Stealing documents and releasing them to the public irresponsibly does not make you a journalist.
Journalists don't simply parrot their sources, they use discretion in determining what is appropriate to release.
There was also the documents related to the DNC aide who was murdered, all of which were demonstrated to be forgeries.
And that's just the US political stuff...
> WikiLeaks has, for instance, revealed Social Security numbers, medical information, credit card numbers and details of suicide attempts.
I can't imagine most of this information is necessary in "uncovering government and corporate secrets" and quite irresponsible of Wikileaks.
What's wrong with that approach is that everyone else got his/her private communications released publicly even if they didn't do anything wrong in particular. They were in a now-public database that exposed dirt on someone else, as a collateral damage. Wikileaks hoped that people would find more dirt from looking at the entire datasets, but what we got instead was conspiracy theories (like Pizzagate).
This is the opposite of the Panama/Paradise Papers approach, that only publishes the incriminating parts of the dataset, while guarding everyone else who happened to be a part of the same database.
I agree with the goal of Wikileaks, but not their approach.
Publishing a bunch of documents does you get does not make you accessory to theft. Helping steal them does.
Also, not necessarily saying he's a journalist, but there's a reason journalist have special protections in many countries. Exposing corruption or the failings of powerful people is always risky, and I'm glad some people decide to do it.
That is actually not a good sign. Anyone with a sufficiently long track record is going to make some mistakes because no one is perfect. If you refuse to issue any retractions or updates, what that really means is that you refuse to admit that you make mistakes.
or, use the Lady Gaga CD case?