New York Times: Assange Was a Source, Not Media Partner. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was a source, not a partner or collaborator, according to the New York Times in a new, detail-rich Times magazine piece about the newspaper’s volatile relationship with beleaguered WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the government’s behind-the-scenes reactions to the cache of documents the site has published.
The lengthy article, written by Times editor-in-chief Bill Keller, appears aimed at distancing his paper from Assange, who is described as “thin-skinned” and “arrogant,” and continues the recent trend of “Assange-bashing” by WikiLeaks media partners. A Vanity Fair article earlier this month provided a similar glimpse of the rocky relationship between Assange and the Guardian newspaper in London, including news that Assange had threatened to sue the paper if it published documents before he gave the go-ahead. Keller reveals that Assange also hinted at suing the Times over the same issue. Keller writes that the tone was “suppressed outrage.” Julian Assange and the journalists. The Man Who Spilled the Secrets. The collaboration between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the Web’s notorious information anarchist, and some of the world’s most respected news organizations began at The Guardian, a nearly 200-year-old British paper.
What followed was a clash of civilizations—and ambitions—as Guardian editors and their colleagues at The New York Times and other media outlets struggled to corral a whistle-blowing stampede amid growing distrust and anger. With Assange detained in the U.K., the author reveals the story behind the headlines. On the afternoon of November 1, 2010, Julian Assange, the Australian-born founder of WikiLeaks.org, marched with his lawyer into the London office of Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian. Assange was pallid and sweaty, his thin frame racked by a cough that had been plaguing him for weeks.