It turns out Wikileaks does care about the source https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l...
To be absolutely clear: I don't have any reason to doubt the motivations of Wikileaks' current leadership. I also genuinely believe that they treat all leaks as "equal," in the sense that they believe in the absolute freedom of information and are liable to (eventually) release everything that they're given.
The observation is tantamount to the tragedy of the commons: give malicious actors unlimited means under an ostensibly just principle, and your principle will be monopolized for malicious ends or used to subvert itself.
But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have commons, or that I want to live in a world without Wikileaks. It's just an admonishment to be aware of a risk inherent in "neutral" venues.
I agree with your sentiment, but we are all aware of the role WL had in the 2016 election. And in chats Assange was found to have said, “We believe it would be much better for GOP to win,” .. and then he continued to play the Seth Rich conspiracy angle until finally distancing from it.
Under scrutiny, the agenda is not as neutral as one would like, and the consequences of this lack of neutrality are massive.
Nonetheless, in that case as well as in the case of Wikileaks, any result of reporting the truth should be blamed on the people who committed the unpopular acts, not the people who reported them.
1) Claims of neutrality are evidence against being neutral
2) performance of neutrality is evidence of neutrality
3) blind adherence to neutrality is evidence of not understanding the goals of neutrality
Everybody is biased. Always.
There are no exceptions to this rule.
>We believe it would be much better for GOP to win, Dems + Media + liberals woudl [sic] then form a block to reign in their worst qualities. With Hillary in charge, GOP will be pushing for her worst qualities, Dems + media + neoliberals will be mute.”
Not only is Assange allowed a personal opinion, why would a pro-GOP preference matter? Pro-GOP sites deserve their freedom of the press trampled?
Where else are we going to get insight into the globbal power "underworld", which the intelligence community just happens to always have a finger in? Anonymous sources feeding into New York Times? Because that's all we had before and continue to have today otherwise.
People just don't like when certain inconvenient information comes out and Wikileaks didnt care about the source.
People constantly try to pin ideological stuff on Wikileaks or data leaking in general but that misses the bigger point and it's a point that extends beyond Wikileaks itself and goes into information releasing in general (we don't need to defend Assange personally or Wikileaks itself to be concerned or defend the general idea). I also highly doubt they are selectively choosing NOT to release political information... like news outlets apparently do.
But I also don't care, there's a huge amount of risk and blowback doing such a mission regardless of source or content which we should respect.
They get what they can from where ever and publish it if it has some value to the general public, and we've gotten tons of value from Wikileaks already. So do plenty of other organizations now inspired by Wikileaks, plenty which have exposed corruption in a new way (like Panamaleaks).
The fact this sometimes can have an 'agenda' or be exploited by the original sources will never negate the value of a neutral 3rd party who releases stuff publicly we'd never see otherwise. And will continue to do so as long as operational.
My only fear is that there won't be people brave enough to do this given nation-state harassment and those who think its all a political-inspired conspiracy (which litter every social media site).