNC itself, a statement of veracity or admission of internal knowledge. Got over 5000 retweets, never retracted/corrected.

After what they did in this election, WikiLeaks can no longer claim to be just a neutral platform for leaked secrets – just like everyone else, they spin facts to fit certain narratives they want to promote for whatever editorial reasons.

Exactly.

Wikileaks has continually misrepresented, lied, and obfuscated the truth. Not just on this issue.

They repeatedly put innocent people in danger and generally favor a very obvious set of political stances (and one of those is being incredibly obviously slanted towards Russia).

Now you can speculate over why they do it, but THAT they do it remains a matter of fact.

Which of their actions are so obviously pro-Russia? I can think of some that are pro-Russia in the sense that they are attacking Russia's opponents but those targets are opposed by others as well, making the conclusion less clear. The most well-known example: is helping Snowden seek asylum pro-Russia or anti-USA? The fact that they were seeking asylum in more than Russia, it seems more anti-USA.

To be clear: I'm not saying it's a deliberate pro-Russian policy - I can see how that might have been implied - but it's undeniable that a large number of their actions benefit Russian interests.

Maybe they are unwitting pawns, or just useful fools, but that it's serving those goals is rather obvious.

You seem to be saying that if leaks benefit Russian policy, the bearer of those leaks is a pawn or a useful idiot.

If legit information benefits someone, it doesn't make that information tainted or the bearer of that information biased or a pawn. I don't care whose interests the truth benefits. We all deserve to know the truth regardless of whom it benefits.

Not at all. When it's a consistent pattern of leaks that are released and misrepresented (for whatever purpose) that benefit one party...

... well then they are either a tool or a fool.

This is Wikileaks now: either in the pocket, or foolish enabler, of Russian interests.

They could be either, but they are one of them.

Nuance is impossible on twitter, so I afford them some lack of brevity in that medium. But beyond that I haven't noticed them editorialize. They release the docs and people can look at them to come to their own conclusions.

Can you show me any examples where they "... continually misrepresented, lied, and obfuscated the truth."

Sure - basically everything around Clinton's position on DOMA was misrepresented. Almost everything about the supposed Colorado voter fraud was straight made up.

Those are just two off the top of my head (I believe Snopes has a lot of detail about those two fwiw).

The brevity of Twitter is not at fault. The whole purpose of their account there seems to be to editorialize the leaks. It's clearly more than just an announcement channel of new releases for people "to come to their own conclusions". They tweet conclusions supported, sometimes incorrectly, with links.

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