To be fair, the stated goal of WikiLeaks/Assange is to destroy the ability of governments to keep secrets by raising the cost of keeping secrets.

His original methods for accomplishing this goal was to enable leaks with the hope of creating an out of control spiral: disillusioned insider leaks -> government cracks down, spends more money, creates more onerous secrecy -> more insiders disillusioned, become leakers.

It kind of seems like this strategy failed -- there hasn't been a runaway spiral of leakers, and the ability of governments to keep secrets hasn't been eliminated.

Assuming the information Wikileaks is releasing is misinformation, whether or not Assange knows for sure, this isn't actually a bad strategy. Releasing plausible misinformation also raises the cost of keeping secrets. This attack only works because the internal communications are secret. If they were never secret, and anyone could peruse them, you couldn't release falsified versions. By keeping them secret, the organizations/governments have made themselves vulnerable to this attack, which raises the cost of keeping secrets.

It makes way more sense to think of WikiLeaks as Setec Astronomy, an anti-secrecy group, than a news organization seeking to inform the public.