Ten years ago today, the whistleblower site Wikileaks went online.
There has been controversy, turbulence, and drama. It has been ten very interesting years. Books have been written about Wikileaks and its editor in chief, Julian Assange. And more books are to be written, for sure.
But a day like this, I would like to address the core issue: Wikileaks contribution to a democratic society.
For democracy to be at all meaningful, the people must know what its political leaders are up to. Voters can elect or remove politicians and governments. They can hold people in power accountable for their actions. But to be able to do this, the people must be informed about what their leaders are and have been up to – in the name of the nation, in the name of the people and on taxpayers expense.
These ten years, Wikileaks has exposed politicians cheating, lying, double-crossing, betraying, misleading and robbing the public in countries all over the world.
All of this in a landscape where traditional media organisations sometimes have been unable or even unwilling to investigate and expose those in power.
This is what really matters. This is the democratic legacy of Wikileaks.
/ HAX
“These ten years, Wikileaks has exposed politicians cheating, lying, double-crossing, betraying, misleading and robbing the public in countries all over the world.”
I would argue that’s not the case . Sure it was the case for the first 4, maybe 5 years.
The last 5 years, however, have been nothing more than Assange’s personal PR unit, desperately spinning and exagerating anything to get their ‘glorious leader’ out of his legal obligations.
What’s more, I’d argue that the last 5 years have undermined everything the first five years have done, have so tarnished the name of wikileaks, have spent every bit of potential goodwill, that now my personal opinion of them is as low as can be.
Were the goals of Wikileaks as you say, the smart thing to do would have been to have shuffled Assange to the side until he got his legal troubles sorted one way or another, and not let it distract from their core mission. Instead, defense of Assange became their core mission. Wikileaks decided that the public opinion of Assange was more important than their mission, and that’s never right. And today’s event was just a “‘member-berries party” for them.