Assange Casts Himself as Persecuted Whistle-Blower | Hacker News Reader

Assange Casts Himself as Persecuted Whistle-Blower

nytimes.com

4 pointsmjfern7 comments

Is he not a persecuted whistle-blower?

Ah, the hypocrisy of the NY Times is enraging. Didn't they publish the leaked documents as well?! What cowards.

Look back - I think you will find that the NY Times did indeed publish some of the leaked documents...

Yes, I am aware. That's why I think the NY Times is being hipocritical.

And if you look more carefully, you'll find why the NYT comes up with these hilariously slanted headlines and salt misleading tidbits into various articles (like Assange and Domscheit's cat): the Ombudsman wrote about their interactions with Assange, and they clearly disliked his demands and treatment of them.

One does not engage in lèse majesté with the Grey Lady.

Well, not technically. He isn't being persecuted for being a whistle-blower and there isn't any hard evidence that he is. Of course, you can always assume that all the problems that exist with his extradition and all are caused by his whistle-blowing, but that's not an objective fact.

I'm curious: was there anything that damning in the info that was released through wikileaks? I didn't really follow the story there with the diplomatic cables.

A lot of the information in the leaked diplomatic cables seemed to be simply embarrassing/socially-awkward, of the "The local population thinks President X is a doodyhead, and he throws huge tantrums when event Y is mentioned; be aware" sort.

That sort of stuff caused diplomatic friction, for no obvious gain. One of the dodgier things about wikileaks (and claims that what they were doing was akin to journalism) was that they released so much of it, if their goal was somehow revealing corruption or something.

[It certainly fit private Bradley Manning's goals, as he did just want to cause embarrassment. But wikileaks itself was supposed to be doing something more noble.]

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