"We are part of shaping this history" - Julian Assange at the International Media Congress in Berlin

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange spoke this morning via satellite link before an audience gathered at the International Media Conference in Berlin. His keynote address and subsequent interview on the subject of “The Future of Digital Publicity, Transparency and What It Means for the World” took place against the backdrop of last week’s events, which saw Britain’s Guardian newspaper and then Wikileaks itself disclose the sources of the secret U.S. diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks had previously made available to a number of media sources for publication. 

In the wake of these disclosures, WikiLeaks has been accused of treating informants carelessly and failing to sufficiently protect them. Just a few days earlier, a number of WikiLeaks’ former media partners, including the New York Times and Der Spiegel,had distanced themselves from the online platform and sharply criticized its disclosure for allegedly endangering information sources. 

In the interview, Deutsche Welle TV journalist and moderator Melinda Crane asked Assange whether he had met his own standards of discretion. In response, Assange said: “There’s nothing else we could have done.” He went on to say that this kind of work always has hidden risks and that journalists’ main job was to bring the truth to light and make it accessible. He added that every plan runs the risk of being uncovered, whether before, during or long after its actual execution.

Assange also said that every person, every organization and every interest group pursues its own agenda, even if it eventually causes them to act against the interests of the general public. He then added that it was the job of journalists to reveal genuine motivations in a way that was directly from the sources, unfiltered and freely accessible rather than how interest groups want to present it. Journalism, he continued, should be used as an instrument for controlling those in power rather than average people. He also said that the fact that the information disclosure had elicited such a strong negative reaction shows just how vulnerable the parties and structures concerned are. 

Der Spiegel editor-in-chief Matthias von Blumencron reacted to Assange’s speech and interview in a subsequent panel discussion on the age of digital news. He repeated his organization’s criticism of WikiLeaks’ decision to publish US diplomatic cables in an unredacted form that included the names of sources, and he said that his company’s employees were annoyed and appalled that the documents had been made available online in this unedited, “incomprehensible” form.