Why Julian Assange is Not a hero? — The Art.

In July 2010, Julian Assange — the founder of whistleblowing website Wikileaks — sat down in a red chair at TED conference in the city of Oxford, England. In front of him, in a bright-blue jacket, was his interviewer Chris Anderson — the owner of the TED conference itself. Their conversation started.

Chris Anderson: Julian, welcome. It’s been reported that WikiLeaks, your baby, in the last few years has released more classified documents than the rest of the world’s media combined. Can that possibly be true?

Julian Assange: Yeah, can it possibly be true? It’s a worry — isn’t it? — that the rest of the world’s media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more of that type of information than the rest of the world press combined.

Six years later, the rest of the word’s media is still doing such a bad job and a group of activists at Wikileaks keep releasing more classified documents than the rest of the world press combined.

In 2016, Wikileaks released documents showing the personal correspondences of U.S. Democratic party members with the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal.

What did the leaks say?

Mainstream media, including the agencies mentioned above, didn’t care at all. Instead, the headlines focused on irrelevant questions such as ‘who did leak it?’ or ‘how did Wikileaks obtain it?’. No mention about what the documents actually said.

The blame fell on Russia and a hacker called Gucifer 2.0, who apparently leaked the files. The headlines said “Is Russia trying to change the outcome of U.S. Elections?” or “Russian hackers crack into DNC conference members.”

Wikileaks, again, revealed the truth, and media, again, tried to shift the focus.

In a perfect world, Julian Assange, would have been proclaimed as a hero of journalism. His unique stories revealed Guantanamo prison torture, U.S. drone assassination programme and DNC’s special relationship with the U.S. media. They must be included in curriculums of the university courses across U.S.

But Assange is still forced to be detained in Ecuadorian Embassy in London and recently be cut off from the internet.

Julian Assange is not hero today, and whether he is going to become one, depends on how we are going to pay attention to what his leaks are actually saying.

Originally published at theart.quora.com.