raising awareness > winning worthless awards.

You see, the award itself is not worthless, because the real value in it is making the general population aware of yourself.

"Any time spent debating whether Assange should have won it could just be spent actually helping the Wikileaks movement."

Arguments of this form are always silly. I don't dedicate all of my free-time to any one task, nor do I have any desire to do so. I lose nothing by taking 2 minutes out of my day (2 minutes that would have otherwise been spent picking my nose or staring at the wall) to complain about Assange not getting this award.