It's a contradiction to the claim he simply acted as a reporter: reporters don't release private information concerning no matter of public concern of people who are in no respect public figures.
That's a very strange definition of "faultless record." Shall we elevate the Ashley Madison password leakers to the same level of folk hero? What about a VPN that spies on its users - they never publish anything false, so any persecution is unfair, right?
We're talking about two different things. The grandparent said that Assange hasn't had to make any retractions and hasn't published any false info. This is undeniably true.
They also said "like him or not". Not everyone likes the outcome of his leaks. Many do. Many like some, but not others. Regardless, he's had a major impact on politics based on very true information Wikileaks has made available to the public.
If the Ashley Madison password leakers were helping expose corruption in the government, I'm sure some would view them as folk heroes too.
Sure, PR Newswire has never retracted an article in the past 13 years, to my knowledge. They've published corrections given to them by sources, but the original article was accurate to what the source gave to them. They are truly modern-day heroes.
I mean, the reason is that PR Newswire just reprints things they're given from others. They're not investigatory journalists in the usual sense by any means.
Since when does no retractions mean a faultless record? That just means you stand with all of the bullshit you spew, not that you're a fully truthful source.
Like when Wikileaks was perpetuating the nonsense Seth Rich conspiracy as cover.
I believe what they’re trying to say is that the context clues in the top-level comment tell us that the comment author defines “faultless record” as “no retractions”. You, me, or any other person can have a different definition of “faultless”, but that is just making conversation break down when we’re all replying to one particular definition that seemed (to me at least) clearly spelled out.
Not really - we don’t have to accept a false framing.
If they mean no retractions, they can just say no retractions.
‘Faultless record’ is a deliberate overgeneralization to make it sound like WikiLeaks is more reputable than it actually is.
Consider that Donald Trump has an equally ‘faultless record’ based on this criterion , and yet many people consider this to be sociopathic behavior,
‘No retractions’ is not a measure of journalistic quality or integrity, and certainly not an indicator of faultlessness. Indeed willingness to retract is usually considered a good thing.
We're saying the same thing! A supporter of Trump or any other politician might think "their guy" is faultless, and I would probably disagree, but I wouldn't sit there arguing with them about how and why they _should_ find fault. The original comment framed their personal definition of 'faultless' by following it immediately with their definition (no retractions). You or I don't have to agree with that, and it just derails the entire conversation to sit here and argue (myself included) about the definition of a throwaway word. Nobody in this conversation is trying to convince you that their definition of faultless matches yours or that Wikileaks fit that criteria, whatever it may be.
