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Comment by nomdeplume | Hacker News Reader

WikiLeaks has been dead for a long time. Ever since the release involving the video of helicopter firing on the people below, someone out there got serious and decided to take Assange down by discrediting him and by diverting the focus away from information and toward the rape charges. Assange was probably given some "offer" he could not refuse and the rest is all for show.

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I'll agree that WikiLeaks died (for me) when they released the helicopter video, but not because of some sort of grand conspiracy. It was because they editorialized the story into the ground. They weren't releasing unadulterated pure data and allowing people to analyze the data; they were attempting to force people into a certain manner of thinking.

That's when I realized WikiLeaks was just the same as any major media outlet.

I am pretty sure they did release the entire video too. And personally I would say the editorialization was mostly harmful to their cause in my case since the real video gave an even stronger picture. Without the cutting it felt much more real and horrible.

Assange advocates something he calls "scientific journalism" whereby journalists publish the raw data and source material along with every story. So they differ from major media outlets in that Wikileaks releases both the editorialized "story" and the unedited source footage and documents.

Now, I'm still not sure how I feel about the "Collateral Murder" video but Assange claims that the original modus operandi of Wikileaks was to simply supply partner news organizations with the raw (possibly redacted) source material and let them publish it. He further claims that the major news organizations were not interested in doing anything with the information until Wikileaks forced them to by creating a story with legs.

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