Julian Assange
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Yes, WikiLeaks Led to the Revolt in Tunisia - New York News - Runnin' Scared
At least according to New York Times editor Bill Keller, who just last week blasted WikiLeakes chief Julian Assange in a massive profile, calling him "arrogant, thin-skinned, conspiratorial and oddly credulous." But that doesn't mean the work Assange's organization does can't spur political change. "The simple nuts and bolts answer to that is, in the case of the Wikileaks cables in Tunisia, Wikileaks certainly did make a difference," Keller told NPR today .Wikileaks: Where Do You Stand? | Overseas Press Club of America
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange In recent weeks, the news has been dominated by the Wikileaks disclosure of classified State Department documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most recently, in the name of freedom of speech, defenders of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange have been mounting hacking attacks on those trying to disavow him, ranging from Amazon.com and PayPal (for cutting off Wikileaks access) to the Swedish prosecutor who accuses him of rape. Should the OPC's Freedom of the Press Committee be defending Wikileaks and Assange? We haven't done so, on several grounds.
Assange calls paper's handling of the story 'unprofessional' (NEWSER) - Julian Assange has criticized the New York Times for not linking directly to his Wikileak site and its archive of Afghanistan war logs, calling the paper's handling of the story "a little bit unprofessional" in an interview with Democracy Now . "If the New York Times , for whatever reason, wants to not link to Wikileaks for its own defensive politics, then it can do that, and it’s perfectly entitled to," Assange said. "But to deliberately say that that is being avoided smacks of unprofessional conduct, to me." More»
New York Times Editor Bill Keller Says Julian Assange Was 'Arrogant' and 'Conspiratorial'
I’m loath to write again about Wikileaks, or about its pig-to-man founder, Julian Assange. Not because I’ve run out of things to say, but because the response is so predictable when I do. Within minutes, the Assange fanboys – the Wikiliebers, if you like – will swarm into the comments, accusing me of unfairly slandering their hero. “He’s sticking it to The Man!”
Bill Keller vs Wikileaks: Goodnight, Julian Assange, And Bad Luck
The Times just posted a lengthy article by executive editor Bill Keller , which tells the story of last year's WikiLeaks dumps through the eyes of the Gray Lady. The piece will appear in this coming Times Magazine , but it's really worth reading now. The whole thing is interesting, from its depictions of WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange (he went from a being a disheveled "bag lady" or "derelict" who smelled "as if he hadn't bathed for days" to a stylish "cult figure" who was "evidently a magnet for women") to its lengthy explanation and eloquent defense of the Times ' motives. It walks readers through how, and why, the paper chose to highlight the narratives it did. It reveals how polite were the interactions between the paper and the government, despite all the controversy — and points out the difference between the Obama administration in this regard and the Bush one. And it lays out in detail how the paper's relationship with Assange went "from wary to hostile."
Bill Keller: Colluding With WikiLeaks Was Fun at First, Then Annoying -- Daily Intel
The Times's Dealings With Julian Assange - NYTimes.com
I was interested. The adventure that ensued over the next six months combined the cloak-and-dagger intrigue of handling a vast secret archive with the more mundane feat of sorting, searching and understanding a mountain of data. As if that were not complicated enough, the project also entailed a source who was elusive, manipulative and volatile (and ultimately openly hostile to The Times and The Guardian); an international cast of journalists; company lawyers committed to keeping us within the bounds of the law; and an array of government officials who sometimes seemed as if they couldn’t decide whether they wanted to engage us or arrest us.