The press wikileaks was getting before Assange emerged from behind the curtain was far better than it is now. They seemed poised to become the reuters/AP of primary source data. Now that seems almost impossible.
Unintentional irony? Both of those organizations' reputations have become quite tarnished. They are certainly not contemporary bastions of fair-handed transparency -- witness Reuters' photo manipulation and AP's quote-whoring.
I was of course using them as examples of a reference news service or the closest thing we have one in this age. Wikileaks was in a position to become such an institution. One that no one could ignore. That does not seem very likely anymore.