Wikileaks never published stories. They've focused on some elements of the data they had in order to spread the message about the entire dataset they had.

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.