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Comment by kjaftaedi | Hacker News Reader

>The fact this sometimes can have an 'agenda' or be exploited by the original sources will never negate the value of a neutral 3rd party..

I agree with your sentiment, but we are all aware of the role WL had in the 2016 election. And in chats Assange was found to have said, “We believe it would be much better for GOP to win,” .. and then he continued to play the Seth Rich conspiracy angle until finally distancing from it.

Under scrutiny, the agenda is not as neutral as one would like, and the consequences of this lack of neutrality are massive.

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The Washington Post wasn't neutral either when it investigated Watergate. They had previously battled Nixon and had close ties with JFK and LBJ.

Nonetheless, in that case as well as in the case of Wikileaks, any result of reporting the truth should be blamed on the people who committed the unpopular acts, not the people who reported them.

This is really interesting to me because of the way the information age seems to have collapsed claims and evidence into one another. I was actually recently discussing this with a friend and we formulates three rules:

1) Claims of neutrality are evidence against being neutral

2) performance of neutrality is evidence of neutrality

3) blind adherence to neutrality is evidence of not understanding the goals of neutrality

I think you could just have one rule instead, which is also taught to beginning journalists if I'm not mistaken:

Everybody is biased. Always.

There are no exceptions to this rule.

But this is not about bias...it’s about representation of your actions.

There are no neutral actions, though.

That's a rather massive elipses there

>We believe it would be much better for GOP to win, Dems + Media + liberals woudl [sic] then form a block to reign in their worst qualities. With Hillary in charge, GOP will be pushing for her worst qualities, Dems + media + neoliberals will be mute.”

Not only is Assange allowed a personal opinion, why would a pro-GOP preference matter? Pro-GOP sites deserve their freedom of the press trampled?

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