Site’s edge on whistleblowing is gone and its co-founder must recover, yet their resilience may make revival a possibility
Despite his 14-year legal saga, few who know Assange expect him to spend the rest of his life on a beach.Despite his 14-year legal saga, few who know Assange expect him to spend the rest of his life on a beach.
While it remains online – and would-be whistleblowers can theoretically use it to pass on secrets – to all intents and purposes the organisation around it has been repurposed in recent years to campaign for Assange’s freedom. James Harkin, director of the London-based Centre for Investigative Journalism, said interest in WikiLeaks – which he characterised as “a loose alliance between investigative journalists and information anarchists” – emerged more than a decade ago from a profound frustration with the mainstream media’s inability to report what western states were really doing in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.
“In retrospect, it’s striking that everything WikiLeaks published was true – no small feat in the era of “disinformation” – but the tragedy is that much of its energy and ethos has now passed to blowhards and conspiracy theorists. Perhaps, in the light of our tepid new involvements in the Middle East and Ukraine, we need a new WikiLeaks.”
James Ball, a journalist and former WikiLeaks staff member, said “the smart move” would be for Assange and WikiLeaks be to become a figurehead for transparency activism. While much of the WikiLeaks public output has been focused on Assange’s predicament, the site has continued to maintain a presence as a platform for amplifying the journalism of others.As well as this, the ripples of its original leaks continue to have an impact in big and small ways.
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