It sounds whimsical but the headline of this article helped me gain a new perspective on Wikileaks. I probably shouldn’t see them as this supposed holier than thou and perfect organization which fails miserably at being just that (especially in the wake of the Collateral Murder video).<p>They are just something like a news organization, with their own biases, their own screw ups (which should be criticized), but they still provide a valuable service to society. The headline helped me come to terms with my ultimately unrealistic expectations of Wikileaks.
I think it's very dangerous to define and describe WikiLeaks as 'a news organization'.<p>News organizations curate and editorialize content - I hope that WikiLeaks doesn't editorialize their content (I know Julian Assange has talked about 'getting PR for leakers' as a motive, which is concerning).<p>We're still working out what WikiLeaks is as their model is basically something new for the mainstream world that they have not seen before.
It's sort of amazing that an amateur and somewhat half-assed journalist club is getting this much attention for just reporting the news.<p>Of course, it's because "real journalists" no longer report the news or investigate anything. They just parrot the party line. In a world full of Pravda clones, an amateurish guerilla operation doing actual journalism captures the front pages.
I wonder what ever happened with that Wikileaks "insider" writing to Cryptome about how they were planning on shutting the place down?<p>Am I wrong, or does this give us every reason to disbelieve the guy, given that they've been working on this huge leak for quite a while now?