I want to set up a new standard: โscientific journalism.โ If you publish a paper on DNA, you are required, by all the good biological journals, to submit the data that has informed your researchโthe idea being that people will replicate it, check it, verify it. So this is something that needs to be done for journalism as well. There is an immediate power imbalance, in that readers are unable to verify what they are being told, and that leads to abuse.
Julian AssangeThe FBI demonstrated this by taking down the former head of the CIA [General David Petraeus] over classified information given to his mistress. Almost no-one is untouchable. The FBI is always trying to demonstrate that no-one can resist us. But Hillary Clinton very conspicuously resisted the FBI's investigation, so there's anger within the FBI because it made the FBI look weak. We've published about 33,000 of Clinton's emails when she was Secretary of State.
Julian AssangeWikiLeaks has been publishing for ten years, and in those ten years, we have published ten million documents, several thousand individual publications, several thousand different sources, and we have never got it wrong.
Julian AssangeLet's say that, personally, I loved Hillary Clinton. Would WikiLeaks still publish this material? Of course it would. Otherwise, we would be censoring it. That's our mandate. It's actually interesting to think about what media organizations wouldn't publish such material if it was given to them.
Julian AssangeWhere they couldn't pick holes in our arguments they would drive horses and carriages through my character.
Julian AssangeI just find it absolutely amazing that the narrative about this situation is not put out publically in the press, because it doesn't suit the Western establishment narrative - that yes, the West has political prisoners, it's a reality, it's not just me, there's a bunch of other people as well.
Julian Assange