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You both appear to be forgetting something much more important.

Information was passed to trusted reporters because they were the only ones who had access and the ability to publish in a newspaper so that many people could be informed at once.

This is no longer exclusively the purview of newspaper/television reporters.

I'm disappointed by the failure to work with some of the really good reporters, simply because they're good at what they do. But it's hard to argue that circumventing mainstream news is somehow inherently wrong at this point.

If someone pressed Assange on this matter, I imagine he'd point out that he has more experience examining and organizing major leaks than almost any reporter. And, further, that he trusts himself more than he trusts the objectivity of reporters.

Now, I can disagree on those claims, and I think I do, but there's no particular reason an experienced data-handler is inherently wrong for not using reporters.

That's a really good point. And to think, I grew up pre-Internet, and have forgotten all about that!

A lot of what Wikileaks is reporting now is that the media is coordinating with the same people that these leaks are about in the first place. In other words, the media isn't trustworthy.

It doesn't work like that.

In the past WikiLeaks worked with the media on redaction. Its not like they just handed over the material and stepped away powerless. And they always had the fallback of posting unredacted materials if they felt the media was biased.

The refusal to redact is plain and simply philosophical.

Also, their former media partners, the NYT and the Guardian, won't work with them any more because of Assange's irresponsible and sociopathic behavior.

That's a bit of a strawman argument. The least they could do is vet the material with reporters, the media would have jumped all over these emails. If their reporting partners for some reason determined they didn't want to run with the story, then WikiLeaks could just go ahead and do what they've already done.

The fact that they don't care about the vetting aspect anymore just confirms the DNC leak was petty and personal, not an exercise in transparency. The DNC isn't even a government, wasn't the whole point of WikiLeaks to hold governments and their leaders accountable?

> The DNC isn't even a government, wasn't the whole point of WikiLeaks to hold governments and their leaders accountable?

I agree that this was personally motivated, but that's a pretty laughable claim. A major political institution was attempting to manipulate an election for the US Presidency, but it's outside Wikileaks' purview because the DNC isn't technically part of the government?

Vetting and bias are topics worth discussing, but when political officials using 'neutral' funds try to reshape an election, I'm quite happy to label that a "government accountability" issue.

Edit: removed "state funds" reference, I had misunderstood part of FECA. I don't think it changes the point.

Given how much money goes into an election, this level of collusion should piss you off at least a little if you supported Bernie Sanders, right? It's not an outright fix, but if the deck was stacked, any donations to candidates other than Hillary Clinton were sort of like pissing into the ocean. Maybe a little less satisfying than that.

I agree that it was personally motivated. I just don't care. I want to know if our major media outlets are coordinating with specific campaigns, or if campaign finance laws are being broken in general. I'd love to see those Goldman Sachs speeches that Hillary is looking into for 6 months now.

It's not collusion, the decisions are all being made within the party. It's wrong and unfortunate the way Sanders was treated by the DNC (I supported and donate to Sanders), but it's the DNC's call to operate however they want to operate.

It's not really, though. Or at least, what the DNC did wasn't just operating how they chose.

The DNC portrayed itself as a candidate-agnostic intermediary that wanted to see a Democrat win the election. They fundraised, did press coverage, and organized events using that claim. They were repeatedly accused of being biased, and they denied the accusations then publicly mocked the accusers for spinning crazy conspiracies.

So no, the DNC didn't 'rig' the primary, they didn't have the power. But everyone who donated to the DNC has a right to be angry. The DNC is free to operate as they choose, but they lied about how they operate, and took money under those false pretenses. We aren't expected to accept that behavior from companies or charities, and I don't want to accept it from political groups either.

You are incorrect. DNC is not state funded.

They're not federally funded, correct

Actually, in several states the two-party system is baked pretty deeply into the state-level laws. Pennsylvania, for example, has a primary system where one has to declare whether one is Democrat, Republican, or Independent, and then must vote on the ballot corresponding to that declaration (with the Independent ballot holding only referendum questions and not any input into the primary process).

Those elections use the state's voting machines and vote security infrastructure. That's functionally equivalent to being state-funded, even if the funding is in terms of human-power and machine use donation and not cash.

That's a bit of a stretch to reach the conclusion the DNC and RNC are "state funded". Poll workers are volunteers, the machines are bought with taxpayer money but they are used for multiple types elections (from state to federal).

Not all poll workers are volunteers. I'm a majority inspector; I'm state-paid. I'm required to show up for the primaries.

But you're not a federal employee, that isn't your full time job. That's a responsibility you volunteered to take on, the fact that you get compensated for your time every time there's a primary vote doesn't imply you're an agent of the state, it's not a "functional equivalent".

The fact that I'm compensated means I am not a volunteer. In fact, I'm an elected official. It isn't my full-time job, but that's irrelevant.

The state pays me to assist with the operations of the taxpayer-purchased-and-funded voting machines for the purpose of executing both the Democrat and Republican primary elections (and no other primary elections) on PA primary day. I don't know how that can be not "state-funded."

It's not "functionally equivalent" at all

Don't be silly. The DNC is not taxpayer funded, the primary election system that all major parties have access to is. The DNC is funded by non-tax-deductible donations.

I drive to work on government supplied roads, but that doesn't mean you have a moral or legal right to hack my company email.

Neither the DNC, RNC, nor any other political party organization is a federal institution.

Doesn't it make it even worse? A private, oblique organisation has effective stranglehold on who gets the shot at presidency with little oversight, because "private"

The DNC is a private entity, and can act (internally) just about any way they want. You and I are free (well, constrained by finances I suppose) to establish our own parties that act however we want. Freedom of association and all.

People don't have to join the Democrats or the Republicans. Those who do make that choice are now learning that these parties function exactly like any other corporate entity. Some sort of oligarchy calling the shots over a pseudo-democratic process that they ostensibly claim to be the real process. Time for the schisms.

Someone didn't pay attention in civics class. You'd prefer the federal government to manage the decisions of all the major political parties?

Manipulate an election? What? Firstly, Clinton straight out won more votes then Sanders, secondly, it's absolutely legitimate for leadership of a political party to try to influence who that party nominates as its candidate. It's an organization. Sanders could have run for president as a socialist and nothing was stopping him from doing so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

In light of that, if you don't believe parties have a duty to be fair to all primary contenders, then I'm at a loss. How do you expect to avoid cronyism and corruption when "private" political parties are outed working to bias primaries and you say that's okay?

what does "fair" mean? A party's purpose is to advance a set of ideas. So, absolutely, the party leadership can choose not to be fair to a primary candidate that does not support those ideas. As an example, if Sanders is a socialist and wants to advance socialist ideas, he can form his own party and have it be on the ballot. And that party should be free to reject primary candidates who are not socialists, no? otherwise, why have parties in the first place ?

Having said all that, the democratic primary election was pretty fair and the current candidate is the one who won the most votes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/us/politics/dnc-emails-san...

Don't you think fair means, at a minimum, not doing that kind of thing? The DNC's officials were trying to persuade their own party's voters against one primary candidate and for another primary candidate.

As I understand it, a party's purpose is to organize and provide membership for people sharing whatever ideology they share, who are then (among other things) capable of signing petitions for candidates seeking to run under that Party's name. If enough party members from enough districts sign your petition, you're on that party's primary ballot in that State.

Most of what the DNC and RNC do, or what they should do, is either administrative, or attacking the other party. I'm not defending that DNC vs RNC dynamic; I think we'd probably be better off without the party system, at least as it currently exists as a privatized crony-capitalism bullshit theater with very public repercussions... and I'm also in favor of fixing the voting systems used by the States. But, in the meantime, the DNC and RNC should be banned from trying to influence their own primaries.

If DNC officials want to attack one primary candidate, they should quit the DNC and go work for an opposing primary candidate's campaign. They don't want to do that, because they'd lose the status of working under the aegis of the DNC; they'd be working merely for one candidate or another, any of which could lose.

To put it succinctly, a political party official should act in a purely administrative manner with respect to the party's own internal operation, including its primaries.

Well, I disagree with your last statement. Party officials should act to protect the raison d'être for this party's existence in the first place. As I said above, if you are a socialist, by all means, register a socialist party, get on the ballot in every state, raise enough money for advertising, etc. to be competitive - nothing is stopping you from doing this. That does not mean that non socialist party officials should just roll over whenever a socialist runs in their primaries.

As an example, say what you want, Donald Trump is clearly not a conservative in any meaningful sense of conservatism. What is the long run result of his candidacy? there is a high probability that the long run result is irreversible damage to Republican party. Surely, party officials can act to prevent something like this, and not simply act as disinterested administrators. A political party in the US is essentially a private non for profit organization - that can run its affairs as the leadership of that party sees fit

You do realize that the DNC not being "fair" might have affected who won the most votes, right?

That's the entire point.

in what way? do primary voters not support Hillary Clinton more than they support Sanders? Was it not up to them to decide ? were they in any way prevented from deciding ?

Hang on, I think you're misunderstanding my objection.

Clinton won a majority, so the primary wasn't "stolen". She probably would have won without any DNC intervention, so it wasn't "rigged", either. And the DNC is under no duty to be objective, so it wasn't malfeasance in that sense.

My complaint is specifically that the DNC denied attempting to skew things to Hillary, and collected money while pretending to be neutral. Sanders repeatedly accused the DNC of favoring Hillary and attacking him, and DNC staffers said that the claims were untrue and absurd.

Priebus and the RNC openly opposed Trump, as was their right. Donors to the RNC knew that they were effectively donating to Cruz and Rubio, and against Trump. The DNC insisted they weren't opposing Sanders, and then did so behind the backs of voters and donors.

So no, I'm not mad that a party committee tried to influence a primary. I'm mad that they did so while swearing up and down they weren't, and mocking the Sanders campaign for claiming otherwise.

I guess, although you have to realize the reality of politics is often like this. It is because the voters on average are quite misinformed, so they will not understand the nuance of the situation. So, yes, they got caught in a lie and had to resign as a result.

When you say "vetting" what are you actually suggesting they do? Check to make sure the information is actually true? As far as I can tell they did that. Check the make sure that the information doesn't put peoples lives in danger? It doesn't seem like they put any lives in danger with this leak. Except maybe their source's but I'm not sure how "vetting" the information would have helped that.

What pray tell is actually meant by "vetting?"

Releasing the personal information for all those Turkish women absolutely can put their lives in danger.

> wasn't the whole point of WikiLeaks to hold governments and their leaders accountable?

No, not exactly.

WikiLeaks specializes in the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption.[1]

I would definitely say the DNC leak was restricted official materials involving corruption.

[1] https://wikileaks.org/What-is-Wikileaks.html

>The DNC isn't even a government, wasn't the whole point of WikiLeaks to hold governments and their leaders accountable?

Something tells me you would not be making this comment if they released leaks that implicated "evil" corporations like Exxon-Mobile, Wal-Mart, Koch, ect.

If Wal-Mart had an election for their CEO and the deck was stacked, I would probably be equally surprised.

"the media" is a bunch of individuals, many of which are not as you describe. They could find trustworthy and thorough reporters to work with if they wanted to. They did before.

There are trustworthy reporters, the challenge is to find trustworthy reporters who will be heard by the masses.

As much as I like The Intercept, for example, they do not have the same reach as the WSJ or the NYT.

So why not run it through reporters and if they bury the story, then release it. Snowden ran his story through reporters and it certainly wasn't buried.

Because the DNC leaks implicated a lot of reporters who Wikileaks would have to work with to get this story out.

Even if we generously interpret the "whole lot of reporters", the implication here is that they were left with no reporters to work with. That's absurd. There are many, many reporters, and even many credible reporters. It would not have been difficult to find non-implicated reporters that could deliver this with an impact.

You're acting as if there is a small group of reporters who, if compromised, make it impossible for Wikileaks to be responsible.

I agree with this. There is no vast media conspiracy. If nothing else, Fox would be all over it, as would the tabloid (most of these days) media. There's no honor among thieves.

I'm not sure an organization as biased as Fox News would improve the credibility of the leaks by any measurable amount.

You don't give the enemy a heads up. The fact the media is now an enemy is a nightmare in and of itself.

Think about it like a data project at a company (because that's my job, heh). There's this weird, but accurate, assumption that the first to report something is assumed true, and anything that comes later either has to conform to that or is presumed to be wildly inaccurate.

It's not so much the risk that the media buries it, I was incorrect in framing it that way. The bigger risk is that the media spins and reports it. Remember, they still have the majority of the eyes and ears.

Snowden did it, but note that it involved foreign media. It's probably easier to get foreign media involved in an international spying story than it would be to get someone to take up the US democratic primary and campaign finance laws (which everyone else in the world already thinks is ridiculous). I'm not saying it can't be done, or that it shouldn't be done or whatever else - but I do think it's a complex decision.

The media is spinning it and reporting it now. I'm fine with the release, I'm not fine with essentially doxxing all the donors.

Also, Assange is currently putting his own spin on it implying the DNC staffer that died was murdered. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

> implying the DNC staffer that died was murdered.

The DNC staffer that died _was murdered_. That's exactly what happened. I think what you mean is they're implying motive and conspiracy.

A $20k reward might clear the air either way.

>I think what you mean is they're implying motive and conspiracy.

Yes, thanks for correcting that.

That's the things seen and unseen fallacy. Suppose some parts were buried, you wouldn't know of them.