Maybe I'm just too much of a pessimist, but I think Assange (and others like him) are naive to assume that bringing leaks to the general public really has that much of an effect in today's world - people just don't care enough. You won't find many people actually reading the documents... maybe they notice those going viral, but that's probably it. People don't associate WikiLeaks with the idea of transparency, they associate it with scandals. A tabloid newspaper isn't something the majority of the population respects. WikiLeaks seems to share that negative image. Most of my (Gen Z) peers don't even know WikiLeaks exists.