WikiLeaks founder charged with rape and molestation?

[SchmitzIT]

Right or wrong... the media do it every day, paper and online. Wikileaks is just another media outlet nowadays... that many media agencies wish they had more direct access into, but can't... because wikileaks are giving it away for free, where the media magazines and newspapers want you to pay for it by buying their publishing.

See, I do not subscribe to this. Media (well, respected media anyway), are supposed to have some kind of objective role. They report, they do not judge, or aren't supposed to, anyway. WikiLeaks does not have such a standard.

Traditional media, when informed that publisizing some of the documents they might be about to go public with might end up endangering lives of actual human beings, will supply fictive names. WikiLeaks did not do so.

Other than that, who appointed WikiLeaks as the watcher of the watchers, exactly? WikiLeaks is not an official body or organisation that is monitored. Instead, one man calls the shots here (I might be wrong in that, but other than Assange, I'd not have a clue who would act as an internal moderator).

Traditional media also have a responsibility from a commercial perspective in that their advertisers and subscribers will take note of what the media outlet does (and make no mistake, this can be an extremely powerful motivator when it comes to choosing what will be published and what will not). WikiLeaks takes donations, so it does not have such motivations. Heck, for all we know, it could be indirectly funded by countries like Iran and/or North Korea.

So I for one, do not think you can compare WikiLeaks to the traditional media.

 

[Dragapult]

Assange should be the Person of the Year, I can't think of any other individual that got more media coverage this year. (Outside of the usual suspects, anyway.) Of course, I'm sure this won't happen, because the local media wants us to think of Assange as a "bad guy," equivalent to a terrorist or mass murderer.

 

[Kier]

This one has run its course too.